Rocking MLA Like It's 2004
The MLA conference starts today in Seattle, and I’ll be there all weekend manning the booth that Open Letter is sharing with Archipelago and Counterpath. If you happen to be attending, stop on by. I’ll have copies of a bunch of our books AND the brand-new uber-cool Spring/Summer 2012 catalog, which you have to see ...
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The Perpetual Motion Machine: The Story of an Invention
Paul Scheerbart was a German writer and artist who lived around the turn of the twentieth century. He was perpetually broke, even though he was constantly writing books, newspaper articles, and plays. Even when he was alive he was not generally well known or successful, despite the influence his book Glass Architecture would ...
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Excellent Review of Karaoke Culture
In the L.A. Times, Carolyn Kellogg has an excellent review of Dubravka Ugresic’s Karaoke Culture — one of the best books I read last year. (And which you can purchase here.) Here are a few highlights from Carolyn’s review: Dubravka Ugresic does not like karaoke. That doesn’t stop her from ...
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Josef Skvorecky Dies at 87
The only Skvorecky book I ever read in full is The Engineer of Human Souls, which is a long, wonderful, fun book, that Dalkey Archive recently reissued in a new snazzy cover. As a writer, Skvorecky was a huge figure in Czech literature, but he was also well known for establishing ’68 Publishers in Toronto, where he ...
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Great Publishing Jobs
Over the break, I heard about two great publishing jobs that might interest some of you (and many of my students, former students, and colleagues). First up, the phenomenal Melville House is hiring a publicist. Duties include performing all aspects of book publicity, including: designing campaigns; writing press ...
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It's 2012–Time for Some Resoluting!
Back when I was a kid, I used to love the start of every New Year. A fresh calendar, new journal to write in every day for a week before forgetting it in the back corner of a desk, dedicated routines (read for an hour a day! only watch TV once a week!), promises of better health and finally talking to that girl I’d been ...
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A Thank You from Three Percent and Open Letter
We at Three Percent & Open Letter want to simply say: Thank you. This may be the last message we’ll post about our 2011 Annual Campaign, and we want to use it to let you know that, by participating, you’re making a vital (and tax deductible) gift toward all of the nonprofit publishing, programing, and ...
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