July 14th, 2010
Attn Teachers: Did you know that the new classroom anthology “Learn then Burn” is available through writebloody.com and even more importantly, donorschoose.com? Well it is, as is the entire Write Bloody catalog. If you want to be the coolest teacher in your school come this September, we highly suggest you create a project for a classroom set of “Learn Then Burn”. Think of the children! Think of the pencils in the ceiling! Below is the companion materials for ready made project, discussions and exercises specifically made for the Learn Then Burn anthology. Available Aug 25.
Coming in one month from WB!
Posted in News | No Comments »
June 13th, 2010
Check out Mindy’s great interview for her new book on TNB. Her last answer should be seen by everyone in the writing world and maybe even taken to heart
HERE IS THE INTERVIEW
this girl is getting married this weekend to david!
Posted in News | No Comments »
May 28th, 2010
We at Write Bloody are thrilled to announce our manuscript contest winners for our next publishing season. Holy Moly!
Before I have the pleasure of announcing these golden wordsmiths, I first need to address the issue of our posting of editors comments regarding manuscript submissions in our blog. Not all comments were negative but many were negative, short and to the point. We requested these short curt responses since there were so many entries. A score was also used to judge the submissions. We won’t post those because that doesn’t help. We want to help those who want a clearer vision of what works and what doesn’t for WB. We aren’t looking for a discussion between authors and press about what works for us, we just want you to have a clearer picture of our preferences. We here at WB realize that writing is a wrenching, sensitive, gut searching process. I can assure you that the editing and critical process is not. It is often direct and painful. A great manuscript is worth the work.
After many weeks of phone calls, scoring, reading and re-reading, this batch selection of WB authors has proven to be amazing. If we were rich, we would publish all of these 25 submissions. I mean it. We have even decided to piece together an anthology collection of the most beloved pieces from this submission process in the next few months. Since we have a tiny staff, small funds and a passion for great writing, we had to narrow it down to eight winners. Winners were chosen for a manuscript that showed range, consistency, power and creativity.
Here they are. Welcome to the Family. We are proud of you.
1. LAURA YES YES
2. BRIAN ELLIS
3. TARA HARDY
4. DAVID PEREZ
5. BENJAMIN CLARK
6. ELAINA ELLIS
7. JON SANDS
8. PAUL SUNTUP
The closest contenders in terms of scoring were:
Daniel Romo, Megan Falley, Jason McBeth, Tufik Shayeb, Adam Stone and Steve Subrizi
SUPER THUNDER CLAP CONGRATULATIONS for even making it to the finals. We will be contacting the winners next week with more information. To all our finalists, thank you for honoring us with such quality manuscript submissions. We have only been doing these call for submissions for our second year and thank you for making it so, so, so difficult.
Posted in News | No Comments »
May 25th, 2010
Hi gang. Finalists were so hard to choose from this year. If we were rich we would print them all. Any small press owner will tell you, that putting out 14 books in one season is insane work, but I am dedicated to pulling it off, so we can only print 8 new comers this year /season. A lot of interesting debate in the blog section. A few words: Thank you for your passion. All we care about is power on the page and that the author will tour, their status in the poetry slam world plays no part. Please be nice on our site. We aren’t super bloggy. Persona poems are wonderful. We LOVE The page the page the page. We just got orders from Guam and South Africa, so obviously, we aim to reach out from our known worlds with poetry and prose… and most of these books will be bought online or in bookstores so… the page the page. We will announce the winners on this Friday and our next blog will have ambiguous notes from some of our 12 talented unnamed editors. Our goal is to make poetry big. As big as anything you’d see on a Friday night freak Trot. We underground authors wield their power over people and we believe in them, no matter how cheeseball that sounds. DCB PS- If you love poetry, fiction and interviews and live performances, we have some free hot recordings you can download under podcast at lightbulbmouth.com
Derricks hand has got to be hyperbolic to party at the radio hour
Posted in News | No Comments »
May 3rd, 2010
Congratulations to those manuscript submission folks who pushed through to become the favorites of our editor crew. We had over three hundred this year so the competition was tight. First off, here are the manuscripts we hand picked for publication:
RICHARD SWIFT-BUDDY WAKEFIELD-MINDY NETTIFEE-IDRIS GOODWIN-BEAU SIA-CR AVERY
Here are the final contestants selected to send in a 40+ poem or 12-15 story short story collection. If you know any of these authors, please congratulate them. This is the only way we notify the winners. There were many manuscripts that came close to making the top round. As a thank you, we will post the almost selected crew below the winners. But for now, here are your final selected contestants for 2010. Remember, show variety, show power and originality. This will be a tight race, so look for small things like spelling mistakes or lower case poems for no reason. The format requested is on our submissions page: Selected contestants:
17. JON SANDS
18. TUFIK SHAYEB
19. DANE KUTTLER
20. BOB REDMOND
21. ADAM STONE
22. CARRIE SEITZINGER
23. MOLLY MEACHAM
24. DANIEL ROMO
25. SARAH BRICKMAN
Special Congratulations to Charley Pope and David Ayllon for being selected to be in our new Learn Then Burn anthology for the classroom.
The almost selected:
CYNTHIA FRENCH-JAKE DANNA-STEPHEN MEADS-WINNIE OLIVER-CARLOS ANDRES GOMEZ-KHARY JACKSON-PAUL HELLWEG-WESS MONGO JOLLEY-DAVID DOC LUBEN-JENNIFER GIGANTO-MICHAEL D LEE-PAUL HELLWEG-ZEIN EL-AMINE-RONNIE STEPHENS-JARED SINGER-AUSTIN ZERPOLI-KRISTEN TOMANOCY-MERCY GALLAGHER TEAGUE-CASEY ROCHETEAU-VANESSA PIKE-VRTIAK-BRETT ELIZABETH JENKINS-HANNAH BROOKS OLSEN-HENRY GANT-JESSE LETOUR
Posted in News | No Comments »
April 30th, 2010
The final advancers will be listed here on monday morning. Or you can go
to lightbulbmouth.com and click on last nights podcast to hear who the final few were!
In the meantime, guess which wb author got this tattoo?
who dat?
Posted in News | No Comments »
April 22nd, 2010
The next eight authors of 24 advancers will be announced here now: The next and final 8 will be announced via podcast at lightbulbmouth.com on Thurs morning.
9. TARA HARDY
10. MEGAN FALLEY
11. DAVID PEREZ
12. NATALIE ILLUM
13. BENJAMIN CLARK
14. PAUL SUNTUP
15. ELAINA ELLIS
16. JASON MCBETH
Posted in News | No Comments »
April 13th, 2010
READ THIS PLEASE FRIENDS. Our 2010 submission process is over and those chosen to submit a full manuscript are being accepted into the final round. Finalists must submit a full 40 poem or more manuscript (or 15 short stories or both) within two weeks. We then choose 8 final winners out of the 24 selected manuscripts to be release from now til next June. We hope the pockets are deep cause this is amazing company to keep. These submissions were stellar. Here is how we will do it. We will announce 8 advancers every monday, making the total 24 advancing to finals out of 330 entries. Eight brilliant authors will join our family when the smoke clears. Check back in with our site to see who makes the cut. We are so excited. It was a very close race this year.
Also, we will be announcing the next advancers early, on wednesday at lightbulbmouth.com somewhere in the podcast, that posts each thurs morning for the eager ones. (Not this WED. Derrick will be in NYC, show on monday april 19th for Night reports and also a literary death match at pianos on wed night in nyc.)
ADVANCE GROUP 1.
1. BRIAN ELLIS
2. CURTIS X MEYER
3. JEFF LACY
4. LAURA YES YES
5. MICHAEL GUARDABASCIO
6. STEVE SUBRIZI
7. CHRIS GILPIN
8. JOAQUIN ZIHUATANEJO
Posted in News | No Comments »
April 2nd, 2010
Catacomb Confetti by Josh Boyd
He did it. Josh Boyd is a mid west writer pounding his dreams into ink.
He is a powerhouse romantic and he is touring the nation to blow your brains out with a deluge of good heartache, wanting and a great wild open heart.
“The sheer verbal energy of Josh Boyd’s debut hurtles like a semi run amok out on I-80, along the emptiest corridors of his Iowa home. That’s just the first tickle of this Catacomb Confetti, however. In one painful catalogue the poems crumple the swagger of youth into sodden party debris on the barroom floor, then in the next busy exhortation, they hoist all that’s drained and heartbroke back onto its hind legs; they send you back out bellowing “maniac hoots… echoing in the grooves of your intestines.”
—John Domini, author, Earthquake I.D. and A Tomb on the Periphery
Miracle Trauma
Our soldiers returned covered in pollen.
There had been a full moon in the sky every night that they were away.
A couple of the other children and I snuck up the clock tower,
smoking stolen cigarettes and avoiding the spot where
Danni was sitting before she jumped last summer.
We watched our heroes marching toward the village for
hours, remembering when they had trumped away with such stellar fierceness.
Town hall was an overcrowded terrarium.
The captain spoke.
His face was wormwood.
His voice, a gearshift,
“We arrived on the other side of the world and there was a great blizzard.
We huddled together like bamboo.
No one could tell if it was day or night, or how many days and nights had passed.
Gripped with fatigue, we all eventually fell asleep in the ice.”
He paused and looked around the room;
“Most of our men never woke up.
The rest of us woke with what I would describe as discursive neurons.”
Dr. Whithers was sweating.
The governor’s face was flushed.
The captain continued,
“The stars that were supposed to guide us home kept falling from the sky,
leaving violet trails of mica. It looked pretty, sure, but it
didn’t do a damn thing for us.
We have been praying that the gods would send bees to sting us all to death.”
Everyone just stared at their pollen-covered armor.
After that, nothing anybody said in that town ever made sense again.
Posted in News | 1 Comment »
March 19th, 2010
Racing Hummingbirds by Jeanann Verlee
NYC author Jeanann Verlee releases fantastic new collection of poetry. We believe in Jeanann. This is raw, well crafted poetry that will pull at your heart until you feel it beat faster than a hummingbird’s wing. March19, 8pm, bowery poetry club book release! NYC.
Racing Hummingbirds examines, critiques, and at times delights in one woman’s navigation through the many worlds of manic depression and her struggle to maintain humanity in the process. Jeanann Verlee’s debut collection is a series of narratives, prayers, and conjurings which address gender, sex, race, poverty, survival and heartbreak with such stark intimacy, you will find yourself living inside. These poems cannot possibly be about you, yet they are. They cross boundaries and reclaim hope. They are as the opening poem suggests, nothing short of communion.
The Telling
She is a tornado.
He is a man. He is solid and humble.
She tells the story three times, convinced
he does not understand. He is trying.
The story is about an elephant and a mermaid.
No, the story is about a millipede in a thicket of roses,
a prized buckskin horse and fifty lashes.
She is talking gibberish. He is trying to understand but she
is thunderbolt. Her tongue, a spear.
The dog is hiding in the back corner of a dark room.
The man wants to sit with the dog. She is melting.
Her face pools in her lap. Freckles pile at her feet.
There is nothing in the room that has not been hurled.
She is science like this. An atom, separating.
Finally, the story comes, like flood. Its mud seeps in
from under the doorjambs, rising. They are standing
ankle deep in water and sludge. He understands now.
He is a spiced wound. He wants firearms. Hit-men. A brutal justice.
All the while, the window is sitting with its mouth open,
spilling their hot storm into the courtyard,
where the neighbors have come to their sills,
elbows propped, hungry
like vultures.
Pank Magazine reviewed “Racing Hummingbirds” and LOVED IT:
http://www.pankmagazine.com/pankblog/?p=3574
On sale for a limited time at the Write Bloody Store.
Posted in News | 2 Comments »
