Cultural Events

Hey Blog readers!

 

I know it has been awhile since I’ve posted. Life gets in the way. It happens.

I don’t know if ya’ll know but this coming weekend is all about books and arts! The Brooklyn Book Festival is happening from September 10th-12th. They are so big this year that they are hosting events all weekend long! Visit the website and find out which one of your favorite authors will be in attendance.

Apart from The Brooklyn Book Festival, Poets and Writers is partly sponsoring an event at Le Petit Versailles Garden on September, 10th at 7 pm in the Lower East Side.

There will be readings by Mary Gaitskill, Shelley Marlow, Robert Marshall, and Peter Trachtenberg.

There will be an artist reception for Baroque Bike Rack by Bernard Klevickas. More information on the website.

Lastly, The Howl Festival occurs this weekend. There are events throughout the Lower East Side as well as plays way after this coming weekend.

That’s all for now. I have more posts coming soon about any of these events I attend and then some!

Have a great Labor Day Weekend!

Lit Mag Marathon Weekend

This past weekend The Council of Literary Magazines & Presses sponsored the 11th Annual Lit Mag Marathon Weekend in New York City. Part of this weekend’s festivities included an event on Saturday where editors from selected magazines were available to speak to readers, writers, and lovers alike of literature at the New York Public Library’s DeWitt Periodical Room at 5th Avenue.

On Sunday, the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe held the 11th Annual Literary Magazine Fair, in which the proceeds benefit the Housing Works, a nonprofit organization serving homeless people living with AIDS, and to The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses. Each magazine was $2 (a steal compared to how much the retail cost).

The store was filled with readers, writers, regulars, employees of the magazines, college students, and everyone in between.

As a reader, I’ve never read a literary magazine in my life so the options were daunting. The choices ranged from magazines I would actually read versus purchasing a prestigious magazine to have in my apartment to impress folks. I rejected the second reason to buy a literary magazine and opened myself up to exploring based on what genre I read the most: fiction. I found some magazines with poetry, fiction, memoir, and non-fiction which I’m glad I bought. Additionally, I also stumbled upon many straight up poetry magazines and since I don’t read or write poetry, I declined buying those.

I settled on the following magazines:

Alimentum – The Literature of Food 

Zahir – A Journal of Speculative Fiction – self- explanatory

Glimmer Train – all fiction!

Narrative Magazine – I receive emails from this magazine and wonder why I have not yet subscribed but I’ve been in love since I read an article about Lorrie Moore months ago.

Epiphany – a journal that enticed me because of the cover and I loved the title!

Reading these will take some time since I am part of a book club, have books to read that I own (and borrowed), and other miscellaneous reading materials. However, I see owning these books to  gauge the writing MFA programs produce as well as potential places to submit when I have a piece good and ready.

I look forward to reading actively more and being more productive as a writer. MFA applications are slowly approaching.

For your convenience, I have provided a list of the magazines at the fair. Enjoy.

My MFA choices

I’ve decided what schools I will apply to in the fall for Fall 2010.

New School University – had a post about how awesome the program is so I’m in.

Brooklyn College – gorgeous campus and potential to have be a TA during my academic career.

Hunter College – I’ve heard absolutely nothing but great things about this program so I’m applying based on that. Plus, my brother actually attended and that wouldn’t hurt for making friends.

University of San Francisco – that’s right, I’m trying again because I will not be stopped in the face of “No”!!

So far so good – I will start writing my personal statements, save up for my applications, work on or edit a piece for my submission and most importantly, get all those damn undergraduate transcripts all over again.  Not to mention, hit up more folks for recommendations.  I hope all I need is two because three is ridiculous.

As for low residency choices, I perused the Poets and Writers MFA database, wrote down a few choices but have yet to research which ones to apply to.  I’ll narrow it down in the next month and go from there.  Some of these schools have rolling admissions which freaks me out because I’m absolutely not ready with anything readable to those committees so I’m doing them all at the same time like last year.  Why does it feel like application time is almost nearing and it’s only April?  I’m already psyching myself out!  I need to chill.

I’m ahead of myself but I do need to work on my manuscript (whatever that may be) because I realized that the other stuff is pie – the manuscript is killer.

What to choose is the question.  That, I’ll have to mull on for a bit.