Constantly Thinking of Japan

Posted on March 17, 2011 by Meakin Armstrong

Like a lot of people with ties to Japan (I grew up there, and my father still lives there as a retired diplomat) I’ve been having a difficult time with thinking of anything other than what’s going on over there. I wish them my best. And I worry.

I don’t have much more to say than that. I wish the American cable networks were many levels less hysterical. I wish journalists were more specific in their coverage. But Americans like to be outraged and worried. We want some good TV from their Lay-Z-Boys.

This thing is real. 50 workers are right now doing their best to contain the reactors. And millions more are quietly getting by and doing their best, with incredible dignity.

Posted in Blog | Leave a comment

Caine Prize Winner Olufemi Terry on Guernica

Posted on March 2, 2011 by Meakin Armstrong

Olufemi Terry, whose “Stickfighting Days” won the 2010 Caine Prize for African Writing, is in the current issue of Guernica. The story is brilliant, and it shows how if won Africa’s mst prestigious literary prize.

But it’s looong. . . can the Internet support long fiction? I hope so. It has to.

Any suggestions on how to feature long-form fiction? Send me a note if you have an idea. I’m committed to long fiction.

Posted in Blog, Fiction Editor, Guernica, Guernica Magazine | Tagged | Leave a comment

AWP Assessment: I slept in the Best Whorehouse in Minsk

Posted on February 7, 2011 by Meakin Armstrong

I’ve just gotten back from AWP, held this year in Washington, D.C. AWP is an annual conference, a gathering of writers from every skill level, jumbled together like a rat’s nest in DC’s Marriott and Omni hotels. The beginners and the pros–hundreds of them, clogged the lobbies, on the way to panel discussions and meet-and-greets.

It was tiring, but also valuable: I booked a few writers for upcoming issues of Guernica, and found some magazines that say they’d be interested in my own work. I also had a reunion with many of the my fellow 2007 Bread Loaf waiters.

But now: I’m truly exhausted. Read more about the AWP experience elsewhere, such as on Electric Literature ‘s blog.

My own hotel room was so hilariously awful, that I can’t not comment upon it: high stairs were required to enter the bathroom (it was some 3 feet about the floor for some reason, and jammed against the ceiling.

My room was also raised above the floor (and forced up against the ceiling). Furnishings: brown tones, accented with chrome. The bed was crammed into a tiny alcove.

Overall, the place was like a whorehouse (that is, how I imagine one to be) in Minsk. But is was the best one, I decided, because it was (thankfully) clean, and far away from the madness of AWP.

Posted in "bread loaf waiter", Blog, Fiction Editor, Guernica, Guernica Magazine, Writing | Leave a comment

New Fiction on Guernica: Melissa Ann Chadburn

Posted on February 2, 2011 by Meakin Armstrong

Guernica‘s fiction intern found this story (she gets the credit, not me, although she says she’d rather remain nameless). I accepted Melissa’s “Loose Morals” for publication, because liked how it was confrontational from the get-go. And how it’s certainly nontraditional.

Sometimes, we (or rather, I) can get caught of in that traditional stuff, wherein there’s an epiphany of some sort at the end of the piece. The epiphanic style is my usual choice for Guernica, but sometimes, you know,  you’ve got to break boundaries (and so on).

Anyway. . . this story will wake you up, right in its first sentence.

Posted in Blog, Fiction Editor, Guernica, Guernica Magazine, Writing | 2 Comments

New Fiction on Guernica: Michael McGuire

Posted on January 20, 2011 by Meakin Armstrong

Michael McGuire, who often writes about life on the American border, has one of his best pieces, ever, in Guernica called “Rosa de la Rosas.”

Michael is the author of a short story collection, The Ice Forest (Marlboro Press), named one of the “best books of the year” by Publisher’s Weekly. His stories have appeared in The Paris Review, The Hudson Review, New Directions in Prose & Poetry, and elsewhere.

His plays have been produced by the New York Shakespeare Festival, the Mark Taper Forum of Los Angeles, and at other theatres. They are published by Broadway Play Publishing.

Posted in Blog, Fiction Editor, Guernica, Guernica Magazine | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Faulty Plug-ins and Fiction Editing

Posted on January 6, 2011 by Meakin Armstrong

A faulty plug-in crashed my site and left it a total wreck. It was awful, but all is fine now.

In the intervening period, I’ve been editing a short story collection from a Canadian writer that’s set in the area just north of Detroit.

I’m also preparing for a new job: writing a piece about a Renaissance family that’s far more interesting “family” than New York’s Colombo Crime Family; compared with them, the Five Families look like the Brady Bunch.

Posted in Blog, Editing, Fiction, Fiction Editor | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Blogging Again for The Atlantic

Posted on December 4, 2010 by Meakin Armstrong

I’ve been working on a sponsored blog for The Atlantic, where I find links, write, edit, and so on. I’ve been finding out about such topics as cloud computing.

The experience reminds me of my first job: I was an editorial assistant/proofreader at PC Magazine, way back when it was still a print publication and the latest system was (I think) Dos 4.1. I used to go home with my head swimming with such terms as ROM, C> Prompt, and 8086. Now it’s a bunch of acronyms and terms such as BPM, Network IPS MQ, or just plain IT.

Posted in Blog, Copywriting, Writing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

I Have a New Short-Short Fiction Piece on Wigleaf

Posted on November 16, 2010 by Meakin Armstrong

I have a short fiction piece in the latest issue of Wigleaf.

Wigleaf is one of the top journals of super-short fiction (fiction of the very sort that Guernica, by the way, does not usually run). I love Wigleaf—the stuff in there is consistently good.

And I was very well edited, too. They made the story better than it had been.

Lullaby
We lived above an auto repair shop in that part of town where they kept the warehouses and strip joints. Every morning, we awoke to hammering and clanging. When they were painting a car, a fine mist wafted through the bathroom vent and turned our tub, toilet, and sink murky blue.

Posted in Blog, Editing, Fiction, Fiction Editor, New Clips, Short Story by Meakin Armstrong, Writing, Writing Samples | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Pleasure is the Business

Posted on November 12, 2010 by Meakin Armstrong

I love this comment “strober” wrote on the Delta piece I did for the The Atlantic’s website:

great feature here – only way to do business is to mix in a bit of pleasure. Thank you for the tips!

That’s exactly it, strober–while you might have meant something else in your comment, I still think it’s important to give the potential customer something interesting.

Maybe then, the message will get through. And by the way, that’s the trend, the cheap tricks aren’t working anymore. But I wrote about that before here and here.

Posted in Blog, Copywriting, Freelance Writing, SEO, Writing | Tagged , | Leave a comment

New Fiction on Guernica: Panos Karnezis

Posted on November 2, 2010 by Meakin Armstrong

This issue of Guernica fiction has an excerpt from the novel, The Convent, to be published later this month by W.W. Norton & Co.

The story of a nun who adopts a baby, it’s intense and gripping. . .

Dog lovers may find the story upsetting. I sure did.


Posted in Blog, Fiction, Fiction Editor, Guernica, Guernica Magazine | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment