St. Johns has a Writers' Room

Sock man do

Selin with dirty sock

We'll Miss You Immensely

One of my literary heroes, Kurt Vonnegut, died last night. Here's a great,
short bio about him, his work, and his influence on the literary world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/books/12vonnegut.html

We do love you already

As I mentioned, we're headed to see Jonathan Lethem tomorrow as part of the Portland Arts and Lectures series. He's on tour with his new book You Don't Love Me Yet.

His Web site abounds with the notion that Writer, Publisher, PR, Web-2.0-Savvy are all one organic globule with the young lit rock star gig. His bibliography (did you see that essay list?) has many a Writer Bum at home sighing over rejection letters and forgotten plans for publication. We'll see if his show lives up to his hype. My guess: of course it will... and then some. This is Lethem.

The Business of Books

Yet another blog post to be filed under "no duh!" Today I rediscovered the Web wonderland that is Publishers Weekly. Every pro resource, insider, agent and book monger in the country will say, "Hey, you should read PW. It's what's going on in the business." To which the Writer Bum might say, "Yeah, yeah, tell me something I don't know." But do we do it?

We should. The site is rocking with news, tips, hints, facts, trends, events, reviews, interviews, and more. I'm a believer.

Council for Literary Magazines and Presses

If you're like other Writer Bums and you're looking to publish in a literary journal, it's interesting to see behind the iron curtain, to see how these magazines—largely published through MFA programs—operate behind the scenes. Enter CLMP—Council of Literary Magazines and Presses. They offer a wealth of resources for new publishers and writers, with links and amazingly helpful tools. You're going to want to browse this site.

Authors We Love

Staring at my bookcase in amazement today for the prose of lit rock star Jonathan Safran Foer. Here's New York's new Truman Capote. Foer has his youth, a movie deal, and his cartoon likeness in an episode of The Simpsons.

If you haven't already, go today and read this book and this book. (And if you have read the first one, check out this site.)

Foer has a distinctive voice—one that’s lyrical and literary; one that relies on syntactical artistry. It’s the sort of prose that makes the writing community hopeful, as it did in reviews by his Princeton mentors, Joyce Carol Oates and Jeffery Eugenides.

Bravo, Mr. Foer.