Penguins Wallpapers

Panel this Thursday (6/16) in NYC; Post45 piece on PD

How to get your book published: From Writing a Query Letter to Signing a Contract
Thursday, June 16, 2011, 7PM

Are you a recent MFA graduate trying to figure out how to turn your manuscript into a novel? Or a a journalist who dreams of publishing the next Maximum City? Or maybe you're writing short stories on the side and looking to craft a collection.

At whatever stage you may be, these prominent writers, esteemed editors, and ace agents will walk you through the process of getting your book published. From rising above the slush pile to choosing an agent, Juliet Grames (Senior Editor at Soho Press), Kirby Kim (William Morris Endeavor agent), Wendy Lee (author of Happy Family and editor at HarperCollins), Ed Park (author of Personal Days and editor of The Believer), Zohra Saed (editor at UpSet Press), and Monique Truong (author of The Book of Salt and Bitter in the Mouth) will share their insights, experience, and expertise. Jin Auh (The Wylie Agency) will moderate the panel discussion and Q&A session.

The Asian American Writers' Workshop is at 110-112 West 27th Street (between 6th and 7th Avenues), 6th Floor, Buzzer 600

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"The fact that the reader is not told the race of most of the characters in the novel, even after letting it slip that some are black or Asian, disrupts the assumption that, if one does not know the race of a character in a novel, then he or she is probably white...."

—from Min-Hyoung Song's "Race and Racelessness in Personal Days," at the Post45 website.

Sloane Crosley and Ed in conversation

I'll be talking to Sloane Crosley tonight at 7 at McNally Jackson (52 Prince St.)—more info here! Sloane's second book, How Did You Get This Number, is just out in paperback.

April doings

File under "!": The great Arthur Phillips on Personal Days, at the Barnes & Noble Review:

"Another debut. In one of those odd burps of culture, 2007-8 produced two novels about office politics and sociology written in the first person plural, Personal Days and And Then We Came to the End. Park's book is the less well-known, but very undeservedly. It is extremely funny, dead-on in its descriptions of slacker work ethics and corporate compromise. And, then, out of nowhere, it's somehow very moving, showing how youth's fragile idealism can shatter under the weight of bad decisions and economics."

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I'll be reading this Tuesday (4/12) at the Believer edition of KGB's "True Story" night, with Deb Olin Unferth, author of the memoir Revolution. Doors at 7.