Genre: Fiction

New Rivers Press Extends Story Contest Deadline

G&A: The Contest Blog
5.4.11

The American Fiction Prize sponsored by New Rivers Press has pushed its deadline to June 1.

Fiction writers have an additional month to submit a story of up to 7,500 words to be considered for the one-thousand-dollar prize and inclusion in an anthology, American Fiction: The Best Unpublished Short Stories by Emerging Writers, to be released in 2012 by the press.

This year's judge is Croatian-born fiction writer and essayist Josip Novakovich, whose most recent book is the story-essay hybrid Three Deaths, published last year by Montreal press Snare Books. His story collections include Yolk and Salvation and Other Disasters, both published in the United States by Graywolf Press.

For complete American Fiction Prize guidelines, visit the New Rivers Press Web site.

Landing a Literary Agent by Going Viral (and Being Funny)

Special Agent's blog
5.2.11

If somehow you're one of the few who missed Richmond, Virginia, attorney David Kazzie's hilarious Xtranormal animation, "So You Want to Write a Novel," that zinged around the Internet a few months back, then watch it right now, but only if you're sitting somewhere where it's appropriate to laugh out loud. It lampoons the vast, blind ambition of certain novice writers, and tickled agents, editors, writers, as well as would-be writers and readers alike. The video, as they say, went viral, and one of the multitude of people who liked it, was Ann Rittenberg, a Manhattan literary agent who represents Dennis Lehane, and who, with Laura Whitcomb, has written a how-to guide called Your First Novel.

Kazzie noticed Rittenberg had linked to his video, and found it particular exciting as he is a huge Dennis Lehane fan. Kazzie and Rittenberg chatted, and it turned out, Kazzie did indeed have an unpublished manuscript, a thriller. Rittenberg liked his sensibility. David Kazzie now has an agent, and, yes, it's Ann Rittenberg.

Bonus: Ann Rittenberg's "The Successful Writer’s Personality" and an interview with David Kazzie. Also, check out more with Ann Rittenberg in Eryn Loeb's article, "Seek and You Shall Sign" in The Poets & Writers Guide to Literary Agents.

A New Bread Loaf Rises in Italy

by
Jennifer De Leon
News and Trends
May/June 2011
5.1.11

This September Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference will expand its workshop from the historic Bread Loaf Inn in Middlebury, Vermont, to the Italian island of Sicily, with a condensed program of classes in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.

Tags: 
conferences

April 28

The Time Is Now
4.28.11

In a Paris Review interview, fiction writer Amy Hempel talks about a workshop she took with legendary editor Gordon Lish in which he assigned  the class to "write our worst secret, the thing we would never live down, the thing that, as Gordon put it, 'dismantles your own sense of yourself.'" From this came her story, "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried." Follow Lish's assignment. Write a story about your worst secret.

Literary Hoax

Caption: 

In the eleven-minute film In the Spotlight (2007), starring Michelle Tea, Guinevere Turner, and Clint Catalyst, with music by Emily Wells, writer and director Hilary Goldberg presents the story of an aspiring author who is offered the chance to be the front person for a literary hoax and discovers a fate far worse than rejection.

Genre: 
Fiction
Tags: 
short film
In the Spotlight

Pages

Subscribe to Fiction