Saints and Sinners

David Baker, the editor at Kenyon Review, has divorced Zoo Press, for whom he judged the Kenyon Review Prize for a First Book. The open letter describing the end of the affair can be found here: http://www.kenyonreview.org/news/krppletter.php

The upshot, though, is that Neil Azevedo, editor at Zoo, is a dirty skunk. A mangy skunk with patchy hair. And he stinks worse than a regular skunk. A mangy skunk who fell into a sulfur mine. In 2005 the press introduced another book prize, this one under the Nebraska Review heading. Editors at NR (Azevedo is one) were the judges. I, like hundreds of other young(ish) poets around the country, submitted to both prizes last year, and it appears now that Azevedo is in the wind (as they would say on NYPD Blue). Certainly, I'm not trying to say that Assholevedo is smoking cigars on the Riviera with the contest money ($25 for each contest), but I am saying that the man is a gutless worm. (And a skunk (see above).) I'd rather send my money to a crooked contest, one that uses its prize to reward alumni of its MFA program, than send it into a black hole like this one.

A bit of good, though, too: Cheryl Strayed, old friend of DBE, has just published Torch, her first novel, which I expect will be made into a movie, and which I expect will make her a star. (Though she's already rather a star.) Go to Amazon and buy it.
Now.

Cheers.