The Interfictions Auction has 7 great pieces up, most with still pretty low bids. The Auction ends tomorrow (Monday), so don't delay!

Not the bidding kind? No worries! We've added, for a flat fee of $25, 5 signed prints of Connie Toebe's "In the Moonlight," which was also the cover of the first Interfictions anthology (see my icon, here). It's a gorgeous print, on beautiful paper.

Our pal, new media guru & fabulous guy Henry Jenkins, was kind enough to write an introduction, On the Pleasures of Not Belonging, to Interfictions 2 - and to allow us to post the entire intro on the IAF website. I thought I'd clip & post a brief selection to entice you to read the whole thing:

Over the course of the 20th century, however, genre categories have become ever more specialized as media industries refine techniques for monitoring and targeting particular clusters of consumers . . . . And where the market doesn't impose such specifications, we add them ourselves. Catherine Tosenberger has argued that the best fan fiction is "unpublishable" in the sense that it operates across the genre categories, aesthetic norms, and ideological constraints that shape commercial publishing. Fans self-publish in order to step outside those filters. Yet, the fan community also imposes its own categories, which help readers find the "right story" through author's notes that tell us, for example, which "ships" (relationships between specified pairs of characters) are being explored, offer a rough sense of their sexual explicitness or emotional tone, warn us about vexing themes, and so forth. . . . All of this focus on using genres to classify and shelve works assumes that we know where one genre ends and another begins and that genre works stay where we put them. Genres may be optical illusions, which come and go like mirages, depending on the ways we look at the texts in question.

* * *
You can read Jenkins' entire essay, and comment here.

And once you've done that, I hope you'll want to read Interfictions 2 in print or as an ebook. And don't forget the Auction!

The Interstitial Arts Foundation's Shameless Commerce Division (well, OK, it all goes to support a non-profit dedicated to tearing down genre boundaries, but I couldn't resist), headed by Auction Guru ktempest Bradford, is making an offer you'd be mad to refuse:

1. Browse the images of art and jewelry we’re auctioning off and pick 1 – 3 favorites. Then share these favorites on your blog or social network of your choice. Tell your friends and family why you chose the pieces. Don’t forget to include a link back to IAFAuctions.com.

2. To enter, post one comment in the AUCTION'S POST HERE (not my LJ post) for each of the places you mentioned your favorite pieces.

3. Recipients of the free books must promise to review them (honestly & without bias) on their blogs/websites.

For more details, links & instructions: Read the Fine Print in this Auction post - and while you're in there, check out all the amazing pieces coming in every day!

The Interfictions Auction is up & running, with 6 fabulous pieces, and a new one every day!

I have bid on several. But there is one piece I seriously want, and do not intend to lose.

Can you guess which one?

As you may know, I'm a co-founder, currently serving as President, of the Interstitial Arts Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to the support, and promotion of interstitial art: literature, music, visual and performance art found in between categories and genres – art that crosses borders.

We have just published our second anthology of original writing, Interfictions 2, edited by Delia Sherman (deliasherman) & Christopher Barzak, and we're celebrating with a multi-city chain of readings, signings, and musical collaborations.

TOMORROW (Friday) night we kick off the East Coast jam! I hope you can join me there: ( NEW YORK CITY )

This is Brian's baby: He enthralled KGB audience a few months back with a a words/music mix, and I can't wait to see what he does with the potent combo of all those Interfictions writers + his band. Here's a sample of some of Brian & band's past improv readings.

It really is art without borders.

Not in NYC? No fretting: Brian & a bunch of writers & musician pals are doing another show in Boston next Friday, Nov. 13th at Lily Pad in Cambridge!

Tonight at 7 pm I'll be at Borderlands Books, celebrating the Book Birthday of Interfictions 2 with a reading/signing by book co-editor deliasherman, and authors Anna Tambour, Ray Vukcevich & Amelia Beamer. We'll follow it up with a Q&A, so bring your deepest interstitial questions for us to answer!

What's our craziest Book Birthday present so far? Gotta be the listing of Interfictions 2 in the Amazon.com Top 10 SF&F Books of 2009!

And the IAF Auction is in full swing . . . new work going up every day! You'll want it, trust me.

Each week they put a new story up on the Interfictions Annex. And each week I think, Aha, this one's my favorite!

Ron Pasquariello's "The Chipper Dialogues" is so short that if I quote you all my favorite passages, I'll have almost the whole thing up here! Suffice it to say that it's a conversation, in haiku, between a man & his beloved dog. Samples:

A human in a rush.
Dog, a leash, a row of trees.
Hurry @#$%& dog.

Morning ritual –
A tree sniffed. A leg lifted.
Thus, each tree I bless.

or

To take cares away,
The prescription: Hold cute dog.
Rub belly, throw kiss.

Lo, a prescription
Take two biscuits. Feed to dog.
Call him in the morning.

If you like the story, please help spread the word about the Annex! You can also leave a comment on the IAF Blog here.

. . . oh, and we've moved the Auction Deadline for mailing art to Oct. 2.

I've just posted all the lovely info here.

I know there's a lot of talent out there - if you've been wanting to get more involved with IAF, and have coding/photoediting skills, and/or brilliant organizational/leadership abilities, now's the time to get involved with the IAF AUCTION, a limited-time project that should end in December.

There's still time to get your work into the Interfictions Auction! Sign up now, and get your free story 2 months before book publication!

Sneak peek:
On Sept. 15th we're launching the Interfictions Online Annex, with 1 new, online-only, story/week until the book publication November 3rd:

Sept. 15: Genevieve Valentine, "To Set Before the King"
Sept. 22: F. Brett Cox, "Nylon Seam"
Sept. 29: Kelly Barnhill, "Four Very True Tales"
Oct. 6: Ronald Pasquariello, "The Chipper Dialogues"
Oct. 13: March Rich, "Stonefield"
Oct. 20: Kelly Cogswell, "For the Love of Carrots"
Oct. 27: Chris Kammerud, "Some Things About Love, Magic, and Hair"
Nov. 3: Eilis O'Neal, "Quiz"

I just made my (tax-deductible) contribution to Interfictions 2, the forthcoming original anthology from the IAF. They offered a space to make your donation "in honor of" or "in memory of," and I decided to make mine in honor of Terri Windling, for her great editorial & visionary contributions to interstitial fiction over the years - especially with her 16 years of co-editing THE YEAR'S BEST FANTASY IN HORROR. In those collections, she constantly made bold choices that were not standard genre fare. She opened us all up to a wide range of styles and visions, international & sometimes radical: Kelly Link, Pagan Kennedy, Osamu Dasai, Rosario Ferré . . . .. She took a flack for it in some quarters, too. "This stuff isn't fantasy!" critics objected. It sure wasn't commercial genre fantasy. But it was fantastical, and fantastic. And an entire generation of writers grew up reading it, and being told that it was all right to stretch the boundaries of genre until it became something new.

( Read more... )

Donations of $200+ will be guaranteed a space on the printed Donors Page in the actual book, if we receive them by tomorrow. (Don't be thrown by the text on the donations form saying it has to be $375; that just needs updating!) Donations of any size, at any time from now through November, will be listed on our online Thank You page, along with a link to your preferred website.

You can make your own contribution here. Dedicate it to someone who's made a difference to you.

2 new posts from http://syndicated.livejournal.com/interstitialart/
worth noting:

The Interstitial Arts Foundation has extended the date to July 31, 2009 for making your donation of $200 or more to get your name printed in the Acknowledgements section of Interfictions 2. The deadline is only a couple of days away, but it’s not too late to make your gift.

The easiest way to give is by visiting the IAF’s web site: http://www.interstitialarts.org/donate

Your support is very important to the IAF and to Interfictions 2. Thank you for your help!

== please help spread the word ==

aaaaand......

Want to throw an Interstitial Salon in your town? We have a new national Salon head: Larissa Niec! Drop her a comment here.

Dear LJ Friends:

When is the last time anyone invited you to sponsor an actual book?

I’m asking you to sponsor not just a book, but an idea, too – the idea that artists need to be able to express themselves freely and directly to their audiences, without the restraint of conventional genre limitations. We live in a world of niche marketing, where many forces, financial and cultural, conspire to keep artists locked into tiny, cramped spaces. The Interstitial Arts Foundation (IAF), a non-profit group dedicated to the study, support, and promotion of art that crosses borders, works to break down the many barriers that force artists into categories and genres. I feel strongly enough about all this to be currently serving as President of the Executive Board of the IAF, and organization Delia & I helped to found. We are about to publish Interfictions 2: a New Anthology of Interstitial Writing, edited by Delia Sherman & Christopher Barzak (November, 2009, in collaboration with Small Beer Press), the second anthology of original work by writers who joyfully seize the opportunity to explore the big imaginative spaces between conventional genres—realistic and fantastical, scholarly and poetic, personal and political.

( The Background: )

To do all this, we need your support. The IAF is a nonprofit 501© 3 organization, so your contribution will be fully tax-deductible. But more important than a tax deduction, when you make a gift to the IAF, you can bask in the knowledge that you are helping to build a new work of literature that can change people’s lives.

Here are some ways you can help us publish Interfictions 2:

$25 – send out five review copies
$50 – pay one author for an Annex story (The Annex will feature 8 stories available only online, with one appearing every week from September to November 2009.)
$100 – help us print promotional postcards
$200 – buy Interfictions 2 a magazine ad
$250 – send Interfictions 2 to a conference
$375 pays one author for a 7,500 word short story
$400 covers typesetting fees
$500 pays the artist’s honorarium for use of his painting on our cover by Alex Myers

( Contribute $375+ by July 31 and we'll print your name in the book: )
Contributions of any size are most welcome. And if you know anyone else you think might like to be involved, please feel free to pass this along to them!

Thanks for being the sort of people I feel I can turn to for help with a project like this! I know many of you are already working on cool stuff for the Interfictions Auction, too. Whatever and however you contribute, many thanks for helping us to keep the borders open!

Warmly,
Ellen
--------
Ellen Kushner, President
Executive Board
Interstitial Arts Foundation

Much to my surprise, events fall out such that Delia & I will be attending, along with yuki_onna and a couple dozen other fine folks:

The Interstitial Arts Foundation presents
A Social Event for Artists and Art Lovers in Maine!

Date: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 6:00pm - 8:00pm
Location: The Frontier Cafe
Street: 14 Maine Street Brunswick, ME
Phone: 207-725-5222
Email RSVP: erin_underwood at hotmail dot com . . . or just show up!

Artists and enthusiasts are cordially invited to the first Brunswick Interstitial Salon for an evening devoted to the pleasures of conversation among boundary-crossing artists, writers, musicians, and creators. What better place to gather than in the thriving artistic community of Southern Maine?

( Read more... ) Also on Facebook.

The Interfictions 2 Auction, sponsored by the Interstitial Arts Foundation (which I helped to found), is well underway, with over twenty artists already committed to creating original pieces of art based on the Interfictions anthology series of original interstitial writing (thanks, folks!). We have a great team of volunteers working on every aspect of the auction, from sending out stories to maintaining databases to photographing incoming work (yay, vols!).

We are seeking a Project Manager to coordinate & oversee the Auction committee. The IF2 Auction Project Manager is a non-paying volunteer position that should only require a few hours per week from now through December 2009. It can be performed from anywhere as long as you have reliable Internet access. In addition, the Project Manager will have a volunteer assistant to help on an as needed basis.

The position responsibilities for the Project Manager include:

* Maintaining communication with auction volunteers and the IAF Board
* Coordinating efforts between auction volunteers
* Keeping people on task
* Setting goals for the project
* Being an organizational god or goddess for which you will be worshipped

Please send an email introducing yourself along with your resume or description of your relevant experience to us at: volunteers AT interstitialarts -dt- org

For more info & related links, click here.

As you may know, I am a co-founder and currently serve as Vice President of the Interstitial Arts Foundation (IAF). It's a non-profit organization devoted to encouraging work in all the arts that falls between recognized genre (and marketing!) categories. One of the ways we've decided to encourage this is through a series of live Salons where interstitial folks can get together. Our very first one is coming up this Thursday in NYC. All are warmly invited to attend, or to help spread the word.
( Here's the invitation: )
* * *
More Interstitial Salons coming soon to Minneapolis, Boston, Los Angeles and Indianapolis! Want to host an Interstitial Salon in your town? Write to info at interstitialarts dotorg and let us help you get started connecting with other interstitial artists.

* * *
Ellen Kushner
Vice-President,
Interstitial Arts Foundation

My dear old friend jaguartist, welcome to FaceBook! Thank you for your insights and your wisdom. I've always loved walking & talking with you. (Hey, paddymeboy, when are you going to start posting some of those great letters you send me, so I can link to them & share the joy??)

Also, friends please cruise on over to the newest IAF post to see how you can sponsor an idea - and a book!

A quick note to let New Yorkers know that BINIBON, the highly interstitial Jack Womack/Elliot Sharp collaboration at The Kitchen thru May 9th is very much worth seeing! Acting & direction are terrific. But it's all about Jack's language - sheer poetry, describing the New York we lived in in 1981. A dangerous place. It no longer exists. Very much the NYC I wrote Swordspoint in and about. Jack's characters - waitress, transvestite, teen graffiti artist - ghosts of the night Jack Henry Abbott killed that guy at the Binibon cafe - recall it in speeches so sharp and funny and moving I had to keep myself from rocking back & forth, sticking up my hand and yelling, "Oh, yeah! Tell it, baby!"

They guy playing Abbott is just chilling. As the Narrator (a shaky former jazz drummer) describes him (yeah, I got Jack to send me the script) :( Here's some text by Jack Womack )

. . . but when has life not been exciting around here?

Delia worked incredibly hard with co-editor Christopher Barzak all winter to choose stories for the next Interfictions anthology of interstitial fiction (Interfictions 2), and to do all the administrative tasks necessary to get authors their contracts, etc. They also wrote personal rejection letters to almost everyone, sometimes with suggestions. A lot of good stories got read. Then I got to work on the Fundraising aspects - joined by an increasingly merry band of colleagues & volunteers doing everything from writing a pitch letter that will knock yer sox off ("Buy a Story - Get a Book!") to forming a Dream Team for the Auction, spearheaded by last year's auction mad dreamer/doer, K. Tempest Bradford.

The Auction.

I can't even begin to express its wonders, and how much fun it will be. I leave that to talkstowolves, whose page about the IAF Auction is just one of the prettiest things I've ever seen.

Go look!

When we saw this play in previews a couple weeks ago, I was so moved I literally couldn't speak. On the way home, while we were talking about what we'd just seen, I had to stop and lean against a lamppost in Times Square to let my emotions pass through me. I wanted to write about it in depth, but couldn't find the time to say what I wanted to say. I left it to deliasherman to write one of her wonderful reviews of August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone, incorporating some of what we'd been talking about.

Today's NYTimes has a rave review. Just reading it made my scalp tingle again, and my eyes prickle with tears of feeling. Do see if it you can. There are some tix up on TDF.org for next week (to my surprise; Next to Normal - also a rave recipient -'s are gone - because it's got music? Because it's about white people in suburbia?). There are also discount tix on Broadwaybox.com and Theatremania.com. I was pleased to see the Times critic said what we felt: it's about magic. It's epic poetry. In the everyday. In history. It's a good reason to remember why we make art - and try to make good art, not just something to sell. You can't just sit down and decide to make great art. But you can decide not to try not to.

I know most of you will never see it. Glad to see that there's a tiny excerpt up online here: "My daddy healed people with a song. I seen him do it...."

Thanks to merlusyne for reminding me that the IAF's blog should have an LJ RSS feed, which - thanks to new IAF Working Group member e_underwood - it now does: please friend us at
http://syndicated.livejournal.com/interstitialart/profile

We're also Tweeting! Yes, a Secret Cabal of undisclosed IAF Board & Working Group members is now contributing what we hope are useful and amusing tidbits of Border-Crossing goodness at
http://twitter.com/InterstitialArt

If you are interested in getting more involved in IAF, please go to our Join Us page and do what it says. Volunteer, subscribe to our newsletter, download flyers & upload our banner to your blog....

Are we not all Artists Without Borders?