New York Magazine book critic Sam Anderson is running a literary Twitter experiment — and no, this isn’t a Twitter novel. In fact, it’s almost the exact opposite. Anderson tweets the best sentence he reads each day, and as he points out, “‘Best,’ in this context, can mean almost anything: funny, beautiful, enlightening, stylistically amazing.” A few of his selections:

“Rain patters on a sea that tilts and sighs.” (philip larkin, ‘absences’)

I think that at least a third to half of all MFA seats should be reserved for people with families. (junot diaz, panorama interv. w eggers)

“But according to my count, it’s ten times ten — it’s a hundred o’clock.” (mr. weevle, bleak house)

“The little river rushed between the milky bluffs like cola.” (barry hannah)

Why do it this way? Anderson explains:

The object is to use Twitter as a daily note-taking system: to document, organically, the various text-streams I actually pay attention to — novels, magazines, blogs, whatever. When Salinger died I went back to read Nine Stories and tweeted this sentence from “A Perfect Day for Bananafish”: “She looked as if her phone had been ringing continually ever since she had reached puberty.”

What makes this project fascinating is that each sentence must stand on its own. And in isolation, a single amazing sentence catches your attention in a new way. Or, as Anderson puts it, “Some people have described Twitter as anti-literary, but I find that it makes me pay attention in interesting ways. It can put a spotlight on throwaway lines I might otherwise have lost forever.”

Steve Almond signs a copy of Candy Freak / photo by Jonathunder, via Wikipedia Commons

On The Rumpus, author Steve Almond explains why he recently decided to self-publish a book of short stories and essays, This Won’t Take But a Minute, Honey–and it’s probably not for the reasons you’d think:

If this were a traditional publishing endeavor, the next question would be how to get the book a “bigger platform,” meaning a place in the great Barnes-&-Noble-Amazon-Kindle-i-Pad-clusterfuckosphere. But because this is something much more personal, I decided – nah.

I was cool with Harvard Bookstore selling it. But other than that, Minute, Honey is available only at readings. My reasoning is pretty simple: I want the book to be an artifact that commemorates a particular human gathering, not a commodity.

Read the full essay–including why Almond thinks self-publishing isn’t for everyone, why print publishing probably isn’t doomed, and where writers should look for publishing inspiration–here

I am not a patient person. People who do slow, meticulous things like needlepoint and whittling amaze and bewilder me. This impatience applies to my reading habits, too: when immersed in a book I love, I can’t stop myself from reading faster and faster, eager to see the whole picture, to wolf the whole story into my head.

Luckily, though, Five Chapters exists to remind me that patience is a virtue. Five Chapters publishes one story each week, with one section of the story posted each day. It’s an old-fashioned exercise in delayed gratification, and as this week’s story is by one of my (and FWR’s) favorite authors, Aryn Kyle, I suddenly appreciate the enforced pacing, slowing down to wallow in each line of prose. This is like someone doling out chocolate mousse to you one very rich spoonful at a time, so you can relish every bit of it. Part One of “Take Care” is up now, but for the rest, you’ll have to check tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. Savor, and enjoy.

Also on FWR…

• Read more about Five Chapters and other serial fiction and why slow might be good for you
• Check out Elizabeth Ames Staudt’s review of Kyle’s debut novel The God of Animals

Entries are now being accepted for the 2010 Asian American Short Story Contest–the only national, pan-Asian American writing competition of its kind.

The contest’s sponsors are two of the leading promoters of Asian American literary arts: Hyphen magazine is a non-profit news and culture magazine and blog that focuses on exploring Asian American identity, and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop (AAWW) is the most prominent organization in the country dedicated to exceptional literature by writers of Asian descent.

Fiction Writers Review is proud to be a media partner for the 2010 contest.

This year’s judges are Alexander Chee and Jaed Coffin. Ten finalists will receive a one-year subscription to Hyphen and a one-year membership to AAWW, and one grand prize winner will also receive $1,000 and publication in Hyphen.

The contest is open to all writers of Asian descent living in the United States and Canada, and there is no required theme. For full contest instructions, visit http://www.hyphenmagazine.com/shortstory. The deadline for submission is March 31st, 2010 (postmark deadline), and winners will be announced by June 16.

Further Reading:

Preeta Samarasan

• Read the 2008 winning story: “Playing the Sheik,” by Shivani Manghnani
• Read the 2007 winning story: “Our House Stands in a City of Flowers,” by (FWR contributor!) Preeta Samarasan

1909 postcard of Boston Public Library

The Boston Public Library is now accepting applications for its Children’s Writer-in-Residence Fellowship, a little-known but wonderful opportunity for children’s and YA writers. The fellowship, offered to one writer per year, is intended to “provide an emerging children’s writer with the financial and administrative support needed to complete one literary work” and offers a workspace in the library and a $20,000 stipend.

Recipients’ projects may be fiction, nonfiction, poetry, illustration combined with any of the former, or a script; last year’s recipient, Kelly Hourihan, is working on a YA novel.

There is no application fee, and to apply, you must be a U.S. citizen with no more than three previously published works of children’s literature. The Boston Public Library’s webpage has more information about the fellowship and past recipients, as well as full application guidelines in PDF form. The next residency runs from September 1, 2010, to June 1, 2011, and the deadline for application is April 1, 2010.

The Shady Side Review is having a postcard contest. They’re seeking the best poetry or prose of 100 words or less. Winners will have their work published on–what else?–postcards. The submission deadline is March 17, and each entry is $1. From the Editors:

What can you get for a dollar these days?

• A newspaper (but they don’t usually publish fiction unless you’re famous. Are you famous? Maybe your work is already in a newspaper then.)
• A bagel (but unless you carve your poem into the dough, your work does not appear here).
• Eternal fame and glory (this can be achieved by submitting your work that is one hundred words or less to shady side review’s annual (probably) postcard contest).

If you win the grand prize, you’ll receive a cash prize and ten glossy postcards featuring your work…Two runners-up, you can call them second and third place if you prefer, will receive 10 copies of their postcards, but no cash. Sorry. On top of that, yes, it does keep getting better and better, we will be handing out the winners’ postcards at AWP in Denver this year. Think of all that amazing publicity. So what are you waiting for? Submit!

For more information on how and where to submit your work, please see the Shady Side Review’s contest guidelines.

Photograph from My Wings Books - http://www.mywingsbooks.com/coll-terms/edg02_.shtml

Opening a book can already feel like opening a gift. Armed with a knife and freeing the pages and the story hidden beneath the folds, it becomes something more, “a penetration of its secrets” and an act of discovery, shot through with a suggestion of violence and danger or of the painful gestation of the words themselves.

This act of cutting open pages to read a book has been lost (one imagines the paper knife arrangement wouldn’t go over well with the TSA), and right now, all over the world, people are reading their books on screens and the idea of even opening a cover and turning pages may one day seem odd as well.

This idea of the book as an anachronism may explain the persistence of the deckle edge, which is now created not by the reader with a knife but by leaving one edge of the page untrimmed during the printing and binding process.

I’ll admit I’m not crazy about the deckle edge myself: it makes the pages harder to turn. And when I’m caught up in a great book, even a second or two of fumbling with the page is too long to wait. But I couldn’t agree with C. Max Magee more when he points out that books are objects of beauty, not just information. Those who appreciate that beauty–in the cover, in the deckle edge, in the smell of the paper–may be the ones to save paper books.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that book tours don’t really sell books. Or at least they don’t sell a lot of books in comparison to the amount of time and expense involved. So then why do authors continue to go on them? Well, book tours have ancillary benefits, otherwise publishers wouldn’t still send authors on them. Meeting booksellers makes them more likely to recommend your work, or to look forward to your next book. It gives local media an excuse to talk about you. It gives you a chance to travel the country, catch up with old friends, and show your exes what they missed when they dumped you.

But what if your publisher is an independent press with little to no budget for touring? What if your big name publisher doesn’t think it’s worth sending you out? Plan your own tour.

When my collection of short stories THINGS THAT PASS FOR LOVE was published by OV/Dzanc Books in 2008, they offered me $1000 toward book promotion. I took it on the road (and ended up spending a bit more than that, but I did visit over 17 cities). Here are some helpful tips as you plan your own DIY book tour:

To see Amend’s suggestions–which range from practical to philosophical to humorous–you can read the rest of her essay here.

In addition to Amend’s work, this issue features essays by Stephanie Soileau and Josh Henkin, as well as announcements about the most recent Glimmer Train Prize Winners and upcoming contests. The Bulletin is a free monthly subscription. No adds, no solicitations–just writers on writing. Sign up here.

Maybe it’s also because Barry’s prose felt like it was carved out of stone. Not weighty, but permanent. With a hint of the divine. That crazy Old Testament kind of divinity that’s equal parts kindness and cruelty, lust and humor. Especially humor. Who else could open a collection of stories as Barry did his 1978 masterpiece, Airships, with a passage like this:

When I am run down and flocked around by the world, I go down to Farte Cove off the Yazoo River and take my beer to the end of the pier where the old liars are still snapping and wheezing at one another. The line-up is always different, because they’re always dying out or succumbing to constipation, etc., whereupon they go back to the cabins and wait for a good day when they can come out and lie again, leaning on the rail with coats full of bran cookies. The son of the man the cove was named for is often out there. He pronounces his name Fartay, with a great French stress on the last syllable. Otherwise you might laugh at his history or ignore it in favor of the name as it’s spelled on the sign.

I’m glad it’s not my name.

For many young writers, this was our first encounter with Barry’s work. His voice hooked you deep. I was in college when this book was pressed upon me and my now brother-in-law, Dean Bakopoulos, by Elwood Reid. This was the late 1990s. Dean and I were undergrads at the University of Michigan, both eager to be writers but still sorting out exactly how to go about the task. Elwood, who was finishing his MFA at the time, took us under his wing to show us the way. For Elwood, who’d once been a college football player, that meant work. Lots of work. And by “work” I mean reading. Barry Hannah. Larry Brown. Rick Bass. Alice Munro. The collections piled up.

But there was something about Barry’s work that stood out. An urgency in the prose that punctured your heart. “Water Liars” is a great story, but when I hit the second one in the collection, “Love Too Long,” I was gone.

My head’s burning off and I got a heart about to bust out of my ribs. All I can do is move from chair to chair with my cigarette. I wear shades. I can’t read a magazine. Some days I take my binoculars and look out in the air. They laid me off. I can’t find work. My wife’s got a job and she takes flying lessons. When she comes over the house in her airplane, I’m afraid she’ll screw up and crash.

For a college kid, Barry bored down through the mantle to the molten core of what it meant to feel. He still does. Typing his words you can feel the anguish and energy. Further down this page, the narrator, nearly beside himself, writes, “I want to sleep in her uterus with my foot hanging out.” It’s an image that makes you wince, but it’s also oddly tender. What it is is honest.

I experienced both sides of Barry’s honesty when I was a student of his in 2003 at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. The day of my workshop, we moved around the table in usual fashion–what’s working, what isn’t. Janet Peery was co-teaching the session, and among the group were writers such as Ben Percy, Lisa Lerner, Dave Koch, Forrest Anderson, and John Struloeff. I was giddy to be in the room with one of my literary heroes. And while the others were offering feedback on my writing, I stole the occasional glance to see how Barry was reacting. Most of the time he spent flipping fairly idly through my pages. So perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised when, upon his turn to speak, he began gutting the opening paragraph of the prologue to the novel I’d been working on. Sentence by sentence, word by word, he worked like a butcher, cutting back the fat. Let’s just say that there wasn’t much meat left when he got down to the bone. Or, rather, he showed me that there hadn’t been much muscle to begin with. Would it be too much to say I felt eviscerated along with my work?

Yet it wasn’t cruel. It was honest. And when the furnace of my face cooled I saw that he was mostly right.

But I didn’t want my teacher and literary icon to have this impression of my work (I swear, the rest was better). So, later that night, during the evening cocktail hour, I slipped him one of my stories, one which I’d been carrying around for the better part of an hour rolled up in my fist, wrinkled and creased. And when I finally got the nerve to give it to him, I tried hard to assure him that this wasn’t extra work. Nothing I was looking for feedback on. Nothing he even had to read during the conference. Just, well, something I wanted him to have. And I’m sure I must have said something inane like, “I hope you enjoy it.” As if it were some sort of gift. Walking away, I was certain that I had made things worse.

And the next morning, when Barry found me at breakfast, I was more than sure of my mistake. “Here, kid,” he said, handing the story back to me across the table. Without another word, he walked off. Cut to blistered cheeks again. In front of an entire table of your peers, Barry Hannah has just returned the story you gave him the evening before, the story meant to redeem you. “Thanks, but no thanks,” is what you read in this gesture. And in that moment you imagine escaping back to Michigan several days from now–it’s a nice, long trip from Tennessee, one that will give you plenty of highway to replay this moment over and over and over.

Yet when I unrolled my story, he’d scrawled this across the top in loopy script: “I enjoyed greatly. I’m nominating it for Best New American Voices.” Simple. Generous. An unasked for kindness. And I realized that it wasn’t about you in that classroom; for Barry it was about the work.

At the end of his fantastic interview with Barry in Tin House last year, Tom Franklin asked the author how his teaching has changed over the years. Here is Barry’s response:

It’s gotten a lot simpler. The things that I do well in my own work, I didn’t ever think about, because I’d been trained on good storytelling and helped by a few good teachers. But outside of beginning, middle, and end and “thrill us,” what is there to teach? There’s no theory, there’s nothing that guarantees publication. I’ve never been interested in intellectual experiments. I prefer to thrill people in their guts rather than in their heads. With some of the MFA writing I read now, I wonder, “My God, didn’t anybody get it across that you’ve got to entertain?” You’re fortunate if what entertains you entertains the crowd also.

It’s impossible for me to behave as if I were thirty-five when I was writing Airships–it’s impossible. And I must say you don’t necessarily gain a lot by age; you sometimes are in danger of becoming the old hack plagiarizing his own former work. That’s probably why the old often bore people, they just say the same damn things over and over, and they just deal in truisms. That’s the mass of America, one truism after another. For instance, the word motherfucker is a truism now. It’s just empty. It used to be an exciting word because it’s the worst thing you can imagine, you know? But now it’s just a weak flat noun.

It may be just my time of life, but I’ve been teaching better, I hope. My essays have gotten better. But what I want is what I had in Airships and High Lonesome and Bats Out of Hell and Captain Maximus: joy. Joy, just joy, just jump in there because you’re onto it. You’ve gotta write it. You feel it deep in the pit of your stomach.

Thank you, Barry.

From the Sewanee Writers’ Conference:

We are saddened to hear that Barry Hannah, a great friend of the conference, passed away on Monday, March 1.  Barry was a member of the fiction faculty at Sewanee in 1999, 2000-2003, and 2006.  He visited the conference to read in 2004, 2005, 2007, and he was scheduled to read at this summer’s conference.

One of the finest writers in American letters, Barry Hannah published eight novels—Geronimo Rex (Alfred A. Knopf, 1972—winner of the William Faulkner Prize), Nightwatchmen (Viking, 1974), Ray, The Tennis Handsome (Alfred A. Knopf, 1981, 1983, respectively), Boomerang, Never Die (University Press of Mississippi, 1986 and 1990), Hey Jack! (Dutton, 1992), and Yonder Stands Your Orphan (Grove/Atlantic, 2001). His story collections are Airships, Captain Maximus (Alfred A. Knopf, 1978 and 1985), Bats out of Hell, and High Lonesome (Grove/Atlantic, 1993 and 1996).

Barry’s readings at Sewanee were always the highlight of the conference, and his openness with all participants spoke to his generosity.  We will miss him greatly.

e-Readers (Kindle on left) / photo by jblyberg (flickr cc)

Most of the talk about e-readers centers on full-length books. But The Atlantic has recently worked out a deal to publish a series of Kindle-only short stories, each retailing for $3.99. It’s the literary equivalent of a pop single.

Six stories have been published so far, by authors such as Jennifer Haigh, Curtis Sittenfeld, and Paul Theroux. Here’s a description of Patricia Engel’s story “The Bridge”:

Available exclusive to the Kindle, “The Bridge,” by Patricia Engel, is the story of Carlito and Reina, a brother and sister from Miami. When he was a boy, Carlito was thrown from a bridge by his distraught father. Saved by a fisherman, Carlito was treated with special care throughout his life: no one bothered him about school, about his manners, about beating up his sister. Years later, when he found out his girlfriend was unfaithful, Carlito threw her baby off a bridge. Murder is Carlito’s inheritance, people say, and he is paying the price, languishing on death row at Florida’s South Glades Penitentiary. Only his sister, Reina, refuses to abandon him, visiting him every weekend to preserve his humanity, and to drive away her own terrible secret. “The Bridge” combines the lyricism of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez with the stripped-down realism of a Raymond Carver to produce a story that will sadden readers’ hearts while expanding their souls.

Maybe it’s because they’re usually grouped together in a collection or a journal, but shorts seldom get highlighted on their own, with a full writeup, like this.

Readers, would you buy a short story for your e-reader? Does the single-serve format make short fiction more appealing to you?