11th Annual Juniper Literary Festival: New Writers/New Writing

Hey Local Peeps, I will be on a writing/publishing panel on Sat. April 16th at UMass. Read below...

Please join us for the

11th annual Juniper Literary Festival: New Writers/New Writing

April 15 & 16, 2011

University of Massachusetts Amherst

For ten years the Juniper Literary Festival has celebrated some of the nation’s most exciting authors, books, and publishers. The 2011 Juniper Literary Festival: New Writers/New Writing will introduce audiences to vital contemporary writing and explore issues essential to the future of American literature. A unique national event, the festival will celebrate and contribute to the literary richness of the Pioneer Valley. The festival will offer readings by a dozen acclaimed authors who have recently published their first or second books, including Timothy Donnelly, Michelle Hoover, Travis Nichols, and Kiki Petrosino. There will also be roundtable discussions, a press fair featuring dozens of the nation’s most exciting literary magazines and presses, and a keynote panel with the Poetry Society of America’s Alice Quinn and the National Book Foundation’s Harold Augenbraum.

All events will take place at the UMass Fine Arts Center and be free and open to the public. Please visit http://umass.edu/english/MFA_JuniperFestival.htm for additional information. For a letter of invitation to attend (to support a request for institutional travel support), please contact Assistant Directors Sarah Malone smalone@english.umass.edu, (646) 263.7908, or Zach Savich: zsavich@english.umass.edu, (301) 904-0145.

Juniper Literary Festival: New Writers/New Writing

Friday April 15

6:30 PM Journal & Book Fair Opening Reception

7:30 PM Reading with Sommer Browning, Timothy Donnelly, Michelle Hoover, & Roy Kesey

Saturday April 16

10:00 AM Journal & Book Fair Continues

10:30 AM Editors’ Reading

12:00 PM Keynote Panel with Alice Quinn & Harold Augenbraum, moderated by Robert N. Casper & Brigid Hughes

1:30 PM Reading with Gina Apostol, Joseph Cardinale, Abraham Smith, & Michelle Taransky

2:45 PM Roundtables on Nuts and Bolts: From Manuscript to Book, moderated by Jensen Beach (Mirabee will be on this panel too).

& What’s New about New Writing: How the Old and New Meet in New Literature, moderated by Noah Eli Gordon

3:45 PM Roundtables on Changing Conditions: Editing, Publishing, and Promotion, moderated by Monica Fambrough, & To Make It Beautifully: Craft and Design in Book Arts, moderated by Betsy Wheeler

7:00 PM Journal & Book Fair Reopens

7:30 PM Reading with Cynthia Arrieu-King, Margaret Luongo, Travis Nichols, & Kiki Petrosino

HOW TO GET PUBLISHED: SOME SUGGESTED SITES

Greetings all,

Well, it looks like my email is up and running again. Sorry about the confusion. Anyway, today I wanted to remind you to make sure to check my sidebar once and a while because I periodically upload new links and resources. I have also finally separated my blogrolls into two lists: blogs that relate to Mira's List subjects (and other issues, such as how to find an agent, how to write a great query letter, etc) and blogs that are my personal and quirky favorites (okay, I like food, I like neuroscience and I have a special fondness for the strange marriage of art and science, particularly science during the Age of Discovery. I also am fond of baby animals, graphic novels and 19th century polar exploration. Well. I could add to the list but I won't bore you any more than I already have.

One another note, and this one is for writers—Lately I have been getting a lot of personal mail asking me about the publishing world. Now, while I do know a bit about that elusive and mercurial world, I think there are many more bloggers out there who are really experts in this field. Here are a few of my favorite sites for you writers out there who have written me asking about how to get an agent, how to write a query letter, etc. Victoria Mixon, who writes eloquently and amusingly about a variety of publishing and writing issues: http://victoriamixon.com/. I love Victoria and suggest you visit her site. Another blogger I just adore uses the name Moon Rat and you can find her at http://editorialass.blogspot.com. She is an editor at some unnamed publishing house and, for my money, offers the best advice for both emerging and published authors. She's hilarious, witty, ironic and will answer all your burning questions about the publishing industry. I am all about Moon Rat.

If you want to write a kick-ass query to an agent, then there is no one better than Wendy Burt-Thomas at askwendy.wordpress.com. She is the author of the The Writers Digest Guide To Query Letters which I will add (right now!) to my bookstore at the bottom of this blog. Another great site is literary agent, Nathan Bransford's blog: http://blog.nathanbransford.com. Nathan is an agent for Curtis Brown so he really knows what he is talking about. I find his posts extremely insightful. And knowing what I know about the biz and how hard most agents work at getting writers deals (mine certainly deserves a Purple Heart), it is heartwarming to know that there are some literary agents out there willing to take time out from their busy schedules to help emerging writers understand how to get published.

Anyway, there are so many great sites in the blogsphere that deal with publishing and breaking into the literary market that I am just leaving it all up to them. Come here for your weekly dose of Mira's List but go to these experts on the business of getting your great poems, stories and novels out into the world.

And speaking of publishing, please check out the books at the bottom of this blog. And if you have a hankering to buy any holiday gifts from Amazon in the next few weeks, please do your book search from my site, on the right sidebar where it says "Search for Grant Books!" because I might earn a couple pennies that way!

More to come in the next few days....and we have some great interviews lined up for you for December and maybe this month too. Now get off the computer and do your art.
Cheers,
Mira