Rick Rofihe's Blog, page 4
December 15, 2010
2010 Open City RRofihe Trophy Winner Amy Bonnaffons' Story Published...
Read the 2010 OPEN CITY RRofihe Trophy
Short Story Contest Winner HERE:
"The Wrong Heaven" by AMY BONNAFFONS
http://www.anderbo.com/anderbo1/afict...
Amy Bonnaffons holds a BA in literature from Yale University and an MFA in fiction writing from New York University. She currently lives in New York City, where she teaches writing, sings Balkan folk music, and works on her first book of short stories. "The Wrong Heaven" is the 2010 Winner of the Open City RRofihe Trophy Short Story Contest http://opencity.org/2010/12/the-2010-...
Note: The complete 2010 results are posted on the new Open City RRofihe Trophy pages:
http://opencity.org/2010/12/the-2010-...
http://opencity.org/the-rrofihe-trophy
***
There were exactly 200 entries in the 2010 Open City Magazine RRofihe Trophy Short Story Contest.
The Winning Writer is Amy C. Bonnaffons of New York City for her story "The Wrong Heaven".
She will receive a prize of $500, a trophy, and publication of the story in Open City #31.
The 2010 RRofihe Trophy Runner-Up is Mac Barrett of Brooklyn, New York for his story "We Call This Living; or, Ghosts".
The 2010 RRofihe Trophy Special-Mention Stories (2) are:
"This Was Going to Work Out Fine" by Barbara Arno Modrack" of Brighton, Michigan.
"Baboon" by Jan Stinchcomb of Austin, Texas.
The 2010 RRofihe Trophy Top-Ten Stories include:
"The Airplane Hangar" by Anelise Chen of New York City.
"Release" by M.E. Parker of McKinney, Texas.
"An Incident at the Plaza" by Elizabeth Kadetsky of New York City.
"One of the Funner Parties I Have Been To" by Katya Apekina of St Louis, Missouri.
"Scared" by Adeola Adeniyi of Brooklyn, New York.
"Perfect Soup" by Olivia Shih of New York City.
The 2010 RRofihe Trophy Top-Twenty Finalist Stories included entries from:
Annie DeWitt of Brooklyn, New York; Meakin Armstrong of New York City; Michael Di Gesu of Chicago, Illinois; Victoria Moon of New York City; Tamela J. Ritter of Haymarket, Virginia; Rashanna Rashied-Walker of Brooklyn, New York; Elizabeth Richards of New York City; Lindsay Allen of New Orleans, Louisiana; Brent Shearer of New York City, and, Jessica Pishko of New York City.
Short Story Contest Winner HERE:
"The Wrong Heaven" by AMY BONNAFFONS
http://www.anderbo.com/anderbo1/afict...
Amy Bonnaffons holds a BA in literature from Yale University and an MFA in fiction writing from New York University. She currently lives in New York City, where she teaches writing, sings Balkan folk music, and works on her first book of short stories. "The Wrong Heaven" is the 2010 Winner of the Open City RRofihe Trophy Short Story Contest http://opencity.org/2010/12/the-2010-...
Note: The complete 2010 results are posted on the new Open City RRofihe Trophy pages:
http://opencity.org/2010/12/the-2010-...
http://opencity.org/the-rrofihe-trophy
***
There were exactly 200 entries in the 2010 Open City Magazine RRofihe Trophy Short Story Contest.
The Winning Writer is Amy C. Bonnaffons of New York City for her story "The Wrong Heaven".
She will receive a prize of $500, a trophy, and publication of the story in Open City #31.
The 2010 RRofihe Trophy Runner-Up is Mac Barrett of Brooklyn, New York for his story "We Call This Living; or, Ghosts".
The 2010 RRofihe Trophy Special-Mention Stories (2) are:
"This Was Going to Work Out Fine" by Barbara Arno Modrack" of Brighton, Michigan.
"Baboon" by Jan Stinchcomb of Austin, Texas.
The 2010 RRofihe Trophy Top-Ten Stories include:
"The Airplane Hangar" by Anelise Chen of New York City.
"Release" by M.E. Parker of McKinney, Texas.
"An Incident at the Plaza" by Elizabeth Kadetsky of New York City.
"One of the Funner Parties I Have Been To" by Katya Apekina of St Louis, Missouri.
"Scared" by Adeola Adeniyi of Brooklyn, New York.
"Perfect Soup" by Olivia Shih of New York City.
The 2010 RRofihe Trophy Top-Twenty Finalist Stories included entries from:
Annie DeWitt of Brooklyn, New York; Meakin Armstrong of New York City; Michael Di Gesu of Chicago, Illinois; Victoria Moon of New York City; Tamela J. Ritter of Haymarket, Virginia; Rashanna Rashied-Walker of Brooklyn, New York; Elizabeth Richards of New York City; Lindsay Allen of New Orleans, Louisiana; Brent Shearer of New York City, and, Jessica Pishko of New York City.
December 10, 2010
November 24, 2010
FREUD'S BLIND SPOT (Reviewed by Gabrielle Mitchell-Marell)
(To appear on http://anderbo.com on or before 11/30/10)
Review by Gabrielle Mitchell-Marell of
FREUD'S BLIND SPOT: 23 Original Essays on Cherished, Estranged, Lost, Hurtful, Hopeful, Complicated Siblings
Edited by Elisa Albert
Free Press / Simon & Schuster
New York, November 2010
The personal essayist who longs to mine his or her life for universal emotional truth must translate its value to any objective reader. It’s easier to write about the circumstances of our own lives once we’ve gained some distance, and a sibling relationship brings a particular challenge to this matter because it’s between two people not only tied and anchored by the past but woven, however involuntarily, into the present and future. No matter the distance or proximity, siblings harbor one another's unprocessed pasts, along with possible answers to certain existing life difficulties. And, probably, to truly explore one's relationship to a sibling, one must be willing to fully excavate—and expose—oneself.
The 23 essays in Freud’s Blind Spot, edited by Elisa Albert, explore the many dynamics and classifications of sibling relationships: the full, the half, the step-, the estranged, the one who you never knew existed, the lost, the dear friend, the twin-like, the estranged, the disadvantaged, the hostile—all possibly including siblings who have diverged in their religion, geographic locale, career, and even in desired closeness with one another.
In some instances the process of composing such an essay alters the course of the relationship. In his “Thirty-Eight Questions I’ve Always Wanted To Ask My Brother But Haven’t Until Now”, T Cooper takes the opportunity to forge some intimacy with his estranged brother, Steve, a cop. The questions illuminate the business of life as well as a deeper probe of the past and the strain of their current relationship. The author gets the answer to questions he would otherwise not have had the occasion, or perhaps the nerve, to ask, while Steve grows more tender and open in his responses as he settles into the pull of wanting to be better known by his writer-brother. Hearing Steve, as the non-writer who doesn’t make his living revealing his innermost feelings or observations, is especially poignant, as he confesses to his brother towards the end of the interview, “I avoid getting close with anyone these days because I am a scaredy-cat of losing them. That’s why I don’t have pets anymore and that’s probably why I don’t stay in relationships very long.”
Throughout her growing up, writer Margo Rabb fantasized about having an intimate sisterly connection like the one portrayed between the real-life twins in the 1985 sitcom “Double Trouble”. In her essay, “Jackie”, Rabb depicts the innate differences and resulting distance between herself and her sister without unfairly wielding her pen on her own behalf. The untimely loss of the girls’ parents—and the brutal process of cleaning out their parent’s home—finally helps them to value one another as individuals and as each other’s only remaining family. “I’m somehow still shocked, even though ten years have passed since we lost our father, and twenty years since our mother died, that they’re gone,” Rabb writes. “Whether we speak of it or not, my sister is the only one who understands this.”
For Jill and Faith Soloway, who lie on the other side of the sisterly spectrum, any childhood memory not relived is a moment yet to mine. The two rehash intimate childhood details in a way that both excludes and absorbs the reader. Jill: “Remember when we played prostitute and John, why was I always the John?” Faith: “No!!!! We Did!? Please tell me about that.”
Memory is notoriously relative, and between those with a shared childhood that discrepancy is colored by family roles. Childhood events whose objective events are untraceable have long ago cemented into divergent truths. Even divisions and alignments within the family, which might have seemed certain to one, prove relative. Jill remembers that Faith “belonged to her dad” while she “belonged to her mom.” But Faith experiences it differently. “I felt more like I had Dad’s talents and you had Mom’s. But not like we were paired off.” By giving retrospective credence to a sibling’s testimony we have the option to revise our own versions of reality, which may have been colored falsely by our child selves.
Nellie Hermann‘s essay, “Ben Hermann Forever,” begins as an explanation of the author’s position in her family as a girl with three older brothers, two of whom died before she finished high school. Its focus moves to her dearest brother, Ben, who Hermann adored with the intensity of a girl with a celebrity crush on a guy who happens to live down the hall. It’s a relationship that even in death is unfolding.
“What does a girl talk about with her older brother at that age? I don’t know,” Hermann writes. “I guess we didn’t talk much at all. We joked; we gestured; we laughed and rolled our eyes. Mostly I observed. I watched Ben; he was always who I watched. In the wake of his illness I felt all my language dry up and blow away.”
How will Hermann’s sense of her brother settle as she tries to fuse her adult perception of their relationship with the one held by her fifteen-year-old self—a self who wields a disproportionate claim on Ben and his short life. Had he lived into adulthood, the two would have eventually stood on more equal ground, but as a girl she was rapt by the separateness of her brother’s world, and her keenest desire was to permeate it. Ben’s death reinforces his inscrutability during his short life. Like the young girl standing outside his bedroom door, listening for clues and longing for entry, Hermann’s adult ear now presses against that even more impermeable barrier which separates the living from the dead.
Steve Almond says of “Happy Siblings”: “I run into them sometimes, at brunches, softball games and potlucks. They seem especially fond of potlucks.” With his identifiable brand of pointed wit Almond describes these roving, innocuous-seeming but potentially dangerous pairs of tweedle-dee-dee brothers whom he prefers to avoid. Almond details the cruel litany of revenge and torture that comprise his own memories of growing up with two brothers—admitting that although there must have been some sweeter times, as a writer who is “deeply invested in the narrative of my miserable childhood,” he is not especially motivated to unearth them.
Collectively, the 23 essays in Freud’s Blind Spot made me reflect on my own sibling relationship. As someone who’s attended more than one potluck with my sister, the primary downside of having a sibling, as I see it, is that you have just that much more to lose. As my sister Emily once said to me about a friend negotiating an uncomfortable situation between his divorced parents, “I don’t know how those only children can even get up in the morning!” This is now a refrain between us, which arises particularly when we get annoyed with our mostly-delightful parents. (A shared, private language is near the top on the list of privileges that happy siblings enjoy). More sobering, though, we are probably subtly acknowledging the possibility that we will eventually have to care for our parents, and woe is either of us to have to bear that trial individually. For me, there is also a literal truth in her small statement: it is a bit easier to get up in the morning when one knows that there is another person out there who imbibed the same worldview at the dinner table, grew up staring at those same watercolor tiles in the shower and squeezing the same grungy sponges in the kitchen sink—“Why did Mom and Dad act like sponges were a luxury item?” Emily asked me recently. This book of recollections and reflections so deftly assembled by Elisa Albert also reminded me that as my clearer-thinking, more-sidesplitting sister survives and thrives in this world, perhaps she's quietly providing me with a little extra proof that I can too.
____________
Gabrielle Mitchell-Marell, Anderbo Associate Editor (West Coast) has contributed articles and reviews to BlackBook, The L Magazine, Publishers Weekly, Variety and New York Magazine online. She has taught at Fordham University, the Writing Center at Yeshiva University and Glendale Community College. She has an MFA in Fiction Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Gabrielle grew up in Woodstock, New York and currently lives, writes and teaches in Los Angeles.
Review by Gabrielle Mitchell-Marell of
FREUD'S BLIND SPOT: 23 Original Essays on Cherished, Estranged, Lost, Hurtful, Hopeful, Complicated Siblings
Edited by Elisa Albert
Free Press / Simon & Schuster
New York, November 2010
The personal essayist who longs to mine his or her life for universal emotional truth must translate its value to any objective reader. It’s easier to write about the circumstances of our own lives once we’ve gained some distance, and a sibling relationship brings a particular challenge to this matter because it’s between two people not only tied and anchored by the past but woven, however involuntarily, into the present and future. No matter the distance or proximity, siblings harbor one another's unprocessed pasts, along with possible answers to certain existing life difficulties. And, probably, to truly explore one's relationship to a sibling, one must be willing to fully excavate—and expose—oneself.
The 23 essays in Freud’s Blind Spot, edited by Elisa Albert, explore the many dynamics and classifications of sibling relationships: the full, the half, the step-, the estranged, the one who you never knew existed, the lost, the dear friend, the twin-like, the estranged, the disadvantaged, the hostile—all possibly including siblings who have diverged in their religion, geographic locale, career, and even in desired closeness with one another.
In some instances the process of composing such an essay alters the course of the relationship. In his “Thirty-Eight Questions I’ve Always Wanted To Ask My Brother But Haven’t Until Now”, T Cooper takes the opportunity to forge some intimacy with his estranged brother, Steve, a cop. The questions illuminate the business of life as well as a deeper probe of the past and the strain of their current relationship. The author gets the answer to questions he would otherwise not have had the occasion, or perhaps the nerve, to ask, while Steve grows more tender and open in his responses as he settles into the pull of wanting to be better known by his writer-brother. Hearing Steve, as the non-writer who doesn’t make his living revealing his innermost feelings or observations, is especially poignant, as he confesses to his brother towards the end of the interview, “I avoid getting close with anyone these days because I am a scaredy-cat of losing them. That’s why I don’t have pets anymore and that’s probably why I don’t stay in relationships very long.”
Throughout her growing up, writer Margo Rabb fantasized about having an intimate sisterly connection like the one portrayed between the real-life twins in the 1985 sitcom “Double Trouble”. In her essay, “Jackie”, Rabb depicts the innate differences and resulting distance between herself and her sister without unfairly wielding her pen on her own behalf. The untimely loss of the girls’ parents—and the brutal process of cleaning out their parent’s home—finally helps them to value one another as individuals and as each other’s only remaining family. “I’m somehow still shocked, even though ten years have passed since we lost our father, and twenty years since our mother died, that they’re gone,” Rabb writes. “Whether we speak of it or not, my sister is the only one who understands this.”
For Jill and Faith Soloway, who lie on the other side of the sisterly spectrum, any childhood memory not relived is a moment yet to mine. The two rehash intimate childhood details in a way that both excludes and absorbs the reader. Jill: “Remember when we played prostitute and John, why was I always the John?” Faith: “No!!!! We Did!? Please tell me about that.”
Memory is notoriously relative, and between those with a shared childhood that discrepancy is colored by family roles. Childhood events whose objective events are untraceable have long ago cemented into divergent truths. Even divisions and alignments within the family, which might have seemed certain to one, prove relative. Jill remembers that Faith “belonged to her dad” while she “belonged to her mom.” But Faith experiences it differently. “I felt more like I had Dad’s talents and you had Mom’s. But not like we were paired off.” By giving retrospective credence to a sibling’s testimony we have the option to revise our own versions of reality, which may have been colored falsely by our child selves.
Nellie Hermann‘s essay, “Ben Hermann Forever,” begins as an explanation of the author’s position in her family as a girl with three older brothers, two of whom died before she finished high school. Its focus moves to her dearest brother, Ben, who Hermann adored with the intensity of a girl with a celebrity crush on a guy who happens to live down the hall. It’s a relationship that even in death is unfolding.
“What does a girl talk about with her older brother at that age? I don’t know,” Hermann writes. “I guess we didn’t talk much at all. We joked; we gestured; we laughed and rolled our eyes. Mostly I observed. I watched Ben; he was always who I watched. In the wake of his illness I felt all my language dry up and blow away.”
How will Hermann’s sense of her brother settle as she tries to fuse her adult perception of their relationship with the one held by her fifteen-year-old self—a self who wields a disproportionate claim on Ben and his short life. Had he lived into adulthood, the two would have eventually stood on more equal ground, but as a girl she was rapt by the separateness of her brother’s world, and her keenest desire was to permeate it. Ben’s death reinforces his inscrutability during his short life. Like the young girl standing outside his bedroom door, listening for clues and longing for entry, Hermann’s adult ear now presses against that even more impermeable barrier which separates the living from the dead.
Steve Almond says of “Happy Siblings”: “I run into them sometimes, at brunches, softball games and potlucks. They seem especially fond of potlucks.” With his identifiable brand of pointed wit Almond describes these roving, innocuous-seeming but potentially dangerous pairs of tweedle-dee-dee brothers whom he prefers to avoid. Almond details the cruel litany of revenge and torture that comprise his own memories of growing up with two brothers—admitting that although there must have been some sweeter times, as a writer who is “deeply invested in the narrative of my miserable childhood,” he is not especially motivated to unearth them.
Collectively, the 23 essays in Freud’s Blind Spot made me reflect on my own sibling relationship. As someone who’s attended more than one potluck with my sister, the primary downside of having a sibling, as I see it, is that you have just that much more to lose. As my sister Emily once said to me about a friend negotiating an uncomfortable situation between his divorced parents, “I don’t know how those only children can even get up in the morning!” This is now a refrain between us, which arises particularly when we get annoyed with our mostly-delightful parents. (A shared, private language is near the top on the list of privileges that happy siblings enjoy). More sobering, though, we are probably subtly acknowledging the possibility that we will eventually have to care for our parents, and woe is either of us to have to bear that trial individually. For me, there is also a literal truth in her small statement: it is a bit easier to get up in the morning when one knows that there is another person out there who imbibed the same worldview at the dinner table, grew up staring at those same watercolor tiles in the shower and squeezing the same grungy sponges in the kitchen sink—“Why did Mom and Dad act like sponges were a luxury item?” Emily asked me recently. This book of recollections and reflections so deftly assembled by Elisa Albert also reminded me that as my clearer-thinking, more-sidesplitting sister survives and thrives in this world, perhaps she's quietly providing me with a little extra proof that I can too.
____________
Gabrielle Mitchell-Marell, Anderbo Associate Editor (West Coast) has contributed articles and reviews to BlackBook, The L Magazine, Publishers Weekly, Variety and New York Magazine online. She has taught at Fordham University, the Writing Center at Yeshiva University and Glendale Community College. She has an MFA in Fiction Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Gabrielle grew up in Woodstock, New York and currently lives, writes and teaches in Los Angeles.
November 20, 2010
How I Invented the Designer Jean in 1968 (Memoir)
Before I was 18 years old, in my small home town of Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, Canada, I invented the designer jean, about a decade before Calvin Klein http://www.calvinkleinjeans.com/ and Jordache http://www.jordache.com/ -- and even Gloria Vanderbilt http://www.thefind.com/apparel/info-g... .
But the men in our family clothing business dismissed my idea, and wouldn't back me. So I bid a sad good-bye to Mother and headed for the big city -- Halifax -- where, three years later, and, still months shy of my 21st birthday, I established two publishing companies, including Anderbo Books, today http://www.anderbo.com .
Then somehow I got it into my head to be an actor -- eventually I got to New York in 1978, and was soon in the personal class of Lee Strasberg. But, one day before class, Lee's wife Anna, seeing me with my face buried in The New York Times, said, "How can you read the newspaper with so many interesting people around you?"
I left acting; soon my writings were appearing in the Times, the Village Voice, SPY, The New Yorker, Grand Street, Open City Magazine, and on Mr. Beller's Neighborhood http://www.mrbellersneighborhood.com/... .
But as the years went on, designer jeans were -- are -- all around me, and it's not unreasonable to think of what might have been.... http://www.nsbd.ca/results.php?hide_i... .
***
Rick Rofihe is the author of FATHER MUST, published by Farrar Straus & Giroux
(Editor: Jonathan Galassi; Agent: Gail Hochman). For a free download of his book of nine New Yorker stories, BOYS who DO the BOP, go to http://www.anderbo.com/bop9.html .
Rick is a winner of the Whiting Writer's Award; judges the Open City magazine's annual short story contest, the RRofihe Trophy http://opencity.org/the-rrofihe-trophy ; and is an advisor for the 2011 Vilcek Foundation Literature prizes.
But the men in our family clothing business dismissed my idea, and wouldn't back me. So I bid a sad good-bye to Mother and headed for the big city -- Halifax -- where, three years later, and, still months shy of my 21st birthday, I established two publishing companies, including Anderbo Books, today http://www.anderbo.com .
Then somehow I got it into my head to be an actor -- eventually I got to New York in 1978, and was soon in the personal class of Lee Strasberg. But, one day before class, Lee's wife Anna, seeing me with my face buried in The New York Times, said, "How can you read the newspaper with so many interesting people around you?"
I left acting; soon my writings were appearing in the Times, the Village Voice, SPY, The New Yorker, Grand Street, Open City Magazine, and on Mr. Beller's Neighborhood http://www.mrbellersneighborhood.com/... .
But as the years went on, designer jeans were -- are -- all around me, and it's not unreasonable to think of what might have been.... http://www.nsbd.ca/results.php?hide_i... .
***
Rick Rofihe is the author of FATHER MUST, published by Farrar Straus & Giroux
(Editor: Jonathan Galassi; Agent: Gail Hochman). For a free download of his book of nine New Yorker stories, BOYS who DO the BOP, go to http://www.anderbo.com/bop9.html .
Rick is a winner of the Whiting Writer's Award; judges the Open City magazine's annual short story contest, the RRofihe Trophy http://opencity.org/the-rrofihe-trophy ; and is an advisor for the 2011 Vilcek Foundation Literature prizes.
November 14, 2010
A Kentucky Fried Memory; A Drink with Johnny Cash...
Who in this room has shared an elevator with Colonel Sanders? A drink with Johnny Cash?
http://www.fictionaut.com/stories/ric...
http://www.fictionaut.com/stories/ric...
November 4, 2010
Rick Moody & Jacques Derrida "Gang Up" on my e-Publishing Nose...
Rick Moody and Jacques Derrida "gang up" on my e-publishing Nose...
http://www.americanshortfiction.org/b...
http://www.americanshortfiction.org/b...
November 1, 2010
If November's here, can "Snow", by Lisa Margonelli, be far behind?
If November's here, can "Snow", by Lisa Margonelli, be far behind?
http://www.anderbo.com/anderbo1/afact...
http://www.anderbo.com/anderbo1/afact...
October 27, 2010
Said Sayrafiezadeh and 9 others win 2010 Whiting Writers' Awards
Said Sayrafiezadeh and 9 others win 2010 Whiting Writers' Awards
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/28/boo...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/28/boo...
October 13, 2010
Elizabeth Wurtzel to Judge 2011 Anderbo Creative Nonfiction Prize
Elizabeth Wurtzel to Judge 2011 Anderbo Creative Nonfiction Prize
http://www.anderbo.com/anderbo1/ander...
http://www.anderbo.com/anderbo1/ander...
October 4, 2010
Open City RRofihe Trophy Short Story Contest Deadline Friday October 15th...
Open City 2011 RRofihe Trophy Short Story Contest Deadline Saturday October 15th...
Guidelines @ http://opencity.org/the-rrofihe-trophy
+ See late-breaking Open City news @
http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_...
Guidelines @ http://opencity.org/the-rrofihe-trophy
+ See late-breaking Open City news @
http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_...
