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It's gonna cost you more
Seems like everything costs more these days–a gallon of gas at the BP, tickets to a baseball game at the new Yankee Stadium, mailing your manuscript to The Missouri Review.
That’s right.
New postal rates go into effect Monday, May 11. This means envelopes large and small. When enclosing a SASE for an editor’s response, the stamp for the #10, self-addressed business envelope will cost you 44 cents. And we like, even encourage, you to use the correct amount of postage.
See, while our office tries to cover the additional postage required during these times of rate transitions, we don’t always catch ALL of the envelopes with insufficient postage. Then those same envelopes dribble back to us over the course of several months marked “undeliverable, postage due” or sit as “postage due” unclaimed at your local mail stop. You drop your story or poems or essay in the mail to us, then wait and wait, chew your nails, swear and think how inconsiderate and unresponsive that Speer Morgan is.
We don’t want this to happen to you.
So, if you want to increase the chances that the U.S. Postal Service will actually deliver our editor’s response to your submission, we recommend you use “Forever” stamps on those SASES.
In case you’re interested, here’s the breakdown of the new rates for first-class mail:
Letters – first ounce (3-4 sheets of paper) $0.44
Large envelopes (manuscript-sized) – first ounce $0.88
Additional ounces $0.17
Postcard $0.28
Craig Arnold Blog
For those of you following the ongoing search for Craig Arnold, the American poet who disappeared earlier this week while researching volcanoes in Japan, you may find his blog, The Volcano Pilgrim, of interest. Last updated April 26, just before he went missing, he describes his surroundings with a poet’s eye and clearly capture’s the feel of the remote Japanese island.
Whiting Winners
We are delighted to report that Rick Hilles and Benjamin Percy have just been named recipients of 2008 Whiting Awards. Each writer received a $50,000 prize from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation. Presented annually since 1985, the Whiting Awards, according to the foundation’s website, are presented to authors who exhibit “exceptional talent and promise in early career.”
Hilles previously won our Editors’ Prize in Poetry and Benjamin Percy’s story “Dial Tone” appeared in our summer 2007 issue.
Eight other writers also received awards, including Mischa Berlinski, Laleh Khadivi, Manuel Muñoz and Lysley Tenorio in fiction, Douglas Kearney and Julie Sheehan in poetry, Donovan Hohn in nonfiction and Dael Orlandersmith for playwriting.
A case of "hyperforeignification"
Now that the Olympics are over and Michael Phelps with his eight gold medals is off on a victory lap of TV talkshows (look for him on SNL this weekend), we can take time to consider the proper pronunciation of the city “Beijing.”
In her blog “The Word” from The Boston Globe, Jan Freeman, takes on this subject.