Tonight I stumbled (for the first time, I’m ashamed to admit) upon The Second Pass. This fantastic lit site, edited by freelance writer and former Harper Collins editor John Williams, features a blog and an impressive range of features: essays, interviews, and reviews covering both new releases (Circulating) and backlist titles (Backlist). Another section, The Shelf, features reviewlets of recent titles, with links to and excerpts from other reviews across the bookosphere.

To celebrate the site’s first year anniversary, twelve contributors (including the editor) wrote pieces on their favorite out-of-print books. Williams introduces the combined result, “Tales of the Unread,” with this note:

When I launched this site a year ago today, one of my main goals was to approach reading the way that readers do, not necessarily the way that publishers and even many other reviews do. Publishers naturally want to tell you about what’s new or what’s evergreen. But most readers know the pleasure of somehow discovering and falling in love with a book that has fallen from view. And no status is farther from view than the dreaded “out of print.” I’ve learned from my years reading that countless terrific books have met this fate, and the Backlist section of this site is meant, in part, to shine light on just a few of them. I thought it would be appropriate to mark the first anniversary of The Second Pass by asking voracious readers to recommend their favorite out-of-print book. Their answers follow. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

An OP book recommended by Second Pass contributor Jacob Silverman

I enjoyed reading them immensely. Yes, they made me wistful — and angry about the limitations of a publishing industry (and public) that allows too many wonderful books to gather dust before a second printing. But these mini-essays also inspire hope: they are celebrations, not elegies. Even if most of these books remain OP, the desire to read, share, or even republish them is preserved and passed on thanks to pieces like these and the sites that publish them.

So head over to The Second Pass; I guarantee you’ll want to linger. You’ll want to click on everything. The site’s stylish design makes its first-rate content even more inviting.

Then wander back here to read Greg Schutz’s 2008 love letter to J. Mitchell Morse’s The Irrelevant English Teacher, which, like all of Morse’s books, remains out of print but never ceases to, in the author’s own favorite word, delight. Here’s a taste:

We must write well and read well, Morse insists—but more than this, we must cultivate these abilities in others. We must encourage more people to crack the spines of more books. “Thus far,” chides Morse, “we have failed . . . inasmuch as we have been too timid or too politic or too disdainful to answer the demagogues who call the liberating arts ‘the bullshit subjicks’.” On some level, consciously or not, we’ve equated irrelevancy with frivolity; we’ve forgotten what a serious thing literary joy can be, and how necessary. We need to remember this—and if others deny it, we must learn to insist.

“The liberating arts,” though: I like that. Again I’m reminded of Isaac Babel, who did not take the task of spreading joy lightly. His last words were, “I am asking for one thing—let me finish my work.”

When J. Mitchell Morse calls readers, writers, and teachers of the English language “irrelevant,” he is voicing not a lament, but a manifesto. Let’s embrace our irrelevancy. Let’s all finish our work.

view from Le Sirenuse / photo from Sirenland website

So…who wants to spend a week with One Story magazine at this hotel in Positano, Italy, engaging in a series of advanced fiction- and memoir-writing workshops with Dani Shapiro, Jim Shepard, and Ron Carlson; giving and attending readings; and dining with a view of the Tirreno Sea? Submissions are open from now through October 31 for the third annual Sirenland Writers Conference (March 21-27, 2010). As someone lucky enough to have been workshopped by Shepard once, I urge other writers to jump at any chance to discuss work with him!

Visit the Sirenland website to learn more about the conference and its application and selection process; you can read testimonials from previous conference-goers on the One Story blog.

King Curly

The celebration continued Friday with a cocktail party, a short film about the store by Joe York, and a panel discussion entitled “Oxford Reminiscences,” moderated by famed fiction writer and long-time Oxfordian, Barry Hannah. For a fantastic interview with Barry, get your hands on the 10-year anniversary issue of Tin House (#40, Volume 10, Number 4) that came out this summer. Fellow novelist and short story writer, Tom Franklin, sits down with Hannah to discuss the long arc of his literary career, as well as Hannah’s forthcoming collection, The Sick Soldier, what it means to be an aging artist, the meaninglessness of truisms, and the great joy of writing. Says Hannah, “I’ve never been interested in intellectual experiments. I prefer to thrill people in their guts rather than in their heads.”

This weekend was for kids, with the Cat in the Hat at Square Books, Jr., all day on Saturday. There was also a reading by Hester Bass, author of The Secret World of Walter Anderson, illustrated by E.B. Lewis.

But it’s the final event, which takes place tonight, that I imagine people will be talking about for some time—the reading of an original, serial short story by eighteen local writers. It’s entitled “Writer Comes To Town,” and its authors are Ace Atkins, Ann Fisher Wirth, Beth Ann Fennelly, Larry Wells, Wright Thompson, Curtis Wilkie, Lee Durkee, Tom Franklin, Neil White, John T. Edge, Jack Pendarvis, Gary Short, Blair Hobbs, Jane Mullen, Jere Hoar, Jim Dees, D. C. Berry, and Barry Hannah. With a collection of talent like this (to say nothing of combining the styles and voices of such a diverse group of fiction writers, poets, and essayists) you can bet it’ll probably be one of the most unique stories you’ve ever heard. And one hell of a performance. If you’re within a day’s drive of Oxford, you should be in your car already.

Our name is a nod to how traditional forms of storytelling are, well, drifting into forms wholly new and unexpected. We’re interested in sifting through the palimpsests known as the Internet, the arts, and the in-between to uncover those new forms and techniques in constructing fiction. We believe that literature should be fun in an age when it’s only too easy to turn on the TV and watch shitcoms instead. We also believe that changing technologies and cultural trends can liberate fiction rather than oppress it. We believe that everyone—yes, everyone—should take pleasure in creating their own fiction, and we want to help our readers tell the best stories they possibly can.

Among the site’s offerings so far are inspirational (in the writing way) cartoons — aka flarf — and some helpful advice if you’re not good at just sitting down and writing. It also features daily writing prompts and featured short stories, and once a week there’s a free book giveaway (Free Book Friday, sponsored by Two Dollar Radio). This week you might score a copy of Nog by Rudolph Wurlitzer.

And, bestill my heart, Lit Drift has a theater category!

These photos of the DOK Library Concept Center (Holland) by Jenny Levine, “The Shifted Librarian” on flickr, are like porn if you love libraries, modern architecture, and books.

The mission of this library is, at least in part, to be a fun, inviting space–one where kids can stand on the furniture and eat while they read, and where books are integrated with music, games, and other media. Reading becomes socially awesome. And yet DOK also values reading’s solitary nature by providing–as an alternative to the wide-open, light-soaked spaces–nooks and secret rooms where readers can lose themselves in a book. Surrounding the bookshelves with funky chairs and zebra carpets, a bold color palette, and creative signage makes the library an exciting place to explore, even for people who wouldn’t normally visit one. The children’s section features toys, interactive gaming consoles, and wheeled bookshelves that can move around to accommodate storytelling and educational programs. In the music section, bright orange “Pods” are available for listening to music, and the library’s information system is run through Wii stations. Bonus: for a subscription fee, members can borrow works of art! Coming soon: recording spaces.

The Graphic Novels room! (The Romance room is, of course, dramatic and red.)

toy castle in the kids' area

periodicals room

Thanks, Gwen, for the link!

Historic New Harmony, Indiana, was the site of two nineteenth century utopian experiments, and in the same spirit, the The RopeWalk Writers Retreat offers up a small slice of heaven. Here, a competitively chosen pool of students study for a week under four prominent writers (faculty over the past few years include Andrew Hudgins, Erin McGraw, Sigrid Nunez, Lee Martin, Marianne Boruch, Kyoko Mori, among others). There are workshops and panels and readings and one-on-one conferences — the standard fare — but unlike other conferences, no one gets lost in the numbers at RopeWalk. The workshops are intimate (with ten students, sometimes fewer) so every manuscript is discussed with thoughtful intimacy. In no time, everyone seems like an old pal. And unlike other conferences, at RopeWalk there seems to be a healthy blend of fun and work: students spend as much time in inspired conversation as they do in inspired congress with the keyboard. As for the town, it is as curious as it is idyllic: participants can wander through a labyrinth, hike along the Wabash River, enjoy yoga at the roofless church, down a pint and eat a brain sandwich at the Yellow Tavern, and tour a museum that includes a baby coffin, a two-headed calf, and the skeleton of a 38-year-old horse named Old Fly. To learn more about the retreat, click here.

the Breadloaf Writers' Conference / photo c. Middlebury College

(Steven even talked a little about the conference in an essay for FWR last month.) Here are links to more about this year’s conference and the history behind Bread Loaf. Celeste, we look forward to hearing about your experience!

And hey, Boston-based writers: Celeste is also teaching two writing seminars at Grub Street this summer; her course descriptions aren’t up on the site yet, but they’re coming soon.

Dear Everyone,

Some of you may know that up here in Saugerties, NY we’ve been hatching a plan for a summer writing workshop, and now that we’ve got some official flyer-type-things and an application form and even a website, I’m sending this out in the hope that you all might pass it along to potentially interested students, former students, or anyone you know who might be game for such a venture. It’s this July 19-26: The Catskill Studio for Writing!

The website is: http://catskillstudioforwriting.blogspot.com/ It’s not exactly a work of art, but we’re fiction writers, not web designers… [This link also takes you to the flyer and application form.] We’re only going to take 15 people at most this first year, so the sooner people can apply, the better.

We’ll be updating the site soon with photos, links, etc. It’s all pretty low tech right now, but then, so are we… but if folks want to see where some things will be happening, I’ve got photos of our house up on flickr. It’s a pretty glorious place to be… and we’ve got a new enormous garden where a lot of the produce we’ll eat during the CSW will come from, and chickens (we don’t eat them, but we do eat their eggs!), and a creek to swim in…

Apply! And check out Nissen’s books; click on any of the titles to read excerpts and buy copies (new) from Powell’s:

1. Natalie Bakopoulos is currently teaching a week-long writing workshop on the Greek island of Andros as a part of the Aegean Arts Circle, which was founded in 2003 by Amalia Melis. Stratis Haviaris, a poet and the founding editor of the Harvard Review, will lead workshops during the week of July 3-9. Previous workshop instructors have included such writers as Dorothy Allison, Nick Papandreou, Beatriz Badikian, June Gould, Connie May Fowler, and Kathryn (Kitsi) Watterson.

2. Jeremiah Chamberlin and Steven Wingate will travel with Kodi Scheer (recipient of the 2008 DZANC prize), Lana Santoni, and Maya Sloan (who just sold her first novel, Red Dirt and Ice, to Simon and Schuster earlier this month) to Bulgaria next week to participate in the 2009 Sozopol Fiction Seminar, which will take place June 4-8. Joining them will be five Bulgarian fellows: Alexander Shpatov, Alexandra Chaushova, Evgeni Cherepov, Maria Doneva, and Yanitza Radeva. Workshops will be lead by faculty members Elizabeth Kostova and Emilia Dvoryanova. The seminar will also feature guest lectures by Georgi Gospodinov and Josip Novakovich. This is the second annual writing seminar. FWR Contributor Travis Holland was one of the 2008 Fellows. Here are photos/bios of this year’s participants.

3. Sarah Van Arsdale will begin new writing sessions in June on Wednesday nights as part of the Atlantic Writers’ Workshop, which (to quote the AWW website) “offers writing classes, salons, and workshops in New York City in fiction, memoir, and the tricky borderland between.”