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Text of the page (random words):
n t know how to best portray their story s own strengths are sometimes far too attached to their work to be able to distill it into an image or a blurb i mean i can t do that for my own work that is to say publishers can use their powers over a book for good though i do think okaying what you re doing with the author is probably the responsible thing to do publishing is a funny business on the one hand it is a business and wanting to make enough money to keep the business going and pay your workers a living wages a near impossibility in an industry that famously even in established publishing houses makes a negative profit in the first few months of a book s release and may never make that money back is hardly such a bad aspiration on the other hand you re dealing with art and culture which is heavy stuff and should be treated as heavy stuff on a third level to mix my metaphors you also want to entertain finding a balance between all this or at least making an honest effort to is responsible publishing so now that i ve had time to reflect i realize that people assume that publishing is dominated by that loud voice that i heard in the corner of the classroom though my small program designed with a small to mid size press focus to make best use of our fantastic pacific northwest publishing hub is certainly not an accurate microcosm of the publishing world i have to wonder if perhaps if something similar hasn t happened at places like bloomsbury a voice like that that speaks so authoritatively and angrily always makes itself sound practical it waves money around not considering that there are black ya readers for example that might enjoy seeing a black woman on the cover or that maybe white ya readers don t care that much or that there are ya readers who fit into neither of those categories and still might enjoy the book that there are in the case of my class s project women who read graphic novels who might enjoy reading something with a feminist slant though i do not know what his definition of feminism is or men or people who fit into neither of those categories that being responsible and starving don t always have to go hand in hand and yes it goes without saying that there s a more important higher cause kind of getting out important bits of culture aspect to this too i m just not going into that here because i think most people have heard it and the so called voice of practicality doesn t respond well to it i just don t see why we can t find a way to do both perhaps making lower profits but does everything always have to be about making the most money i don t know if this voice on the other side of the classroom swayed that group s decisions or not i actually suspect the answer is no for reasons that i have no place going into here but i do think we as publishers need to learn to address this voice which claims to be so worldly so contrary to any idealistic bookish eyes on great canon sort which has diversity issues of its own we often forget oh why oh why is it always one or the other who might be left in the publishing industry and finally why don t we talk more to readers and writers why keep the publishing process a mystery i mean not everyone does in fact that s one of ooligan s missions yay ooligan i promise i ll try not to become like a giant advertisement for my program but there needs to be more dialogue or i guess polylogue i think bahktin had a term for this that i can t remember between readers writers and publishers because we all have a common interest books and stories the state of things january 12 2010 in blog stuff leave a comment hello everyone i m still alive mostly and typing i m sorry for the unannounced hiatus but after focusing my efforts on publishing school i ve been working on figuring out what direction i wanted to take this site in i d already been heading in a gender and narrative media sort of direction and i d like to continue that with a new focus on my experiences in publishing school yes for those of you out of the loop which i m assuming is most of you last week i started a master s degree program in writing publishing and it s oh so very exciting and exhausting it may take a couple of weeks for me to get back into the swing of things because frankly i m a little tired at the moment settling into a new routine and figuring out how to balance my work load with my life but i hope to be writing in here again soon take care everyone and i ll be back before you know it wordstock 09 on peers and panels october 22 2009 in blog stuff books tags bloggly updates books portland print media 1 comment every year portland hosts wordstock a giant book convention celebrating writers local small presses and bibliophiles last year going was something of an inspiration i had an inkling that someday i wanted to be part of this group i browsed the stalls with excitement asked questions to the independent writer s guild and bought my first chin music press book i attended a panel on the future of book reviews feeling fired up and ready to write this year was a little different having just applied to psu s really exciting publishing program yes exciting is an odd adjective but really what else do you call a publishing school that lets you work at its press for credit i approached the stands with a little trepidation the state of being in application limbo colored my mood i wanted to be their peers and though i don t need a masters to do that it feels like i do simply because i applied to the program somehow taking steps to accomplish my career goal made me feel more like i had something to prove which was frustrating when i just wanted to enjoy myself it probably didn t help that there were less panels i was interested in could make nevertheless i had a great time i finally got to meet bruce and josh from chin music press which was great because as i ve said in previous posts i really admire their ability to create artful books that are as focused on the text as the object waves hi guys i m always floored by the sheer number of interesting publishing projects going on in the pacific northwest oni press which publishes queen and country my current pleasure reading is here in ne portland fantagraphics in seattle little otsu a clever graphic press out of san francisco and portland and run by super nice people btw a whole slew of literary journals portland s independent publishing resource center and bitch magazine just to name a few i hope someday to truly call these creative people my peers their creativity talent and attitude really prove that paper publishing can still be relevant in the midst of today s digital age or some other such cliché name for it i m afraid i don t have as many analytical things to say as last year because the panel i got to see was not on a particularly controversial topic i went to see karen cushman s panel on creating worlds in historical and fantasy fiction she invited some of her peers of the young adult writing world susan fletcher ellen howards jodi sensel and mary jane beaufrand strangely enough i think this was the only all female panel at wordstock though it s difficult to know if this is because karen cushman knew more women who were well suited to the panel or whether women writers find that they get more respect in the realm of ya literature because they don t get dismissed as chic lit or niche lit i also sometimes get a sense that a lot of really good plot based fiction gets published as ya because it s not dismissed there either i d like to do an entire post on this but i don t feel i know enough to write it maybe someday now if i don t suddenly get the plague again and don t die of waiting to hear back from grad school anxiety you ll hopefully get some more posts coming your way i ve got some thoughts about the depiction graphically and textually of tara chase in queen and country some musings about writing about people who are different from you aka i ve just started reading david mack s kabuki because i m on a graphic novel kick and for something that so far seems to be about a woman and her relationship to her identity and her face i m surprised that he does not list a single woman author or artist on his list of works that inspired the series i can t really make a judgment on the series yet as i ve only read a few chapters and i m certainly not saying that this automatically dooms the work but it ll be interesting to see just how convincing he ll be and who knows maybe some other stuff maybe i ll do a giant rant about the big bang theory who knows i have the luxury of not having to post here uninspired but i ve been taking advantage of that too much lately i m still here thinking but life and work for better or worse have to take precedence hope you re all enjoying fall it s my favorite season so gorgeous here in portland today snazzy reads october 21 2009 in books literature the snazz tags books graphic novels print media leave a comment i was going to do a summer reading snazz but being half way through october i m a little late still i ve been wanting to oh by todd shimoda is a book you actually can judge by its cover highlight a few of the awesome books i ve read been reading over the past couple of months oh a novel of the mono no aware by todd shimoda this is a perfect book for traveling though i can t explain why i don t usually enjoy reading heavier things when i travel well while i m in transit to be more precise because i find the experience disorienting airplanes are the worst offenders but there s something about oh that works perfectly for traveling perhaps it s the way shimoda captures his protagonist zack hara s own sense of being out of sync with the world in oh hara a technical writer from la who is plagued by emotional numbness goes to the part of japan where his grandfather grew up in order to rediscover his ability to feel along this journey he kindles a strange friendship with a psychology professor and embarks on a side quest well several really but they all are part of one thing to understand the concept of mono no aware literally stuff of emotion or the emotional essence of objects to add to the story todd s wife linda created a series of gorgeous brush paintings inspired by the work that are interspersed through the text though stories of people trying to find themselves in foreign countries or reconnect with their roots are everywhere shimoda really delivers something special in oh i really enjoyed how so much in the novel was well displaced emotions onto objects one man s search for his daughter onto another man s search for himself at first i found zack s inability to deal with the root of his problem his depression take that word however you wish frustrating as i read on it became fascinating and i became impressed by shimoda s ability to blend literary aesthetic with human emotion and have it still feel authentic and real that is despite all the displacement going on in the novel mono no aware never becomes an excuse or stand in for the emotional core of the novel the characters still feel real and not merely the means of enacting a metaphor or concept to top it off chin music press which as you all know i greatly admire published this book so it is as you would expect meticulously designed what i really love about cmp is that when they publish a book you know the whole package has been thought out to the last detail the design will never overshadow the content because they love what they publish but it will work to enhance it the only thing better than a good book is reading a book that has been designed in such a way that the text s best elements have been enhanced to create a fantastic reading experience their work with oh is no exception the book thief by markus zusak a holocaust book narrated by death that description alone probably intrigues some of you and some of you ready to skip to the next book on my list seriously i find that holocaust literature really divides people i for one have a difficult time reading it because it depresses me and i typically can enjoy depressing literature still the book thief is one of the very best things i ve read recently death is actually quite an engaging narrator giving away just enough to heighten tension and delivering appropriate bits of wisdom the book itself tells the story of a girl named liesl who discovers for her own the power of words to change people as all around her in nazi germany words are destroying life for many german citizens in addition to having engaging characters and lovely prose the novel s strongest point is that it really drove home that it was german citizens well if they weren t polish or french or dying in death camps that they were also jews gypsies homosexuals the mentally and physically disabled etc was just another facet of this i know many of you probably think that we don t need another book explaining that we are all human and killing each other is bad but considering that people don t listen i guess we have to keep writing them and if books this heart wrenching charming and well written come out of it then by all means continue writing the arrival by shaun tan though technically a picture book in fact a wordless picture book shaun tan s little gem really takes the old immigrant story to a new level with gorgeous detailed illustrations tan has created new world full of technology creatures and foods as mysterious to us as it is to the man whose journey we follow despite the lack of words the story is simple to follow tan s artwork stands on its own really but what i do appreciate about his work here and in tales from outer suburbia is the way he really makes issues surrounding multiculturalism immigration and empathy come alive so that they at once can make sense to children and yet still feel fresh and relevant enough for an adult audience the rabbi s cat 1 and 2 by joann sfar a graphic novel about the life of a rabbi in 1930 s algiers as seen through the eyes of his subversive opinionated cat i checked out the first volume of this from the library on a whim expecting it to be cute but what i got instead was 100 times better as a narrator the cat is something between a snarky philosopher and a quintessential cat by turns loyal and critical his views on the world around him from the sometimes shaky relations between the algerian jews and muslims to the difficulties of dealing with french rule are dealt with in a way that feels real while still mixed with a touch of humor one thing that this book really captures is the contradictions inherent in living every day the rabbi at once is happy to see his daughter married and yet saddened by what it means for his life he is getting older his daughter will no longer live with him all of the jewish characters struggle with their beliefs the apparent realities of their situations and their desires the cat lies but sometimes understands the truth better than any of the other characters the result is a fas...