Hostovsky poem chosen for Pushcart anthology

A poem by Paul Hostovsky, author of the upstreet number four poem “A Woman Taking off Her Shirt,” has been selected for Pushcart Prize XXXIII: Best of the Small Presses (Pushcart Press, 2009). The poem chosen for the anthology is “Dream,” which appeared in Volume 28 of Blueline, a literary journal published by the State University of New York at Potsdam. This was the ninth of his poems to be nominated for a Pushcart Prize (including the one that appeared in upstreet number four), but the first to be chosen as a winner.

Paul Hostovsky’s poems have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, and have been published in Carolina Quarterly, Shenandoah, New Delta Review, Atlanta Review, Poetry East, and many other journals and anthologies. He won the Comstock Review’s Muriel Craft Bailey Award for 2001 and the White Pelican Review’s Hollingsworth Prize in 2005. He has two chapbooks, Bird in the Hand (2006), which won the Grayson Books Poetry Chapbook Competition, and Dusk Outside the Braille Press (2006), winner of the Riverstone Poetry Chapbook Award. He makes his living in Boston as an interpreter at the Massachusetts Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, where he specializes in working with the deaf-blind. Both of his chapbooks are available for the blind through Bookshare.org.

Paul’s first full-length collection, Bending the Notes, is due out in January 2009 from Main Street Rag. About the collection, Jeffrey Harrison (also an upstreet poet) says: “This book kicks ass. … Equally adept with fixed or not-so-fixed forms as with free-wheeling free verse, Hostovsky shows us, over and over, in language that is always alive, what it is like to be alive.” You may visit Paul at his website.

upstreet author is editor of Teenagers from the Future

Timothy Callahan, whose short story, “Polyphemos Erat Monstrum,” appeared in upstreet number two, is the editor of the newly released Teenagers from the Future: Essays on the Legion of Superheroes (Sequart, 2008). He will be available to sign his books from 6 to 8pm on September 18 at Chapters Bookstore, 78 North Street, Pittsfield, MA, as part of the city’s “Third Thursday” celebration. The book is also available at Amazon.com.

Teenagers from the Future, which includes a foreword by Matt Fraction and an afterword by Barry Lyga, is described by the publisher as follows: “For 50 years, the Legion of Superheroes has occupied its own, vital corner of the DC Universe—and comics fandom. The Legion’s expansive cast, bizarre characters, futuristic setting, extended storylines, and elaborate continuity all set it apart from other superhero comics. This essay collection, from fans and scholars alike, is as diverse as Legion history. Essays examine significant runs (by Jim Shooter, Paul Levitz, & Keith Giffen); the Legion’s science, architecture, and fashion; the role of women, homosexuality, and race; the early Legion’s classical adaptations, teenage cruelty, relation to the early Justice League, and resurrection of Lightning Lad; whether the Legion should be allowed to age; the Amethyst saga; the themes of the reboot Legion; and the so-called Threeboot’s relationship to adult adolescence and generational theory.”

Tim Callahan teaches English at Drury High School in North Adams, MA, where he has been voted Teacher of the Year twice. He is the author of Grant Morrison: The Early Years (Sequart, 2007), which explores the unifying themes of Morrison’s early work, providing a close analysis of stylistic and structural techniques. The new, revised edition of this book is available from the publisher. Tim also writes for Back Issue magazine and Comic Book Resources. He lives in Pittsfield with his wife, Judy, and their two children. You may visit him at his blog, geniusboyfiremelon.

upstreet 5 introduces online submissions

Submission Manager, an automated system that enables writers to submit their work through the upstreet website, went online September 1, the first day of the upstreet number five reading period. Under the new system, we will no longer take submissions by e-mail (or surface mail), but only from authors who submit through the website. This system asks submitters to log in, fill out a form giving their contact information, add a comment if they wish, and then upload their submission files. The procedure is very simple, and many submitters have already used it with no problems. In the first 24 hours we received 69 submissions--25 fiction, 25 poetry, and 19 creative nonfiction.

The Submission Manager software was designed and developed by Devin Emke, webmaster for One Story magazine, and is available to other literary journals for a fee through the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP). It is very flexible and can be customized to accommodate the ways in which individual journals deal with their submissions. It also keeps a database of all submissions received, which can be sorted and searched in various ways, and generates e-mail messages acknowledging receipt of submissions and notifying submitters whether their work has been accepted or declined.

upstreet is very pleased to be among the users of this time- and labor-saving system. To read our new guidelines, or to submit to upstreet number five, visit our Submission Manager here.