&NOW BOOKS

Besides the benefits I spoke of in my last entry, more are coming down the pike (or as Jiri Cech says, "down the pipe"). At the 2008 &NOW Festival, Davis Schneiderman (author of the recently released work of innovative fiction, Abecedarium), announced two terrific con/in-ceptions:

1. &NOW Books (an imprint of Lake Forest College Press):
The newly formed Lake Forest College Press is pleased to announce the formation of its imprint, &NOW Books. Every two years, &NOW Books will publish THE &NOW AWARDS: THE BEST INNOVATIVE WRITING—a collection of the most provocative, hardest-hitting, deadly serious, patently absurd, cutting-edge, avant-everything-and-nothing work. Distribution of &NOW books will be through Northwestern University Press. Attendees at &NOW 2009 (Fall, SUNY Buffalo) will receive a complementary copy of the debut anthology, but writers need not attend &NOW to be included in the collection.

2. The Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writer’s Residency Prize &NOW/Lake Forest College
Lake Forest College, in conjunction with the &NOW Festival of Innovative Writing and Art, invites applications for an emerging writer under forty years old, with no major book publication (chapbooks and the like excepted), to spend two months (February-March or March-April 2009) in residence at our campus in Chicago’s northern suburbs on the shores of Lake Michigan. There are no formal teaching duties attached to the residency. Time is to be spent completing a manuscript, participating in the Lake Forest Literary Festival, and offering two public presentations.
After the residency, the completed manuscript will be published, upon approval, by the new Lake Forest College Press &NOW Books imprint. The stipend is $10,000, with a housing suite and campus meals provided by the college. The position will be offered on alternate years to writers of prose and poetry, with the 2009 residency going to a poet. Hybrid genre and non-classifiable applications are welcome during either year.

Get the full details on the Now What blog.