Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Reading Series Night 2! (and Staff Apps)

Hey R2ers!

On Thursday, April 8 from 7 to 8 PM we will have our second of a series of readings in the Kelley Lounge of the RMC. Published authors from this year's R2 will be reading their work and there will be FREE food, so you should definitely come check it out!

If you're feeling brave and want to read your own creative writing, send us an email at r2mag@rice.edu before Wednesday, April 7.

See you there!

P.S. Don't forget: staff applications for the 2010-2011 editorial board are due April 5 by 5 PM! Check the website for more details.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Awesome Reading by an Amazing Writer!


Please join us for a reading by

Elizabeth McCracken


March 16, 2010
7:00pm
Brazos Bookstore


http://www.elizabethmccracken.com/


To read exerpts of her writing, go here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=M86PhpoehBAC&dq=giant's+house&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=uu6OS9bdJdDulAf9juy6DQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBkQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=&f=false


The Rice Department of English and Fondren Library's Cherry Reading Series continues at your neighborhood bookstore with the fantastic Elizabeth McCracken. She is the author of The Giant's House, which was nominated for the National Book Award; Niagara Falls All Over Again, winner of the PEN/Winship Award; and Here's Your Hat, What's Your Hurry?, a collection of stories. Her most recent book is a memoir titled An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination about the loss of her first child in the ninth month of pregnancy, called by McCracken "the happiest story in the world with the saddest ending."

"Reading it is a mysteriously enlarging experience. It could pair neatly with Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking: it's hard to imagine two more rigorous, unsentimental guides to enduring the very bottom of the scale of human emotion." Lev Grossman

"Alert to every nuance of feeling, McCracken writes with such clarity and immediacy that we hope anyway. 'It's a happy life,' she says, 'and someone is missing.' That these statements can both be true is the mark of great emotional maturity, and of a writer who rises to the human complexity of grief with all her powers, and all her heart." Mark Doty

"In An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, Elizabeth McCracken does not howl out her loss. She is devastatingly calm and in this matches measure for measure her own fine writing. By the end of this memoir you will have held a beautiful child in your hands and you will have acknowledged him. This book is an extraordinary gift to us all." Alice Sebold

Things to do when you're stuck writing that short story/poem/essay



"If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to ¬music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don't just stick there scowling at the problem. But don't make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people's words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be patient."
—Hillary Mantel

"Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand – but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never ¬being satisfied."
—Zadie Smith

"The nearest I have to a rule is a Post-it on the wall in front of my desk saying "Faire et se taire" (Flaubert), which I translate for myself as "Shut up and get on with it."
—Helen Simpson

"Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can't sharpen it on the plane, because you can't take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils."
—Margaret Atwood

"Write slowly and by hand only about subjects that interest you."
—Annie Proulx

"Work on a computer that is disconnected from the ¬internet."
—Zadie Smith

Monday, February 8, 2010

On the R2 selection process

By now all of you who have submitted to R2 should have heard back from us. This year we received quite a large number of submissions, especially in creative non-fiction. We like to thank you all for submitting and we hope that you will continue to work on your craft!

Overall the quality of writing this year is stronger than those of last year. The diversity in themes is perhaps what surprised me the most. In fiction, we received a lot more genre fictions than before, including even quite a few sci-fi and romance fictions. I want reiterate our stance on genre fiction this year, which is that we are open to fiction in any style. They are judged with the same standard as any kind of fiction - good writing, thought-provoking ideas, and fresh perspectives. In both fiction and non-fiction, we also received quite an eclectic pile of writings that focus on multi-cultural themes. We are very happy to see these new trends.

Some people have asked us about our selection process. So here is how it works for R2:

When we get the submissions, the web master takes them and formats them so that they do not have the authors' names on them, are all formatted in the same style, and randomly compiled in a list, meaning a writer submitting more than one piece would not have those piece appear next to each other when the rest of the staff reads them.

Then the section editors, the managing editor, and the editor-in-chief take the submissions home for the winter break (that's right, we still have to WORK during break!). The EIC and the ME read everything and gives it either a Yes/No/Maybe. None of us knows what each other thinks about the pieces and our policy is to not discuss them until the Big Read. The section editors do the same for their own sections (neither the EIC nor the ME can submit to the magazine).

Then we come back for the Big Read (January in the Spring semester), which is open to anyone interested in creative writing. (YOU DO NOT HAVE TO HAVE WORKSHOP EXPERIENCE!) What happens here is that we have all the blinded submissions for people to look at and rate a Yes/No/Maybe. Each piece would be rated 3 times, by 3 different readers. Then at the end of the night, we compile the votes for each piece.

Once the votes are compiled, those that have 3 straight Yes's or 3 straight No's from the EIC, ME, and the section editor, would either go automatically into the Yes or No pile. Then the ambiguous ones where there are 2 No's and 1Yes, etc, would go into the Maybe pile. Associate section editors, however, can petition to us about a particular piece if necessary.

After the Big Read, we have the second Maybe Read where we decide on the Maybe pieces. Here all the associate section editors meet for that section. By this point, we start the finalizing discussion. We talk about the pros and cons of each piece and arrive at a consensus. It can get a little tricky when one of the editors knows the writer of a piece because he/she took the same creative writing class. If the editor is an associate editor, he/she would refrain from discussing the piece. The EIC, the ME, and the section editor each have final veto power, although this has never been used before.

Therefore, as you can see, we try to keep the selection process as objective as possible by blinding the submissions. But obviously, a certin degree of subjectivity still operates in the selection process. So if your piece was rejected, it may not be that it was sub-par, but because sometimes it could just be due to the overall consensus of a particular mix of individuals. Sometimes, a section editor could eschew a certain kind of writing style and therefore influence the overall styles of the pieces published in that section. Like many things in creative writing, this subjective component is inevitable. However, we do have pieces where everyone agrees on "Yes" instantly.

I hope this is helpful for those of you interested in how the R2 selection process works. Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions!

Jennifer Luo
Editor-in-Chief' 2010

On author blurbs

We want it to be non-perfunctory. For example, here's a think-piece from the Berlin Pfennig Saver in 1886:

"Friedrich Nietzsche is the author of several books of philosophy. And God is dead."

Or like this one from Tiger Beat for Men in 1971 (perfect for a senior)

"Norman Mailer is a magnificent writer and one brilliant son of a bitch. He's outlived, outloved and outbrawled every last one of you miserable pansy bastards who sit around reading magazines."

or it could even have some kind of a foreshadowing element, although hopefully not as pessimistic as this one

"Sylvia Plath is a poet living in London. She Recently purchased a gas oven."- 1963, Opaque and Oblique.

or perhaps more complex like this one from the Paris Review:

"William Burroughs elaborates cardboard assumptions near the horizon. He laments the dachshunds' cruel design."


And finally, here's a great one that really uses the writer's last words to further assert his essential self. This one's from Disembowelment Weekly:

"Stephen King is a horror author. That's horror, not whore."






Friday, January 15, 2010

Open Mic Night 2009 Video

Thanks to Rick Manning, our Webmaster, here is the video for 2009 Open Mic Night:

Click on link below

http://vimeo.com/8105181