Author: Joseph Dante

writer, editor, instructor.

Janie’s Scrapbook

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I found something buried in one of my bottom shelves today and I thought I would dust it off a bit and share. Back in high school, I took advanced placement English classes that not only required a lot of reading and essay writing, but a lot of creative projects as well. One of these projects was putting together a scrapbook for the character Janie from the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. On the pages, I tried to capture several of the most significant scenes, themes, and images in the book. I’m glad I still kept it. It was probably one of my favorite projects.

Carousel #8

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(A somewhat late carousel. I found a lot of things last week, but I just forgot to keep track of some of them. Sorry!)

  1. No Pulitzer Prize was given out for the Fiction category this year. It was quite hilarious to see the deluge of sarcastic and infuriated comments by writers about the Pulitzer committee on Twitter. But here’s Ann Patchett’s much more reasonable reaction to it.
  2. I like this post about pseudonyms and writers’ identities, especially as someone with a half-pseudonym kind of thing going on.
  3. Speaking of pseudonyms, a writer who goes by the internet name of xTx has a really great story in The Collagist (which is probably my new favorite online lit journal, by the way).
  4. My sister has been pressuring me into reading The Hunger Games for a while and I caved. I’ve just finished the first book of the series and I’m beginning to read the second. At first, I wasn’t sure whether it would be something I would enjoy, but I have – more than I expected to, anyway. There’s also this great personal essay by Roxane Gay that helped to persuade me as well.
  5. This story by David Foster Wallace is very chilling. I think it will stay with me for a while.

Rebels Who Refuse to Rebel: Zazen by Vanessa Veselka

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So I guess this is technically my first ever publication in anything! This week, Paste Magazine ran my review on the novel Zazen by Vanessa Veselka. It’s featured in Issue #42 and on their front page in the books section. Exciting. It’s a book review (about a fairly inscrutable book), but I also discuss rebels, dystopias, and Never Let Me Go.

You can read it here.

The First Rejection

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I got my first official rejection this week. It was sort of strange because I honestly thought I would be much more disappointed – in myself, obviously, or perhaps in the journal that didn’t believe in me. But if anything, I actually feel more excited now. More excited to write and more excited to try again.

I’ve started to use Duotrope to track my submissions and the subsequent rejections/acceptances. It’s useful for organizing everything simultaneously. Maybe this is a bit too obsessive for some people, but I’m the type that keeps lists and likes to pin things down so I don’t go completely crazy.

I’ve also been helping read through more submissions at Hobart. I really hope we end up publishing a novella or two. But I’ve been talking with the editor and we’ve noticed how most of the submissions have been largely disappointing. There’s a few really great ones, but it made me realize just how many rejections will be sent out anyway. It’s made me realize how rejections are constantly happening everywhere out there and how everyone will need to keep trying again and again. It was sobering. Maybe that’s why I’m not as angry and dejected as I thought I would be with my own rejection.

Carousel #7

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  1. Mark Z. Danielewski, author of House of Leaves, writes a letter to a girl from OKCupid and it’s pretty hilarious.
  2. I came across a really fantastic blog called The Book Cover Club, where people read books and then design new covers for them. Check it out!
  3. I’ve always been a fan of surreal art. Here’s A Cadeira Alta, by Brazilian artist Marcel Caram.
  4. The details about J.K. Rowling’s newest novel were recently revealed. She has written an adult murder mystery, which is what people were speculating. It’s called The Casual Vacancy and it will be released on September 27th of this year.
  5. I found a generator that emails you rejections. It supposedly prepares you for the impending pain of failure. I’m sure I’ll be making proper use of it soon.
  6. Lately, there have been a lot of creative projects popping up all over the place via Kickstarter, plenty of them book-related. I really wish I could support them all! One of them that drew my attention in particular was Wollstonecraft, a charming series of children books about Ada Lovelace and Mary Shelley, dedicated to teaching young girls about history and writers and giving them positive real-life role models.
  7. This week, a post of mine went up over on ReadLearnWrite. It’s about growing up as a boy who really didn’t read on his own until much later than you would think. It’s also about getting other less enthusiastic people into books (including my own family).