Something to celebrate!

Fall has arrived (I missed the Super Harvest Moon -- did anyone see it?!), coffee consumption is at an all-time high, and the stack of Fiction Prize submissions is vast and growing vaster.

It's come to our attention that a former contributor, Jeff Hoffman, from issue 29.1, won the 2010 New Issues Poetry Prize for his manuscript, Journal of American Foreign Policy. We're thrilled about this news -- the manuscript will be published in spring 2011! Congratulations, Jeff!

Going back to issue 29.1, an excerpt from Hoffman's "Victory Crowd," which is -- ironically -- about a different sort of victory:

The Marriott explodes in a filth of balloons

and confetti. Rachel sickles a hand

to my ear: We won, etc. I love you, etc.

--dk

Photo by Andy Keels

From the Blue - Contributors Read & Recommend #4

Back-to-school shopping is raging here in Bloomington; it's time for defensive cart steering down the aisles of every store! Don't forget to pick up some reads while your out and about. And if you haven't already seen the summer issue, its not too late to get your own copy. Today on our reading series, Erika Meitner, poet featured on our bluecast and in 32.1 shares with us what books are catching her eye and a great gift idea. Her newest book, Ideal Cities, just came in the mail to our office. I'm looking forward to reading it!

Which upcoming book releases are you most looking forward to?
There are so many good books due out this fall! In poetry, I can’t wait to get my hands on Matthew Zapruder’s Come on All You Ghosts (Copper Canyon). Also Jason Schneiderman’s Striking Surface, Sean Thomas Dougherty’s Sasha Sings the Laundry on the Line (BOA), and Julie Carr’s Sarah — of Fragments and Lines (Coffee House). Julie’s 100 Notes on Violence ( Ahsahta Press) is also on my to-read shelf. And Sarah Vap’s Faulkner’s Rosary (Saturnalia Books). I’m also ridiculously excited for Laurel Snyder’s forthcoming kids’ book, Baxter, The Pig Who Wanted to be Kosher (I have a three-year-old son, so we read a lot of children’s books). And Ghita Schwarz’s novel Displaced Persons (HarperCollins) sounds remarkably similar to my family’s history, so I can’t wait to read that (due out any day now). Would it be totally gauche to say that I’m very much looking forward to my own book release too, any day now (Ideal Cities, HarperCollins)?

What are you reading right now?
I’m right in the middle of Lighthead (Penguin), by Terrance Hayes. “The Golden Shovel” is a devastatingly perfect poem. When I finish that I’m hoping to start in on my friend Susanna Daniel’s novel Stiltsville (HarperCollins), which just came out a few days ago, and is en route to my house via amazon.com.

What else have you been reading this summer?
I just finished Carrie Fountain’s book Burn Lake (Penguin), and adored it. I also just finished re-reading both Anna Journey’s book, If Birds Should Gather Your Hair for Nesting (UGA Press), and Gabrielle Calvocoressi’s Apocalyptic Swing (Persea Books)--both stunning. I’ve been mailing either Rachel Zucker’s Museum of Accidents (Wave Books) or Jehanne Dubrow’s Stateside (Northwestern U Press) to friends as thank you gifts because I thought they were so terrific that I had to share them. Everyone should give poetry as thank you gifts!

From the Blue - Contributors Read & Recommend #2

Round 2 of our contributor interview series finds us talking with Oliver de la Paz, whose poem "My Truant Words Have Got Me All Messed Up—A Blues" is part of the Blue Feature in our latest (32.1) issue! Oliver is the author of three books of poetry: Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby, and, most recently, Requiem for the Orchard. He is the co-chair of the Kundiman.org advisory board and teaches literature and creative writing at Western Washington University.

I'm really jazzed to see the short story collections he mentions below, because these are all works I've read in the past year, loved, and would absolutely recommend. Now, without further ado!

What are you reading right now?
Right now I'm juggling several short story collections: Anthony Doerr's Memory Wall and The Shell Collector, Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners, Annie Proulx's Close Range. Summer's the only time I have prolonged stretches where I can read an involved narrative, only these days now that I've got two kids, I can only devote enough time to read a short story.

What is the best thing you've read all summer?
It has to be a tie between Anthony Doerr's "Memory Wall," and "The Hunter's Wife." These are longer stories out of two different collections and they both have strong elements of speculation. "Memory Wall" takes place in the future while "The Hunter's Wife" has to do with an empath.

What book started it all for you?
For poetry it was, strangely, Robert Penn Warren's Collected Poems. When my parents first moved to the United States, they purchased a subscription to Readers' Digest, thinking such reading would assist them in their transition to a new country. Part of the deal for the Readers' Digest membership was they could select books from the Readers' Digest library. The Collected Poems was one of the selections, so they chose it. I "discovered" poetry by stumbling upon this book in my parents disheveled library. I, of course, didn't understand Penn Warren's work at the time (I was really young), but I experimented with writing poetic lines.

Anything else you would recommend for our readers?
I'll give you a list of "hybrid" books--ignore the numbers, they're in really no order. I've been teaching a prose poem class as a mixed genre class over here at Western Washington, so I like to recommend my students books that have trouble fitting into genre categories:
1. Carol Guess's Tinderbox Lawn
2. James Galvin's The Meadow
3. Jenny Boully's The Body: An Essay
4. Kazim Ali's Bright Felon

Stay tuned for Curtis Bauer on Friday!

From the Blue - What Our Contributors Read & Recommend #1

It's balmy and beautiful here in Bloomington, IN and the Indiana Review staff is excited about the recent arrival of our Blue issue (32.1). For me, summer is a time for reading (well, when isn't?) and looking forward to new works coming out in the fall. In fact, I've always got my eyes peeled for book recommendations, which I also love to give! So, to celebrate the new issue and the wonderful writers it lovingly contains (as well as satisfy our literary nosiness), we thought it would be fun to ask our contributors a few questions about what they are reading, what they've loved, and what they are looking forward to in the next few months.

Our first contributor "interview" is with Elizabeth Wilcox, whose piece "Holding up traffic as if to say" appears in our latest issue. Elizabeth lives in Los Angeles, where she is an assistant lecturer at the University of Southern California. She is working towards a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing.

What are you reading right now?
The White Album, by Joan Didion. I can't get enough of Didion, especially her essays. I think it must be extremely annoying for my friends, because I'm forever interrupting stories and conversations with, "Oh, that reminds me of this great Didion essay ..."

"Classic" you've been meaning to read?
Believe it or not, I still haven't ever read Keats. I mean, I know the Grecian urn one, and the one where he pops the grapes on the roof of his mouth and it tastes like joy (is that right?), but that's the best I can do. It's shameful, really. Luckily, I've invented a project for myself this fall that's going to require me to be familiar with his works, so I should be able to wipe this blot off my poetic conscience soon.

What book started it all for you?
This is a tough question because it presupposes that I know when "it" all started. I didn't admit to myself that I was/wanted to be a "poet" (a title I'm still not sure of) until about five years ago. So the book of poetry that really made me sit up and say "Yes, I want to do this," would probably be Moy Sand and Gravel, by Paul Muldoon. My copy of it is full of underlines, of arrows and circles and exclamation marks. I am in love with the way that Muldoon is in love with words, the way he can be playful and silly and deadly serious all in one line. The way he's not afraid of rhyme, or of long lines, or of a moment in a poem that someone in a workshop would likely cross out.

But if you want to go back to the beginning, WAY back, you'd find yourself next to my crib where my grandfather was giving my parents a Complete Works of Shakespeare as my 1st birthday present. My parents thought he was crazy. They put it in a closet. Other people gave me stuffed clown toys, which seemed much more appropriate. But that Complete Works stayed with me, and I finally got it out and started thumbing through it in 5th grade, and I haven't been able to break the spell since. The clown toys, though, are long gone (thank god).


Next week we will have interviews with Oliver de la Paz and Curtis Bauer. Stay tuned!

-N