Did You Miss Us? We Missed You!

.5 We have returned from AWP 2010 where many things happened, all of them good, nay, great. Lots of things have been happening.

1. There’s a new issue of PANK featuring Rachel Andelman, ZZ Boone, Julie Babcock, Leah Bailly, Nik De Dominic, Kerri French, Mindy Hung, Jamie Iredell, Brian Kubarycz, Andrea Kneeland, Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdao, Michelle Menting, Eric Neuenfeldt, Jonathan Papas, Rachel Swirsky, Robert Swartwood, and Chris Tarry.

2. The October issue of PANK will be a special issue on queer fictions and poetics guest edited by Tim Jones-Yelvington. Tim says:

Submissions are open for PANK’s October  special online issue featuring Queer prose, poetry & art, edited by Tim Jones-Yelvington. Submit fiction, poetry, art and unidentified or hybrid literary text objects  by September 1, 2010 through the special issue submission manager:  http://pankmagazine.submishmash.com/Submit.

We are open to any of the following (these are not guidelines. There are no guidelines, because this shit’s Queer):

~Work by, about or representing Queer people of color, women, trans folk, poor Queers, Queers with disabilities, homeless Queers, immigrant Queers, incarcerated Queers, Queers involved in sex work and other street economies, and others.

~Work that explores the relationship between formal/aesthetic innovation and Queer identities and experiences.

~Queer heterosexuality

~”Realist,” “experimental,” “magical realist/irrealist/fabulist, etc.” writing conscious of language and form

~Graphic sex and violence

~The grotesque

~Appropriations, transformation or recontextualizations of existing writers or texts.

~Shit PANK would publish anyway because PANK’s awesome.

3. You have until May 15 to enter our chapbook competition!

4. There’s still time to enter our massive AWP haul giveaway. Comment here with your six word story until Friday at midnight. Other exciting giveaways are on the horizon.

5. The Atlantic’s fiction issue is up.

6. How a tiny press published a Pulitzer winner.

7. The Library of Congress has acquired the Twitter archive. May that console you as your local library is forced to cut hours, staffing and valuable resources for your community.

8. Nanoism is having a Twitter fiction contest with a monetary prize! It’s also a fundraiser for Haiti! Haiti is excellent.

9. There’s a vampire literature conference this weekend. Yes, really.

10. Agatha Christie’s writing process was kinda crazy but it worked so, huzzah!

11. April is National Poetry Month which begs two questions. a. How are you celebrating? b. How are these special months determined? Is there a High Council of Monthly Celebrations? If so, how does one join that council?

12. Seriously, though, how on earth did Brig win Shear Genius? I am so distressed about this unexpected turn of events. I’m sure Jonathan Antin had a conniption on set when the producers forced the judges to make that crazy choice.

13. Mary J. Blige sang “Stairway to Heaven” on Oprah. It was pretty awesome but the ending was maybe not good.  If you people gave up your pesky day jobs, you too would be up on Oprah. Grad School 4 EVA or June 16, whichever comes first.

14.  What is the etiquette for meeting someone you admire at a conference? I would like to know this so next year I am better prepared to not make a fool of myself in front of fancy people.

15. I know almost all the lines to the movie Showgirls. Yeah, I’m talented. Also, Nomi Malone is older than me. She was born in 1973.

16. Why are hockey, basketball and baseball seasons so long? And they call football uncivilized.

17. I recently learned that coriander and cilantro are basically the same thing.