Clifford Garstang's Blog, page 150

Prime Number Magazine -- update 2.3

The latest update (Prime Decimals 2.3) to Prime Number Magazine is up. It features flash fiction by Paul Griner, flash non-fiction by Rebecca K. O'Connor, and poetry by Anne Babson and Jennifer Hollie Bowles. Take a look!

Writing the Literary Short Story -- begins August 30

The class I'm teaching at Writers.com was supposed to begin tomorrow, August 23, but we're going to delay the kickoff by one week. If anyone is interested in enrolling, or knows someone who might be interested, please check out the course description at Writing the Literary Short Story. I'm biased, of course, but I think it's a very nice workshop. We'll definitely start on August 30.

Emily Dickinson :: The Belle of Amherst, BRCC November 12

Emily Dickinson :: The Belle of Amherst - Pam Chabora in Live Theatre, Private Acting Coaching Classes, Fargo, ND, Beckley, WV

There are some interesting opportunities for the students in my Composition class this fall. (I'm teaching Comp II, where we read and write about fiction, poetry, and drama.) First, the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton is performing Othello in repertory until early December. In previous semesters I've taught Hamlet in this class, but the textbook has changed and...

Awards for In an Uncharted Country

This isn't new news anymore, but the local paper just ran a short piece about the Maria Thomas Award that my book, In an Uncharted Country, won recently. And I just happened to notice that the Indiebound listing for the book is now showing the new cover, complete with IPPY Gold Medal the book won in May. And I thought I'd share that here . . .

SWAG Hosts Self-Publishing Workshop

Earlier this year I started an organization called SWAG: the Staunton-Waynesboro-Augusta Group of Writers, a sub-group of the Blue Ridge Chapter of the Virginia Writers' Club. My primary purpose in forming the group was to provide a vehicle for the reading series I envisioned, and the first reading was held on Bloomsday, June 16. Our next reading will be September 29 and will feature the poet Todd Davis and the local nature essayist Janet Lembke.

But before we get there, SWAG is hosting anothe...

Writing the Literary Short Story

My course "Writing the Literary Short Story" begins 8/23 on Writers.com/Writers on the Net. Past participants have found the class very helpful. Have an unpublished story you want to get ready to send out? This is a great way to get feedback and also learn or review the fundamentals of short story writing.

Sign up now!

Anis Shivani: Anis Shivani: 17 Literary Journals That Might Survive the Internet (PHOTOS)

Last week, Anis Shivani created some controversy with his list of overrated American writers. His new list is going to draw less fire, but there might still be some discussion.
Anis Shivani: Anis Shivani: 17 Literary Journals That Might Survive the Internet (PHOTOS)
It's a misleading headline, though. Shivani has merely gathered comments from the editors of these 17 journals; he hasn't said he thinks these are the only journals that will survive the Internet. Indeed, missing are some very...

The New Yorker: "Second Lives" by Daniel Alarcón

According to the Q&A with Daniel Alarcón, this is an outtake from a novel the author is working on, but it seems to work as a story. I like Alarcón's work, and this story is no exception. The title gives us the story's theme: second lives. The narrator's parents were in school in the US when their son Francisco was born, but they had to return their country, where the situation was tolerable for some time but then deteriorated. Because Francisco had a US passport, they could send him the...

Bread Loaf

In case anyone wonders, I'm not at Bread Loaf, which got underway yesterday.

The New Yorker: "The Train of Their Departure" by David Bezmozgis

Begrudgingly, I have to admit that this excerpt from Bezmozgis's novel in progress, The Free World, works pretty well as a short story. I think if he had conceived of it as a story he could have dispensed with a lot of the backstory concerning Polina and Maxim—the fact that she had an abortion and then they got married is pretty much all you need to know about that. The real story is about Polina and Alec.
That said, I like the character of Alec and the way he worms himself into Polina's bed a...