Gertrude Press

This is how the Pushcart Prize nominations work: Literary journals choose the top 6 pieces they published in the previous year, print them out, and submit them. And though it sounds simple, there are always a million things all-volunteer Boards such as ours are doing (especially since we just made non-profit about two years ago)...but this year we put it on our Wish List and we did it. Cherry popped!

Now, we are thrilled to announce our selections for year 2011 (each with a little nugget of trivia attached)....

I don’t own a Kindle or a Nook or any other e-reader for the simple fact that I can’t read them in the tub – though I am interested in them as an object, so originally I decided to do a post titled “Kindle – Taking the Shame from Fluff Buying” about how e-readers may be affecting our book purchases, i.e., some folks may buy much more fluff since the shame-inducing covers are hidden. (Author’s Note: OK, OK – the post was actually my wifey’s idea…) In googling around on my stolen post topic, I ran across a detailed list of what you get when you buy Jack Kerouac’s On The Road app/enhanced eBook. Please sit down and ready yourself. . .

After attending the closing reception for Glitch Studies, I remembered why galleryHOMELAND is one of the more forward-thinking contemporary art venues in Portland! For the past three shows galleryHOMELAND has collaborated with the organization Research Club to form the Body of Knowledge series. Vision was the first show that Research Club curated, followed by the critically well-received Reading. Writing. Glitch Studies was the grand finale and made for a fitting end to the trilogy.

There’s nothing quite like a giant convention center filled with stacks and stacks of books and crowds of people swapping tales and stories.

Gertrude Press was proud to represent GLBTQ small press publishing at Wordstock, the largest literary festival of books, writers and storytelling in the Pacific Northwest, October 6-9.

We shared a booth with our pals at Wordcraft of Oregon who are launching a new journal of fabulist writing. In-between talking with poets, writers and bibliophiles, we snuck off to hear author readings by the likes of Diana Abu-Jaber, Julia Glass, and Michael Ondaatje.

We also got a chance to connect with other publishers, admire their unique marketing efforts (love the unicorn horn, Sambuka Black) and talk to writers, readers, and fans.

In a world where publishing is an uncertain and rapidly changing process, it is a great joy to find so many readers hungry for good writing.

The environmentalist in me has been secretly hopeful about the economic "downturn" (such a ridiculous phrase, like we're making a bed for the night). I have no idea how we are going to reclaim those empty big-box-store-strip-malls and turn them back into wildlife habitat, but I'm sure there's a way. My gloating came to an end when I read that Borders was closing. BORDERS!!!

Working (for lots of joy and no pay) for a small press, I should perhaps be ashamed to admit that I shop at Borders. I promise you that I do shop at Powell's, Broadway Books, City Lights, and In Other Words. But Borders has always represented that hope that even rampant consumers who shop at Sports Authority & Famous Footwear also do read, and there's still a viable career in publishing.
 

Do you have a design living in your mind for that perfect bookcase, but don’t have the tools to build it? Or maybe you’ve always had a hankering for welding but you're not sure where to go to try it out? Portlanders now have a solution for their DIY conundrums: ADX! 

Located at 417 SE 11th Avenue, ADX is a brand new (grand opening party was June 3, 2011) facility hosting a membership-based community built to allow individuals and small businesses to realize their creative dream projects. ADX’s current members are extremely diverse, encompassing architecture firms, tattoo studios, artists, designers, robotics enthusiasts, and even a boat building school! One of their missions is to “build a community of thinkers and makers”.

One of the pleasures of being a poetry editor is the chance to read poetry. A lot of poetry. Between chapbook manuscripts and regular submissions to Gertrude, I get to encounter a lot of great writing. When I'm not reading for Gertie, my day job is software engineering, so naturally much of the fluid in my poetry IV drip comes to me online. I love Poetry Daily.

Kim Addonizio knocks my socks off in June when she writes "Whack Report":

A woman at the gym today said to her friend, Most people are whack.
Whack meaning crazy, displeasing, undesirable, stupid, of poor quality,
appalling, masturbatory, laid off, weird, or dead.
Most poets, as it turns out, are generally pretty whack
as in mentally ill. Anne Sexton, for example. Robert Lowell, also quite whack.
I myself am whack about sixty-seven percent of the time...

On my most recent trip to SF, I was lucky enough to be able to attend both the Literary Death Match and the latest Writers with Drinks. At Literary Death Match. Maybe I am showing my age, but my feet began to hurt as the finalists struggled to put together a jigsaw puzzle that would ultimately be the face of Hunter S. Thompson - or so I read later, since I had already caved to my barking dogs and vamoosed. To my delight, as I also read later, Monica Youn was crowned victorious!

Monica is an amazing poet (finalist for the National Book Award 2010) who also performed at Writers with Drinks the following night! On that, in my last post I promised more pics. Here is one of the amazing ceiling decor of the Make Out Room (host of WWD)...

I love that damn ceiling.