On November 8 Dana Kinstler, winner of our 2006 Mary C. Mohr fiction award will be reading as well, so keep an eye out for that.
Don't forget to check out our pictures...
Photobucket Album
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Fall Readings! Pictures!
So far this fall the Ropewalk Reading Series at University of Southern Indiana has hosted Mike Magnuson, recently the author of Heft on Wheels: A Field Guide to Doing a 180; Michael Martone, with his latest collection, Double-wide: Collected fiction of Michael Martone; and Gary Gildner, whose latest collection of poems is titled Cleaning a Rainbow. We've implemented a new and fun thing this semester, in which students do a kind of "meet and greet" with the visiting writers before their readings. This includes punch, cookies, questions, and sometimes pictures. For the pictures of the readings and the receptions, please take a look at our new Photobucket account, which is linked below. And we've added a big backdrop with a sharp-looking 3-D logo, which just makes our readings that much more enjoyable.
On November 8 Dana Kinstler, winner of our 2006 Mary C. Mohr fiction award will be reading as well, so keep an eye out for that.
Don't forget to check out our pictures...
On November 8 Dana Kinstler, winner of our 2006 Mary C. Mohr fiction award will be reading as well, so keep an eye out for that.
Don't forget to check out our pictures...
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Fall Issue Update
In the office today making final edits. If all goes as planned, the fall issue will be shipped to the printer tomorrow (Monday) morning. It never fails that just when you think that everything is perfect, another error (or two) rears its ugly head. This morning I was flipping through the poetry, confident that all that was left to proof were the book reviews, when I noticed a couple of errors that somehow made it through four levels of proof reading (my original layout, the author, SIR staff, USI's Print Services): "imaging" instead of "imagining" and "breath" instead of "breathe."Ah, the spellbinding life of an editor...
R
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Back to Business, But Not as Usual
From the fall introduction:
...America likes to think
Every one can recover from every thing,
But about this,
Especially, America is wrong.
—Liam Rector, "Back to Country with Pulitzer"
The editors note with regret departures by three friends who have helped and inspired us and whom we have loved as a part of Ropewalk, the Press, the Reading Series, and the Review. One of these, the departure of former managing editor Jim McGarrah for sunnier climes in Florida, is not such a painful loss for Jim but for all his friends here in Indiana who will miss seeing him on a daily basis.
The other two departures, however, are causes for sadness and alarm. The death, in August, of Jim Blevins, dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Southern Indiana, came after a long bout with prostate cancer and deprives us of a friend who was instrumental in creating the structures--financial and intellectual--which permitted our projects to flourish. We will miss his wise counsel, his optimistic outlook, his enthusiasm regarding all the creative arts, and the particular interest he took in our success.
The death of Liam Rector at age fifty-seven in New York City came as an especially severe blow to his many friends here at USI. It was at the time of Matthew Graham’s wedding in 1987 that Liam, a member of the wedding party, first proposed that New Harmony would be an ideal place for a literary retreat. Out of that notion, and with Liam’s encouragement and support, Ropewalk itself was born, followed in time by all of the ancillary programs.
Liam continued to be a close friend and follower of our projects. He led panel discussions at Ropewalk, read several times on campus, and continued to advise us in long, often late-night phone calls (for which he was famous). While Liam’s program at Bennington often put us in competition with him for workshop leaders we would have liked to recruit, his warm friendship and advice more than compensated for the loss. Nothing, however, will compensate for the death of such a close, close friend. Our sympathies in particular go out to his wife, Tree Swenson, and his daughter, Virginia Rector.
TW
...America likes to think
Every one can recover from every thing,
But about this,
Especially, America is wrong.
—Liam Rector, "Back to Country with Pulitzer"
The editors note with regret departures by three friends who have helped and inspired us and whom we have loved as a part of Ropewalk, the Press, the Reading Series, and the Review. One of these, the departure of former managing editor Jim McGarrah for sunnier climes in Florida, is not such a painful loss for Jim but for all his friends here in Indiana who will miss seeing him on a daily basis.
The other two departures, however, are causes for sadness and alarm. The death, in August, of Jim Blevins, dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Southern Indiana, came after a long bout with prostate cancer and deprives us of a friend who was instrumental in creating the structures--financial and intellectual--which permitted our projects to flourish. We will miss his wise counsel, his optimistic outlook, his enthusiasm regarding all the creative arts, and the particular interest he took in our success.
The death of Liam Rector at age fifty-seven in New York City came as an especially severe blow to his many friends here at USI. It was at the time of Matthew Graham’s wedding in 1987 that Liam, a member of the wedding party, first proposed that New Harmony would be an ideal place for a literary retreat. Out of that notion, and with Liam’s encouragement and support, Ropewalk itself was born, followed in time by all of the ancillary programs.
Liam continued to be a close friend and follower of our projects. He led panel discussions at Ropewalk, read several times on campus, and continued to advise us in long, often late-night phone calls (for which he was famous). While Liam’s program at Bennington often put us in competition with him for workshop leaders we would have liked to recruit, his warm friendship and advice more than compensated for the loss. Nothing, however, will compensate for the death of such a close, close friend. Our sympathies in particular go out to his wife, Tree Swenson, and his daughter, Virginia Rector.
TW
Friday, June 29, 2007
Web Silence
Note to self: finish spring issue. Check. Finish spring semester. Check. Keep up with the blog over the summer while the interns are on break. Uh-oh.So, here's what I've been up to since the last post:
1. Attended The Missouri Review fundrasing dinner in Columbia, MO, to hear Rodney Jones read. Here's a photo taken by TMR's promotions director, Kris Somerville...the contents of Rodney's right hand may or may not have been altered. At said event, I "secured" (OK, swiped) Rodney's poem "Willows," which appeared in the spring issue of SIR.
2. Helped coordinate (actually, Linda Cleek does all the work) the 19th RopeWalk Writers Retreat in New Harmony, IN. This year's faculty members were Marianne Boruch (poetry); Michael Waters (poetry); Jennifer S. Davis (fiction); and Kevin McIlvoy (nonfiction). Bich Minh Nguyen was the guest artist.
3. Started working on the 20th anniversay Retreat (June 14-21, 2008) NEA grant.
4. Started the layout of Twenty Years in Utopia: The RopeWalk Anthology, which will (hopefully) be available by April '08.
That said, the blog will probably be inactive until the fall semester begins in September.
See you then,
R
Friday, May 25, 2007
Spring issue has arrived!
The new phone book is here! The new phone book is here!
So, Ron and I drove my deathtrap S10 across campus to print services yesterday to pick up the just-completed spring issues, and they look great. There's just something about holding the thing in your hands that makes it all worth it.
Things are going to start happening to us now.
In other important news, I've discovered a new, really practical keyboard short cut for Firefox. If you close a tab by mistake, just click CNTRL-SHIFT-T, and watch as time folds back on itself and corrects a small part of your sad life.
Have I told you people why you should get Firefox, by the way? Let me just make this my recommendation of the week, or day, or whatever calendar cycle this blog pretends to adhere to. Get Firefox, and then go to their add-ons page and install the following:
1) Inline Google Definitions. With this you can highlight any word, right click on it, and see in a convenient little window its definition(s).
2) Foxmarks. Have more than one PC? One at home and another at the office? Foxmarks keeps your bookmarks synchronized. It's how NASA employees do it, I bet.
3) Super DragAndGo. Drag a link to a blank part of the page and watch it instantly open in a new tab for you. How fun is that?
4) FoxyTunes. Control whatever program you use to play music files directly from your browser. No need to minimize your browser to pause Itunes or to skip that ten minute monotone track at the end of A Ghost Is Born! Welcome to the future, where laziness reaches whole new levels.
So, Ron and I drove my deathtrap S10 across campus to print services yesterday to pick up the just-completed spring issues, and they look great. There's just something about holding the thing in your hands that makes it all worth it.
Things are going to start happening to us now.
In other important news, I've discovered a new, really practical keyboard short cut for Firefox. If you close a tab by mistake, just click CNTRL-SHIFT-T, and watch as time folds back on itself and corrects a small part of your sad life.
Have I told you people why you should get Firefox, by the way? Let me just make this my recommendation of the week, or day, or whatever calendar cycle this blog pretends to adhere to. Get Firefox, and then go to their add-ons page and install the following:
1) Inline Google Definitions. With this you can highlight any word, right click on it, and see in a convenient little window its definition(s).
2) Foxmarks. Have more than one PC? One at home and another at the office? Foxmarks keeps your bookmarks synchronized. It's how NASA employees do it, I bet.
3) Super DragAndGo. Drag a link to a blank part of the page and watch it instantly open in a new tab for you. How fun is that?
4) FoxyTunes. Control whatever program you use to play music files directly from your browser. No need to minimize your browser to pause Itunes or to skip that ten minute monotone track at the end of A Ghost Is Born! Welcome to the future, where laziness reaches whole new levels.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Hot Fuzz, etc.
Have you seen "Hot Fuzz?" I laughed, a lot. It's a very strange blend of British slapstick, Patrick Swayze parody action, and other things I haven't figured out yet. A unique, hilarious movie, through and through. This is the first movie I've watched in months, which is something else I'd like to recommend: Stop watching movies for a while, then when you return, they're all amazing.
So, summer is here, at least for the academic world. Which means we're all just wishing it was already time for Ropewalk. It will be my first time there, and I'm pretty schoolboy giddy about it. I mean, a week away from computers and (worse) computer chairs, workshopping with great writers, swimming, eating free food, rolling around in the grass and stuff...I can't wait.
Other upcoming summer events include:
- The Spring issue
- The debut of our intern issue
- my interview with Dana Kinstler, 1st place winner of the 2006 Mary C. Mohr Fiction Award
So, summer is here, at least for the academic world. Which means we're all just wishing it was already time for Ropewalk. It will be my first time there, and I'm pretty schoolboy giddy about it. I mean, a week away from computers and (worse) computer chairs, workshopping with great writers, swimming, eating free food, rolling around in the grass and stuff...I can't wait.
Other upcoming summer events include:
- The Spring issue
- The debut of our intern issue
- my interview with Dana Kinstler, 1st place winner of the 2006 Mary C. Mohr Fiction Award
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