Your New Thanksgiving Traditions When You’re Far From Family…and Coming Up: Tips to Get Your Book Reviewed!
Thursday Notes: A New Review, a Friend’s Debut, and More!
Thank you to Barn Owl Review and reviewer Julie Brooks Barbour for this new review of She Returns to the Floating World! Here’s the link to the review:
http://www.barnowlreview.com/reviews/gailey.html
And don’t forget to vote before the 20th in the Goodreads Choice Awards for Poetry for my little book if you get a chance! I’m hoping to make it to the finals! (And vote for Sandra Beasley in the food category for “Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl!)
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I was also so pleased to get in the mail Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas‘ new book, Epistemology of an Odd Girl. (Isn’t that a great title?) This book from March Street Press bursts with scenes from everyday life, but also great poems like “In the Spirit of the Apocalypse” and “The True Story of Rapunzel.” This from “Candy Addict:” “Don’t they all suffer withdrawals?”/ (Yes, but not all care for mint cigarettes./ Sometimes we use Cyberkinetics.)”
Still fighting the flu, but feel a bit more mentally capable the last couple of days, so I was able to get some work done (and even a little writing!) Weather forecast for snow (snow!! in the Northwest!) tomorrow….
Vote Vote Vote! Like a baby Stoat! Goodreads Poetry Book of the Year Semifinals!
Dear readers, this is the time when I beg for your vote!
Because of your write-in votes, She Returns to the Floating World is now in the Goodreads semifinal round for Best Book of Poetry of the Year!
I would very much appreciate it if you would go to this link and vote in the semi-final round for my book! The five finalists are chosen on November 20th!
http://www.goodreads.com/award/choice/2011#56614-Best-Poetry
I have some stiff competition (particularly from friends and mentors Aimee Nezhukumatathil and Dorianne Laux.) It’s a good year for poetry books. If selected, I promise not to raise poetry taxes!
A new interview up at California Journal of Poetics, and More Weekend Excitement
The wonderful Gina Barnard (a very talented poet in her own right) interviewed me for the California Journal of Poetics, and it’s up at their site now:
http://www.californiapoetics.org/interviews/1655/an-interview-with-jeannine-hall-gailey
I get to talk about other books that influenced She Returns to the Floating World, my obsession with women turning into animals, and my childhood in Oak Ridge. There’s also a little shout-out to Kathleen Flenniken’s new upcoming book, Plume.
In other exciting news, I finally succumbed in the fourth week to whatever weird cold/virus/upper respiratory thing I’ve been fighting – I came home shaking and feverish yesterday and determined to put a hold on my crazy whirlwind of social activities until I am all the way better. (It doesn’t help that it’s mid-forties and stormy outside, the recipe for my asthma to act up. I know, cold rain, what a shocker in the NW! In California, they’re still wearing skirts and sandals…ah well…)
This means a weekend curled up, finally finishing at least one of my book reviews, starting Murakami’s thousand-page super cool opus IQ84, and deciding whether the last Harry Potter movie was better or worse than the book. And sleeping. And lots of hot drinks. (Is it weird that I end up writing a lot of my book reviews while I am sick and feverish? Then I end up using words like “gimlet-eyed” and “splenetic” and wondering later…who wrote that?)
I’ve also been trying to come up with a last line for a poem. It turned out to be much harder than I thought. Everything I’ve come up with seems harsh, trite, too easy…Sometimes I tool around with last lines even after I publish a poem. Last lines are hard!
I also want to thank the lovely magazine Hollins Critic, as I just got my contributor copies for October’s issue, and a nice little check. I so appreciate magazines that still actually pay their content providers!! Thank you, Hollins Critic! My little poem, “Holiday Redux,” is on the last page, if you’re interested, and the issue also contains a good review of WA State book award winner Frances McCue’s book, The Bled.
Useful links: Success After the MFA, Organizing a book manuscript, tips for submitting to journals
You know I have a special interest in how to organize poetry manuscripts (I’ve run a couple of workshops on it, do manuscript consultations, and pretty much always have a friend’s MS in hand (or my own) to think about how it could be organized. There weren’t a lot of helpful articles out there just a few years ago, but lately there has have been a few articles published. This latest is my Erika Meitner on her experiences reading the slush piles and the “mix-tape” versus “project” book manuscript organization strategies – read it here. I very much write on my obsessions, so I’ll write 100 poems on one subject, then another…for instance, I’ve been writing a series on Oak Ridge, Tennessee, another series on fairy tales, etc. If you look at my books, they’re really the result of sifting down the pile of poems I’ve written around a certain subject or set of subjects.
I’m also very interested in how MFA programs prepare their graduates for the post-graduation environment – especially these days, when teaching jobs (and jobs in general) are few and far between. How do we earn a living? How do we define “success” for post-MFA grads? This article from the Chronicle of Higher Education discusses whether success means publishing a book, getting a tenure-track teaching job, winning grants or awards….read it here.
I know for me, I didn’t necessarily have “getting a teaching job” as a goal after my MFA, but I was definitely interested in publishing a book and in working somehow with literary magazines. Hmm, now that I’ve done those things, I notice my goals shift and change over time. Do you think that most MFA programs do a good job of preparing graduates for the realities of life after MFA? How do you define success as a writer?
And last, for any readers just starting out sending to literary magazines, Bob from Writer’s Market has a good bunch of tips here. My two best tips are: read the magazine and read the submission guidelines closely.
There has also been some controversy around reading fees and contest fees at literary magazines and publishers. Necessary evil or unacceptable? You can’t get it online, but the latest Poets & Writers has an article talking about the issue.
http://www.pw.org/content/novemberdecember_2011
Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and JAMA.
