Wheelhouse Updates

Rodrigo Toscano & Tom Orange in Rodrigo Toscano's Collapsible Poetics Theater, PRESS 2008, The Evergreen State College




SPECIAL PRESS ANTHOLOGY COMING THIS MONTH

One year ago Wheelhouse Magazine & Press, in concert with The Evergreen State College (and other donors - see website list), hosted what has now turned into an annual event: PRESS, a set of workshops, discussions, readings, and performances committed to working through the myriad intersections between text arts and left political movements. What, for instance, are we as writers doing? What are our organizational politics and/or our poetics? Rob Halpern & NONSITE COLLECTIVE kicked off this year's PRESS, and a day-long set of workshops and performative events are closing us out.

We at Wheelhouse are hard at work at finalizing the collection of submissions. We're in the home stretch of designing and producing this new special issue of Wheelhouse, the PRESS Anthology, PRESS:ESC (cover design by Andrew Topel). In this issue, new work from:

Rodrigo Toscano
Kristin Prevallet
Jules Boykoff
Kaia Sand
Roger Farr
Laura Elrick
Leonard Schwartz
Meghan McNealy
Tung-Hui Hu
K. Lorraine Grahm
Tom Orange
Sarah Mangold
David Wolach
Jessica Baron
Steven Hendricks
Daniel Brohzutsky
Mark Wallace

... and several other writers involved in last year's discussions. We're excited to re-up this conversation, to broaden and torque it via recontextualization and imminent critique, to extend our dialogic processes. Thanks to all the contributors, donors, and organizers of PRESS for making this issue come to life. Keep an eye out - slated release date, June 15.

FORTHCOMING CHAPBOOKS

The open chapbook submissions reading period has now closed. Check here and the Wheelhouse website (or the Wheelhouse Facebook Group Page) for future reading periods. If you have not heard back from us with regard to your submission, please be patient - we'll be in touch soon. Look out for new chapbooks fothcoming (more to come for this year) by:

Juliet Cook
Thom Donovan
Matina Stamatakis and John Moore Williams
Dorothy Lang and Jeff Crouch
Felino Soriano
Elizabeth Kate Switaj
Lars Palm
Laura Carter
Ed Baker

... plus...

DZANC BOOKS & STORY SOUTH AWARDS

Congratulations to Tom Sheehan. His prose work "Knickers" was selected by Dzanc Books' as one of the "Best of the Web 2008." "Knickers" will be published in Dzanc Books' Best of 2008 anthology. Congratulations also to CL Bledsoe. CL's "Leaving the Garden" was chosen by Story South's Million Writer's Award as one of the Notable Stories of 2008. A huge thank you to Tom, CL, and Dzanc Books and Story South - and the judges for these awards. Go to Dzanc Books to pre-order the Best of 2008 Anthology, and while you're at it, order the Best of 2007 Anthology, with two works from Wheelhouse contributors. Dzanc Books is a not-profit press; proceeds of book sales go to help their urban schools writing initiatives, as well as several other good works.

ALERT FROM AMY KING: READ THIS, THEN ACT!


message 1: by Amy (new)
04/13/2009 09:49AM

135295 A couple of months ago, Amazon quietly unleashed some sort of campaign to strip certain books of their sales rankings. Unfortunately (& not so coincidentally), most of the books targeted fell under the “Gay/Lesbian” category. Once removed from the sales rankings and placed within the “Adult” category, these books no longer show up in search engines or in Amazon searches. In other words, sales death. How to kill gay books in one easy step? Watch while Amazon quietly removes gay and lesbian titles and renders them invisible. Censorship at its deadliest. Many good people have already been posting and protesting, and though you may not rely on big name middlemen for your goods, much of America does. Make it your business to send a word of protest Amazon’s way!



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UPDATE – I just checked. I’M THE MAN WHO LOVES YOU, my book of poems that has less sexual content than the abstinence-promoting, Twilight, has been relegated to the “Adult” category because I happened to have labeled it, myself, Gay and Lesbian. Go figure. It ain’t even erotic poetry,peeps!
http://www.amazon.com/im-man-who-loves-y...

Lots of links to folks reactions on my blog: http://amyking.org/

The Huffington Post -- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/emma-rubys...

A Petition -- http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/in-prot...

And of course, more seed for the campaign to use places like SPD (Small Press Distribution), indie bookstores, etc.

I'd check your own book if there's any GLBT interest in it -- anyone can label your book as such, which Amazon will have used to remove your book from their search engines.

Best,

Amy

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Amy's Alias
http://amyking.org/