Bull is looking for stories with a woman’s touch. Editor Jarrett Haley writes

Last week my wife and I had our second child, a daughter.  This is the biggest of deals for me, coming from a family where men outnumber women four to one, and my mother being a pretty rugged broad herself.
So to celebrate our brand new addition—Charlotte Kapena Ku Haley (my wife’s part Hawaiian)—I plan to give the next issue of BULL a feminine angle. This means men’s stories by woman authors (it has been done, here and here), stories told or informed from a woman’s point of view (like this here—one of my favorites), and of course, fathers and daughters (but try not to scare me too much).

Send him something awesome, ladies!

Bull is looking for stories with a woman’s touch. Editor Jarrett Haley writes

Last week my wife and I had our second child, a daughter.  This is the biggest of deals for me, coming from a family where men outnumber women four to one, and my mother being a pretty rugged broad herself.
So to celebrate our brand new addition—Charlotte Kapena Ku Haley (my wife’s part Hawaiian)—I plan to give the next issue of BULL a feminine angle. This means men’s stories by woman authors (it has been done, here and here), stories told or informed from a woman’s point of view (like this here—one of my favorites), and of course, fathers and daughters (but try not to scare me too much).

Send him something awesome, ladies!

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of opening a job, it was the age of closing the job, followed by reopening the job, but with a tighter deadline. It was the epoch of being given the specs, it was the epoch of being given the wrong specs. It was the season of a job being written, it was the season of a job being rewritten. It was Saturday, and we were all working late. — Charles Dickens, A Tale Of Two Cities

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York. Wait. Wait, now I remember. I was interviewing for a position at Ogilvy. Yep, that’s it. I guess the whole “electrocution of the Rosenbergs” thing clouded my memory. But now I remember: Ogilvy. — Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins, opener of jobs with budgets and time. — Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

Mother died today. Banner ad. — Albert Camus, The Stranger

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself, proving that Janet’s marketing strategy was dead-on: the target market for those flowers was women, ages 25 to 54. — Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish, despite the fact that the brochure advertised how you were guaranteed a worthy fish by day 83. Had the advertiser exaggerated? — Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

Call me Ishmael. No, wait: call me Donovan. Yeah, Donovan. No, Charlie. Call me Charlie. Chuck. No, Charlie. Charlie or Chuck? You know what: let’s just go back to my original thought: call me Ishmael. — Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. He liked to get good and shaved before doing his timesheets. — James Joyce, Ulysses

I am an invisible man. Not to be confused with an invincible man. Big difference. Found that out the hard way at last week’s client meeting. — Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, this end-of-year review must show. – Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

I have never polished a terd with more misgiving. – W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor’s Edge

It was love at first sight. But the idea was killed on second glance. — Joseph Heller, Catch-22

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since: “Advertising? Why don’t you just go to med school.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

They wanted to fit “I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, tho’ not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull; He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and leaving off his Trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my Mother, whose Relations were named Robinson, a very good Family in that Country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual Corruption of Words in England, we are now called, nay we call our selves, and write our Name Crusoe, and so my Companions always call’d me” in a 15-second TV spot. — Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

It was a pleasure to burn. — Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Of course, there’s the amazing April issue. Start with that if you haven’t already and congratulations to all the PANK writers who were recognized for having a notable story in the 2010 storySouth Million Writers Award. We would especially like to recognize Elaine Castillo and Rachel Swirsky for their beautiful writing that originally appeared in PANK and made this wonderful list.

At Train Write, Sara Lippman’s Crushed is just wonderful.

The Short Fiction Collective has a story by xTx. She is also interviewed by PANK blogger BL Pawelek for Monkeybicycle, as part of his Ten Everywhere feature.

Here’s a nice profile of Melissa Broder at Publisher’s Weekly.

The Spring 2010 issue of Blip includes Matthew Salessse, Ben Loory, Corey Mesler, James Valvis, Kyle Hemmings, and others.

At Everyday Genius, poetry from Peter Schwartz.

Two stories from Tania Hershman—one in Litro and the other in Metazen.

Dear Shin Sang-ok, I keep thinking about you. When I was at university, I wrote a short story—-which was not a short story because it ended up being fifty pages, one of the first indications of my future failure as a short story writer—-based on what happened to you. You were a filmmaker, and in 1978, you and your ex-wife were kidnapped by Kim Jong-il and taken to North Korea to make movies for the regime. You made Pulgasari, that monster movie known as the North Korean counterpart to Godzilla. Godzilla’s body is sometimes prehistoric, sometimes a result of atomic radiation, sometimes cobbled together nuclear refuse. Sometimes Godzilla’s a villain, sometimes a hero. Sometimes he wants to destroy everything, sometimes he has to save everything. All the lengthy debates on the consequences and attendant horrors of nuclear power are in him made flesh—-well, flesh, along with: scale, dorsal fin, tail. The monster is always the one carrying the warning in its body—-as its body. Monster meaning to show; French: monstrer, montrer. The monster always has something vital and painful to show you about the world you live in. The world you die in.

Dear Shin Sang-ok, your Pulgasari wasn’t an aquatic-terrestrial-transitional-form, but a doll made out of rice that came to life, when a little blood from a little girl dripped on it. (It seems that so much in cinema depends on blood from little girls, am I recalling this wrong?) Pulgasari ages in the film; he’s a baby, then an adolescent, then a teenager. Pulgasari the anti-capitalist anti-monarchist monster: he saves the leader of a farmers’ revolt from execution; he helps the peasants’ guerrilla army take down the king’s forces; he demolishes the king’s castle, crushes the king. Of course, by the end of the movie he has become too strong, too greedy; he has to be stopped. The task is borne by the same little girl who brought him to life. Most people seem to think Pulgasari is Kim Jong-il. Gestation of a totalitarian dictator. They’re certainly right. But I’m more interested in the girl, whose name is Ami. She hides herself inside an iron bell, knowing that Pulgasari, who eats iron, will eat the bell and her in it. Once she has been eaten and is inside his body, she tearfully begs him to stop. Begs him from inside him. To disappear from the earth. To come with her. It’s the kind of movie where words have power: Pulgasari begins to crumble.

In the end, what’s left is his baby form, and then that disappears, too, into a blue light; and then that disappears, too, into Ami’s dead body. A monster that comes from a woman and returns to a woman. Women who have vital and painful things to show you about the world you live in. Die in.

Dear Shin Sang-ok, what I only recently discovered is that in your post-kidnapping life, you went to the States, where you wrote, directed and/or produced a couple of the films in the Three Ninjas franchise, which I watched and loved as a kid. Those three kids who were supposed to be the grandchildren of wise-old-Asian-man as played by Victor Wong. Three quapa ninjas, played by white child actors. (Sound vaguely familiar?) Talking to Jackie Wang recently, we agreed that the nineties were a fantastic time for Oriental fetishizing in film and television. But then, it’s always a great time for Oriental fetishizing.

(But surprisingly, I think I prefer the new Karate Kid, with Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith, to the old one.)

Dear Shin Sang-ok, you worked on those Three Ninja films under a pseudonym: Simon Sheen. I get it: Sheen sounds like Shin, and I suppose you can hear Sang-ok in Simon. But I also wonder: when you were so carefully passing, did you also want to be one of the Sheen brothers, so golden in the 80s and 90s? My favorite Sheen was always Emilio Estevez, who doesn’t do anything about his name and how it outs his immigrant family.

(I’ve only vaguely heard about the Charlie Sheen affair, so I don’t feel equipped to comment on it here.)

Dear Shin Sang-ok, what were you trying to do in America, when you went to America? You and your wife escaped your North Korean captors on a supervised business trip to Vienna, before Pulgasari was finished; your name was then erased from it. You sued to have your name put back, and the only information I can find out about it says that you failed. So you remade Pulgasari as an American film, as a writer, in The Adventures of Galgameth. There’s no Ami in the American film. Like many American films, the main character has to be a young boy. Adventure being a gendered genre.

Dear Shin Sang-ok, tell me about your American life. I want to know; I don’t want to know. I think you get that it hurts to know things. For most immigrants, the heaviest thing you bring is what you know. My father was friends with Ferdinand Marcos—-his first wife was a Marcos—-and then all my life he wanted to kill himself for what he knew and saw, and then he finally did. I told him I would follow and then he made me promise that I wouldn’t. Dear Shin Sang-ok, I think you know that guilt is like the iron that Pulgasari eats and eats so that it makes up his entire body. His entire flesh. My entire flesh. Dear Shin Sang-ok, what do you do when you’re the one who survived? Dear Shin Sang-ok, the only other movie I’ve watched of yours is Jiokhwa. The American title is Flower in Hell. It was made in 1958, twenty years before you were kidnapped. When I was nine, my father kidnapped me, too. And took me to the Philippines. America didn’t fit, but I wasn’t part of the life he was willing to abandon. We came back, though, because he realized that we were both aliens everywhere; there wasn’t going to be a home for either of us anywhere. Tagline for a love story: “We can be melancholy together anywhere, why not California.”

Dear Shin Sang-ok, in the story I wrote, you don’t survive. I mean, the character doesn’t survive. He tries to fight back and he gets shot. I abandoned the story because it was going on for too long. Because it wasn’t a good short story, meaning: it wasn’t contained, it didn’t know what it was saying or how to say it, it kept demanding endless random pockets of violence and stillness and lunacy. Long sequences where the character just eats and doesn’t think. Doesn’t think about still being alive. One thing I’ve learned about being alive when I’m not really supposed to be, when my life is a promise I made to someone who isn’t here anymore and with whom I can no longer negotiate, is that I don’t know where I am. Dear Shin Sang-ok, I don’t know where I am.

Dear Shin Sang-ok, tomorrow I’m going to Bavaria, which is not Vienna, but there are similarities. Because in both Bavaria and Austria, you have to greet people with “Gruss Gött,” instead of “Guten Tag.” Gruss Gött, greet God, may God greet you. They’re conservative Catholic regions. They’re racist, too. I’m not looking forward to it. Gruss Gött, greet God. Dear Shin Sang-ok: not yet.

Dear Shin Sang-ok, what kind of monster am I going to have to be, or be eaten by, today? Dear Shin Sang-ok, I can only write to you because you’re dead. Because you’re dead, I know you’re there.

Robert Swartwood says:

Hint Fiction is two years old. Hard to believe that what originally started as a not-so-serious essay which was intended to be read by only a handful of people turned into something this big. After all, Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer came out in November to very positive reviews. It was featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday with Scott Simon. It was chosen as one of The Nervous Breakdown’s favorite books of the year. And the Gotham Writer’s Workshop featured Hint Fiction as their writing contest this past fall. So yes, a lot has happened in the past two years, and to celebrate Hint Fiction’s continuing success, we’re having another contest!

First, what is Hint Fiction? Inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s infamous six-word story — “For sale: Baby shoes, never worn” — Hint Fiction is a story of 25 words or fewer that suggests a larger, more complex story. These are complete stories that hint at a larger story, not a first sentence or random sentence plucked from a larger work thinly disguised as a story. To see examples, look at the past two years’ winners and finalists (2009 and2010), or check out examples of my own Hint Fiction. Or, better yet, read the anthology.

This Year’s Judge:

Two years ago the very first Hint Fiction contest was judged by Stewart O’Nan. Last year it was judged byJames Frey. This year? Why, this year’s judge is the legendary Joyce Carol Oates, who really needs no introduction (though I will mention that her story in the Hint Fiction anthology was the much-loved “The Widow’s First Year”).

Prizes:

• The first place winner will receive $100; the second place winner will receive $50; the third place winner will receive $25. The first place winner will also receive a slew of  journals and anthologies donated by a handful of publishers:
  • a copy of The Best of Every Day Fiction Three, donated by editor Camille Gooderham Campbell
  • a copy of PANK, donated by editor Roxane Gay
  • a copy of The Emerson Review, donated by editor Doug Paul Case
  • a copy of Dark Sky Magazine, donated by editor Kevin Murphy
  • a copy of Monkeybicycle, donated by editor Steven Seighman
  • a copy of A Thousand Faces, donated by editor Frank Byrns
• All runners-up will also receive a copy of the Hint Fiction anthology, signed by over a dozen contributors, including Benjamin Percy, Michael Martone, Edith Pearlman, Randall Brown, Roxane Gay, and more.

Rules:

The contest starts now and will take entries until midnight April 30th eastern time. There is no entry fee. You are allowed to submit up to two stories of no more than twenty-five words each in the comments section of this post or, if you would prefer, in the alternative submission form below. (The submission form is for those writers who do not wish for their stories to be publicly read or who have concerns that, because the stories will appear in the comments section of this blog, they will be considered published. I personally don’t think it’s a problem, but I don’t want to leave anyone out, so the submission form is an alterative.) Any writer who submits more than two stories will be disqualified. If submitting two stories, submit them at the same time. At the end of this contest, all submitted stories will be deleted from the comments section. No reprints. Titles are not required but encouraged, as they can create an extra layer to the story. Winners will be contacted by email and announced here. In the meantime, “like” Hint Fiction on Facebook or follow Hint Fiction on Twitter for any and all Hint-related news. Have fun!

Go here to submit.

Sport is a large part of living in Britain, and everyone is expected to stand up and support their country when the time comes. Football belongs to the English, rugby to the Welsh, and Scotland has such unclassifiable sports as tossing the caber, which involves hurling a tree trunk as far as humanly possible. The Irish sports life mostly consists of drinking competitions and vomiting in new and exciting ways, though I probably only say that because I’m English.

The sport of the moment is rugby. It’s the Six Nations competition whereby the four British countries plus Italy and France take each other on in rugby. Each country plays the others and the most victories overall indicates the winner of the competition.

Other countries are fairly typical with their patriotism – this is my country and all other countries are unimportant to me – but with Britain it’s a little more complicated. Each country supports themselves, the Welsh will watch England matches to boo the English, the English will often do the same with the Welsh, everyone supports Italy because they’re the underdogs, and no one likes the French, possibly not even French people.

Rioting is common during and after rugby matches, because if we lose a match we believe that gives us the right to find and punch anyone who supported the opposite side, regardless of their nationality.

I have the problem of being an English girl who lives in Wales. I don’t go to the pub to watch the match like most people do because it can’t really work out for me. If England lose I get mocked, and then sad and drunk, but if we win, I have to run away very fast or affect an angry Welsh accent. I say this knowing full well the attitudes of the Welsh as I was once punched in the face at a cash machine just for being English. Okay, not just for being English; I may have some years ago got a tattoo while drunk that bears a Welsh dragon holding an English flag to mock the Welsh with the insult they hate more than any other which is “Wales is a part of England.” Seriously, go find a Welshman and tell them that. Then duck.

Sport in America seems so well managed by comparison – people sitting quietly in stadiums watching baseball or American Football, maybe a bit of a punch-up at the end – but every single rugby match is its own self-contained Superbowl to the Welsh, as is every football match if you’re English. So when the Six Nations rolls around every year things tend to get a little aggressive.

No one over here really understands American Football. In countless American teen films I’ve subjected myself to everyone always seems to be prostrating themselves religiously before the quarterback of their high school team, but at the end of the day, American Football is just a very effeminate version of rugby. If you’ve never seen a rugby match, imagine professional ice hockey with all the violence and knocking out of teeth. Now imagine that without any kind of helmet or padding. Now imagine that the players aren’t knocking a puck around but physically beating the hell out of each other to get a ball. The secondary object of the game after scoring points is to cause as much damage as possible to your opponent’s face and in any match, not just the professional ones, if you’re not bleeding by the end of the game you’re considered a bit of a girl.

This level of patriotism only seems to exist around sports events and other countries don’t seem to understand that. In America you have the Pledge of Allegiance and American flags hanging from every corner of the streets, but in England the flags go up during the first match of the football World Cup and come down the second England are out of the competition.

We hate our prime minister (I’m not even sure who it is now, but believe me, I hate him) and very few of us are royalists, although I do think the Queen is adorable. When the national anthem plays at sports events, we’ll all stand up, belt it out, maybe cry a little, but if heard at any other time it’s tolerated to a bare minimum. The only thing that I or anyone else in Britain would probably defend to the death is the idea that a cup of tea is the solution to all of life’s problems. It is.

Danica Green is a English girl living in Wales who will soon graduate from university into the life of a struggling writer.

—

Submit to London Calling, a special issue of British and Irish writing, here.

Sport is a large part of living in Britain, and everyone is expected to stand up and support their country when the time comes. Football belongs to the English, rugby to the Welsh, and Scotland has such unclassifiable sports as tossing the caber, which involves hurling a tree trunk as far as humanly possible. The Irish sports life mostly consists of drinking competitions and vomiting in new and exciting ways, though I probably only say that because I’m English.

The sport of the moment is rugby. It’s the Six Nations competition whereby the four British countries plus Italy and France take each other on in rugby. Each country plays the others and the most victories overall indicates the winner of the competition.

Other countries are fairly typical with their patriotism – this is my country and all other countries are unimportant to me – but with Britain it’s a little more complicated. Each country supports themselves, the Welsh will watch England matches to boo the English, the English will often do the same with the Welsh, everyone supports Italy because they’re the underdogs, and no one likes the French, possibly not even French people.

Rioting is common during and after rugby matches, because if we lose a match we believe that gives us the right to find and punch anyone who supported the opposite side, regardless of their nationality.

I have the problem of being an English girl who lives in Wales. I don’t go to the pub to watch the match like most people do because it can’t really work out for me. If England lose I get mocked, and then sad and drunk, but if we win, I have to run away very fast or affect an angry Welsh accent. I say this knowing full well the attitudes of the Welsh as I was once punched in the face at a cash machine just for being English. Okay, not just for being English; I may have some years ago got a tattoo while drunk that bears a Welsh dragon holding an English flag to mock the Welsh with the insult they hate more than any other which is “Wales is a part of England.” Seriously, go find a Welshman and tell them that. Then duck.

Sport in America seems so well managed by comparison – people sitting quietly in stadiums watching baseball or American Football, maybe a bit of a punch-up at the end – but every single rugby match is its own self-contained Superbowl to the Welsh, as is every football match if you’re English. So when the Six Nations rolls around every year things tend to get a little aggressive.

No one over here really understands American Football. In countless American teen films I’ve subjected myself to everyone always seems to be prostrating themselves religiously before the quarterback of their high school team, but at the end of the day, American Football is just a very effeminate version of rugby. If you’ve never seen a rugby match, imagine professional ice hockey with all the violence and knocking out of teeth. Now imagine that without any kind of helmet or padding. Now imagine that the players aren’t knocking a puck around but physically beating the hell out of each other to get a ball. The secondary object of the game after scoring points is to cause as much damage as possible to your opponent’s face and in any match, not just the professional ones, if you’re not bleeding by the end of the game you’re considered a bit of a girl.

This level of patriotism only seems to exist around sports events and other countries don’t seem to understand that. In America you have the Pledge of Allegiance and American flags hanging from every corner of the streets, but in England the flags go up during the first match of the football World Cup and come down the second England are out of the competition.

We hate our prime minister (I’m not even sure who it is now, but believe me, I hate him) and very few of us are royalists, although I do think the Queen is adorable. When the national anthem plays at sports events, we’ll all stand up, belt it out, maybe cry a little, but if heard at any other time it’s tolerated to a bare minimum. The only thing that I or anyone else in Britain would probably defend to the death is the idea that a cup of tea is the solution to all of life’s problems. It is.

Danica Green is a English girl living in Wales who will soon graduate from university into the life of a struggling writer.

—

Submit to London Calling, a special issue of British and Irish writing, here.

“The images produced by dead men are the greatest mystery of my life.”
M. Kitchell, ‘the text of death’

There are two dead men that mean the world to me. They produced words and stories that stabbed directly, not forceful but immediate. And there was mystery, a question that could not be answered.

Sometimes I rest it in my hands and try to absorb. Sometimes the finite work of dead men is saddening.

one of the photos that accompany ‘the text of death’ …

if you like it, comment below, and I will send you ‘the text of death’