Thursday, March 8, 2007

Mark Goldblatt

March 8th the club had Mark Goldblatt speak to our club on various topics. He was very knowledgeable on the fact that if we were to send short stories or poems out to literary magazines some are respectable while others can put a price on their published editions and might not be worth sending any material to. Though he said the newest thing to come up in literary form is online literary publications. This is good in terms of if you wanted to say that you've been published the web page with your piece will be up always not like print literary magazines which after an edition is over it might be hard to find the edition.

In another note to this he also mentioned that if you have your own website exhibiting your work that can also help your resume and you can be referenced to the website. This is a more modern approach to exposing your writings to prospective publishing places.

He spoke about this topic after reading a piece he wrote about killing a cockroach in NYC and it was satirical images which was very visual. I liked the story in the length he read for us. But he told us the reality of writing a long piece and then seeing if it could get published in print form and he said that when it was published it was only approximately 500 words where as the version he read to us was close to 4 pages in length. So he said that print form might not be such a good way of getting published in the electronic and internet world. This is true.

Mark Goldblatt is also the author of the book entitled "Africa Speaks" which I read up on and was intrigued to hear about how the topic for his book was thought up. He wrote in a different voice which was that of an African American man. See link http://markgoldblatt.com/ The topic for the book is very controversial but it takes a lot to write about something so daring. Definately check this book out!!!

If you want to buy his book check out http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9781579620899&itm=4

It was really great to kick off the club with our first guest speaker and we appreciated the insight Mark Goldblatt shared with the club. :)

Pres.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

When did he say his friend Charles is coming to speak, does anyone know? -Helen

Unknown said...

The club needs to set a date for Charles Salzberg. The officers and I can talk about this and set it up with Charles. We'll let everyone know on the blog when it's set.

Anonymous said...

ok. thanks. -Helen