On Writing and Publishing

Camardi, Ben HAROLD MATSON COMPANY INC. 276 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10001 Sci-Fi, General Fiction, History, Religion/Spirituality, Business/Investing hmatsco@aol.com Cameron, Kimberley LITERARY AGENCY 98 Main Street #704 Tiburon, CA 94920 Thriller, Horror, Mystery/Crime, History/Politics/Current Affairs,Business/Investing/Finance www.kimberleycameron.com Cardenas, Christi LAZEAR AGENCY, INC. 431 2nd St., Suite 300 Hudson WI 54016 General Fiction, Reference info@lazear.com www.lazear.com Cardona, Moses 71 West 23rd St., Suite 1600 New York NY 10010 Mystery/Crime jha@jhalit.com www.jhaliterary.com Carlisle, Michael INKWELL MANAGEMENT 521 Fifth Ave., 26th floor New York, NY 10175 History/Politics/Current Affairs, Science Inkwellmanagement.com Carlson, Jennifer 27 West 20th St., suite 1107 New York, NY 10011 Children’s books, history/politics/current affairs dclagency.com Carvainis, Maria 1350 Ave. of the Americas, Ste. 2905 New York, NY 10019 Reference, General Fiction, Romance,Business/Investing, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Mystery, Thrillers mca@mariacarvainisagency.com www.mariacarvainisagency.com Castiglia, Julie 1155 Camino del Mar, Ste. 510 Del Mar, CA 92014 Memoirs JacLAgency@aol.com Chelius, Jane 548 Second St. Brooklyn, NY 11215 Mystery/Crime, Narrative . . .

In the October 22, 2009 issue of The New York Review of Book there is an interesting foreword written by Charles Simic, our recent Poet Laureate, to his review of Nicholson Baker’s new novel, The Anthologist. Simic makes a few comments about poetry in America that all of us should take note of. [Yes, I know I ended the sentence with a preposition.] While a recent National Endowment for the Arts study says that reading poetry continues to decline, especially among women, Simic sees poetry, and reading poetry, alive and well in America. He mentioned that today there are at least 27,000 blogs on the Web devoted to poetry (I’m not sure we were counted among the many) and “countless on-line poetry magazines.” Simic also mentioned that he was one of twenty poets who were part of last summer’s Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. This festival drew 19,000 to a . . .

Balkin, Richard THE BALKIN AGENCY, PO Box 222 Amherst, MA 01004 Reference, Anthology, Politics (413)548-9835 rick62838@crocker.com Balzer, Paula 126 Fifth Ave., Suite 300 New York, NY 10011 Parenting, General Fiction (212) 989-5757 slazin@lazinbooks.com Bankoff, Lisa INTERNATIONAL CREATIVE MANAGEMENT 40 West 57th Street New York, NY 10019 History/Politics/Current Affairs, Sports, General Fiction, Memoir lbankoff@icmtalent.com Barber, Virginia WILLIAM MORRIS 1325 Ave of the Americas, 11th Fl. New York, NY 10019 General Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Memoir, Sports, History, Politics/Current Affairs, Children’s http://www.wma.com Barbor, Dave CURTIS BROWN LTD. 10 Astor Place New York, NY 10003 General Fiction, Reference, Parenting, Children’s, History, Politics/Current Affairs, Sci-Fi/Fantasy DB@CBltd.com Home Barer, Julie BARER LITERACY 270 Lafayette St, Suite1504 New York, NY 10012 General Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Mystery, True Crime, Memoir www.barerliteracy.com Barrett, Loretta BOOKS, INC. 101 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10003 Religion/Spirituality, Pop Culture, History, Politics, Current Affairs (212)242-3420 mail@lorettabarrettbooks.com Barron, Manie WILLIAM MORRIS 1325 Ave. of . . .

Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas will offer from two to five nine-month fellowships for the academic year 2010-11 to published writers and public intellectuals. Fellowships will be awarded to candidates whose work ranges away from the American experience and into international terrain, and who have an ongoing project that would benefit from a period of sustained immersion. Fellows receive $50,000, a computer-equipped office, and access to UNLV’s Lied Library. They are required to participate in a public forum and take part in Black Mountain Institute’s programs. RPCV Richard Wiley (Korea 1967-69) is the Associate Director.  Wiley is author of the novels Soldiers In Hiding (winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for best American fiction and reissued in 2007 by Hawthorne Books), Fools’ Gold, Festival for Three Thousand Maidens, Indigo, and Ahmed’s Revenge. His most recent novel, Commodore Perry’s Minstrel Show, was published by the new Michener . . .

Over the next month or so, I’m going to post a list of literary agents who you might contact with your book proposals, finished manuscripts, etc. Agents get a lot of proposals, often as many as 100 emails or letters a week. It is important–for you!–to present yourself in a serious way, without overwhelming them. They will simply disregard your email or letter. Study the agency before you email them. Make sure they are representing a type of book you have written. I have added to each address the agents’ areas of interest. Good luck. (p.s. The “B” list is forthcoming.)  Abel, Carole CAROLE ABEL LITERARY AGENCY 160 West 87th St. New York, NY 10024 Parenting, Health (212) 724-1168 caroleabel@aol.com Abou, Stephanie JOY HARRIS LITERARY AGENCY, INC. 156 Fifth Avenue, Suite 617 New York, NY 10010 General Fiction (212)924-6269 stephanie@globallit.com www.globallit.com Adams, Tracey Adam’s Literacy 7845 Colony Road, C4 #215 Charlotte, NC . . .

PCVs and RPCVs going ‘off the grid’ (where electricity is either missing, or sporadic) will be interested in this gizmo, the ‘NEO Writer’. NEO is the modern equivalent of a light-weight portable typewriter that is easy to pack around (less than 2 pounds) and runs seemingly forever on 3 AA batteries. Better yet, after returning ‘to the grid’ you can download your writing to your PC in seconds and get on with editing, blogging, or emailing it off to your editor or to the folks at home. Since many RPCV writers need something quick, light and easy to pack around where computers fear to go, Don Messerschmidt (Nepal 1963–65) thought that his account of “Neo and Me” would interest you. Bear in mind, however, that it cannot distract you with access the Internet (which is nice, sometimes!). This article was originally published in the June 2009 issue of ECS Nepal . . .

Some of you might have read about Tess Gallagher [the widow of Raymond Carver, and his second wife] who wants to publish 17 of Carver’s original short stories. Carver was a minimalist [A literary style exemplifying economy and restraint], and his most successful collection of stories, and what put ‘minimalist’ on the map, was entitled, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. It was published by Knopf in ’81 and edited by Gordon Lish, the prince of minimalist editors. Gallagher, herself a well known writer and poet, wants to publish her late husband’s stories as they were original written. Carver, who died in ’88 at 50, had tried to set the record straight himself. According to an article in The New York Times [The Arts Section, on Wednesday, October 17, 2007] “He restored and republished five of the stories” and published them in a collection entitled, Where I’m . . .

There are no rules. And that is what is so great about writing a book. A friend, a successful writer/editor/creative writing professor and RPCV, has been reading my blogs on “Peace Corps books” and she sent me these wise words on how Peace Corps writers should go about the task of writing a book. Her list: Hopeful Peace Corps writers should take writing courses from reputable instructors to learn the basics and to have the opportunity to workshop their writing among peers. They should also read lots of good How-To books on the craft. There are a gazzillion of them out there. They should avoid at all costs: exclamation points, stereotyping, cliches, and all other proofs of lazy writing. They should plan on revising each chapter or piece at least ten times. Quality writing is all about revision. They should NOT confuse explicit, titillating, borderline-pornographic sex scenes with “intimacy” with . . .

They tell a story of Thomas Wolfe when he lived in New York on First Avenue. Late one night the writer Nancy Hale, who lived on East 49th Street near Third Avenue, heard a kind of chant, which grew louder. She got out of bed and looked out of the window at two or three in the morning and there was the great figure of Thomas Wolfe, advancing in his long countryman’s stride, with his swaying black raincoat. As he went striding down the dark city street, he was chanting, “I wrote ten thousand words today – I wrote ten thousand words today.” Well, wait until his editor Maxwell Perkins got hold of it! There are stories of how Maxwell Perkins would arrive in Wolfe’s Village apartment–where Wolfe wrote standing up, using the top of the refrigerator as his desk–and Perkins would take boxloads of handwritten prose away with him, saying, “you’re done . . .

Reading the Sept/Oct 2009 issue of Poets & Writers, a magazine that claims it goes from “from inspiration to publication” I was struck by the numerous ads for writing programs, MFAs, on-line degrees, and workshops given by colleges and universities. While the ads claims to be about teaching writing, what they seem to be suggesting is destination travel. For example, the full page ad for Chatham University in Pittsburgh has a woman with her laptop (by the way most of these ads feature laptops. What happened to pen-and-pencil and yellow pads?) sitting on cliffs high over the Monongahela or the Allegheny, the two rivers that dissect the rustbelt city.  Now Chatham College (as it is well known) is up in the hills, miles from the polluted waters of the rivers that made this old industrial town famous before the turn of the last century. Nevertheless, this co-ed is watching white caps under the scripted selling . . .

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted. 2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for. 3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water. 4. Every sentence must do one of two things-reveal character or advance the action. 5. Start as close to the end as possible. 6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of. 7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia. 8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should . . .

John Coyne recently published an interview with Abraham Verghese, whose first novel, Cutting For Stone, was published this past winter. [https://peacecorpsworldwide.org/verghese/]  A well-regarded author of nonfiction and a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Verghese has a day job as a physician and a professor at Stanford University’s medical school.  Much of Cutting For Stone takes place in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, a rare setting for fiction. Verghese brings the unusual perspective of having been born, raised and educated in Addis, even starting his medical training there. He uses his familiarity with Addis life, but it is a rather precious slice of that life.  Verghese was born to Indian parents who taught in the private schools for the prosperous middle class and above, who lived nicely in a city where the vast majority struggled in poverty.  Verghese’s fictional Addis suggests that he didn’t often venture much beyond the circle of expatriates . . .

This is an interview I did recently for the Ethiopia & Eritrea RPCVs  newsletter (The Herald) that I thought would-be writers would like to read. Dr. Abraham Verghese used aspects of his own life story to write this novel, setting his narrative in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and the U.S. Dr. Verghese is not only a noted doctor, he is also a well published writer of fiction and non-fiction. jc • Abraham Verghese was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and is the Professor for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Senior Associate Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine. In February 2009, Knopf published his first novel, Cutting for Stone. The novel is set in Addis Ababa. Dr. Verghese is also the author of two books of non-fiction, My Own Country and The Tennis Partner. Dr. Verghese began his medical training in Ethiopia, but his . . .

There has been a lot of fresh talk in the news about the law suit filed by J.D. Salinger’s lawyers concerning a new book entitled, 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, a take off (or rip-off) of The Catcher in the Rye. 60 Years Later is a novel written by a young Swedish writer styling himself J.D. California. In The New  York Times on Sunday, June 21, 2009, there was a short piece in the Ideas & Trends page on how today’s young readers see the famous Holden Caulfield as a “whining preppy, not as a virtuous outcast” while Harry Potter is a nerd conqueror who “wins out over a smirking malcontent.”  Teenagers today would rather read about Harry than Holden. First off, in terms of literature there is no connection between Harry Potter of Hogwarts and Holden Caulfield of Pencey Prep. JK Rowling’s books are for children (and those who . . .

Here’s a true story. Most of the time when publishers think a book will be a hit, they are dead wrong. Last year I tracked ten books that received six-figure advances. A friend, who is in the publishing business, checked on these books a year later and not one had earned out its advance. So publishers don’t know what will work, what won’t. They just think they know. The truth is: I don’t know either! So, give your book a try. Here are a list of agent NOT in New York City, for those of you who would rather deal with an agent closer to home. I don’t know any of these agents, so I can’t recommend anyone to you. I suggest that before sending them anything, that you write a ONE page letter saying who you are and what you have written. Agents are only interested in finished manuscripts. (If you have clips, . . .