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February 2013

So You Wanna Win A Book Prize?

Jesse Lee Kercheval talks about how the places she's been to find home in her writing

This is the second entry of our three-part series in which Hali Sofala, our Book Prize Coordinator, speaks with some of our past Book Prize winners to get a sense of how Prairie Schooner's Book Prize has played a role in their careers, and what advice they might have for future Book Prize contestants. Today, we're featuring her interview with Jesse Lee Kercheval who won the Book Prize in Fiction in 2006.

1. You won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction in 2006 for your collection The Alice Stories, what were you doing when you heard the news that you had won? How did you feel?

So You Wanna Win A Book Prize?

Mari L'Esperance Talks about finding the "right home" for poetry

This is the first entry of our new three-part series in which Hali Sofala, our Book Prize Coordinator, speaks with some of our past Book Prize winners to get a sense of how Prairie Schooner's Book Prize has played a role in their careers, and what advice they might have for future Book Prize contestants. Today, we're featuring her interview with Mari L'Esperance who won the Book Prize in Poetry in 2007.   

 

Post-modern Superheroes

Richard Graham's blog series on comic books

Being an academic who reads comic books, it’s not surprising to me (though a tad tedious) when my colleagues want to talk about “post-modern superheroes.” These discussions tend to involve the usual suspects--Alan Moore’s Watchmen or Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns. Whether there’s really anything “post-modern” about them is contentious, but it’s actually quite rare when one finds a true depiction of Nietzchean imperatives. My favorite out of those rare representations of the ubermensch and his attempt to convert humanity is Mark Gruenwald’s Squadron Supreme.

Our Review of Air Schooner co-host Stacey Waite's first full-length poetry collection "Butch Geography"

by Jordan Farmer

I value troublemakers. This shouldn’t imply that I enjoy any kind of troublemaker. The causeless troublemakers, the ones just looking for something to rally against, don’t much interest me. I like productive troublemakers. The sort who locates a problem or an ideal that seems to corral them in, to stifle their ability to reach a goal, and decide to tear it down. The sort of troublemakers I value as a person and as a reader are the sort that don’t want to dissent for the enjoyment of rebellion, but who are genuinely concerned with social change. Stacey Waite is that sort of writer and troublemaker.

THE BULLSEYE OF MORALITY: How We Project Our Morals on to Games

The final entry in a series of guest posts by Hali Sofala and Eric Jones on the connections between gaming (video and otherwise) and the literary.

 

It is important, in considering the role of videogames in modern literature, to note the different types of games that we play as well as which player model we are adopting when we play them. The recent explosion of smaller puzzle games to a more vast audience, through the medium of such portable devices as tablets and phones, are clearly marketed to a Rational Player Model. The rise of Angry Birds and the resurgence of 2D platformers such as Braid and Limbo, appeal to our sense of practical strategy, rather than our moral pathos. Still, triple-A titles like the recent releases of Skyrim and Mass Effect 3 seem to balance the scales of those two corollaries, providing an expanding new medium which allows for participants to push themselves into intense moral situations that provide a safe format for experimentation. This is not always a good thing.