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Amazon offers Bookscan data

by Lee Thomas

I first heard about this via Stephen Elliott’s very fine Daily Rumpus newsletter, then tracked down some more info via TechCrunch. Amazon has begun to offer Bookscan sales tracking data to authors for free. Stephen Elliott writes: If you’re an author you can now see how many books you’ve sold through Amazon.com. They’ll connect you to the Book Scan database, you’ll see how new copies of your book moved in retail stores across the country. This used to take longer. You would ask your agent, who would ask your publisher. You had to trust people. Once in a while you […]


Glimmer Train Open

by Lee Thomas

Glimmer Train hosts several “Fiction Opens” each year, which provide an opportunity to submit to a terrific journal with a chance at some serious prizes: Open to ALL writers. First place has gone to beginners with no previous publications and to accomplished, established writers. All are welcome. Word count range: 2,000 – 20,000. (Yes, a 2,000 word piece can compete against a 20,000 word piece—it’s the story that counts.) First place wins $2,000 and publication in Issue 82 of Glimmer Train Stories. Second- and third-place winners receive $1,000/$600 (or if chosen for publication, $700). The December contest closes on January […]


From Hemingway's portrait to lit-tats

by Lee Thomas

I recently stumbled upon Poets & Writers’ “Clips” section, “a curated selection of videos, including book trailers, brief interviews, and other literary curiosities updated daily.” It’s an interesting, eclectic cross-section of video that touches on the literary, but isn’t always quite so literal. There’s a clip of photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt’s recalling what it was like to shoot Ernest Hemingway’s portrait for the cover of Life magazine in 1952, a Notre Dame student performing his musical homage to Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby, a timelapse video of artist Mike Stilkey assembling an installation with books as his sculptural medium. Or […]


Thursday morning candy: Waccamaw

by Lee Thomas

It’s been out for a while, but I’ve been perusing Waccamaw: A Journal of Contemporary Literature, Vol. 6. The biannual, online journal out of Coastal Carolina University includes fiction by Julie Babcock, Sarah McCraw Crow, Billy O’Callaghan, Nick Ripatrazone, and Jennifer Spiegel, along with poetry, essay, and a long interview with poet Natasha Trethewey. There’s also a transcript of Trethewey’s Emory University Distinguished Faculty Lecture, which she delivered earlier this year. In it, she observes: It seems to me that all writers, at some point, must respond to a question—posed either by themselves or someone else—in order to answer, as […]


The Fiction Project

by Lee Thomas

Like to doodle in the margins of your stories? Sketch in the park until inspiration for a story strikes? The folks behind Art House Co-Op – out of the Brooklyn Art Library – who came up with the traveling Sketchbook Project, that sends themed sketchbooks around the country on exhibit, have just announced The Fiction Project. Like The Sketchbook Project, anyone can participate, for the $25 entry fee they’ll send you a book to fill: The Fiction Project is an opportunity to tell stories in a different way by fusing text and visual art. Add your voice to this year’s […]


Book of the Week Giveaway: How They Were Found, by Matt Bell (Redux)

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Each week we give away several free copies of a featured novel or story collection as part of our Book-of-the-Week program. Last week we featured Matt Bell’s How They Were Found, and we’re pleased to announce the winners: Suzanne Buckman-Beach, Melissa Scholes Young, and Thomas Gagnon. Congratulations! Each will receive a copy of the book, signed by the author. This week we’re also featuring Matt Bell’s How They Were Found. No, it’s not Groundhog Day. As you may have noticed, FWR is getting a bit of a face-lift. Or, rather, we’re in the process of completing a range of digital […]


Figment.com – self-publishing 2.0?

by Lee Thomas

With gangbusters press coverage on Monday, Figment.com launched a fiction-sharing site. Co-founded by Dana Goodyear, staff writer at The New Yorker, and Jacob Lewis, a former Managing Editor at The New Yorker, the site sets up its mission like this: Figment is an online community to create, discover, and share new reading and writing. Follow your literary obsessions. Find fans for your work. Read the latest by your favorite authors. Vote up the best stories. Embrace your inner book nerd. Read. Write. Procrastinate. Repeat. Whatever you’re into, from sonnets to mysteries, from sci-fi stories to cell phone novels, you can […]


Ode to Barton Fink

by Lee Thomas

I first watched Barton Fink years ago in Chicago, and wasn’t sure what to make of it. It’s one of the Coen brothers’ lesser-watched films. John Turturro plays the title character, hired to write a Hollywood script, and his rendition of writer’s block still makes me want to crawl out of my skin. The wallpaper peels, his neighbor Charlie at the Hotel Earle (a genius turn by John Goodman) interrupts him, Barton loses himself in a picture of a woman on the beach that hangs on his hotel room wall. People may debate the symbols of the movie itself, but […]


This Saturday: Biblioball 2010

by Michael Rudin

Biblioball 2010 from Desk Set on Vimeo. ‘Tis the season, and that means New York’s annual Biblioball has arrived! The event occurs on December 4th and those of you who have attended before know what to expect: not just a winter formal for the “well-read and well-attired,” but an incredible way to support Literacy for Incarcerated Teens. Starting at Brooklyn’s The Bell House at 8 pm and going into the wee hours of the morning, attendees have plenty to look forward to: In addition to these food and drink items, Happy Hour ticket holders can mingle with local literary stars, […]


A story with that cardigan?

by Lee Thomas

In keeping with the shorter nights of winter, and later retail hours of the holiday season, throughout December Anthropologie will offer Bedtime Stories Reading Hour for kids at locations across the country. Now, I’m normally wary of attempts to lure me into stores – but this hits home. I remember an infamous visit to the department store that ended in a trip to the dentist for my brother when he careened into a clothing rack during a game of chase. Yep, we were those kind of kids. Our mother would have been so grateful for a story hour to keep […]


Thursday morning candy: The Nashville Review

by Lee Thomas

The third issue of The Nashville Review – an online celebration of storytelling out of Vanderbilt University – is live, and it’s a doozy. You can read copious amounts of fiction, listen to musical/poetic mashups between the likes of composer Andrew Bird and poet Galway Kinnell (I always like a little music and poetry as a foil to fiction), straight-up poems, interviews, comics, experimental dance. I feel like here is where one of those Batman & Robin “Kabow!” graphics should just obliterate this blog post. The NR’s mission is also the kind of benevolent, gather round the campfire and tell […]


Crazyhorse Prizes

by Lee Thomas

You’ve got about six weeks to polish up that story you’ve been laboring over for the past few months (years?), or start something brand new, to submit to The Crazyhorse Fiction Prize by January 15, 2011. Last year’s fiction judge was Aimee Bender, who selected the winning entry, “All Galaxies Moving” by Marjorie Celona (which is included in the current issue of Crazyhorse No. 78, pictured here). Recent fiction prize judges have included Ann Patchett, Ha Jin, Antonya Nelson, Dan Chaon, T. M. McNally, Diana Abu-Jaber, Michael Martone, and Charles Baxter. The winner of the prize will receive $2,000, and […]




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