BitLit

You're Invited: Lit House Holiday Open House 2009

The Rose O'Neill Literary House, WC Department of English, Sigma Tau Delta, and the WC Review keep it simple, warm, and delicious again this holiday season with our annual Holiday Open House.

Thursday, December 10, 2009
4:30-6:30 p.m.
at The Rose O'Neill Literary House, Washington College
407 Washington Ave., Chestertown, MD. 21620

We're putting up the tree, starting on our paper snowflakes, and plugging in our famous light-up menorah.  This holiday party features the triumphant return of frost-and-decorate-your-own holiday cookies and all of the mulled cider, hot cocoa, ornament decoration, holiday songs and holiday movies that you can handle.  Family-friendly and fun for all WC creative-minded types. 

We'll also be distributing the 2009 Washington College Review.

See you there!

KAB

2010 AWP assistance for Washington College students

Attention Washington College students: BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND!
AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs)
Denver, Colorado, April 7-10

     Given the massive success of our 2009 trip to AWP in Chicago, the Rose O’Neill Literary House—with generous assistance from the Maureen Jacoby Endowment for Publishing & Editing—will be offering stipends for a select group of students to attend the annual conference in Denver. Featured presenters at this year’s AWP Conference include Michael Chabon, Sandra Cisneros, Rita Dove, Patricia Smith, Gary Snyder, and Terry Tempest Williams. A complete list of featured presenters—as well as more information about the conference as a whole—is available at the AWP website:

http://www.awpwriter.org/conference/2010awpconf.php

The Rose O’Neill Literary House will once again have a table at the immense exhibition where we will feature titles from the Literary House Press, information about the LitHouse and Washington College, and other attention-getting freebies. Students selected for the AWP trip will be required to spend four (4) hours each day energetically & enthusiastically at our table, singing the praises of what we already know to be one of the  truly great literary rendezvous-Victorians in the country.

Just to be clear, anyone can come to AWP.  If you can afford a flight to Denver along with the student registration and a hotel or crash pad, you are welcome to come be a part of the AWP excitement.  This email is to solicit inquiries from those students who want to come and need help to do it.  If you are in the latter category, please send an email no later than January 22, 2009, indicating a) whether you want to be considered for working the table & b) what you can afford to contribute to your own travels + accommodations in Denver.  Send these to Kate Bursick, kbursick2@washcoll.edu.  If you have any questions, please send them to me.

Want to learn more from the students who went last year?

Hailey Reissman gives us in introduction to AWP, for newcomers: <http://bitlit.typepad.com/bitlit/2009/02/awp-for-newcomers.html#more>.

You can read Joe Yates' piece on attending AWP 2009 here: <http://magazine.washcoll.edu/2009/spring/10.php>.

Doug Carter talks about his time at AWP 2009: <http://2012.washcoll.edu/dougcarter/>.

Happy December,
Mark Nowak
Director, The Rose O'Neill Literary House

Chestertown Book Festival (Nov. 13th & 14th) brings Collier, Corrigan to Eastern Shore; Brings local authors together to share in the literary experience

Well, it's nearly upon us.  

     43 authors and 15 Chestertown venues will be participating in the 38 events that will make up the first-ever Chestertown Book Festival this weekend, November 13th and 14th, 2009.  And I sure do hope you'll come experience a part of it.  There's literally something for everyone at this year's ChesBookFest: highlights include the lit of love and war to mysterious historical muckraking, paranormal regency romance and giant gingerbread houses, the art and craft of memoir, letterpress demos and cocktails.  

     If you haven't seen the schedule of events yet, please head to http://chestertownbookfestival.org post-haste!  There's still space at all author brunches/lunches - call Kate at 410-778-7899 to reserve your spot - and Barry Louis Polisar's 7pm Prince Theatre event is FREE, family-friendly, and is not to be missed.  

     Still not convinced?  The inaugural year of ChesBookFest seeks to celebrate literary life on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.  Participating authors include former Maryland Poet Laureate Michael Collier (who'll be reading Friday night at 7pm at Bookplate), NPR Fresh Air book critic Maureen Corrigan (who discusses why her favorite books are her favorites at 1:30pm on Saturday at Bookplate), and author/illustrator Marc Castelli (who'll show off his works at 11:30am on Saturday at Chestertown Old Book Co.).  The wide variety of events include author lunches, readings, signings, panel and roundtable discussions, and a musical finale by Barry Louis Polisar, whose 1977 song “All I Want is You” was chosen for the Grammy Award-winning Juno soundtrack.

     Events kick off on Friday, November 13^th at 7 p.m. with a reading by Michael Collier, 2001 Maryland Poet Laureate, director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and author of Dark Wild Realm (2007) at Bookplate, 112 S. Cross St., Chestertown, MD 21620. 

     Festivities continue on Saturday,  November 14^th, starting at 9 a.m., with events with Terwana Brown, Robert Earl Price, Robert Ortiz, Meg Founds, Terence T. Finn, Eric Mills, Maureen Corrigan, Marcy Dunn Ramsey, Cynthia Bowers Fulton, Peter J. Heck, Alix Rickloff, Bill Thompson and Jenna Moore; panel discussions by Maureen Stack Sappey, Carol Larese Millward, James Dissette, Dawn L.C. Miller, Robbi Behr and Matthew Swanson of Idiots’Books, Emily Kalwaitis and Lindsay Lusby of Thread Lock Press, Gail Johnston, Edith Noordewier Foley, Michael Collier, Elizabeth Arnold, Robert Garson, Robert Earl Price, Sue Ellen Thompson, and Mary Wood; author lunches with Erasmus H. Kloman, John Elsberg of Bogg: A Journal of Contemporary Writing, Art Bounds of Pegasus, Jehanne Dubrow, Meredith Davies Hadaway, Nancy Taylor Robson and representatives from Delmarva Review; exhibitions by Ian and John Murray, Master Printer T. Michael Kaylor, Shirley Hampton Hunt, Marc Castelli, Heather R. Davidson; and the semi-annual Kent County Public Library Friends of the Library Used Book Sale.

The Rose O'Neill Literary House has worked its butt off on this one.  And we couldn't have done it without Artworks, Bookplate, Chester River Press, Chestertown Old Book Co., the Compleat Bookseller, and the Kent County Public Library.  Special thanks goes out to our the Friends of the Kent County Public Library, the Friends of the Clifton M. Miller Library, and the Kent County Arts Council.   

Visit our blog for the latest news: http://chesbookfest.blogspot.com/

DONATE TO THE BOOK CAUSE!   

The Chestertown Book Festival Fund is a component fund of the Mid-Shore Community Foundation, a public foundation designated as a 501(c)(3) charity.  Gifts to the Fund are fully tax-deductible as allowable by law.  A copy of the Mid-Shore Community Foundation’s financial statement is available at www.mscf.org or by calling 410-820-8175.  Information about Mid-Shore submitted under the Maryland Charitable Solicitations Act can be obtained from the Office of the Secretary of State, State House, Annapolis, MD  21401.

Questions?  Write Lindsay at chesbookfest@gmail.com or call Kate at 410-778-7899.  We're at your literary service.  

KAB

Dr. Dubrow takes home the "Bright Lights Big Verse" Times Square prize

Congratulations are owed to Washington College Assistant Professor of English Jehanne Dubrow, a winner in this year's "Bright Lights Big Verse: Poems of Times Square" contest.

Dr. Dubrow has been announced as one of four winners in the national contest run by the Poetry Society of America and the Times Square Poetry Alliance.

The contest seeks poetry celebrating Times Square. Dr. Dubrow's prizewinning poem is "VJ Day in Times Square."

The winners are presenting their poems in a public Times Square, NYC reading right now!

Meanwhile, here's a link to the "Bright Lights Big Verse" website:

http://www.timessquarenyc.org/about_us/brightpoetry.html

Congratulations, Dr. Dubrow!  Your Wednesday afternoon poetry workshop students thank you for canceling class to go to NYC to read!

KAB

Chestertown Book Festival - November 13th & 14th

Chestertown's got a new festival on the horizon - a literary one! 

My involvement on the ChesBookFest committee is purely personal, not Lit House-related, but I can't help hoping that the Lit House Community will get excited for a such an outstanding two days of authors and books.

This will be the first-ever book festival on the Eastern Shore.  We've been gathering authors, poets, critics and book artists from the surrounding area and a few from across the Bay for a day-long festival of readings, signings, panel discussions, author lunches, and more on Saturday November 14th.

It kicks off on Friday, November 13th with the Friends of the Library Used Booksale at Kent County Public Library from 10am-6pm and that evening at the Bookplate on Cross St. with NPR book critic Maureen Corrigan and former Maryland Poet Laureat Michale Collier at 7pm.

Our list of participating writers, artists, and performers include:

Alix Rickloff
Barry Louis Polisar
Carol Larese Millward
Dawn L.C. Miller
Edith Noordewier Foley
Elizabeth Arnold
Erasmus H. Kloman
Eric Mills
Gail Johnston
James Dissette
Jehanne Dubrow
Marc Castelli
Marcy Dunn Ramsey
Mary Wood
Maureen Corrigan
Maureen Stack Sappey
Meredith Davies Hadaway
Michael Collier
Michael Dixon
Nancy Taylor Robson
Peter J. Heck
Robbi Behr & Matthew Swanson
Robert Earl Price
Robert Garson
Robert Ortiz
Ryan Grim
Sue Ellen Thompson
T. Michael Kaylor, Master Printer, and
Terence T. Finn

For more information as it becomes available visit our blog:http://www.chesbookfest.blogspot.com and our website:http://www.chestertownbookfestival.org

KAB

Mark Nowak reads today, 4:30pm, at the Lit House

Dear Friends,

I hope you will consider joining us to celebrate the arrival of Mark Nowak, new director of the Rose O'Neill Literary House and associate professor of English, with a reading by Mark, followed by a reception and book sale, today, Tuesday, September 15th, at 4:30pm at the Rose O'Neill Literary House.

Mark is a documentary poet, social critic, and labor activist whose writings include Shut Up Shut Down (afterward by Amiri Baraka), a New York Times "Editor's Choice," and the recently published book on coal mining diasters in the US and China, Coal Mountain Elementary(2009), that Howard Zinn has called "a stunning educational tool."

Mark's unique work in bringing innovative aesthetics and working class communities into dialogue has resulted in a dynamic array of projects and publications.  His poetry, similarly, has engaged central issues of work, family, and community.  His verse play on Reagan's firing of striking PATCO air traffic controllers, "Capitalization," has been staged at both major theaters (Stage Left in Chicago, the Cleveland Public Theatre) and at rallies for striking Northwest Airlines mechanics.  He is one of a dozen poets to have been included in the seminal anthology America Poets in the 21st Century: The New Poetics (Wesleyan University Press).  His ethnographic essay on gothic-industrial music in rust belt America was recnelty published in Goth: Undead Subculture (Duke University Press).

This event is sponsored by The Rose O'Neill Literary House and the Department of English.  Please join us post-reading for drinks and hors d'oeuvres at the Lit House.  If you haven't gotten a chance to come greet Mark yet, I hope you will stop by!

Best,

Kate Bursick

Assistant Director

The Rose O'Neill Literary House

A hoax? No. A tactic? Probably. A horror? Definitely!

The news out of Philadelphia this week isn't good.  It's downright scary.  

All Free Library of Philadelphia Branch, Regional and Central Libraries are set to close, effective close of business of October 2nd of this year.  

NO WAY, right?  Way.  

According to freelibrary.org, they "deeply regret to inform" us that "without the necessary budgetary legislation by the State Legislature in Harrisburg, the City of Philadelphia will not have the funds to operate our neighborhood branch libraries, regional libraries, or the Parkway Central Library after October 2nd, 2009."

PA is working on a budget, but Governor Rendell is threatening to veto it.  

What hurts most is that it's not just book borrowing that will be over.  All programs for children and teens, all after school programs, all computer classes, all visits to schools and day care centers, senior and community centers, all GED and ESL classes - would be cancelled.

From Cory Doctrow on Boing Boing: "Just look at that list of all the things libraries do for our communities, all the ways they help the least amoung us, the vulnerable, the children, the elderly.  Think of every wonderful thing that happened to you among the shelves of a library.  Think of the millions of lifelong love-affairs with literacy sparked in the collections of those libraries.  Think of every person whose life was forever changed for the better in those buildings."

Your final Philadelphia library books are due October 1st.

It's a great way to force the State Legislature's hand, but libraries are usually not bargaining chips so this comes across as real hit.  

Doctrow says it best: "Picture an entire city, a modern, wealthy place, in the richest country in the world, in which the vital services provided by libraries are withdrawn due to political brinksmanship and an unwillingness to spare one banker's bonus worth of tax-dollers to sustain an entire region's connection with human culture and knowledge and community."

KAB

Holiday Road

Well my pretties, I'm finally taking a real, live, honest-to-god vacation - the first I've taken in over two and a half years.  People keep reminding me to not touch my email or my smart phone or to mentally go to work during my week off, but they have no idea that I already have 7 emails and one conference call with NYC on my plate.  

Anyway, that's not stopping me from packing some shoulda-read-it-long-ago novels with me to read while I put my feet up.  So far I'm trying to squeeze these into my suitcase:

The first two Twilight Saga books, Twilight and New Moon, by Stephenie Myer

Vampires, Burial, and Death, by Paul Barber

Anne Rice's Interview With The Vampire and The Vampire Lestat

Warren Ellis' Crooked Little Vein

Shampoo Planet, by Douglas Coupland

The Poe Shadow, by Matthew Pearl

Pride And Prejudice And Zombies, by Miss Austen & Friend

Eric Jay Dolin's Leviathan: The History of Whaling In America

Frank Herbert's Dune

and The Zombie Survival Guide, by none other than Max Brooks

I promised myself I wouldn't take anything necessary for class or work.  The problem with this list is that it's all stuff I basically don't need to read.  I've already read Dune.  Three times.  The two Twilight books, despite their noticeable girth, are sadly not filled with much and will only take about a day to read (both together).  I've already read Pride & Prejudice, and I'm not entirely convinced that Zombies will add much to it, and I'm already a walking Zombie Survival Guide.  

Perhaps I need to rethink my packing?

What do YOU, dear reader, think I should take with me?

KAB

Amazon's 1984 snafu is what we'll call "awkward"

Word came this week that Amazon.com had very quickly and quietly, via their "WhisperNet" technology (which, incidentally, brings to mind Terminator's SkyNet), deleted George Orwell's classics 1984 and Animal Farm from both the Kindle marketplace and from every Kindle that had ever purchased them, refunding the money to the Kindle's owners.

The irony, of course, is that 1984 is about a fascist media state and their constant alteration of history by changing digital records of what has occurred. 

The hard part here is that Amazon's mass e-book removal was necessary due to copyright infringement.  Whoever had first uploaded those books to Amazon's Kindle store and started selling them didn't actually own the rights to them.  When Orwell's estate found out, down they had to come. 

Amazon certainly could have handled it a bit better, I think.  io9 points out that what they did flies in the face of what you expect to happen when you purchase a book (i.e. that it's a physically thing that cannot be forcibly taken from you).  Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos took the fall yesterday, and Amazon.com claims that they will not revoke books from customers "in this circumstance" again. 

I don't know.  This spells trouble for e-book readers if you ask me.  No e-book or piece of e-information will ever be yours unless you can get it onto a device that is not connected to the internet.  1984 came and went a long time ago, after all.

KAB

Time to outsource the Lit House

This morning I arrived at the office to 47 new emails and 6 new voicemails.  Admittedly, 15 of the emails were junk, but, alas, only one of the voicemails could be deleted without reply.  The problem, though, is that this is on top of yesterday's 35 new emails and 7 new voicemails.  Every phone and email in the Lit House is forwarded at me right now.  I'm starting to get bogged down in a hazy swamp of communication.  I probably owe you an email.  Or a phone call.  Or a jaunty walk down to your office to say hello to you.  Or I'm supposed to do lunch with you.  RIGHT NOW.  I'm running about two days behind on everything and I'm starting to have dreams about angry office supplies chasing me again.  

I'm reminded that writer A.J. Jacobs experimented in 2005 by outsourcing his life to an executive assistant service in Bangalore.  He was assigned a young woman named Honey.  Here's just a snippet of how it went:  

Honey has completed her first project for me: research on the person Esquire has chosen as the Sexiest Woman Alive. (See page 232.) I've been assigned to write a profile of this woman, and I really don't want to have to slog through all the heavy-breathing fan Web sites about her. When I open Honey's file, I have this reaction: America is fucked. There are charts. There are section headers. There is a well-organized breakdown of her pets, measurements, and favorite foods (e.g., swordfish). If all Bangalorians are like Honey, I pity Americans about to graduate college. They're up against a hungry, polite, Excel-proficient Indian army. Put it this way: Honey ends her e-mails with "Right time for right action, starts now!" Your average American assistant believes the "right time for right action" starts after a Starbucks venti latte and a discussion of last night's Amazing Race 8.
Read more:http://www.esquire.com/ESQ0905OUTSOURCING_214#ixzz0M6YmdoSe

I'm pleased to report that Owen and I have never once discussed Amazing Race.  

To be honest, A.J. has a much more interesting life than I do.  He's the Editor At Large for Esquire, which probably means he doesn't need to go into the office very often but gets a corporate card anyway.  He's posed nude for Mary Louise Parker because she was posing nude for Esquire.  He's read all 32 volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, lived strictly following the rules of the Bible for one year, and, I'm told, is about to tell the world what it was like to live by our very own George Washington's Rules of Civility.  

I'm jealous of the students in Josh's class last year, who got to videochat with A.J. in class, and of Nick, who got to talk to him as he set up the chat.  I'm also jealous of A.J.  But I'm guessing he's got just as many emails and I do today....

KAB