October 10, 2011
NYC
Bumming around NYC, looking for literary journals, and what did I find?
I found it at the wonderful McNally Jackson on Prince Street in Soho, NYC. Obviously I moved it to the front so everyone would scramble to buy it.
Love,
Daniel
October 06, 2011
St. Mark's Bookshop
As a former NYC East Villager, I have a special place in my heart for the St. Mark's Bookshop. I spent many a long day perusing the store and its vast selection of literary magazines, art books and fiction. It is truly a gem, one of the best independent shops around: you could even argue it is an inspiration.
Unfortunately, like so many independent sellers, the St. Mark's Bookshop has seen a sharp decline in sales. Without a reduction in rent from the Cooper Union (the store's landlord), the St. Mark's Bookshop will have to close its doors.
A petition to the Cooper Union was created by the Cooper Square Committee to lower the rent. The required amount of signatures is close to being met. Please consider signing the petition here. And thanks in advance.
Unfortunately, like so many independent sellers, the St. Mark's Bookshop has seen a sharp decline in sales. Without a reduction in rent from the Cooper Union (the store's landlord), the St. Mark's Bookshop will have to close its doors.
A petition to the Cooper Union was created by the Cooper Square Committee to lower the rent. The required amount of signatures is close to being met. Please consider signing the petition here. And thanks in advance.
October 05, 2011
Literature Party AWP 2012
The Versal crew will be in Chicago for the AWP 2012 conference with our very own table. There are so many events, but it looks as though the Literature Party supporting young, Chicagoan authors, should be very exciting. Check it out.
October 04, 2011
Oh, silly artists. Or, on the use of "plums" in response to a 3-hour art editor's meeting.
The above is what happens when Versal's art editors get together to discuss the future of art in Versal.
Table-top installation utilizing fruit, medicine, ceramic bowl and nuts compliments of art editor Reed van Brunschot.
September 25, 2011
why 3000?
"do you know that more murders are committed at 92 degrees farenheit than any other temperature?
i read an article once.
lower temperatures, people are easy going.
over 92, it's too hot to move.
but just 92, people get irritable."
--- Siouxsie and the Banshees
Occasionally, we get a query asking why our prose word limit is 3,000 words. If you're not doing flash stuff, say, less than 1,500 words, who writes that short? The average short-story length, apparently, is about seventeen pages - maybe 6,000 words or so. And most journals cap their prose limit at 7,500 words or so - say twenty-five pages. So what's with the 3,000?
A few overlapping thoughts:
1. Practicalities: on a staff of dedicated volunteers, with a process whereby we read each story in its entirety, and we promise a quick turnaround time, with a limited page count devoted to prose, it makes sense to publish shorter stories. If we published longer stories, we'd have the following problems:
3 times fewer stories published
2-3 times for story turnaround (or similar turnaround times, but less attention paid to each story)
So this kind of word count ensures that your story is getting a complete, full reading and that we'll get back to you quickly.
2. History of the short story: Has the average length of the short story changed over time? Of course. Why? Economic concerns, attention spans, notions of what does or does not constitute a short story (read Lydia Davis' Varieties of Disturbance lately?) all affect the general length of stories. Yes, it's much harder to get a 7,500 word story published now than it was ten years ago (though of course there were fewer journals then, too). Is 3,000 a kind of liminal space between flash fiction and "traditional" short story? Most definitely. That's where the fun is.
3. Possibility Space and Constraint: In that vein, I encourage people to think about how "traditional" notions of the short story must be deformed when writing shorter forms. It's very, very difficult to write a character and plot driven short story in 3,000 words - there's just not enough time (an example of a really nice "traditional" story in that length might be Stacey Swann's Crib Biting (V8)). So what can you do? What new forms, what new concerns might open up for you? That's what interests us.
If you don't feel like writing short, that's great - I myself am often writing 30-page stories. So while I'm a proponent of short work, I'm not fanatic about it. I am, however, riven by fascination, by mutation, by defacement - and that's one of the things that short forms allow us.
Co-conspiratorially,
r-
i read an article once.
lower temperatures, people are easy going.
over 92, it's too hot to move.
but just 92, people get irritable."
--- Siouxsie and the Banshees
Occasionally, we get a query asking why our prose word limit is 3,000 words. If you're not doing flash stuff, say, less than 1,500 words, who writes that short? The average short-story length, apparently, is about seventeen pages - maybe 6,000 words or so. And most journals cap their prose limit at 7,500 words or so - say twenty-five pages. So what's with the 3,000?
A few overlapping thoughts:
1. Practicalities: on a staff of dedicated volunteers, with a process whereby we read each story in its entirety, and we promise a quick turnaround time, with a limited page count devoted to prose, it makes sense to publish shorter stories. If we published longer stories, we'd have the following problems:
3 times fewer stories published
2-3 times for story turnaround (or similar turnaround times, but less attention paid to each story)
So this kind of word count ensures that your story is getting a complete, full reading and that we'll get back to you quickly.
2. History of the short story: Has the average length of the short story changed over time? Of course. Why? Economic concerns, attention spans, notions of what does or does not constitute a short story (read Lydia Davis' Varieties of Disturbance lately?) all affect the general length of stories. Yes, it's much harder to get a 7,500 word story published now than it was ten years ago (though of course there were fewer journals then, too). Is 3,000 a kind of liminal space between flash fiction and "traditional" short story? Most definitely. That's where the fun is.
3. Possibility Space and Constraint: In that vein, I encourage people to think about how "traditional" notions of the short story must be deformed when writing shorter forms. It's very, very difficult to write a character and plot driven short story in 3,000 words - there's just not enough time (an example of a really nice "traditional" story in that length might be Stacey Swann's Crib Biting (V8)). So what can you do? What new forms, what new concerns might open up for you? That's what interests us.
If you don't feel like writing short, that's great - I myself am often writing 30-page stories. So while I'm a proponent of short work, I'm not fanatic about it. I am, however, riven by fascination, by mutation, by defacement - and that's one of the things that short forms allow us.
Co-conspiratorially,
r-
September 23, 2011
Website's back! Now I'm off to Malta.
Oh bless the shining stars. Today was, like, 2003. When websites really did go down for half a day.
If you tried to reach us today. We're sorry. Our web hosts went bonkers on a server.
Anyway, we're back.
And now: I'm off to Malta. Me and the lady are celebrating our one-year. Robert, Sarah and the rest of the Versal gang are going to hold down the fort while we're away. If anything weird happens (again), blame them.
If you tried to reach us today. We're sorry. Our web hosts went bonkers on a server.
Anyway, we're back.
And now: I'm off to Malta. Me and the lady are celebrating our one-year. Robert, Sarah and the rest of the Versal gang are going to hold down the fort while we're away. If anything weird happens (again), blame them.
Boring post: Website's down. Submit later!
Hey guys, our website has been down for forever (well, for 7 hours now). Our hosts GreenGeeks are doing some server maintenance and it seems things got wonky. Whatever.
If you're trying to submit to Versal 10, just hang tight with us. I assume things will eventually work again. Or I'm going to go Pulp Fiction on GreenGeeks.
If you're trying to submit to Versal 10, just hang tight with us. I assume things will eventually work again. Or I'm going to go Pulp Fiction on GreenGeeks.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
