Wake Up, Wake Up

it’s the first of the month.

For the last month or so, I’ve tried to make a long-winded preamble about our sense of community in the literature scene, about how it’s our responsibility to stay in touch with one another and share information and blah blah blah. Since I’ve hit a stalemate every time I tried to do such a thing, I figured it’d be best to hit the ground rolling.  Here’s a bunch of things you should know already.

-after a fun-filled month of formatting, we’ve finally released Big Lucks #1 and have made it available for purchase.  Get your hands on it and burn through it in one sitting.

-DC’s Call + Response is one of my favorite exhibits ever, and the opening was jam-packed.  there were some really fantastic works of literature hanging on the walls, particularly by Christian Howard and Casey Wiley.  It’s open until February 13th.  You should give it a look-see.

-Ted Genoway, editor of Virginia Quarterly, wrote a seemingly-misinformed, pessimistic editorial about the fate of literature (how ground-breaking!); Roxanne Gay of PANK Magazine rebutted by saying everything I was thinking, and then some.

-Kyle Minor wrote the single most important piece of journalism on Haiti, if you ask me.

-Giancarlo DiTrapano, Ken Baumann, & Blake Butler collaborated this list of do’s and don’t for writers in 2010 at the Vice blog.  If you take it too seriously, don’t write.

-You can now pre-order a copy of What’s Your Exit? A Literary Detour through New Jersey for Word Riot Press.   Something about this excites the ever-living hell out of me, even though I’ve never had the inclination to set a story in Jersey.

-Bookslut has been one of my favorite places on the web for years now, but Courtney Queeny’s feature on carpe diem poems is mind-bogglingly awesome.  The payoff really comes in the last few paragraphs, so stick with it.

-The idiot I am, I’m only now discovering the genius of Gary Lutz in Calamari Press’s most recent edition of Stories in the Worst Way. I can’t believe how ahead of the curve the guy was, in almost every element- the sentence, structure, the subject matter, the length.  I’m embarrassed to admit that I’d never read him before.  Check it out, if you haven’t in the last 14 years.

We’re a few hours a way from e-mailing every one we know and telling them about Big Lucks.  I’m very nervous, but I don’t know why.  It’s like when you invite your friends over to see your baby for the first time– you know your kid’s adorable, and you know your friends are going to tell you they think it’s adorable– you just want them to mean it.

Happy Monday, and god bless the district.