Journal of Writing & Democracy

Events

  • 12th Street Issue 10 Launch and Readings – April 28 – 6pm – Barnes & Noble, Union Sq. (video by Jimmy Dillon and Richard Law)

    Video Player
  • In the Issue

    In the Issue

    “He picked up The New Yorker, saw his work being praised, and tossed it. He tossed the rest of them. They made his ideas mean something, and he hated those filthy animals for it. Before, his ideas were nothing, and he did not have to think for an idea like he had to think for an idea now. He just acted from his subconscious and, bam, it was art. His last idea had given him too much notoriety. Now, there was an expectation to his work, and Joe felt it.”

    –From Joe Newman by Sean Everington

     

    “Here we are at a delicious restaurant! We sit outside, close to the beach, as the warm air wraps around our white bodies.

    Here is my family, and here am I—I am the outsider.

    When their conversations started, I clocked out. I could care less about everything that came out of their mouths—comfortable consumers.

    Conversations concerned: money, food, Jake’s college”

    –From The Cayman Islands by Alexa Seiler

     

    “Lenox Avenue is always full of sunlight, the kind that makes you want to permanently shield your eyes, as if this would protect you from things you do not need to see. I walk beside you silently. You walk beside me. You don’t speak, but words spew from every crevice of your mouth. These things you say create a ripple effect of twitching nerves down to the third layer of my skin.”

    –From The Storm in the Dream by Latroya Lovell

     

    “Tell me all the ways a bass note riles your jimmies and coats your eyes. Show me the way your feet move to avoid a door. I only hope that my true facets come out with age and with remedy and with mesmerizing dreams. My dear, if you’re all alone, bring over your sweaters, bring over your lies—bring your hands always over to me.”

    –From Oranges by Hannah Witner

     

    “Language feels very physical, we try to pretend like we trap it on the page with text, so we try to pretend it’s only text. It’s not like there’s the word of text that’s in some ink, that’s not what language is. We’re sitting here talking, and so many muscles of my body are working— and there’s air, and I’m pushing, I’m building, and I’m pressurizing and I’m pushing it. And you can’t even see it. I fling it out into the air, and then you take it into your ear, and it’s this kind of vibration like I’m actually moving atoms.”

    –From the Interview with Natalie Diaz by Charlotte Slivka

     

    “‘Would you stop taking pictures already?’

    ‘I can’t. I’ll need them to remember.’”

    –From Johnny by Ken Goshen

     

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    Issue #9 

  • Sneak Peek at Author Interviews

    Sneak Peek at Author Interviews

    “Language feels very physical, we try to pretend like we trap it on the page with text, so we try to pretend it’s only text. It’s not like there’s the word of text that’s in some ink, that’s not what language is. We’re sitting here talking, and so many muscles of my body are working— and there’s air, and I’m pushing, I’m building, and I’m pressurizing and I’m pushing it. And you can’t even see it. I fling it out into the air, and then you take it into your ear, and it’s this kind of vibration like I’m actually moving atoms. I’m moving particles and then they start moving particles…” —Natalie Diaz

    “When I got to prison, the first thing my cellie said to me was, “How long you got?” And I was like, “A year and a day.” And he’s like, “Damn, I’ve done more time in the joint on the toilet than you got time.” And right then, I was like, man, I should write some of this stuff down because people are going to have these clever witticisms. So I just started [writing] on napkins and on toilet paper and whatever scraps I could.” —Jeff Smith

    “I don’t know how it is for you when you’re writing, but for me the beginning is always so exciting and things are fresh and new, and it’s all potential and that’s really great. That’s always a good feeling—then the trick somehow is how to keep recreating that feeling for yourself.” —Matt Bell

     

     

  • A Consultation with the Doctors

    A Consultation with the Doctors

    Managing Editor Charlotte Slivka engaged the drDOCTOR team in conversation via email. They discussed their reading series/podcast and where they’re going next.

    Sam  Farahmand and Luke Wiget are the New School MFA Grads that make up the team of drDOCTOR, a live reading series and podcast that sprang from the New School community in tandem with Audiograph: a podcast that features interviews and readings with The New School’s literary faculty and can be seen/heard on the New School writing blog.

    Partners in literary crime, partners in comedy, and partners in podcast during their time at The New School as MFAs, Luke and Sam were often seen together and the effects of symbiosis would render them brothers. And they do look alike: long dark hair in lively conversation with itself and they are both tall and slim. Sam’s glasses separate him from Luke and Luke’s mustache and beard separate him from Sam. Other than these physical attributes (like the geography of neighboring islands that share the same water) there is only one fiendishly paradoxical mind at work here. Sam’s surreal comedy to Luke’s Dada straight man, and then they swap and interchange and the two of them together is always refreshing and funny and you never quite know what’s going to be said next.

    My first early encounters with the dRs were at the Undergrad Riggio student readings apparently favored by the MFAs for its open and freeform atmosphere and the free beer and pizza.

    One reading went late. Inspired by his inner Beat, Sam stood in a chair and read from pages that he let flitter to the floor like baby butterflies attempting flight and land, as good dreams do, in a light caress of the floor. This prompted everyone in the room to rush for their poetry and take a turn in the chair. Good times.

    One month later the very first of the drDReading series would begin at The Mellow Pages; a free reading room and event space in Bushwick. The Dr’s in the house for this maiden voyage: drDOCTOR w/ Dr. Luis Jaramillo, Craig Morgan Teicher, MD, and Jen Choi, DO

    This interview with Luke and Sam occurred over two parts of emailed questions as Luke now lives in Nashville and Sam lives in Brooklyn. Even with this change in geography, the drDR podcast pods on.

    Part I
    THE dOCTORS arE IN:

    Diagnostic interview, Symptoms and Evaluations, Hypotheses

    Street: Firstly, happy spring! I’m really looking forward to this next edition of of drDOCTOR w/ Dr. Melissa Febos, Laura Cronk, MD, and Dolan Morgan, DO.  I think the last one it was about 6 degrees out? Seems like a while ago. Luke, you have moved to Nashville and Brooklyn will definitely miss you, Sam are you going to Skype him in or digitize a version of him like the the Max Headroom show?

    dR: Well, at one of our previous DReadings, Luke was also in absentia (recognize a pattern here?), and at that one I ended up filling in for him by growing a goatee and mustache to look like an idiot, and get into character to act like an idiot. There’s a good chance that this time I’ll be an idiot all by myself.

    Street: Tell us a little about your germination, drDR has been going since?

    dR: drDOCTOR has been going since April of 2014. The first DReading, which was followed by our first podcast episode, was at the end of that first month, which was April (of 2014).

    Street: I think the first thing folks would want to know is: why doctors? Why drDOCTOR?

    dR: There’s a long literary tradition of writers being doctors, whether they’re actual doctors, as in the case of William “Doc” Williams, or fictional doctors, as in the medical case of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. But for us, why doctors, as in medical doctors, I think there is this American fascination with doctors, sort of the same way there is with people who do real things, blue collar workers and the like (remember that scrubs are so blue collared they are entirely blue). Being a writer, or any sort of artist, is so absurd in the day to day, in the making of some sort of a living, or even in being a human being. Being a doctor is much more defined. A lot of what we like talking about on the podcast and a lot of what we like complaining about in our personal lives is the mystery of being a writer (most of all if you’re not a mystery writer–they seem to have things easily defined for them), the work you put into writing that seems to come from nowhere and often ends up right back there, the work you put in forty hours a week to make a living (for your employer).

    As for drDOCTOR, the name, it mostly came together when the two of us were appointed as Riggio TA’s. We were shooting the shit about what we would want our students to call us. It quickly escalated from Mr. Farahmand to Professor Wiget to Dr. Farahmand to Dr. Professor Wiget, and that sort of name calling stuck between us (our students didn’t take to it in the same manner we did) referring to each other as doctors, so when we were far enough along in the process of building a reading series to warrant a name, it had to be drDOCTOR.

    The referring to other people at our readings or on our podcasts as doctors goes back quite some time in comedy routines. The Marx Brothers comes to mind, but there is something so funny about someone pretending to be a doctor, referring to someone as a doctor. One scene we often come back to is from the film Spies Like Us, in which there is an endless line of doctors shaking hands with other doctors and saying doctor, doctor. Thus our twitter being drDOCTORdrDR and our website drdoctordrdoctor.com.

    Street: When I Google drDR, I get:
    1) A song by brit rock band UFO
    2) A sitcom from 1989 about 4 doctors who meet at Harvard and start a practice together (we could substitute ‘practice’ for ‘band’ here for a different sitcom). All the action of the show is based the zany antics of the main character a Doctor who is a novelist.
    3) Another sitcom based in South Korea
    4) A live British talk show
    5) A South Park character
    6) A Thompson Twins song
    7) A song from an electronic musician named Just Jack

    Are there any other drDR references we can add to the list?

    dR: No. That seems complete to me.

    Street: Lets talk a little about the Dr’s: from where and when did you come to the New School? When did you know you wanted to be Drs?

    dR: Sam came to the New School from Los Angeles by way of Berkeley by way of Los Angeles (which is to say, he was born in Los Angeles, studied undergraduates in Berkeley, then spent a year not finding himself in Los Angeles, ending up instead in the MFA Program at The New School). I would say that’s a long story short, but really, it’s not that long of a story.

    Luke made it to The New School by way of Santa Cruz, California, which is the capital of flipflops and bleached-tip hairdos. It was only after quitting his job as a high school teacher and then playing some guitar and keyboards and things for a while and working as a janitor that he decided to try and write his way into grad school.

    We ended up as doctors in our tenure as Riggio TA’s when we were in our final semester at the program and were looking at life post-MFA and Luke didn’t want to go back to being a janitor.

    Street: Tell us about the format of how drDR appears in print, is the use of the upper case lower case purely style choice, or is there a more complicated idea at work here?

    dR: Both. Both lower case and upper case, I mean. And also both purely stylistic and more complicated as well. drDOCTOR is all about paradox–a pair of docs, if you will. When it does come to the style though, I think it speaks to wanting to be absurd but also serious, as with our twitter account where we’ll have poorly typed all lower case tweets as well as thoroughly typed out and well thought out tweets. Being an artist is such a paradox, but being a paradox is such an art. (The previous sentence feels like a tweet that’d probably be better off in all lower case).

    The stylization of drDOCTOR itself, maybe it was alluded to some earlier on, is this desire for actualization, being a doctor’s doctor, a writer’s writer, a writer’s doctor, thus the lowercase dr and the uppercase DOCTOR. Hear me, but also, understand me. As in any partnership there is inevitably some playing to characters, whether it is perceived only by the audience or whether the comedic/creative partners play to that themselves, but the contrast in dr and DOCTOR addresses that. A Costello and Hardy sort of thing.

    Street: Ultimately, do the Drs have an agenda?

    dR: cashMONEY.

    No, really though.

    But really, at this time we’re sort of in a state of transition, with Luke having moved from New York City to Nashville. It is hard to do things–create art, have a job, be alive, do a podcast about creating art and having a job and being alive. Maybe it’s a bit repetitive (and there’s nothing repetitive about drDOCTOR, so I know this might come as a bit of a surprise), but the agenda is to speak to those things for artists while also having those things in our own lives.

    Part II
    pRogNosis:

    Street: What were you thinking about when you did drDR #1?

    dR: Why are we even doing this? What if no one shows? What if we were to quit while we’re ahead? Maybe we can still get our deposit back on that X-raying machine.

    All thoughts we haven’t really shaken.

    I will say, though, that at the heart of drDR is a desire to continue meeting other thoughtful people (though we’re both introverted, sweaty, and bad at meeting people — most of all if they are other and thoughtful). We were thinking that our MFA program was coming to an end and we wanted to continue having good conversations over decent to bad beers.

    Street: What are you thinking about now?

    dR: Moving to a new city, getting a new job, getting a new identity. Selena’s twenty-year death anniversary. Jokes we would have written at the recent Bieber burn. Writing an autobiography of Randy Newman.

    We’re always looking for new ways to speak to art and the state of art and the state of the arts (whether they be state-of-the-art arts or not). Right now that consists of looking for new guests to have on the podcast, readers to have at readings, new formats (to release content) and new mediums (writerly or visually) and new mans (Randy Newmans) that might pair well with the podcast.

    Street: For some of the readings, Mellow Pages resembled the L train at the height of the morning commute, will the Doctors be seeking a larger operating theater?

    dR: We love Mellow Pages and think most of our readers do too. There’s nothing worse than an uncrowded reading. You are right that it is a small theater of war-ds, words, I mean, but they put up with our nonsenses and they keep giving us the good vibrations we look for in a reading.

    Street: Where do you see drDR going? Now that Luke is in Nashville, will you be taking this Medicine show on the road? Does the Doctor do house calls?

    dR: We’re still sort of feeling this one out. I think one of the best things one can do when doing something, whether or not it is doing something with someone else or doing something by oneself, is to, of course, set out to do something and see it through, but also, to welcome revision along the way and be okay with it turning into something else.

    That, and be precise with one’s wordings.

    One of the things Luke and I have always done is fail. We’ve failed at a lot of things, the most recent of which being the answering of this here question. But that being said, out of those failures we’ve always moved on to trying different things with dD. I think one of the things we’ll be feeling out (failing out) right now is the back and forths we’ll be having over the phone to anchor the podcast in the coming months, which shouldn’t be quite as difficult as creating some form of consistency when we individually interview guests in our respective Yorks and Villes (New and Nash, respectively). It might start looking a little more like a late night variety show, or at the very least, sounding like one. It is, after all, first and foremost a podcast, and always will be —

    Check the drDR podcast here or on iTunes

    Like them with great passion on Facebook

    Stalk them on twitter

  • 2014-15 Online Launch, Tuesday December 2nd, 7PM

    2014-15 Online Launch, Tuesday December 2nd, 7PM

    Date: Tuesday, December 2nd, 2014,

    Time: 7 p.m.

    Location: Union Square Barnes & Noble, 33 East 17th Street, New York, NY 10003.

    Please join us for the 2014-15 12th Street Journal Online launch, with an evening of readings by Alysia Abbott, Jeffery Allen, and Marisa Frasca, along with student contributors to 12thstreetonline.com from the Riggio Honors Program: Writing and Democracy, of the Writing Program at the New School.

     

    Alysia Abbott is a memoirist, essayist and journalist. She is the author of the memoir, Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father, which was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and an ALA Stonewall Award winner. She has also been published in The New York Times, Slate, and TheAtlantic.com, among other publications. Abbott grew up in San Francisco, and received her MFA in writing from the New School Writing Program. She now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her family, where she co-created and runs the website TheRecollectors.com ,  “a storytelling site and community for the many children and families left behind by parents who died of AIDS.”

    Words on Abbott: “At once a father-daughter love story, a testament to survival, a meditation on profound loss, and a searing chronicle of a complex coming of age, Fairyland is a beautiful, haunting book that instructs, even as it breaks our hearts.” – Dani Shapiro, author

     

    Jeffery Renard Allen is a poet, essayist, short-story-writer and novelist. He is the author of the novel, Rails Under My Back, which won the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize for Fiction; the story collection, Holding Pattern, and two collections of poetry. He has been published in The Chicago Tribune, Poets & Writers, and Bomb, among numerous other publications. His writing was also included in the 2010 edition of Best African American Fiction. He was born and raised in Chicago and now lives in New York City, where he teaches at Queens College and in the Writing Program at the New School.

    Words on Allen: “Constructed like a mosaic…Allen’s prose is intense, concentrated. His language, which ranges from the delicately lyrical to the aggressively vulgar, demonstrates extraordinary poise… There is also some preaching from a church pulpit that, if read aloud, would stand a good chance of bringing the house down.”–Stephen Donadio, The New York Times Book Review

     

    Marisa Frasca‘s most recently released collection of poems, Via Incanto: Poems from the Darkroom, was named first runner-up for the 2013 National Bordighera Poetry Prize. She has had her poems published in journals and anthologies, such as: Voices in Italian Americana, 5 AM, Arba Sicula, Philadelphia Poets, and Adanna Journal, among many others. Frasca was born in Vittoria, Italy, and moved to New York City where she earned her BA at The New School and was a Riggio Writing Honors student. She holds an MFA in poetry from Drew University. She now lives in the New York Metro and Long Island area.

    Words on Frasca: “”Frasca’s vision and passion are so arrived, so rich with variation, that they elevate us inside a lyric adventure…her darkroom—part time-capsule, part temple—steals everything. It tests the heart with fire and compression, and it tests all of us with razor-sharp memory.”–Judith Vollmer, poet

  • 12th Street Print Launch and Reading

    12th Street Print Launch and Reading

    12th Street Print Launch and Reading

    Click Here for Facebook Event Page

    Wednesday, April 30, 2014 at 6:00 p.m. At the Union Square Barnes and Noble: 33 East 17th Street, New York, NY 10003

    Politics and Letters come together for an evening of readings by David Grand, Elizabeth Gaffney, and student editors and contributors to Issue 7 of 12th Street, the award-winning undergraduate literary journal, published by the Riggio Honors Program: Writing and Democracy, of the School of Writing at the New School.

    Elizabeth Gaffney is a native Brooklynite and the author of the novels Metropolis and When the World Was Young (forthcoming in August). She also writes short stories, which have been published in many literary magazines, teaches at the New School and has translated several books from German. Gaffney has been a resident artist at Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and the Blue Mountain Center. She also teaches fiction at The New School and serves as the editor at large of the literary magazine A Public Space.

    David Grand is the author of Louse, a New York Times Notable Book and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year, The Disappearing Body, which Bookforum described as “satirical noir at its mesmerizing best,” and most recently, Mount Terminus. Grand received his MFA from New York University, where he held the Fellowship in Fiction and studied with E.L. Doctorow. His writing has appeared in anthologies as well as The New York Times Magazine, Travel and Leisure, BlackBook, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and twin sons.

     

  • Online Launch, This Friday at 7PM

    Online Launch, This Friday at 7PM

    12th Street Launch And Reading

    Friday, November 22, 2013 at 7:00 p.m. At the Union Square Barnes and Noble: 33 East 17th Street, New York, NY 10003

    Politics and Letters come together for an evening of readings by Rosie Schaap, Adam Fitzgerald, Justin Vivian Bond, and student contributors to 12thstreetonline.com, the undergraduate online literary journal, published by the Riggio Honors Program: Writing and Democracy, of the undergraduate writing program at the New School.

    Adam Fitzgerald is a founding editor of the poetry journal Maggy, and received his MFA from Columbia University’s School of the Arts in Poetry. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in A Public Space, Boston Review, Conjunctions, The Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere. He teaches at Rutgers University and The New School. His debut collection of poetry, The Late Parade, will be published by W. W. Norton’s Liveright imprint in the spring of 2013.

    Mx Justin Vivian Bond is a writer, singer, painter, and performance artist. Mx Bond is the author of the Lambda Literary Award winning memoir TANGO: My Childhood, Backwards and in High Heels, published by The Feminist Press and Susie Says… a collaboration with Gina Garan (Powerhouse Books, 2012). Mx Bond is a recipient of The Ethyl Eichelberger Award, The Peter Reed Foundation Grant, and The Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award for Performance Art/Theater, an Obie and a Bessie. Please visit www.justinbond.com to download and enjoy v’s music and blog, Justin Vivian Bond is Living!

    Rosie Schaap has been a bartender, a fortuneteller, a librarian at a paranormal society, an English teacher, an editor, a preacher, a community organizer, and a manager of homeless shelters. A contributor to This American Life and npr.org, she writes the monthly “Drink” column for The New York Times Magazine. Her memoir, Drinking With Men, was published last January by Riverhead Books.

     

     

     

  • Now Accepting Submissions for the 2014 Print Edition

    Now Accepting Submissions for the 2014 Print Edition

     We are now accepting submissions for the 2014 print edition of 12th Street.  The print edition of 12th Street is published once per year, and is sold through Barnes & Noble. We are looking for personal, political, and thought provoking fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and 2D visual art.  For written work we recommend between 250 – 10,000 words, double spaced, with numbered pages. For visual art submissions, please send a high res (300 dpi) jpeg file and  provide a checklist if submitting more than one image. Include details such as material, dimensions and title.  All submissions must be from current New School undergraduate students.

    12th Street online runs new content weekly. We are looking for timely work, reviews of all things media, and experimental pieces that engage online readers in new and interesting ways. Please consider submitting videos, music, slideshows, pictures, interactive work, and written pieces that challenge what text can do online.

    Submissions received by November 15th, 2013 will be considered for both the print and online journal; work submitted after November 15th, 2013 will be considered for online only. If you wish your work to be considered for print or online only please specify in your submission.

    Undergrads looking to submit are encouraged to read previous 12th Street editions available at The New School Writing Center (room 510, 66 West 12th street) or by visiting www.12thstreetonline.com. All submissions are reviewed anonymously. Feedback is available for all work submitted regardless of whether or not if it is published.

    For important guidelines and to submit click here.

    We look forward to your submissions.

     

  • Iggy’s Riot (Ours, too)

    Iggy’s Riot (Ours, too)

     

    NOTE: Riot Fest was a two-day music festival featuring styles and genres from the Violent Femmes to Public Enemy. Three cities, Toronto, Chicago, and Denver, hosted the event. The big news was that The Replacements were playing after a nearly 20-year hiatus. Fiction Editor Daniel Gee Husson was there in Denver Sept. 21-22. These are his thoughts.

    Ferris wheel blinking, a ride called “Moby Dick” spinning, sun setting, and me on top of a hill looking at three stages of Riot Fest wondering why am I here? I’d seen Superchunk play a song called “Detroit Has a Skyline,” which the lead singer said was also about Denver, and some other forgettable emo/post-punk acts.

    Then all three stages went dark.

    Purple lights burst onto the middle stage and the opening track from Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew blasted from the PA. The mixed crowd had mixed reactions. Some were surprised, wondering what this odd sound was floating across the hills. Some shared secret glances, amused by such an odd contrast to the music of the day.

    The music and the lights went out.

    Iggy and the Stooges threw themselves onto the stage and their energy commanded that the crowd pay attention. At the end of a long day, they were a shot of speed with espresso on top. The crowd rushed to Iggy, compelled to listen.

    I’d come here with friends to see the Replacements and Public Enemy, but Iggy had me in his grasp.

    “Come dance with the Stooges,” he said.

    And we did. The stage was full of hipsters with skinny jeans and jocks in baseball caps sharing the energy, the vibrancies of this performance. For me, I was no longer in Colorado. It’s not like the rolling hills turned into the Bowery, I was somewhere else entirely.

    I jumped off the stage just in time for the solo for “Be Your Dog.” The guitar rolled and stabbed, twisting itself into my chest. The crowd, once rowdy, stood in unanimous appreciation of the guitarist’s work. It seemed at once to go on forever and to be too short.

    Once the solo ended, it was Iggy’s turn again.

    “There’s a screaming girl in the front row,” he said. “She’s very pretty … But your pretty face is going to straight to hell, baby!” The Stooges crushed the crowd with the beats of “Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell.”  The drums and bass were in our bodies, vibrating from the inside out.  It’s one of the most memorable moments I’ve had as a concertgoer.

    In the middle of the song, Iggy jumped into the crowd. He was the only one I’d seen that day who dared to crowd surf without security surrounding him. He sang a verse or two, floating on top of the front few rows, before a roadie reeled him back in with his mic chord.

    And then it was over.

    It wasn’t the Stooges’ music that surprised me. I’d heard “Be Your Dog,” “Passenger,” and numerous other tunes on jukeboxes and sound systems. It was the energy that they brought to the performance and transferred to the crowd that shocked and impressed me. It was the kind of performance that would make somebody run to the nearest record store and buy every Stooges’ albums–the kind of performance that will stay with me.

    I imagine myself telling the legend of this show to children and grandchildren years from now. I see in their eyes that they don’t understand. Frustrated, I put on the first Stooges album and implore them to get the energy, the excitement of that night. It’s no use. Only the Stooges on that stage that night could command such energy. Only real artists could take the energy and give it to the crowd. Only people in that crowd can truly understand what a transcendent hour of music and dancing that was.

    I’m frustrated now, trying to explain the emotion and buzz that was in the audience at that festival. It was every cliché there is about outdoor shows and aging punk rockers and teenage emo kids rolled together to mean something. It was a shared experience that I’m not sure I’ll ever have again. Hopefully, if I repeat the story enough, it will become a part of me and I’ll be able to recall the feeling I had.

    The Replacements, who I was excited to see, played next. They were great, but not surprising. Public Enemy played the next day and I felt like I was back in 1990, which was what I expected. Both bands were really good, but the spark from Iggy and the Stooges made everything seem bland in comparison. Iggy was a habanero pepper and everyone else was vanilla yogurt.

    The Stooges show will haunt me, if I’m lucky, for the rest of my life.

  • 12th Street Issue # 5 Launch and Reading

    12th Street Issue # 5 Launch and Reading

    About the Event: POLITICS AND LETTERS COME TOGETHER FOR AN EVENING OF READINGS BY ELISSA SCHAPPELL, TÉA OBREHT, AND STUDENT CONTRIBUTORS TO 12TH STREET ISSUE 5, PUBLISHED BY THE NEW SCHOOL WRITING PROGRAM.

    Date and time: Wednesday, May 9th, 7:00 pm

    Location: 17th Street Union Square Barnes and Noble, 33 East 17th Street, New York, NY 10003

    Fee: Free and open to the public.

    About the authors:

    Téa Obreht is a 2011 National Book Award finalist and winner of the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction for her debut novel, The Tiger’s Wife. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker and The Atlantic and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories.

    Author Téa Obreht                                Photo Credit: Beowulf Sheehan

    Elissa Schappell is the author of Use Me, a collection of linked short stories and finalist for the PEN/Hemingway award. She is a contributing editor and book columnist for “Hot Type” at Vanity Fair and the New York Times Book Review. Schappell is also Co-founder and Editor-at-Large of Tin House literary magazine.

    Author Elissa Schappell                             Photo Credit: Emily Tobey

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     


     

  • 12th Street Online Launch

    12th Street Online Launch

    Union Square Barnes & Noble
    33 East 17th Street, New York, NY

    February 23, 2012
    7pm-10pm
    Free and open to the public

    Join us to celebrate 12th Street Online’s launch with an evening of readings by Patrick McGrath, Leigh Stein, Sarah Schulman and student editors and contributors. Hosted by Robert Polito.

    ABOUT THE AUTHORS

    Patrick McGrath is the author of two story collections and seven novels, including Port Mungo, Dr. Haggard’s Disease and Spider, which he adapted for the screen, and which was filmed by David Cronenberg. His Martha Peake: A Novel of the Revolution won Italy’s Premio Flaiano Prize, and his 1996 novel Asylum was shortlisted for both the Whitbread and Guardian fiction prizes in Britain. Ghost Town: Tales of Manhattan Then and Now was published in 2005. His seventh novel, Trauma, was published in 2008. He is the co-editor of The New Gothic, an influential collection of short fiction.

    Leigh Stein’s first novel, The Fallback Plan has just been published by Melville House.  She is a former Riggio student, New Yorker staffer and frequent contributor to its “Book Bench” blog, and her poetry has been published in numerous journals, been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and earned her Poets & Writers Magazine’s Amy Award. She lives in Brooklyn, where she works in children’s publishing and teaches musical theater to elementary school students. Her book of poetry Dispatch from the Future will be available summer 2012.

    Sarah Schulman is the author of fifteen books, including nine novels. Forthcoming is the hard cover edition of a new nonfiction book THE GENTRIFICATION OF THE MIND: Witness to a Lost Imagination by University of California Press, to be followed in Spring, 2012 by the paperback of TIES THAT BIND: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequence.  Sarah is Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York, College of State Island, a Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University. She is on the advisory board of the Center for Human Rights and Social Movements at Harvard’s Kennedy School. She is the US coordinator of the first LGBT Delegation to Palestine. She lives in New York.

  • Writers and Occupy Wall Street: A review of Reading + OWS Discussion

    Writers and Occupy Wall Street: A review of Reading + OWS Discussion

    What do raps about the working class, Shakespeare monologues and stories about the south have in common? What responsibilities do writers have within the OWS movement?

    On Friday, November 4, New School Riggio Writing and Democracy students along with friends gathered to find out during an event entitled Reading + OWS Discussion.  While the reading is a regular event, the discussion about Occupy Wall Street was added as an acknowledgement that the movement is impacting  lives.

    Something that emerged early in the night was the way writing created years ago, read now, echoes the activism sweeping the country. Student Rochelle Melton, currently working on a memoir, dug deep in her vault of poems to share life before her northern migration. Her deeply considered work vividly expressed a bleakness many of us have come to realize you can’t escape by moving. The systems of sadness we live under are bigger than state lines.

    Other work was so fresh it was ripe with relevance. Riggio student Charlotte Slivka read a work in progress about taking her daughter to the October 7th Brooklyn Bridge protest and how she was unable to explain why upon getting there people were being arrested. By sharing, Charlotte made the audience complicit in the job of explaining the complex world to her daughter. If we as adults are tying to make sense of what is happening, shouldn’t we include our children in our unknowing?

    In between were stories of everyday lives, visiting loved ones in prison first person accounts about the US healthcare system, contemplations on violent instincts, and epic journeys of young love. Never far from anyone’s tongue, yet hardly ever explicit, was Occupy. It seemed to hover over the podium, there to supply extra meaning when needed.

    Bringing the reading came to a close, poet and student Enrique Sebastian Rivas performed a soliloquy from Hamlet, reminding us angst in the world is nothing new, there is value in sharing what haunts as, and nothing is ever just one thing. Kicking off the Discussion was a hip-hop/spoken word tribute to the laboring bodies that keep New York City running written and performed by 12th Street Online Editor Tim Prolific Jones and collaborator SoSoon. Written years earlier, the piece, like Melton’s work read fresh.

    New York City nights, bright lights, pretty sights/somebody’s gotta keep it lookin’ all pretty
    when the city’s at a standstill, they keep it movin’/it’s a fucked up job, but somebody’s gotta do it

    [audio:https://www.12thstreetonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/UNDERCLASS-remix.mp3|titles=UNDERCLASS remix]

    In talking about how it fit with OWS, Jones explained, “as young, working class, black men, being disillusioned with the American Dream is nothing new”. Opening the door to talk about race, class and the occupation, the crowd never picked up the opportunities thrown out from Jones and SoSoon, instead the OWS discussion came into it’s own around the politics of tipping. Mentioned as an example of how neo-liberalism creates conditions for owners to shift employee compensation on to consumers, tipping surprisingly became the evening’s lightening rod. Faces went flush, voices were raised, and lines were drawn. Some felt that tipping is a harmless, culturally ingrained form of financial incentive. Others suggested this way of thinking was what Occupy Wall Street was hoping to change. As one woman offered, we are always participating in systems that contribute to the bigger picture; sometimes connections are clear, and sometimes – as with tipping – it can be less obvious. While we don’t always have opportunities to choose how systems engage with us, we sometimes have a choice on how we engage with systems.

    Two weeks after Reading + OWS Discussion, there was an early morning raid at Liberty Park, the home of the OWS movement. What becomes clear that in the face of things that can be taken away – tents, rights, and privileges, writing can often be something that remains. In response to the question, why he joined the Occupy Writer’s statement Hari Kunzru wrote, “Writers do many kinds of cultural work, but one of our roles (or duties, if you prefer) is to make visible what is hard to see, to use words to tell the truth about the world.”

    What do raps about the working class, Shakespeare monologues and stories about the south have in common? Everything, they are our stories. They make visible what OWS is working to address; they represent ways writers engage with systems, and right now they are adding to the coalescing of issues that make up the OWS movement. Without stories, OWS is just dogma against dogma.

    In the end Occupy Wall Street, no matter its outcomes will run it course. What Shakespeare, rappers and the readers who shared their work during Reading + OWS Discussion teach us is, our stories matter. Whether they are as fresh as a new laptop, or as old as a fading page, stories endure. Our responsibility as writers within the OWS movement is simple. Write.

  • AWP National Program Directors’ Prize for Undergraduate Literary Magazines 2011 Winners

    AWP National Program Directors’ Prize for Undergraduate Literary Magazines 2011 Winners

    The Association of Writers & Writing Programs is pleased to announce the winners of the 2010 National Program Directors’ Prizes for Undergraduate Literary Magazines. Instituted by the directors of AWP member creative writing programs, the prizes are awarded annually in the categories of content and design. Each winning magazine-one in content, one in design- receives a $500 cash award.

    The Award Winning 2010 Staff:
    Editor-in-Chief: Zoë Miller, Managing Editor: Liz Axelrod, Fiction Editor: Mario A. Zambrano, Poetry Editor: Marisa Frasca, Non-Fiction Editor: Luke Sirinides, Interview Editor: Patrick Hipp, Online Editor, Tony Grassi, Faculty Advisor: Rene Steinke

    2011 Design Winner:
    12th Street
    The New School Writing Program

    “12th Street by the Riggio Honors Program of the New School is a striking package that draws you in at first glance, guides you through its marvels and keeps you close in its wonders. In these days of lamentations at “the death of the book” this is a journal that has considered the purpose of this most efficient piece of literary-delivery technology and declared “Printed Text Lives.” 12th Street’s front and back covers tell you what to expect with an artful arrangement of pull quotes; Venn diagrams of stories; wry comments on contents—all set as a beautiful and appealing piece of text art. Between the covers, the journal gets down to business, with fine use of typeface and ink, a helpful and helpfully laid out Table of Contents, individual works set on the page to enhance reading, and art that both stands on its own as well as comments on the literary material. Kudos also for the complementary, comprehensive, and exciting website accompanying the issue.”
    -Design Judge: Judith Baumel, Adelphi University

    2011 Content Winner:
    12th Street
    The New School Writing Program

    “AWP awards its prize for the best content for a literary magazine to 12th Street, for the variety of its forms of poetry, the high level of overall achievement in its stories, poems, and exposition, and the seriousness, in the best sense, of its overall approach to writing. Both in the sequence of its presentation and the substantiality of its offerings set a high standard.””
    -Content Judge: Roger Lathbury, George Mason University

  • Fond Memories in the Belly of the AWP Whale

    Fond Memories in the Belly of the AWP Whale

    AWP Recap by Liz Axelrod

    Every year thousands of writers, professors, school teachers, students, Ph.D. candidates, publishers, booksellers, bloggers, posers, and other assorted literary peddlers and pushers convene en masse in a chosen locale for the annual Association of Writer and Writing Programs Conference—a locale most definitely not ready or even aware of the magnitude of this population’s thirst for words, wishes, deals, dollars, companionship and alternative states of wordly being. That said, Patrick Hipp—our 12th Street Interview Editor—noted the very best Tweet of the conference: “Dear Marriott, next time 8000 writers descend upon your premises, it might be a good idea to have more than two bartenders.” I add to that that it also might be good if those bartenders were able to move at a pace a bit above that of a leisurely slug. If you’re going to charge us twelve bucks for a rum and Coke, it would be nice if we could get it before the ice melts. Thanks.

    This year’s conference was held in Washington, DC, just a short hop, skip and Amtrak away from New York City. Optimal for me. I arrived a day before my crew to help set up our table at the Book Fair and in hopes of a private night of fun and debauchery. Unfortunately, my wishful candidate for said night opted for a younger, thinner, taller, more Asian version than me. Without warning I was thrust upon the two of them at the hotel bar after spending the earlier hours at Busboys & Poets watching the Word for Word readers make Mindmeld graphs on a wall—don’t ask, I have no idea. I was fortunate though to hear Brittany Perham read some sexy poems right up my alley, and not fortunate to hear an editor read his poet’s work. Note to editors: even if your poets are snowed in, it might be better to have them phone into the reading. This way you won’t get tangled in their line breaks and the poem won’t end up sounding like Forrest Gump with a mouthful of chocolate. (more…)

  • Stories & Songs Residency

    On Sunday, September 26, New School Professor Joseph Salvatore gave an amazing and ardent reading at Googies Lounge. The room was filled with a community of readers and writers, former students, friends, and literary admirers sweating in the oppressive humid heat while anxiously waiting to hear the piece from his upcoming book of short stories, To Assume a Pleasing Shape. The story he chose to read “Whatever, Forever” kept the crowd rapt and dramatically raised the temperature of the room. The passion, torment, beat, and gothic sensibility mixed with just the right amount of pathos moved the crowd from gasps to laughs to audible sighs. Not often does one get to witness a master in peak form entertain and enthrall with such brilliant use of language.

    Here’s an excerpt:

    “… she wouldn’t mind a nice set of claws, claws like her winged friends have, claws that could hold onto ledges of dizzying height — like the stone belfry of Old Salem Church, from which foggy perch she could peer down upon her entire Witch City, peer down upon Salem Harbor with the hillside cemetery of Marblehead off across that dark water, peer down upon the old lighthouse overlooking the salty mouth of the Atlantic, down upon the dry-splintered eaves of the House of Seven Gables, down even to Swampscott, to the gallows there where, contrary to popular knowledge, were hanged the wise women of her township, the women who did not need men — claws that could act as protection, as weapons, while she flies through the night air, her outstretched wings a dark sail billowing behind, the moon above a flaming penumbra; claws that could scrape down a lover’s back, down even (yes, she wasn’t afraid to say the name) Angie’s back, Angie Kosinski’s freckled back …”

     

    To Assume a Pleasing Shape, will be published in 2011, from BOA Editions.

     

  • Big Event & Closing Remarks

    Business first:

    Tuesday, May 18, 7pm
    12th Street Magazine Issue # 3 Launch
    33 East 17th Street, Barnes and Noble Union Square
    Celebrate the launch of the third issue of 12th Street, the literary magazine edited and published by the students of the Riggio Honors Program: Writing and Democracy. Robert Polito, director of the New School Writing Program, will host an evening of readings by students and novelists Mary Gaitskill and David Gates.

    This could arguably be the most festive Riggio event of the year, so I encourage all who can attend to do so.

    Now, a personal note: as another academic school year comes to an end, so must the majority of activities we – students, professors, scholastic community members – have come to embrace over the last nine months. For some, this time represents only a break in the pursuit of an extensive educational goal. For others, it is the culmination of years of hard work and academic devotion. I implore you all to be proud of what you have achieved.

    That said, another year has come and gone for the staff of 12th Street magazine. As on-line editor, this was my first. The group of individuals who produced 12th Street, Issue #3 is bigger than the sum of its parts and will, unfortunately, exist only in the record of this year’s journal. There are those of us who will graduate next week. Many of us will return next year, perhaps in different capacities, and there will, of course, be new contributors to 12th Street, who will bring fresh and exciting perspectives to the magazine. But, the team that produced this year’s journal, like all things, must evolve. For myself, I am grateful and proud to say I was a part of this team, be it in my small (and yes, somewhat removed) position as on-line editor. Like many aspects of the journal, the 12th Street website is still in its infancy, and only time will mold it into the comprehensive media outlet I and the remaining staff wish it to be.
    As on-line editor, I had a generous amount of unexplored territory to navigate. At times, I may have stumbled, to which I acknowledge my shortcomings. For all that I accomplished, I have to give credit to those who helped, particularly Pat Hipp, Liz Axelrod, and Julie Carl. Their assistance was invaluable this past year, and they have my sincere gratitude.

    I don’t wish to make this a long-winded affair, so I’ll leave with this final request: contribute. Not just to the journal itself, but to the website, as well. No one appreciates print more than I, but this is the new media and it’s important that talented and authoritative voices be heard here. Bear this in mind next year when you’re developing your work for 12th Street. Whether it’s myself or someone new, 12th Street Online looks forward to your contributions.

    Have a great summer.

    ~Tony

  • Pictures from the latest Riggio Reading Series

    Don’t forget to come by the Lang Center this Friday, May 7, for the finale in the Riggio Reading Series. Graduating seniors will be reading excerpts from their thesis projects. It’s an event not to be missed. Formal attire is expected.

  • 12th Street: Writing & Democracy event

    12th Street Celebrates the Release of Issue Number 3!

    The literary journal of The New School’s Riggio Honors Program, Writing
    and Democracy, will celebrate the launch of its third issue at Barnes &
    Noble in Union Square at 7:00 PM on Tuesday, May 18th. The reading will
    feature New School undergraduate student contributors, Robert Polito,
    Director of The New School Writing Program, and special readings by two
    writers interviewed in this issue – David Gates and Mary Gaitskill. 12th
    Street is edited and published by students in the Riggio Honors Program:
    Writing and Democracy at The New School.

    The Riggio Honors Program: Writing and Democracy is an innovative
    sequence of writing workshops and close-reading seminars designed to
    offer gifted undergraduate writers in the New School Bachelors Program a
    balanced and substantial literary education. As one part of the Leonard
    and Louise Riggio Writing and Democracy Initiative at The New School,
    the honors program accents “the writer in the world,” and extends to
    undergraduates the mission and accomplishments of the New School’s
    well-known graduate program in Creative Writing.