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News and Notes
You wanted a challenge that's calling you higher

© Pushcart Press
You did? Really?
O.k., try snaring a 2007 Pushcart
Prize nomination, like the following fine failbetterers:
Short Story category
Lou Mathews, "The Garlic Eater" (Issue 19)
Cari Luna, "Go" (Issue 19)
Benjamin Krier, "One Guy is Me" (Issue 20)
Poetry category
Sally Ashton, "Same Donkey, Different Blanket" (Issue 20)
Max Winter, "That Night" (Issue 20)
Nicholas Alan Harp, "I Know to You It Might Sound Strange..." (Issue 21)
And then, to them and to you, we'll say, Good luck!
Secluded in a maker stone not only deadlier but smarter too
We refer, of course, to our esteemed alumni, not the least of whom are:

© Picador
Donald Antrim (Interview,
Issue 2), whose memoir The Afterlife was recently a finalist
for a National Book Critics Circle Award.
The multi-talented and quite possibly hyperactive David Barringer ("The Vampires," Issue 8), who has a story-cum-satire in the latest number of Opium, essays in recent issues of AIGA Voice and I.D., and a novel, American Home Life, due this summer from So New Publishing.
Charles Baxter (Interview, Issue 10), who recently snagged an Award of Merit for the Short Story from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. No slouch, he—past honorees include Richard Ford, Paula Fox, and some guy Hemingway.
Caren Beilin ("Three or So Uses of the Crab Apple," Issue 21), whose latest fiction appears in McSweeney's 23.
Michael Ceraolo ("Twelfth Possible Definition of Irony," et. al., Issue 7), whose Euclid Creek is now available from Deep Cleveland Press.

© HarperCollins
Michael Chabon (Interview, Issue 1), whose new novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, is just out from HarperCollins.
John Cotter ("Ophelia" and "Midwest," Issue
4), who's been tabbed to be the poetry editor of Open
Letters, and who has work in recent issues
of word for / word and Absent, and forthcoming issues
of Unpleasant Event Schedule and Volt.
Two-time National Book Award nominee Stephen
Dixon (Interview,
Issue 21), who is retiring after 26 years of teaching writers
at Johns Hopkins University.
Josh Dorman ("Bathysphere" et al., Issue 9), who has a solo show running through June 2 at LA's George Billis Gallery, and works in a group exhibit that's up 'til June 24 at the Schick Gallery in Saratoga Springs, NY. Not to mention a smart new website.
Shelley Ettinger ("Glutton for Punishment" et. al., Issue 15), whose story "When Death Did Them Part" graces the latest CRATE.
© Picador
Jonathan Lethem (Interview,
Issue 11), whose recent Harper's piece, "The Ecstasy
of Influence," suggested that the very idea of "intellectual
property" is preposterous. And lest you think he's not serious,
he's offering the rights to a handful of his own short stories
for a mere one US dollar, as part of what he calls the "Promiscuous
Materials Project." And lest you think he'll stop there—do
you? we did... but no!—on May 15, he'll give
away—for
free!—the film rights to his new
novel You
Don't Love Me Yet.
Chris Lombardi ("San
Francisco in the 1990s," Issue 16), whom the University
of California Press recently signed to pen a tome entitled I
Ain't Marching Anymore: Soldiers Who Dissent, from George
Washington to John Murtha.

© Calamari Press
Robert Lopez ("Essentials," Issue 15), whose novel Part of the World is now available from Calamari Press.
Alice McDermott (Interview,
Issue 22), whose latest novel, After This, was recently
a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
Lou Mathews ("The Garlic Eater," Issue 19), who has fiction in recent numbers of Black Clock and Gentle Strength Quarterly,
and whose play The Duke's Development is
slated for an early '08 run at LA's Powerhouse Theater.
Peter Markus ("Our
Father Who Walks On Water Comes Home With Two Buckets Of
Fish," Issue 2), who has stories out or due in Denver
Quarterly, Chicago Review, Sleeping Fish, New
York Tyrant, and the anthology New Sudden Fiction.
And his novel Bob, or Man on Boat? Thanks for asking:
it's set for a fall '08 release from Dzanc Books. Enough,
you ask? No, we proclaim! On top of all that, Peter was recently
named Wayne State University's 2008 Writer-in-Residence.
Now that's what we call keeping up with the Barringers!

© Holt
Mary Morris (Interview, Issue 16), whose new non-fiction offering, The River Queen, was recently the subject of an extended Jacki Lyden-hosted feature on NPR's Weekend Edition.
Colleen Mondor ("Our
Missing Aviator," Issue 20), who has an essay in
the spring issue of Elysian
Fields Quarterly, and no end of amusing musings on her
website, Chasing
Ray.
Thylias Moss ("Prologue
of the Book of Hallowed Verses of the Holy Circus of Decent
Girls,"
Issue 18), who has two video poems in the 2007
Venturous Vanguard Video Film Festival, and a whole slew of
same available now from YouTube.
Hal Niedzviecki ("Camp
Gesher," Issue 18), whose The Big Book of Pop Culture: A How-to Guide for Young Artists is just out from Annick Press.
Bryson Newhart ("Buried
Alive," Issue 12), who recently finished his Brown
MFA, and has fiction in the March issue of elimae,
as well as pieces forthcoming in both the print edition of Tarpaulin
Sky and Bust
Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens.
Richard Norman ("Line
Up" et. al., Issue 20), who has poems forthcoming in dANDelion, Descant,
and Nashwaak.
Amie Oliver ("Angels
& Infidels XIX" et. al., Issue 22), who had work
in a Whitney Museum at Altria show this past March, and has a
solo show opening this October at Richmond VA's Project Space,
and has generally been so busy that we—not being as energetic
as, say, David Barringer—can only keep up with her by reading
her blog.
Mia Pearlman("The
Galaxies in My Veins Still Waltzing" et. al., Issue
16), whose new work can be seen at Larchmont, NY's Kenise Barnes Fine Art gallery through May 17.
George Saunders (Interview, Issue 5), who is all over The Man for getting rid of book reviewers.
Jenn Scheck-Kahn ("A
Day Has a Morning and a Night," Issue
22), who recently nabbed an "honorable mention" in the Atlantic
Monthly's student fiction contest, and has a story forthcoming
in Tea Party.
Maggie Smith ("I
Dream a Highway" et. al., Issue 16), who has poems
in current or forthcoming issues of Quarterly West, Third
Coast, Indiana Review, Blackbird, Massachusetts
Review, Gulf Coast, Mid-American Review, Court
Green, Brooklyn Review, and the tiny.
And who recently snagged a in Individual Excellence Award
from the Ohio Arts Council. Et tu, David Barringer!

© Artamo
David Starkey ("Everything
in Store 60% Off," Issue 9), whose collection Ways
of Being Dead is just out from Artamo, and is rocketing
its way up Poetry Magazine's Poetry Bestseller list.
Randall Stoltzfus ("Chrysler,"
et. al., Issue 21), whose recent solo show at Charlottesville's Migration
gallery has sent the critics into a tizzy.
Terese Svoboda ("The
Story," Issue 22), whose memoir Black
Glasses Like Clark Kent recently won Graywolf
Press's Nonfiction Prize, and who has stories forthcoming
in Opium, Prairie Schooner, Green Mountain
Review and Narrative. Positively Barringeresque!
Anne Tyler (Interview,
Issue 20), whose Digging to America is one of six finalists
for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction.
Courtney Weber ("This
Is What Gets Me," Issue 15), who is simultaneously newslettering
with ToxicPop, comedying
with SMUT!, and starinterpreting with both BakeSpace and Horrorscopes.
And
David Barringer? Shaken, not stirred, no doubt.
© 2007 failbetter LLC · all
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