Poets & Writers Coming to Austin
If you want help with your writing, then enter an MFA program, or attend a multitude of writing conferences, or read a lot. But after the hurdle of learning structure, and rhythm, and plot, and character, and … there’s another hurdle: getting published. Poets & Writers magazine hopes to remedy the problem by sending Heather Blakeslee, the co-director of its Literary Horizons program, to Austin on Tuesday, Nov. 28, at 7:30pm at Barnes & Noble Arboretum. In an hourlong program that is free, Blakeslee will talk about how to avoid publishing pitfalls. Because most advice about how to get published emphasizes commercial work, Poets & Writers caters to people writing literary fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. “Most of the time we find that when people aren’t having success publishing their work,” Blaskeslee says, “it’s because they aren’t submitting to the right places, so we try to help people understand how to best find those for the type of work they’re writing.” And what about those critics who say that the strongest writers eschew help of this sort? “Basically, that just hasn’t been our experience,” Blakeslee says, and she laughs. “We’ve taught hundreds of writers over the last four or five years with these classes and what we find is that even the people who are publishing their work already don’t know exactly why it is that they’re being published at certain journals or having certain publishers ask to see an entire manuscript after they’ve queried them. They’re having success because they are talented but they’re not really sure why it is that some people are looking at their work; after the classes, they have a much better understanding of why certain presses and journals are interested in looking at it and based on that knowledge, they can then start submitting in a much more strategic manner and have much more success than they would have otherwise. You can be really, really talented and have the best work in the world but if you don’t send it to appropriate venues, you’re not going to have any luck.”… Michener Center visiting professors playwright Lee Blessing and author Anthony Giardina will read from their work on Thursday, Nov. 30, at 7:30pm in the HRC’s fourth-floor auditorium (Guadalupe & 21st). Free and open to the public. Blessing has had plays produced on Broadway and in London’s West End, among other locales. NY’s Signature Theatre devoted its second season to his work, including the world premiere of Patient A. Giardina is the author of two novels, Men With Debts and A Boy’s Pretensions, and a collection of stories, In the Country of Marriage. His new novel, Recent History, is forthcoming from Random House in March 2001… James Patterson will be at BookPeople on Monday, Nov. 27, at 7pm, to present his sixth Alex Cross thriller, Roses Are Red… Applications for the 2001-2002 Dobie-Paisano Writing Fellowships are being accepted until January 26. The fellowship offers creative writers the opportunity to live and work at Paisano, J. Frank Dobie’s 254-acre ranch 14 miles west of Austin. Applicants should either be a native of Texas, have lived in Texas at some time for at least two years, or have published writing that has a Texas subject. Criteria include quality of work, character of the proposed project, and suitability of the applicant for life at Paisano. The first fellowship begins September 1, 2001 and the second March 1, 2002. Each provides a living allowance of $2,000 monthly during residence. For more information, write: Dobie-Paisano Project, J. Frank Dobie House, 702 E. Dean Keeton, Austin, TX 78705; call 471-8542; or e-mail aslate@mail.utexas.edu.
This article appears in November 24 • 2000.