Starcher-Blog

A quick contest update:

Owing to the vicissitudes of the US Mail (generally not something I complain about; indeed a service I generally admire), we've had a delay in finalizing our contest. No biggie; we have multiple copies of all finalist manuscripts. But outcome will likely not be determined until after August 15.

The coolness of PP/FF (2)

Hey, cool cats one & all,

Join us Wednesday, July 26, 7pm, at Night & Day, for our Brooklyn PP/FF Anthology Party! If you haven't heard about PP/FF, it's the newly released Starcherone Books anthology featuring 61 of today's leading practitioners in the in-between prose-poetry/flash-fiction form that editor Peter Conners has named "PP/FF." See http://www.starcherone.com/ppff.htm for more info on this first-of-its-kind book, ideal for creative writing classes and for just hanging around in the park reading and looking cool with in these summer dog days...

Readers: Kazim Ali, Brian Clements, Peter Conners, Geoffrey Gatza, Christine Boyka Kluge, Ted Pelton, Anthony Tognazzini, Jessica Treat, & Mark Tursi.

Location: Night & Day, 230 5th Ave (cross street: Presidents St.), 7pm

Reader Bios:

Kazim Ali is the author of a novel, Quinn’s Passage, and a book of poems, The Far Mosque. He is the publisher of Nightboat Books and assistant professor of English at Shippensburg University.

Brian Clements is the author of several collections of poetry in print and online, including Essays Against Ruin, Burn Whatever Will Burn, and Flesh and Wood. He is the editor of Firewheel Editions and of Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics, and he coordinates the MFA in Professional Writing at Western Connecticut State University.

Peter Conners is founding co-editor of the online literary journal, Double Room: A Journal of Prose Poetry & Flash Fiction, as well as editor of PP/FF: An Anthology. His third poetry collection, Of Whiskey
and Winter, will be published by White Pine Press in fall 2007. Conners works as Marketing Director/Associate Editor for the poetry publisher BOA Editions. He lives with his wife and two sons in Rochester, NY.

Geoffrey Gatza has dedicated himself to protecting the downtrodden of his city from a continuing series of deadly poetic schemes by the insidious School of Quietude. He is editor and publisher of BlazeVOX
Books. His web site is Geoffreygatza.com.

Christine Boyka Kluge is the author of Teaching Bones to Fly, a poetry collection from Bitter Oleander Press, and Domestic Weather, which won the 2003 Uccelli Press Chapbook Contest. Her prose poetry and
flash fiction collection, Stirring the Mirror, is due out from Bitter Oleander Press in 2007.

Ted Pelton is the author of three books, most recently the novel, Malcolm & Jack (and Other Famous American Criminals) (Spuyten Duyvil, 2006). Recipient of an NEA Fellowship for Fiction, he is an Associate Professor at Medaille College of Buffalo, NY, and Executive Director of Starcherone Books.

Anthony Tognazzini has published work in Swink, The Hat, Sentence, Quarterly West, Salt Hill, La Petite Zine, The Mississippi Review, Quick Fiction, Ducky, and Hayden’s Ferry Review, among other journals, and
in Sudden Stories: A Mammoth Anthology of Miniscule Fiction. He has received a Pushcart nomination and an award from the Academy of American Poets. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Jessica Treat is the author of two story collections, Not a Chance (FC2, 2000) and A Robber in the House (Coffee House Press, 1993), and is completing a third. Her stories and prose poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She is the recipient of a Connecticut Commission on the Arts Award.

Mark Tursi is one of the founders and editors of the literary journal Double Room, and he is an Assistant Professor at College Misericordia in Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Denver and his MFA from Colorado State University.

Hope to see you all there! It's not too late to book a flight!

Contest Finalists Announced

Five finalist manuscripts have been forwarded to judge Carole Maso, from which she will select the 2006-07 Starcherone Fiction Prize winner. They are:

Dear Ra (a story in flinches)
Guest
The Lost Books of the Odyssey
Pirate Talk, or Mermalade
Some Days Like Superheroes: a povella

In addition, the following 15 manuscripts have been designated Honorable Mentions. In the unlikely event that our judge does not choose a winner from among the five finalists, these manuscripts may be forwarded to her to select from. Honorable Mentions go to: At a Loss for Words; Autobiography of a Worm; The Dead Elvis Ball; Desperate Beans; The Ephemeralizing Device; Falling; Heretic; Insect Dreams; Missing Presumed Dead; The Murther of Blick Mancoosh; The Night Birds; Quantum Physics & My Dog Bob; The Storyhouse; Syzygy; Taipei – Nipple.

This year's judging was among the toughest we've ever done, and I believe the final five books are the strongest group we've ever had. We thank all the contestants for their submissions. If you are interested in trying again next year, look for our announcement in the November/December Poets & Writers, as well as on our website, as of October 1.

Now, since practically all I've been doing for the past month, morning til night, is reading, reading, and more reading, I'm going on vacation! (Not for too long -- look for an announcement of our winner in early-to-mid August.)

Contest Wind-Down/Thaddeus Rutkowski

Getting near the end of our 4th annual contest -- I've been reading mansucripts pretty much constantly for the last month, since finishing my academic term. Two finalists have been forwarded to Final Judge Carole Maso; three more will go out at the end of this week. Look for an announcement of these finalists then, and then for the winner to be announced sometime in early August, both on this blog and on our contest page (http://www.starcherone.com/winners.htm).

Last evening, Starcherone hosted a former finalist in one of our contests, Thaddeus Rutkowski. Thaddeus was one of three finalists the year that Nina Shope was selected as winner of the Starcherone Prize by Judge Kenneth Bernard; but coincident with him being selected a finalist, Thaddeus signed a contract to publish the book with Beyler Publications. So all came out well -- and this book, Tetched, came out in 2005.

Rutkowski is one my favorite contemporary US writers. His work is funny, vulnerable, unsentimental, spare, language-conscious, and formally smart without sacrificing an ability to entertain. What I didn't know about Thaddeus was that he's also a great performer of his ownj work, having cut his teeth in the slam-scene of the Nuyorican Poetry Cafe. Unlike a lot of the slam poetry I've seen and heard, however, Thaddeus's writing isn't wordy or, as I like to put it, soft. It works as well on the page as it does aloud, which is rare.

I just wished I'd asked him to send stuff for PP/FF. Tetched is a novel made up of dozens of short-shorts, and the pieces work well individually. Particularly good is his story about going to a writer's colony; all of his fellow office workers mistake his announcement as "nudist" colony; then, at the colony itself, Thaddeus's narrator discovers that all studios and apartments have mattresses for sleeping off depression and mitigating the impulse to suicide. This is dark -- but then the recognitions one has (funny) bring in light -- the best kind of work!