American Short Fiction blog

The year is 2010. And The Guardian has recently reported that Stephenie Meyer has joined the ranks of authors whose books get the most requests to be banned from American libraries. The Twilight series debuts on the baddies books list at fifth, between To Kill a Mockingbird (fourth) and Catcher in the Rye (sixth).

The American Library Association (ALA) didn’t have too much to say on the importance of Twilight to the history of literature, but its rep Angela Maycock did note that Salinger’s iconic novel of teenage rebellion The Catcher in the Rye has been called “anti-white,” “obscene,” “centered around negative activity,” and “a filthy, filthy book”—ever since it was published more than 50 years ago.

Maycock’s final analysis: Noncomformity, even in 2010, is scary.

Barbara Jones, director of the ALA’s office for intellectual freedom adds the following: “[T]he ability to read, speak, think and express ourselves freely are core American values. . . Protecting one of our most fundamental rights—the freedom to read—means respecting each other’s differences and the right of all people to choose for themselves what they and their families read.”

Meanwhile, ASF wonders if the people who are cleansing their libraries and school of dirty and challenging literature have gotten the ink off their hands from their morning paper.

After the the jump, the ALA’s Top Ten Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2009:

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Walker Percy brought us The Moviegoer, which took the National Book Award for Fiction in 1962. Nearly 50 years, this March, later Loyola University in New Orleans honors their esteemed colleague by bringing us the Walker Percy Center for Writing and Publishing.

As an artist Percy was devoted to exploring dislocation. As a mentor he fostered the growth of developing writers to safeguard them from feeling that dislocation.

A poetic honor, then, for the eponymous center to offer help and instruction to new writers, with special outreach to high schools in the region.

• Check out the documentary clip with Richard Ford, Robert Coles, and others on the Center’s website.

from novels. Do you agree with this list? Feel like one of your favorites has been left out? Let us know in the comments.

We offer a selection from the top 10, followed by a few more of our favorites from the list. You can catch the entire list here.

1. Call me Ishmael. —Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)

3. A screaming comes across the sky. —Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow (1973)

4. Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. —Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967; trans. Gregory Rabassa)

5. Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. —Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)

6. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. —Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1877; trans. Constance Garnett)

7. riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. —James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939)

8. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. —George Orwell, 1984 (1949)

9. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. —Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

10. I am an invisible man. —Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)

More of our favorites from the list after the jump  . . .

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Or it could land you a Golden Grant, anyway.

General Mills wants to give you the gold to increase your job-seeking stamina. The company is giving away 12 boxes of Golden Grahams to 75 people a week for three months.

To win a box, you must share your funny (or depressing) job search story in 122 characters or less (that’s shorter than a tweet!). General Mills and the Golden Grant team might then animate your story into a silly little video.

See winning stories here. Read the rules here.

If you’re wondering how this little gimmick will help you actually get a job, don’t ask us. We’re writers, too.

Likely you’ve already seen Steve Almond’s spot-on take on AWP 2010 at The Rumpus.

Writer and teacher John Dufresne was at AWP, too, and his recent blog post sums up the surreal process of getting oneself going on the journey home from the madcap adventure that was AWP in Denver.

What the Sydney Morning Herald called “Women arrested for trying to take corpse on to plane,” Dufresne called “He always sleeps like that.” We ASF staffers, some of whom were up at 4:30 am for a Sunday morning flight out of Denver, are wondering, “Were we the women or the corpse?”

We may never know.

What we do know: we had a blast. Thanks to all our contributors and readers, new and returning, who attended our panel on the Long Short Story (blogged here and here), who shared a drink with us at Jonesy’s EatBar during our happy hour, and who stopped by our booth to say hi. You give life to American Short Fiction.

Catch you next year, AWP!

Here’s the least of it: If you’re looking for a wild literary ride, get to New York City’s West Village on May 1 for the PEN Cabaret.

Natalie Merchant will perform from her new album, Leave Your Sleep (Nonesuch), which features interpretations of classic poetry from Ogden Nash, Christina Rossetti, Robert Louis Stevenson, and others. Stick around and meet Booker Prize-winning novelist Ben Okri, and Georgian novelist, poet, and performance artist Irakli Kakabadze. Later, get spooked by cyber ghost story writer Ariel Dorfman. Special global guests will be announced. The entire event will be emceed by editor, author, and jazz singer Rakesh Satyal.

Got more time and energy to spare? Stay for the week-long party leading up to the Cabaret, when PEN World Voices, a festival of international literature, takes over NYC.

From April 26 to May 2, PEN plans for a stellar lineup of emerging and established authors to take to stage and panel  across New York City (and several satellite locations from San Francisco to Washington D.C. to Portland) for their Sixth Annual World Voices Festival.

Check out more participants after the jump.

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Nearly 100 writers have been named by Dzanc Books’ as Best of the Web 2010.

ASF readers may recognized some of their favorite writers from our print and online pages:

* Chris Bachelder
* Kim Chinquee
* Michael Czyzniejewski
* Scott Garson
* Amelia Gray
* Ander Monson, and
* ASF editorial advisory board member Dan Chaon

According to Dzanc Books, publisher of BotW series, the 2010 print anthology, guest-edited by Kathy Fish, “compiles the best fiction, poetry, and non-fiction that online literary journals have to offer in an eclectic collection in the manner of other broad-ranging anthologies such as Pushcart, and Best American Non-Required Reading. This is the first substantial attempt at creating an annual print compilation of the best of material published online.”

Intrigued? Pre-order your copy for June delivery. Then, when it arrives, you can pat yourself on the back for your brilliant foresight.

Doug Dorst, Nell Freudenberger, ZZ Packer, Angela Pneuman, Wells Tower. In a panel discussion that includes American Short Fiction’s own Jill Meyers.

The Austin Public Library Friends Foundation presents the New Fiction Confab, featuring some of America’s most prominent emerging writers. On the agenda for this Saturday, April 17: a 3:45 pm panel discussion as mentioned above, moderated by Texas Monthly editor Jake Silverstein. Arrive at 1 pm for a series of short readings and Q&A with the writers.

This confab is free and open to the public. It happens at Faulk Central Library (800 Guadalupe Street). Need more info? Grab it here.

Also on this day from 10 to 11:15am at libraries throughout Austin: fiction workshops for elementary, junior high, and high school students led by Nell Freudenberger, Angela Pneuman, and Wells Tower. Check it.

About the authors… (more…)

American Short Fiction is in Denver for the writing conference AWP. If you’re around, please drop by and visit us at the book fair. Our table is J10 in the Convention Center’s Exhibit Hall A. The book fair is open to the public on Saturday, April 10. We have the beautiful new issue on sale, plus posters, pencils, and loads of info.

Today at noon, I’ll be moderating the panel “Going Long: The Long Short Story,” which will examine the revered, but not often published, long short story. Award-winning writers Karen Brown, Joan Silber, and Josh Weil are part of the panel–they’ll read their work and talk about the long story’s rewards and challenges. You can find the panel in room 110 at the Convention Center.

And tonight. . . American Short Fiction is throwing a happy hour! Starting at 5 pm, we’ll be at Jonesy’s EatBar, 400 East 20th Avenue. We’ll be celebrating our new Spring issue and joining up with former contributor and all-around friend of ASF, Owen Egerton, for the AWP launch of his new novel just out from Dalton Publishing. Come have a drink with us!

Set to open on April 30 in  Dallas’s new Winspear Opera House, composer Jake Heggie (of such operas as Dead Man Walking, The End of the Affair, and the lyric drama To Hell and Back, among others) has decided to make at least one drastic change in the story of the Captain Ahab and his great whale: He’s making the first sentence the last. “Call Me Ishmael” will close the performance.

According to the composer,

“In Moby-Dick, there’s a tremendous intimacy and yet [also] a sense of larger forces at work. But you don’t have a narrator. You’re seeing the things happen. So. Let’s put together events that would inspire an author’s imagination when he sat down to write it.”

Heggie cites Wagner as important in the five-year development of the opera.

According to American Way magazine, Ben Heppner, one of the world’s leading heldentenor singers (able to sustain an hours-long performance of thick, lower range notes) will play Ahab.

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What do you think? Is Melville doing a deadman’s float over this?