Opening Night Party at Matilda's In Lakeview and Tonight's Events

Pics are rolling in from last night's Opening Night cocktailing at Matilda's in Lakeview. Remember, the Pilcrow Lit Fest flickr pool is open to anyone, we just ask that one of your photo tags is Pilcrow09. Easy enough.

Tonight's Pilcrow line-up offers three events from which to pick:

{7-10p}
Reading Under The Influence
Sheffield's
3258 N. Sheffield Ave. (map)
RUI is a reading series based in Chicago developed by a group of Chicago writers who happen to like drinking. Featuring reading by Joe Meno, John Berger and RUI co-hosts. Jointly-hosted by Julia Borcherts, Robert Duffer, Jessee Jordan, Gabriel Levinson and Pilcrow founder/director, Amy Guth. $3 cover, open to the public, 21+.

{7p}
Boring Nude Girl In The Boring Devil's Boring Territory
w/ Gina Frangello
The Book Cellar
4736-38 N. Lincoln Ave. (map)
The final stop of the 25-city Live Nude Girl in the Devil's Territory Tour, Zach Dodson will read from his novel Boring, Boring, Boring, Boring Boring, Kyle Minor will read from his story collection In the Devil's Territory, Kathleen Rooney will read from her memoir Live Nude Girl and featured guest Gina Frangello will read something awesome. No cover, all ages are welcome.

{7:30p}
Waiting 4 the Bus
w/ featured guests Larry O. Dean and Charlie Newman
Jak's Tap
901 W. Jackson Blvd. (map)
Waiting 4 the Bus is an open mic on the 1st and 3rd Mondays of the month, a poetry collective, and a workshop of writers talking with writers about writing, held in the backroom of Jak's Tap. Hosted by Buddha 309. No cover, open to the public, 21+.

WBBM 780

Nice shout-out on Chicago's WBBM 780's website today, as well as snippets on the air.

Shout Out from HuffPo and Dropping Bombs

In a post about the state of publishing and literature in Chicago, Pilcrow Lit Fest got a nice shout out from Gina Frangello in the Huffington Post.

"for many years Chicago's book publishing community was almost nonexistent, but now new independent book presses like Featherproof Books and So New are popping up like wildfire to fill the gap left by New York; now Chicago is host to almost back-to-back AWP Conferences and Pilcrow Literary Festival is helping to also organize writers independent of the academy."

Thursday night at the Chicago Nerd Social Club, I was chatting with Terry from Third Coast Comics. He's speaking on the panel about graphic novels and described Pilcrow at "Literary NATO: We'll be dropping literary facts on people like bombs."

Amy and I promised to steal that from him and share it with you all. So get out to Pilcrow from May 17 to the 23rd and we'll be dropping literary facts like bombs.

Shout-Out from Outsider Writers

Pilcrow got some love from Outsider Writers Collective's Tim Hall this morning:

The 2nd annual Pilcrow Lit Fest will be held the week of May 17-23 in Chicago, culminating with a full day of panels on the 23rd and a fantastic “rebuilt books” auction to cap off the event. Those of us who were there for the inaugural event last year can attest to how amazing it was, and what a brilliant job organizer Amy Guth did putting together events and panels that were really informative and interesting.

Merci!

Photos and Video and Podcasts, Oh My!

Last year we opened the doors to photographers, videographers and podcasters to help document Pilcrow Lit Fest. The result was hundreds of photos, great videos and excellent roundtables.

This year we are inviting you back and we have something special in store for the podcasters and video folks. We're going to have a space set up in Baby Atlas for you to record on May 23rd. That way you can sneak away to a quiet spot, get your interview done and then quickly rejoin the festival upstairs.

Want to be a part of the team to document this year's Pilcrow Lit Fest? Leave a comment or contact me. I'll even make you a special badge.

Rebuilt Books

Rebuilt Books is on again this year, and in a big way.

Rebuilt Books is, as many of you remember, a fundraiser which asks writers to disassemble their own books (or partner with an artist and have him/her do it) then rebuild the book into a piece of art.

This year, Pilcrow Lit Fest/Chicago will be raising money for Young Chicago Authors, a wonderful organization for the young and inspired, and we encourage all writers to participate, whether they plan to attend Pilcrow Lit Fest or not. All we ask if that you email us so we can anticipate the arrival of your artwork, either when you ship it or deliver it. Easy enough.

See inspiration of last year's Rebuilt Books here with Timothy Schaffert's doll parts book, Laurel Snyder's switchplates, Laura Van Prooyen's word-lanterns, and one I still hear mentioned now and again, the Hitler turtle by Peter Davis.

Oh, and the auction isn't just an auction this year. Nay, this year, the auction is all week, in various venues, starting with the kickoff cocktail reception at Matilda's in Lakeview, and finishing in one wild event we're throwing alongside Opium's Literary Death Match here in town.

Oh yes, that Literary Death Match.

In Praise of the American Short Story

From A. O. Scott/NYT Week In Review:

... a good story, or a solid collection of them, can do more than a novel to illuminate the textures of ordinary life and the possibilities of language. And the short story may provide a timely antidote to the cultural bloat of the past decade, when it often seemed that every novel needed to be 500 pages long and every movie had to last three hours — or four years, if it took the form of a cable series.

The new, post-print literary media are certainly amenable to brevity. The blog post and the tweet may be ephemeral rather than lapidary, but the culture in which they thrive is fed by a craving for more narrative and a demand for pith. And just as the iPod has killed the album, so the Kindle might, in time, spur a revival of the short story. If you can buy a single song for a dollar, why wouldn’t you spend that much on a handy, compact package of character, incident and linguistic invention? Why wouldn’t you collect dozens, or hundreds, into a personal anthology, a playlist of humor, pathos, mystery and surprise?

The death of the novel is yesterday’s news. The death of print may be tomorrow’s headline. But the great American short story is still being written, and awaits its readers.

(hat tip to Megan Stielstra)

Controversy, Then Not, Then More Controversy, Then Not at Inaugural Dubai Lit Fest

The first-ever Dubai lit fest, which finishes up today, opened to controversy when a The Gulf Between Us, which features a gay sheik, by brit Geraldine Bedell was rejected from the festival line-up. The Emirates Airlines International Festival of Literature officially insists it's not a matter of censorship at all, but of simply a book out-of-synch with the event. "This has nothing to do with censorship... We simply found after reading the book upon the request of its publisher, Penguin, that it is not suitable for the festival," said festival director Isobel Abulhoul.

Author Margaret Atwood (veep of PEN, by the way, the literary anti-censorship organization), pulled out of the festival immediately, but wrote this weekend in the London Guardian that she regretted her move, which was admittedly based on the belief Bedell's book was banned. So, now Atwood is participating in the festival via video conference, at, of course, a last-minute discussion panel about censorship.

You Give Me Growing Pains, Theodore Huxtable

A 80's-themed reading? Wish granted. Chicagoans, and those passing through, do stop in at Black Rock Bar (3614 N Damen) on Wednesday, March 4th at 8pm as the regular Recroom series goes 80's for "You Give Me Growing Pains, Theodore Huxtable", with readings by Jac Jemc, Zach Plague, Lindsay Hunter, Mary Hamilton, Tobias Amadon Bengelsdorf, Nicolette Bond, Meg Barboza, Allison Gruber, and Erin Teegarden.

March is Small Press Month

March, as the title of this post implies, is Small Press Month. Get some small press love on the event's website here, including this fine list of things to do to support small press.

6S2, Word Riot News, AWP/Chicago

What with the AWP circus being in Chicago this week, Pilcrow went out and represented last night at the Dzanc/OV/Keyhole soiree last night. Fabulous time of course.

Friend of Pilcrow, Six Sentences has news: The authors included in Six Sentences, Volume 2 anthology have just been announced, and a piece of mine is included, along with a few friends of Pilcrow: So New and Word Riot author David Gianatasio, Heather Leet, Shelly Rae Rich and Jason Jordan. Most excellent news. Catch that in March. And, apparently, word on the street anyway, is that there are more author names that'll be announced for special sections of the book, so that's fun.

Speaking of Word Riot, chatted recently with WR's Jackie Corley about World Takes by Timmy Waldron (out soon) and Midnight Picnic by Nick Antosca (out in days, but pre-order is up now). Eyes peeled for those.

Ready?

This year:

The Rebuilt Books Auction is back, but this time with a killer twist. Stay tuned here on the Pilcrow blog for more info. Want to deconstruct and rebuild your book this year? Do let us know.

And, we're back!

Join us May 17-23rd, 2009 in Chicago.

Here a Fest, there a fest, everywhere a fest, fest!

As luck has it, Pilcrow Lit Fest shares time on the calendar with both the Calabash Jamaican Literary Festival and the Hay Festival of Literature in Wales. (Have you read Paul Collins' Sixpence House? Do it. Do it, now.) Anyway, I have been following both festivals with great interest and thought this article in The Independent was a fine one.

How is everyone, post-fest? I'm great!

Search, RSS and Becoming a Geek

During my Social Media Toolkit for Authors, I promised a blog post in lieu of a hand-out. Here is that blog post.

First off, I begged you to start using search engines other than Google.

For Blogs
Google Blogsearch
Blogpulse
Technorati


For Forums
Boardreader
Omgili

For Twitter
Tweetscan
Summize

For Images
Flickr

For Videos
YouTube

Then I said, "Learn how to use RSS and then use it to monitor your name. Cause your name is your brand."

RSS Readers
Bloglines
Google Reader
Newsgator

Then we talked about becoming geeks and learning how to do video on the go. But most of the questions were about picking a blogging platform. Lucky for me, ProBlogger has that covered much better than I could do.

Did I miss anything? Drop me a line if you want additional links up in the post.

We're quite pleased with how everything went this weekend and will be taking the day off here at Pilcrow HQ.

Recap of the festival to follow.

Last Night.

Pics are up on Pilcrow's flickr page. Here are some highlights:

Rebuilt Books Auction.

Re: Rebuilt Books Auction

Bring cash and bring your checkbooks; we can't do much of anything with credit/debit cards. That said, get ready-- we have things for every budget to help rebuild the New Orleans Public Libraries-- for example, my stylish clutch handbag fabulous eyeglasses case made from Three Fallen Women on perhaps the lower end, a two-month membership to Uptown Writer's Space somplace in the middle range of things, and say, Nick Hornby's hand-written brainstorm for Songbook (a first edition alone, much less a first-edition signed copy of the actual book goes for a pretty penny, so a one-of-a-kind hand-jotted list? Um, yeah.) and Tony Fitzpatrick's beautiful piece of art, "Luck", on the higher end of things (I will not be mad at anyone if they would like to purchase this beautiful piece of art for me. It's beautiful. I gasped when he handed it to me yesterday.)

And, remember, every penny from this auction on Saturday evening goes directly to New Orleans Public Library Foundation. Pilcrow is covered for the things we need for the most part, but New Orleans needs our help, and that's where the help will go.