OUR OCTOBER STORY, AND WE’RE STICKING TO IT

• Simpsonistas: Vol. 3 is available now from Rare Bird Books and distributed internationally. Click here to purchase. Series Editor is Joseph Di Prisco, and the anthology highlights the fiction, poetry, essays, and conversations produced by the many brilliant associates of the New Literary Project. In Joe’s far-reaching preface, “Journal of our Plague Year,” he discusses the pandemic’s impact upon our local community and our nation, and he interrogates its literary, political, and existential ramifications. Contributors include teenage writers from our Simpson Writing Workshops, creative writing teachers from UC Berkeley, alongside Joyce Carol Oates (represented by her New Yorker story “Mastiff”) and Daniel Mason, 2020 Joyce Carol Oates Prize Recipient. Daniel is represented by an interview with Regan McMahon that appeared in Zyzzyva, a rollicking excerpt from his The Winter Soldier, and a brilliant story from his most recent collection, A Registry of My Passage upon the Earth, for which he was named one of three finalists for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize. Other celebrated authors found in these pages include: Noah Warren, Peter Orner, Maria Dahvana Headley, Laila Lalami, Anne Raeff, and T. Geronimo Johnson. In addition, several New Literary Project luminaries shine within the book, such as Shanti Ariker, David Wood, Michael Ross, Ian S. Maloney, Uttara Chintamani Chaudhuri, and Phillippa Kelly, dramaturg of the California Shakespeare Theater. For our Simpson Writing Workshop students, this is their first time seeing their work and their names in print. We are happy and proud to publish them, because, simply put, their work is continually surprising, fresh, impassioned, and beautiful. We’re confident this will not be their last publication.

• Submissions to the Joyce Carol Oates Prize Close October 15th, 2021. The sixth annual prize will celebrate the work of an emerged and still emerging author of fiction. Prize winners receive a $50,000 award to encourage and support forthcoming work.

• Jack Hazard Fellowships for Creative Writers Teaching High School. Learn about this trail-blazing, unique opportunity we cooked up: Summer 2022 fellowships of $5,000 to nine California writers who teach high school. (Following  year, 2023, we’re coming for you, Brooklyn, Chicago, DC, Boston, Austin, and everywhere else in the country.) Spread the word to writers, teachers, and schools.

• Writing is the Best Medicine. Research suggests that writing improves mood, memory, and symptoms of chronic illness. Write your heart out.