FC2

Listen to the new FC2 Podcast with Brian Kiteley.

Listen to the review.

All of us at FC2 are remembering Raymond Federman, one of the masters of innovative fiction and richest hearts of our press, who changed tense on the morning of 6 October after a long battle with cancer.

This from Ted Pelton: “Ray had been in hospice in recent weeks, and although I had been working on his final novel with Starcherone, Shhh: a novel of childhood, I hadn’t heard from him since August. When I wrote him last month, his daughter Simone wrote back that he was too weak to do emails. Anyone who knew Ray would know that when he was too weak to write, he wouldn’t last long. I know nothing yet about any memorials or services, but send this merely to note the passing of a powerful, funny, and supremely dedicated artist, humanitarian, and friend. He loved life, and we will miss him.”

Listen to the new FC2 Podcast with Steve Tomasula.

FC2 is pleased to announce that it has been awarded a $25,000 grant from the The Jarvis & Constance Doctorow Family Foundation.

FC2 is pleased to announce:

The FC2 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize
$15,000 & publication by FC2

The Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize
$1,000 & publication by FC2

For more information: http://fc2.org

Stephen Graham Jones’ The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti is a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award and Magdalena Zurawski’s The Bruise won Best Lesbian Debut Fiction at the Lambda Awards. Congratulations to both authors!

Men in Bed: Women Writers on the Male Sexual Experience
Forthcoming from Other Voices Books

This groundbreaking anthology, edited by Stacy Bierlein, Kat Meads and Cris Mazza, will investigate the sexual experiences and identities of male characters as envisioned by female writers.

Throughout history, male writers from D.H. Lawrence to Phillip Roth have defined sex in literature, including female sexuality. Rare examples of women writers’ sexual explorations were either suppressed or treated as trivial. While women writers in a post-Erica-Jong era have claimed the female sexual experience for themselves, those attempting to explore sex from a male character’s point of view are still often challenged for their so-called lack of credibility, or for trying to push a feminist agenda.

Of course, great works of literature involve writers stepping far outside their own experiences­gender, age, social class, race, nation­to approach a wider envisioning and understanding of the world. In Men in Bed, today’s prominent women writers, alongside emerging talent, explore the provocative and historically pertinent sphere of writing sex through the male lens, thereby reaching a greater understanding not only of human sexuality but of literary tradition and the power of the creative imagination.

Guidelines
Literary fiction only, with frank sexuality
Sexually graphic work encouraged, but must have strong literary merit
All work should be self-contained and less than 10,000 words.
Previously published stories eligible if the author has retained rights
Submit work via email to meninbedstories [at] yahoo.com
Please include a brief biographical note.

Listen to the latest FC2 podcast with Kate Bernheimer.

At a moment when most large commercial publishers are scrambling simply to stay afloat amid the global economic collapse in order to produce more novels, collections, and novellas that want to be films when they grow up, I’m delighted to announce the advent of The FC2 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize. The award will include $15,000 and publication of the winning manuscript by FC2.

U.S. writers in English with at least three books of fiction published are eligible. Submissions may include a collection of short stories, one or more novellas, or a novel. There is no length requirement. Works that have previously appeared in magazines or anthologies may be included. Translations and previously published novels and collections are not eligible. To avoid conflict of interest, former or current students or close friends of the final judge are ineligible, as are employees of and authors published by FC2.

Selection criteria will be consistent with FC2’s mission to bring forth fiction considered by America’s mainstream publishers too challenging, innovative, or heterodox for the commercial milieu. FC2 remains committed to work of high quality and exceptional ambition whose style, subject matter, and/or form push the limits of American publishing and help reshape our literary culture.

Finalists for The FC2 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize will be chosen by the FC2 Board of Directors: Kate Bernheimer, R. M. Berry, Noy Holland, Brenda Mills, Lance Olsen (Chair), Matt Roberson, Susan Steinberg, and Lidia Yuknavitch. Carole Maso, I’m thrilled to report, has agreed to serve as judge and pen a foreword to the winning manuscript.

Contest entries, which will be read blind, and which must be accompanied by a $25 reading fee, will be accepted between 15 August and 1 November. The winner will be announced 1 May 2010. For contest updates, entry instructions, and so on, please visit our newly revamped website (now replete, by the way, with blog, podcasts, upcoming events, links, and more) at fc2.org.

FC2 continues to endorse the contest ethics code set out by the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses. To that end, FC2 is committed to: 1) conducting our contests as ethically as possible and to addressing any unethical behavior on the part of our readers, judges, or editors; 2) providing clear and specific contest guidelines—defining conflict of interest for all parties involved; and 3) making the mechanics of our selection process transparent and available to the public.

The FC2 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize, designed to identify and welcome into the Collective mid-career authors finding it increasingly difficult to locate publishers for their literary experiments, will take its place beside FC2’s Ronald Sukenick American Book Review Innovative Fiction Prize (now in its third year), designed to identify and welcome into the Collective early-career authors searching for an outlet for their ground-breaking work. This year’s judge for the latter will be Susan Steinberg, and our reading period will be the same as that for the Doctorow: 15 August through 1 November. (Again, for further information please visit our website.)

Please help FC2 get the word out about these contests by blog, Facebook, email, and word of mouth, and please urge authors of innovative fiction whom you know to submit their fiction.

Please join me as well in offering profound thanks to the benefactors behind both contests, none of whom is interested in fanfare. Through their generosity and dedication to fictions that most assuredly don’t want to be films when they grow up, and through the monumental effort (usually performed on a volunteer basis) on the part of our Board of Directors, contest judges, editorial pool, contest manuscript screeners, FC2’s layout arm at the Illinois State University, its production, distribution, and PR arm at the University of Alabama Press, its business offices at the University of Houston-Victoria, its coordination center at the University of Utah, and assistance from private contributors on and off our Board of Advisors, FC2 continues to embrace the collective spirit and literary activism that has made it one of America’s oldest independent presses run by authors for authors devoted to ever-shifting investigations into the innovative, and that has carried it successfully now into its surprising 35th year.

—Lance Olsen
Chair, FC2 Board of Directors