Writ Large Press

Here’s, at least as far as I know, the first review of our very first title, Kim Calder’s Who’s to Say What’s Home.

It appears in Rattle and Kim is very happy with the review.

I like this passage best:

I found one of the best poems of the collection to be “emergency room,” in which the daughter has to face her father’s aging and eventual death. This is a universal issue that we all have to deal with, yet the poem doesn’t veer into triteness at all. Calder demonstrates a remarkable ability to portray real grief – which I find refreshing in the midst of the many poems in this collection that seem to try to drown grief out.

Check it out!

A writer that we are HUGE fans of will be one of the readers at Conrad Romo’s Tongue & Groove event this Sunday.

We like Andrew Choate so much that we told him we’d like to publish his next book. To our delight, he’s all for it. He’s been working on the manuscript right now.

His work is incredibly unique and we love any writer, any artist, who commits to his craft so completely.

His first book, Langquage Makes the Body Plastic, was published by Palm Press. The book comes with a CD that includes Andrew’s musical renditions.

We are very excited and we have to figure out how to do the CD and such, considering the publishing service we use.

Anyway, for a better taste of what Andrew’s about, check out this clip of him reading “Home Depot Weapon”:

A cool article on the LA Times last week about Mike Sonksen. It gives a good sense of what Mike the Poet and his crew, and our friendship with him over the years, has been about.

He doesn’t do it for riches or for the ego boost. He is driven instead by the simple belief that in the “postmodern metropolis” of L.A., the city is what the people make it. His poems, which often read like little histories, celebrate the city and its countercultural movements.

“There are little worlds, little villages, little pockets all over the city, and there are all of these different scenes and movements throughout the years,” he said. “What I’m doing is cataloging it.”

In the process, Mike the Poet is also trying to build an art movement of his own – something he refers to as the New Beautiful.

We are eagerly awaiting his manuscript for Fast Lane (working title), a memoir/novel/poetry/travelogue that he’s been working on and that we will be publishing later this year.

In the meantime, check out the piece:

Sprawling LA is poet Mike’s muse on LA Times.

Big and sad literary news: John Updike has passed away.

John Updike, 1932-2009

We’ve received the sad news that John Updike has died, at the age of seventy-six. His writing has been a mainstay of The New Yorker, starting with the poem ‘Duet, With Muffled Brake Drums,’ which was published in August, 1954, and followed two months later by his short story ‘Friends from Philadelphia’; his last work of fiction for us was ‘The Full Glass,’ which appeared last May.

Great stuff. The power of literature, and all Arts, to provide a common ground, a common passion, for people from all over the world. I often imagine that when aliens arrive (if they haven’t already, that is!), it will be some work of art that will be able to communicate some important truth about the human race.

The Greatest Literary Show on Earth – The Daily Beast

Now in its third year, the Jaipur Literature Festival brings the voices of India and Pakistan together in peace.
Every January, the ancient city of Jaipur, India, celebrates the written word in a literary festival that easily places first in Asia for cultural cachet and star power. It’s hard to believe that the festival is only three years old, given the crackle and buzz around its events and personalities—Salman Rushdie chose the occasion for his first public appearance after the fatwa. And this year too, through five sun-drenched mornings and vivid, musical evenings in the dignified old Diggi Palace, the festival made headlines across India.

We haven’t seen this film yet, but it’s definitely on our list. All our friends who have seen have been raving about it.

Via Publisher’s Weekly:

Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Macmillan, will publish a full-color graphic novel adaptation of Israeli director Ari Folman’s much acclaimed animated documentary, Waltz with Bashir, in February. Waltz with Bashir seems to pick up a new award with every passing week. The film was named Best Movie at the Israeli Academy Awards; Best Picture by the National Society of Film Critics; and, over the weekend, was awarded a Golden Globe as the Best Foreign Language Film of the year. Metropolitan Books plans a 17,000-copy first printing for Waltz with Bashir: A Lebanon War Story.

The graphic work was created by the art director of Waltz with Bashir, David Polonsky, an award-winning children’s book illustrator in Israel, in collaboration with Folman and a team of Israeli comics artists. Polonsky will make appearances in the U.S. to promote the book.

This reminds me again of how much we eventually want to publish graphic novels or books with much artwork. It is part of our future plans. Once we have picked up enough momentum, success, not to mention funding.