Sybil Baker's Blog, page 16

Read all about it: Meacham Workshops start tomorrow!

There's a great write up on the Meacham Writers' Workshop in today's Times Free Press. We're getting a lot of great writers including Kevin Wilson and Jane Bradley on the prose side. A bonus pic of my handsome hubby as well!
You can read it here:
http://community.timesfreepress.com/news/2011/oct/26/meacham-features-ny-times-best-seller-wilson/?Community-Downtown
For information about the Meacham schedule look here:
http://www.meachamwriters.org/schedule.htm
Hope to see you there!

Short Story up at Prime Number

The latest issue of Prime Number is out and my story "The Spiritual Age of Machines" is in it. Here's the opening:
"I wasn't manorexic, as my wife asserted. I was simply trying to live forever. Or at least until 2029 when, according to The Spiritual Age of Machines, humans will be able to download their brains into computers."
You can read the story here at http://www.primenumbermagazine.com/Issue13_Fiction_SybilBaker.html
Even better, look at the whole issue: http://www.primenumbermagazine.com/Issue13.html

Guest blog post on linked story collections

I'm the guest blogger for September over at Hunger Mountain. I have a post about linked story collections which includes the genesis of my own linked collection, TALISMANS, and some recommendations for those interested in delving deeper into the genre.
You can read the post here:
http://www.hungermtn.org/linking-story/

What are you doing with your life? Part I

Obviously William Purkey was thinking of my mother-in-law Lorraine when he penned the famous (if not now cliched) saying:

"You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching,
Love like you'll never be hurt,
Sing like there's nobody listening,
And live like it's heaven on earth."


Here's Lorraine on her 60th birthday (yep 9/11/11)


Saturday she leaves Jo-burg for a week hike on Kilimanjaro.
What are you doing with your life?

Interview with Victoria Barret at Psychology Today

Great interview with Victoria Barrett at Engine Books at the Psychology Today blog.
I thought she did a good job of defining literary fiction especially in relation to submission guidelines, as I always have problems defining it for my students:
"I think people misunderstand the term "literary" when we editors specify it in submission guidelines: They think it just means "good." But it has a specific connotation, if not a dictionary definition. It was taught to me by Kevin McIlvoy and Robert Boswell (who I'm sure got it somewhere, though I don't know where) as this: The story of everyday life made worthy of art."
You can read the entire interview here:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/one-true-thing/201109/victoria-barrett-launches-literary-press-act-faith

Monomyth and Flash Fiction

For those of you interested in the craft of fiction, http://flashfiction.net/ is one of the best places to go. Even though their focus is flash fiction, most of what they say can apply to "regular" length fiction.
Recently they ran a series on the monomyth, how it applies to flash, and then applied it to James Joyce's "Araby." I'm using the monomyth in my Western Humanities (the Odyssey and all that) and I've used it in my novel writing class, but it didn't even occur to use it for short fiction until I saw this series. V. cool.
The latest post is one on endings, something I find hard to teach and yes, write.
I urge you to check out http://flashfiction.net/ regularly--you'll learn a lot about writing.

Engine Books Novel Prize

I've had nothing but great experiences with Engine Books and I know the other authors on their list say the same. So it's very good news for writers and readers that Engine Books has started a novel prize--deadline is March 10 2012.

You can read the details here:

http://enginebooks.org/prize.html

Andrew Scott on Rejection

Great post by Andrew Scott at Beyond the Margins on rejection.

After more than 416 submissions, Scott's short story collection was published by Press 53--in other words, he's a success story.

Here's another tidbit from his post:

"After six years and 252 submissions, one of my stories was accepted for publication, but not in a literary journal."

I think my fiction students have no idea what the numbers game is like with this stuff, and I think if they knew they might never write a word again. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Read the whole post at Beyond the Margins here:

http://beyondthemargins.com/2011/09/try-try-again-rejection-and-persistance/

"Women Who Smoke" in Prime Mincer

Yes, you need to buy this one (from Amazon)--look how gorgeous the cover is:

http://primemincer.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/full-cover1.jpg

I'm all about that shade of green these days. It's my color--I bought a painting by William Gay this summer that sits above my office computer and most of that painting is that same green, as is the cover for my new novel.

My contributor's copy is arriving any day now, but it was cool to see that I knew a few people in the issue--KB Ballentine, who lives near Chattanooga, and Adam Tavel, a VCFA grad who was here for our Summer Conference a few years ago.

I read the story at one of the Meacham conferences, so you can listen to me read it on Itunes for free--it's the story for March 2010.http://www.meachamwriters.org/writers/sybil-baker.htm

Here's the link to Prime Mincer's website.http://primemincer.wordpress.com/

New flash fiction piece up at Matter Press

When I finished INTO THIS WORLD in February I decided to take a break from big writing projects while I figured out what to do with the manuscript. When I saw that Engine Books was publishing Patricia Henley's collection, I sprinted to their website, checked out their philosophy and submission guidelines (people *always* check out and follow the submission guidelines) and thought (hoped!) they would be a perfect fit for the novel. I sent Victoria Barrett, the editor, a query letter, she wrote back asking for the full manuscript and the waiting period began. I didn't send the manuscript out to anyone else because Engine Books was my first choice, so as I waited to hear from them, I knew I needed to start on some new writing projects as a diversion.

I was burned out from writing a long sustained work and decided to turn my attention to playing with a (for me) new form. The result is a bunch of drafts of mostly flash nonfiction pieces that I need to revise and polish before sending out, a shorter story (about 2,500 words) which was picked up by Prime Number for their next issue, and this, my first flash fiction piece which came out today at the amazing Matter Press, which has published pieces by a lot of great writers including Myfanwy Collins, who--small world--has a novel coming out with Engine Books in spring 2012. Chad Prevost, one of the editors at C&R Press, publisher of Talismans, has also published there.

Check out my piece and all the other great pieces that they've published (including those by Chad Prevost, Myfanwy Collins, and coming soon--Michael Martone).

Agamemnon's Wife Speaks From Hades http://matterpress.com/journal/2011/08/23/agamemnon%E2%80%99s-wife-speaks-from-hades/#more-784

And the journal:http://matterpress.com/journal/