Have you heard the news-- the Michael Rubin Book Award is open for submissions! What? You haven’t? Well then, you've come to the right blog. The Michael Rubin Book Award is an annual contest open to students of San Francisco State University. If you are such a person, and... have a prose manuscript (sorry poets, you have to wait until next year) between 45 and 170 pages, send it on in. Entries will be read with great interest by our fabulous guest judge, Frederic Tuten. The winning manuscript will be published by Fourteen Hills Press in a limited one-run printing. Yes, you read that correctly. We are offering you an opportunity to have an entire book of your work published. It’s just too good to pass up.

For more information follow this link:
http://www.14hills.net/michael-rubin-book-award-submission

John Haggerty

Fourteen Hills Staff

The Fourteen Hills staff is back in action hitting the ground running! And we have a lot of work ahead with this season's amazing amount of submissions, but we are already finding exciting possibilities for issue 18.2. Thanks to all the writers and artists for considering Fourteen Hills, and who have submitted works this round. It has been a pleasure to read so many fine and challenging submissions.  We're going to have some hard decisions to make, but that's just how we like it ;-)

This semester we have much to look forward to, including our Annual Gina Berriault Award Reading and Bambi Holmes contest winner, as well as, of course our popping spring Release Party! (More info later).  I'm so honored and delighted to be working with such an insightful, enthusiastic, and genuinely dedicated staff.  You can, as ever, expect awesome things from Fourteen Hills this season! 

Thanks for reading,

Diana Rosinus

Assistant Poetry Editor

Fourteen Hills

If you missed anything catch up here on YouTube, and don’t miss out on anything else by following us Facebook and Twitter.

It was a cold 44 degrees on Friday night, but you wouldn’t have known it if you were at Space Gallery for the Fourteen Hills 18.1 release party. Warmth pervaded the venue, which was packed with an enthusiastic and diverse crowd, united by their desire to help us celebrate one of our best issues yet, and, of course, maybe win a great raffle prize, too.  

Editor-In-Chief Kelly McNerney and Faculty Advisor Matthew Clark Davison, who was decked out in a utilitarian and fashion-forward jumpsuit, mc’d the lively proceedings. The performances began with a short music set by Michael Mullen of Pocket Shelley. Pocket Shelley’s piano-driven songs, which feature lyrics both melancholy and funny, charmed the growing crowd who were partaking in the Space Gallery’s wonderful (and perhaps now famous) spiced cider. Afterwards, Cedar Sigo, whose fantastic poem “A Gentlemanship” closes-out issue 18.1, read a selection of his recent work to a reverent room.

D.A. Powell, a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow in poetry, was next and delighted us with his wry poems of love and desire. Our final reader, Elizabeth Bull, shared an excerpt of her short story, “The universe holds an infinite number of possibilities.”  Bull elicited laughs and hearty applause for her work, which you can read in its entirety in Fourteen Hills 18.1.

In between the performances and the awarding of various raffle prizes, friends old and new mingled with each other and moved to the music of our DJ. Over a hundred people eagerly sought out and bought copies of Fourteen Hills 18.1.

Speaking of our latest issue, the cover art was officially unveiled Friday night! John Masterson, who is a writer, photographer, and designer living in New York City, provided the striking photo that graces the cover. This issue marks the first time in years that a photo has been featured on our cover and we think you’ll agree that it provides an eye-catching entry into the quality work you’ve come to expect from Fourteen Hills.

With the readings complete and the last raffle prizes won, attendees, with spiced cider and copies of the new issue in hand, danced and socialized among the eclectic zombie art of Ezra Li Eismont who is being featured Space Gallery until January 7^th. They also had the opportunity to buy art from Ayuna Collins who generously donated her own artwork to our raffle. All in all it was great night and we hope to see you all in the spring for the release of 18.2!

18.1 will be available for sale online soon! You can purchase here.

Did you miss the party? No worries, we will soon have video of the event up on our YouTube site.

— Jason File, Assistant Fiction Editor, Fourteen Hills

Literature has always had a dynamic, often revelatory relationship with the image, and this edition of Fourteen Hills will continue that dialectic, with three wildly different visual artists gracing the pages and cover of 18.1. Here’s a peek at what’s in store for readers of our new edition:

Chris Koehler is an award-winning artist and illustrator working out of San Francisco. He has worked with Wired, Google, Coca Cola, MTV, Kenneth Cole, and the NFL, among others. Chris also teaches in the illustration department at California College of the Arts and regularly shows in galleries.

Philip Govedare was born in Yuba City, California in 1954.  He grew up in southern and eastern Oregon, and attended the San Francisco Art Institute where he received a BFA in painting in 1980. After receiving an MFA from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, he taught at Temple University in Rome and, in 1991, settled in Seattle where he has been on the faculty of the School of Art at the University of Washington ever since.

John Masterson, cover artist for 18.1, is a writer, designer, and photographer living in New York City. His short story “Weapons” appeared in Fourteen Hills 16.1. His story “Tiny Fucking Tim” recently appeared in the queer literary journal Bloom. And if you haven’t already noticed, we have purposefully obscured the cover image until the book is launched, so come to the Fourteen Hills 18.1 Release Party on Friday, December 16^th at Space Gallery, and meet our contributors, listen to readings, and celebrate the intersections of text and image while also enjoying beverages, raffle prizes, musical guests, and maybe a little bit of disco-disco. 

—Miah Jeffra, Staff, Fourteen Hills

The stunning mind behind the hotly-anticipated "Glockenspiel / Ukulele " record will take to the stage for the 18.1 Release Party! The inimitable Michael Mullen will be doing a solo performance, at the personal request of the Fourteen Hills editorship. Known throughout the Bay Area and beyond as co-writer of the art-rock outfit The Size Queens, this charming man has been commissioned to write music for the art criticism conference Our Literal Speed, does studio work and performs with local musical luminaries, and recites some wicked dead Romantics!

Here's what Indiefolkforever had to say about Pocket Shelley's album, "Putting vocals, piano and acoustic guitar front and center, Mullen has put together a stunning album of romantic but grounded songs, generous, open-hearted stories of everyday longing, regret and joy that fans of American Music Club and Mark Eitzel shouldn't miss."

You can listen and buy Pocket Shelley here, watch Pocket Shelley on YouTube, or get caught up on the latest news with Facebook. But don't miss the chance to meet him in person at the Fourteen Hills 18.1 Release Party on Friday December 16th!

 — Maxwell Love, Assistant Poetry Editor, Fourteen Hills

Get your dancing shoes ready because Fourteen Hills will take over Space Gallery on Friday, December 16^th for the release of issue 18.1. We will be featuring three wonderful readers and a musical guest! If that’s not enough, here are some fantastic raffle prizes to be won.

You know ‘em, you love ‘em: gift cards! They are great for that special someone, and no one will judge you if you use it for yourself!

·         $25 Gift Card to Zunki

Dance, Get in Shape, Learn Something New: Get your New Year’s Resolution here!

Free Club Entry and Complimentary Drinks for Two at 222 Hyde, Valued at $40
Located in the Tenderloin, 222 Hyde has a clean yet bass-booming sound system—they won best sound system in the SF Weekly's “Best of San Francisco 2010” poll—perfectly suited to the club's exciting rotation of local, national and international DJs. Full bar and amazing made-to-order thin-crust pizzas on the main floor, and DJ and dancing in the basement. Located at 222 Hyde Street at Turk. Easy to get to from Civic Center BART. (415) 345-8222

Three One-month Memberships to Funky Door Yoga, (Valued at $99 each)
Feel younger, move better, regain flexibility, and melt away those extra holiday pounds!
Funky Door has yoga studios on Polk Street, Haight-Ashbury, and Berkeley.

 

A flight of beer (Valued at $45)

"Chicken, Disco-Disco" - Acrylic on Canvas 24" X 36" by Ayuna Collins

Free Massage or Rolfing from Integrity Bodywork (Valued at $150)

Françoise Lajoie Brunette at Integrity Bodywork is a Certified Advance Rolfer® with a strong background and active practices in Yoga and Massage Therapy. With over 30 years’ experience in the field of bodywork, including fourteen combined years in clinical settings, Françoise brings expertise and a strong sense of center and grounding to the care of your soft tissues and the restoration of balance and cohesiveness to your structure.

 

The Rolling Stones 1964 -1969 Limited Edition Remastered Vinyl Box Set (Valued at $250!)

Strictly limited edition 13 vinyl LP box set that encompasses the Stones' early UK releases. The box set includes nine remastered Rolling Stones studio albums, two remastered EPs, plus two 'Big Hits' collections. The first five titles in the set are presented in their original mono format for the first time in years. The inclusion of the band's original two Hits collections was mandated by the fact that UK album releases in that era most often did not include contemporaneously released hit singles. The ultimate gift for your loved one! 

 

 

 — Ari Moskowitz, Staff, Fourteen Hills

Fourteen Hills is thrilled to introduce you to the writers who will be reading at one of San Francisco’s finest literary events: The Fourteen Hills 18.1 Release Party! The event will be held on Friday, December 16, at Space Gallery on Polk Street. (RSVP on Facebook) Please join us for an evening of art, language, music, and incredible raffle prizes (raffle prize details here)! 

The Readers

D. A. Powell was born in Albany, Georgia on May 16, 1963 and graduated from Lindhurst High School in Linda, CA. He received his MA from Sonoma State University in 1993 and his M.F.A. from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop in 1996. He now teaches at University of San Francisco in the English Department and edits the online magazine Electronic Poetry Review. He has served as the Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Poetry at Harvard University and taught at other universities.

Cedar Sigo was awarded a scholarship to study at Naropa Institute’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. Ugly Duckling Presse published the first edition of his Selected Writings in 2003 and the second edition in 2005. Other books include Death Race vsop, Expensive Magic, and Stranger In Town. Cedar Sigo’s poems have previously appeared in The Poker, Yolanda Pipeline's Magazine, Shampoo, RealPoetik, Puppy Flowers, Suspect Thoughts, 6x6, and New York Nights, among others.

The Music

Pocket Shelley is our musical guest for the evening. Pocket Shelley is the project of Michael C. Mullen, a San Francisco songwriter who has also played and written for The Size Queens (along with novelist and Fourteen Hills 18.1 contributor Adam Klein), Glasstown and Roman Evening. Taking a page from the works of poet Percy Shelley, Pocket Shelley aims to "weave strange webs of melancholy mirth" with his music, creating heartfelt, open songs with a mordant streak. We gaurantee you will be thrilled by the literary innuendos peppered throughout the lyrics.

— Diana Rosinus, Staff, Fourteen Hills & Sandra Wassilie, Poetry Editor, Fourteen Hills

Congratulations to Jeannine Hall Gailey (contributor to Fourteen Hills 16.2)! She just won the Silver Medal in the 2011 Florida Publishers Association Book Awards for her second book of poems She Returns to the Floating World (Kitsune Books 2011).

14 H: Your poem published in Fourteen Hills, “Snow White Has an MRI,” and this collection assert your ability to put the traditional fairy tale into modern contexts. In She Returns to the Floating World, one of your threads is relationships between the female and the male, particularly the wife – husband and the older sister – younger brother. I am curious as to why the brother is never given a voice as the husband is; and also why the husband is not imbued with either “dragon,” “moon,” or animal forms as is the brother. Is the husband so unchanging?

JHG: I am a lover of organization strategies – I like taking apart my friends’ and my own manuscripts and trying out different layouts for fun. This book was in process for so long that it went through several different organization schemes. Six or seven years ago, it was just in two sections, one section about childhood and family, and the second focusing on the more romantic folk tales-oriented poems. As I kept writing the book, and kept shuffling it around, the political notes in the book – particularly around nuclear issues – started creeping in, and the book kind of expanded beyond what I originally expected it to be. I actually started writing a new book about the nuclear issues and my childhood in Oak Ridge, Tennessee as I was finishing up this manuscript.

 Jeannine Hall Gailey lives and works in Seattle. She has also received the 2007 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize. For more information about her poetry, accomplishments, and activities, visit her blog.

Sandra Wasilie, Poetry Editor, Fourteen Hills

   On the evening of November 2^nd, over a hundred people poured into Brick and Mortar Music Hall in the Mission District of San Francisco to see Keely Hyslop read from her 2011 Michael Rubin Book Award-winning book, Things I Say to Pirates on Nights When I Miss You. The venue had a rustic setting to it, with a full bar of drink specials and premium beer on tap, gothic chandeliers, a raised stage, and low lighting. The outside of Brick and Mortar was fitting, placed under a bridge (US 101) like a pirates’ cove.

   Keely was greeted by a thunderous applause, wearing an appropriate skull and cross bones t-shirt, notebook in hand. The poems that she read for the night were as followed: “Dear Anne Bonny, This Isn’t a Love Letter,” “What It Is Like To Be a Woman Pirate,” “Dear Anne Bonny, I Read About Your Father,” “Mystery Girl,” “My Choices” (performed with Ariel Fintushel), “Dear Anne Bonny, All The Things I Wish For…,” “A Small Madness,” and “Anne Bonny Makes a Daredevil Escape Out of the History Books.” Keely brought laughter, tragedy, and theatre charm, making for a perfect evening for pirates, eye-patches, and secret letters stuffed into bottles.

Good news for those of you that couldn't make it to our excellent Michael Rubin Book Award release party for Keely Hyslop's Things I Say to Pirates On Nights When I Miss You. There are a few more chances to catch Keely reading (and selling) her new book. See below for event details.

Pirates, Gangsters, and Jackknife at the Li Po Lounge - TONIGHT @ 7pm!

The Not Quite Thanksgiving Reading at Press: Works on Paper - This Friday @ 7pm!

 

On Friday, November 18th at Press: Works on Paper at 3492 22nd Street, San Francisco, CA 94110 in the Mission, Keely will be performing with Diana Salier, Patrick Duggan, and Adam Moskowitz. "This is going to be a beautiful, funny, very human reading," says Keely. Another reason to come to The Not Quite Thanksgiving Reading is Press: Works on Paper itself. If you're a paper or stationary nerd, or just love a place that uses rolled up scrolls stacked atop one another as a decorative accent, you'll love this space!

 

Diana Salier is the author of the hilarious and heartbreaking, Wikipedia Says It Will Pass, a poetry chapbook that is essentially about getting over a break-up in the age of the internet when your former beloved's cyber-echo is on every mutual friend's Facebook wall, every Twitter stream, and every abandoned chat-room. It's a strange time to be alive and unlucky in love and Diana Salier's book addresses that head on.

 

Patrick Duggan was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. You can read some of his poems by visiting Shampoo Poetry.

Adam Moskowitz says this about himself: "Someone once asked Adam Moskowitz what his "genre" was. Before he could respond an eavesdropper butted in and said, 'POETRY' which felt like peer pressure to Adam. But later that night Adam thought that maybe the guy just thought his paragraphs in his prose were poetic, which maybe was a compliment. Adam hopes so. Adam teaches middle school students in the East Bay."

Saturday Night Special: "Overfed" - An East Bay Open Mic - Saturday November 26 @ 7pm!

Keely Hyslop will be the featured reader for this special Thankgiving edition of Saturday Night Special. This event is co-hosted by Fourteen Hills' former Editor-in-Chief Hollie Hardy. Check out the event details here! You can also read more about Saturday Night Special here!