In addition to being chosen for Oprah's next book club read, The Road has come out on top in The Morning News Tournament of Books 2007.  It was a tough competition, with the final round coming down to The Road vs.  Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan.  Read about the tournie here.

Has everyone already seen the article over at NYT about the No Impact Man?  It's called "The Year Without Toilet Paper."  Brilliant, strategic advertising for this guy's book is all I'm saying.  According to his website, Colin Beavan and his wife  Michelle Conlin only "giggled" at the brilliant spoof Gawker provided.

According to this very disturbing Guardian article, the "only fully authenticated" image of Jane Austen, the image that has been traditionally used by publishers, is being photoshopped into something "more appealing" by Wordsworth editions.  To quote the publisher's managing director:

Jane Austen wasn't very good looking. She's the most inspiring, readable author, but to put her on the cover wouldn't be very inspiring at all. It's just a bit off-putting.

Apparently the improvements included adding more makeup and hair extensions and removing her nightcap.  Wow.  It's like What Not to Wear for literary icons.  Except when I watch What Not to Wear, I feel all uplifted, because though Stacey and Clinton can dole out some pretty harsh criticism, it's really just tough love, and you can tell by the end of the episode that the person who was just made over is genuinely happy about their new look, because really, what were they doing wearing a bodysuit in 2007 anyway?  But this?  This just makes me feel sad.  Poor, poor Jane and her ill-fated nightcap.  What have we become as a society when we won't let one of the most celebrated writers of all time keep her nightcap? 

A book club with Victoria Beckham at the head, and Katie Holmes and J.Lo as members?  Now that is an idea I can get behind. 

*sorry.  I had to.

The NYT offers up the first chapter of Jonathan Lethem's new novel, You Don't Love Me Yet. Every book I've read by this guy I've read in one sitting.

I've been reading this blog called Pinky's Paperhaus for a while now, and I met the woman behind it, Carolyn Kellogg at AWP.  Although we didn't talk long, she seemed pretty awesome (and had awesome red hair).  Check out her Flickr set of literary photos.  I won't tell you why, but it's worth it for the AWP pics. 

And, it's worth mentioning that Ms. Kellogg is also the co-editor of Hot Metal Bridge, the new lit mag/blog of the University of Pittsburgh MFA program, whose first issue will go online on April 1st.  Are you excited?  Because I am.

Some updates:

Firstly, the index for 19.1 is available here. Check back as we start to add poems and stories.  Sorry that took so long.  Preparations for (and the convalescing from) AWP took over the Sycamore office in a bad, bad way.

Secondly, the 2007 Wabash Prize for Fiction contest is closed.  We're in the process of reading submissions! 

And finally: got non-fiction?  (Or fiction, or poetry?) Send it quick, before the reading period ends on March 31.  We're still putting together content for 19.2, which will be out in June. 

One of my favorite writers (Jhumpa Lahiri) who received her MA from the writing program at Boston University (directed by Leslie Epstein), and spent time crafting her first collection of stories (The Interpreter of Maladies) at the Provincetown Work Center had her first novel,The Namesake, made into a film that came out this month. Those of you who have read the book and seen the film let me know what you think.

The stereotype is a popular one: A writer sitting at his desk, eyebrows pensively poised, a pen resting tentatively against his lips, staring out a window for hours, lost in his thoughts, trying to set down that next line.

But that’s not the reality. Is it? We can’t always be alone.

When I first arrived in Lafayette, Indiana, I spent about a week alone before meeting another soul. I told myself I needed to adjust to a new solitary lifestyle. I was prepared for that challenge. I setup my desk facing a large window from which I could look out onto the street. I started several stories. I read two biographies about Truman Capote. I watched movies. I organized my paperwork into clearly labeled manila files. I called my credit card companies to inform them of my change in address and chatted up the operators, complaining about the boredom of the Mid-West in hopes of sympathy. Instead, I was informed that the call center I had called was located in Ohio.

By Wednesday of that week my situation was quickly deteriorating. I wandered the isles of the local Wal-Mart for hours, emerging in a daze with only a few items. I looked for any excuse to get out of house and drive to a store, any store, where there were people. Things were definitely not going as planned.

I missed the life I left where if I wanted, there was some social engagement to occupy me: The opening of a new restaurant, club, or bar. A friend of a friend’s band was playing a gig. So-and-so was throwing a roof party. The independent theater in Harvard Square just started screening a new foreign film. And if there was nothing to do, I could always take the T to the Commons and wander around, people watching.

When the semester got underway I asked my peers about how they dealt with the isolation. How much time did they spend alone and how did they keep themselves from losing their mind? Unfortunately, I didn’t get the responses I anticipated. Most of my peers informed me that in fact, they relished their isolation. They liked being alone. Didn’t I?

I’m not saying that I’m one of those people in need of constant stimulation; otherwise I’ve definitely chosen the wrong career. I too like to unwind with a good book and obviously I have to be alone to write. But I wonder, how much time do writers typically spend alone? What are their social lives like? I guess I’m interested in those aspiring writers like myself who aren’t regulated by the demands of a spouse and children. Those twenty-somethings for whom life is still an urgent curiosity to see and experience what they, because of their age, haven’t. After all, if we don’t get out there and live, then what is there to write about?

Why do you want to become a writer? It’s a question that’s posed of us MFA students at one point or another in our careers. There are, I believe, two schools of thought: those who believe that a response can be articulated, and those who don’t. My own experiences have forced me to constantly grapple with this question, and it does, in certain ways, filter into my writing. I have always envied those writers who don’t feel like they have to justify their writing, who don’t have anything specific in mind when confronted with the question: what do you want your writing to accomplish?

My decision to pursue writing was fraught with tension: immigrants shouldn’t pursue careers in the arts I was constantly “advised”; they should train in more practical fields: the sciences, business, law. And yet, some of the best writers explore (at the heart of their work) issues of cultural conflict and the role of the immigrant. Edwidge Danticat, Jhumpa Lahiri, Isabel Allende, Julia Alvarez, and Sandra Cisneros are just a few names that come to mind. They are writers whose work, I believe, has both social and cultural aims. They are well-crafted writers whose mastery of the form has attracted large audiences. Not only do they explore those universal emotions that we as human beings (regardless of ethnicity or nationality) struggle with, but their writing also informs a large American readership of their own particular cultures. It can be argued then, that in part, they write to voice the experiences of their specific ethnic groups, to understand their place in a country that asks them to justify their presence.

Recently, I traveled down to Atlanta along with my fellow first year MFA writers to attend the AWP conference. We were seven poets and writers squeezed into a van for ten hours. In this tight space, I decided to survey my peers, who, like me, must have grappled with this very question: why do I want to become a writer? Personally, I was interested in their responses because unlike myself, none of the other writers in the program are first generation immigrants. Surely their reasons for writing would differ from mine.

One thing became clear: we have all arrived at this point in our lives from very different backgrounds: from a corporate trainer to a Hollywood script reader to a Teach for America member, ostensibly, we all decided to pursue careers as writers for different reasons. One poet explained how in the “real world” there is no time for reflection; that people constantly look to Hollywood in order to understand how they should feel. This steams, he believes, from a history of repression. A fiction writer explained that she writes because by writing, she feels most human. Her writing aims to understand how our motivations are shaped by human interactions. Another poet explained that her writing is a means to be less alone, a chance to recreate memory because by writing it down, it becomes more vivid. Our discussion passed the hours and I didn’t really see any commonalities between our reasons for becoming writers until several days after our return from Atlanta, when I sat down to write this.

In the end, I guess it’s not as important to philosophize about why we write, as it is to simply commit oneself to the act. It seems that like my peers, the process of writing forces one towards understanding of oneself, and the world that one must navigate. I write because I must believe that by depicting the inner lives of Iranians, citizens of the United States will have a road towards empathy, and in taking it, arrive at understanding.