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Author Archives: Richard Sowienski
TMR Author on the Air
This week Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Ramona Koval interviewed Jason Anthony about his experience in Antarctica. Anthony’s essay, “Song of Hypothermia,” appeared in the Fall 2005 issue of The Missouri Review and was the springboard for much of the conversation. We’ve posted the full essay for your reading enjoyment, and you can hear the interview here.
Audio and Video Competition Winners Announced
We’re pleased to announce the winners of the second annual Audio & Video Competition. We received 211 entries, and the quality was deep in nearly every category. Over the next few weeks we will audition the winners and select runners-up for your listening enjoyment.
Narrative Essay
First place, $1,000: “Dayenu,” by Judith Sloan
First runner-up: “What’s Your Status,” Judith Sloan
Second runner-up: “‘Reverie’” Reclaimed, Nancy M. Williams
No student entries/winners
Documentary
First place, $1,000: “Love Triangle,” Lauren Kirby
First runner-up and best student: “Dad’s Naughty Pictures,” Ken Cormier
Second runner-up: “Love, War, & PTSD: Peter and Anna Mohan”
Voice Only
Fiction
First place, $500: “Annunciation of the Baby Jesus One Block North of Riverfront Dr.,” Ann Rosenquist
First runner-up and best student entry: “Glorie in a Small Town,” Kristin S. vanNamen
Creative nonfiction
First place, $500: “Smoke Rings,” Rachael Hanel
First runner-up: “Mary Lee,” Robert V. Wolf
Second runner-up: “Foreign Land,” Sue Mell
Best student entry: “Personal Assistant Needed,” Kristin S. vanNamen
Poetry
First place, $500: “Living the Life of the Great Buster Keaton,” Douglas Collura
First runner-up: “Fear of Moving Water,” Alex Grant
Second runner-up: “There’s a Guy in L.A. Who Charges a Premium Teaching Men How To Get Women,” Todd Boss
Best student entry: “The Life Expectancy of a Fruit Fly,” “Some Revisions,” Marcus Wicker
Video
Creative Short
First place, $500: “Separate Vacations,” Anne Lewis
First runner-up: “A Length of Time Is Measured By the Space Between 2 Hands,” Ryan Scammell
Second runner-up: “The Clam Diggers,” Tim Wilson
Documentary
First place: $500: “The Unhappy Traveler: A New Yorker in India,” Basia Winograd
First runner-up: Inventing the G-Suit: the Life Story of Dr. Earl Wood,” Bill Bonde
Second runner-up: “Coming Home,” Dmae Roberts
Best student entries: “Nokota,” Lucie Schwartz; and “The Palmyra Massacre,” Brian White
On the intersection of docs and lit magazines
In addition to the dozens of docs screened during the True/False Film fest, a number of workshops and classes are offered. Wanting to deepen my knowledge of the industry, I checked out a couple, including “Hybrid Cinema: A Filmmaker’s Guide to DIY, Web and Self-Distribution.”
Jon Reiss, director of Bomb It, a doc about the “battle for public space throughout the world” (or graffiti), led the presentation. I was struck with the similarities of marketing a literary journal and marketing a documentary film. At one point, Reiss stated that when the doc was completed, the filmmaker was only half-way through the process. He or she must get it out in the public. I think, in some broad way, that’s true of a literary magazine. After we’ve accepted the final prose or poetry piece for our journals, we’re ready to put our feet on the desk, lean back in our office chair, and congratulate ourselves on putting together another fine publication. But as wonderful as our magazines may be, we haven’t done our job fully until we’ve reached the largest audience possible given our budget, personnel, and time constraints.
For many in literary publishing, marketing may be the least favored part of the job. As Reiss said early in his presentation, he went into filmmaking because he didn’t want to go into business—but that career choice turned him into a businessman. Likewise, I’m sure many of us feel the same way about marketing, but if we want our journal to succeed, we need to make smart choices.
Reiss uses his blog (http://jonreiss.com/blog/) to raise attention for his films and long-term audience development. You can check out his blog to see what he’s doing in this regard. And if anyone is interested in some of his specific blogging tips, comment below and I’ll add a “part two” later in the week.
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The Missouri Review Video Winner Kicks Off True/False Film Fest
Last night, the True/False Film Fest (www.truefalse.org) launched its sixth annual festival with the screening of Afghan Star,directed by Havana Marking. First, though, festival co-founder David Wilson announced the winner of the Creative Short category of our annual Audio and Video Competition.
Anne Lewis takes home the top honors with “Separate Vacations,” an animated short about a narrator who drops her dog off at the kennel and finds herself facing agonizing decisions concerning her dog’s possible future. The screening delighted those in attendance at the state-of-the-art classroom/theatre in the recently-opened R.J. Reynolds journalism building on the campus of the University of Missouri.
On the documentary side, the winner of our competition goes to “A New Yorker in India,” by Basia Winograd. The doc features lush photography and insight into India’s culture as a native New Yorker travels across the country by train.
Both winners, along with the winners of the audio competition, as well student winners (to be named soon) will be featured on our website. Watch this site for more information and blogs about the film festival.
Richard
Audio Competition Winners Announced
We’re pleased to announce the winners of the first annual Audio Competition. We received 169 entries, and the quality was deep in nearly every category. In the coming days and weeks, we’ll be posting the winning entries on our homepage and packaging the top entries into Podcasts. Our thanks go to Jay Allison of transom.org for judging the Narrative Essay category, Mark Kelty, Director of Theater at Central Methodist University, for judging the 10-minute Play category, and staff, senior advisors and Missouri Review interns for screening and helping to judge the other categories. We hope you enjoy the audio pieces as much as we did.
Narrative Essay
First place, $1,000: Judith Sloan, “Sweeping Statements”
First runner-up: Kris Saknussemm, “Cahoots”
Second runner-up: Richard Paul, “Fighting With My Dad”
Documentary
First place, $1,000: Lu Olkowski, “Grandpa”
First runner-up and Editors’ Choice Award, $100: Richard Paul, “Shakespeare in Black and White”
Second runner-up: Ken Cormier, “The Secret Pianos of Manhattan”
Third runner-up: Dan Collison, “Lord God Bird”
10-minute play
First place, $500: Kris Saknusemm: “Memory Wound”
First runner-up: George Zarr: Old Dog/Newer Tricks
Second runner-up: Sue Zizza, National Audio Theatre Festivals, “Avian Invasion”
Voice-only Literature
Creative Nonfiction
First place in Voice-only Literature category and Creative Nonfiction subcategory, $500: Albert Haley, “The Cough”
First runner-up and Editors’ Choice Award, $100: Lisa K. Buchanan, “All That I Missed”
Second runner-up: Randolph Jordan, “A Death in the Family”
Third runner-up: Angela Cervantes, “A House of Women”
Flash fiction
First place in subcategory and Editors’ Choice Award, $100: Josh McDonald, “Lost”
First runner-up and Editors’ Choice Award, $100: Jithendria Kumar Aravamudhan, “Memoirs of a Mad Man”
Poetry
First place in subcategory and Editors’ Choice Award, $100: Todd Boss, “To Wind a Mechanical Toy”
First runner up: Todd Boss, “Yellow Rocket”
Second runner-up: Runner up: Susan B.A. Sommers-Willett, “The Golden Lesson”
Third runner-up: Eric Torgersen, “Taking Tickets”
Fourth runner-up: Josh McDonald, “Women in Strange Trousers”
English majors learn real-life skills
I’m a believer in a liberal arts education and all that it stands for, including (but not limited to) the enhancement of critical reading and thinking skills, a broadened cultural perspective, an appreciation of the arts, and a context for determining why we’re here and what our purpose in life may be. That does not, however, preclude us from equipping our students with practical skills, such as those needed to communicate in an ever-increasing digital world.
Learning such communication skills is an important part of The Missouri Review internship program. Not only are our interns immersed in reading and discussing manuscripts, but they also learn about the larger business of running a magazine. Last semester, that included teams of interns producing video podcasts. These students experienced all aspects of production, including storyboarding, the capturing of video, and editing audio and video tracks. Video subjects included author and staff interviews, an interview with our poetry editor, and a short on the “The Life of a Manuscript.” For a brief insight in what happens to a submitted manuscript, click here. And thanks for the creativity and diligent work by this team of interns (which, by the way, does include more than English majors): Scott Scheese, Kate McIntrye, Lindsay Sihilling, Cody Horton, and Emily Wunderlich. Original music by Kyle Stokes. We’ll post more video podcasts in the coming months.
Richard Sowienski