skip to main | skip to sidebar

Fried Chicken and Coffee

"It's keeping me mean."

a blogazine of rural literature, Appalachian literature, and off-on commentary, reviews, rants

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

More Carolyn Chute

Link courtesy of Endless Emendation:

PARSONSFIELD, Me. — The novelist Carolyn Chute doesn’t have a working phone, a fax or a computer. She writes on a washtub-size electric typewriter that was probably state of the art in the ’70s. Ms. Chute (pronounced CHOOT) and her husband, Michael, live in a small compound at the end of an unpaved road in this rural Maine village near the New Hampshire border. There are stacks of old tires in the yard, a rusted bedstead, a pen full of Scottish terriers and an assortment of well-used vehicles. A bumper sticker on Mr. Chute’s pickup reads, “School Takes 13 Years Because That’s How Long It Takes to Break a Child’s Spirit.”
I admire the lifestyle. I don't know if I could do it myself, though. It's one thing to read about it, another entirely to do: what would I do without the computer?

Finding new content and finding time to put it up or write something halfway clever has been difficult lately, as you all have no doubt noticed. I'm hoping to be back on the stick sometime soon.


Posted by Rusty at 12:34 PM
Labels: carolyn chute, time's winged chariot

No comments:

Post a Comment

Newer Post Older Post Home
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Blog Archive

  • December (5)
  • November (5)
  • October (6)
  • September (11)
  • August (9)
  • July (9)
  • June (10)
  • May (8)
  • March (3)
  • January (1)
  • December (1)
  • November (4)
  • October (4)
  • September (11)
  • August (7)

About Fried Chicken and Coffee

My photo
Rusty
View my complete profile

Submission Guidelines

The Skinny:

No word limit/no content guidelines, within the broad categories I've established in my first post to this blogazine. See here if you've forgotten. Anything more than 8000 words would have to be done in serial form, I would think, and be exceptional too. Send me rural, funky, dirty stories about churchgoing women who never sin. I'd like to read that. What about the story I lived, the one where the kid moves away and goes to college and becomes a writer, and until he's thirty, his male relatives hitch their drawers and ask him when he's going to be out of school? Except don't write about writing. I don't care much, since I live it. I would love to see more stories about women, though. Get to the grit, get to the love, show me the scars, and take Harry Crews to heart: "Blood, bone, and nerve, that's fiction. Show me the stuff that cuts to the quick."

In case you're coming here cold, I've been editing other writers for nearly fifteen years now, and for the last six of these I've read hundreds and thousands of stories. Your Bukowski knockoffs are not going to make it, son. Sorry. Nor do nostalgic o-it-was-better-back-then stories stand much of a chance, unless they really, really transcend. If it all sounds good to you, hit me at rusty DOT barnes AT gmail DOT com with FCAC SUBMISSION in the the subject line. I'll be in touch soon.

The Payment:

If I publish your work here, I will send you a book from my personal collection. You get to choose, poetry or fiction. It might be a new book, it might be well-loved, it might have my notes in it. But you'll get a free book.

Stories/Poems/Essays/Interviews

  • "Total Immersion" by Silas House
  • "Upheaval" By Chris Holbrook
  • Chris Offutt Interview
  • George Brosi on Gurney Norman
  • KET Bookclub Interview with Chris Holbrook (video)
  • Lee Smith Interviews (audio)
  • Mary Lee Settle & The Critics, Brian Rosenberg
  • Ron Rash Interview
  • Tom Heffernan on Breece Pancake

Rednecks and Honorary Rednecks and Useful Other Things

  • A Country Boy Can Surmise - Silas House's Blog
  • Appalachian Cultural Project
  • Appalachian Greens
  • Appalachian History
  • Appalachian Studies
  • Appalachian Voices
  • Buffy Holt
  • Chris Holbrook Interview
  • Coal Black Voices
  • Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
  • Dew on the Kudzu
  • Digital Library of Appalachia
  • Donald Ray Pollock
  • Endless Emendation
  • Fixing to Shout
  • Harry Crews
  • Hillbilly Savants
  • James Still
  • Jayne Anne Phillips
  • Jim Goad
  • Lisa Koger
  • Mary Hood
  • Miss White Trash Competition
  • Missin' Appalachia
  • New Southerner
  • Notes From the Holler - Donald Ray Pollock's Blog
  • Robert Morgan
  • Silas House
  • Smokey Mountain Breakdown
  • Squidbillies
  • Wrong Tree Review
Blog Network:
Name:
Fried Chicken and Coffee
Topics:
Appalachian lit, grit lit, rednecks
Join my network
Blog Networks
Add to Technorati Favorites

About Rusty Barnes

  • BookMunch Reviews Breaking it Down
  • Breaking it Down
  • Harry, Giselle, Joyce in In Posse Review
  • If the Tree Falls in Small Spiral Notebook
  • Kelly Spitzer Profiles RB
  • Love & Murder in SmokeLong Quarterly
  • NewPages Reviews Breaking it Down
  • Night Train
  • Rusty on Youtube
  • RustyBarnes.com
  • The Short Review/Breaking it Down
  • Wayne Yang Interviews RB Part I
  • Wayne Yang Interviews RB Part II
  • Wayne Yang Interviews RB Part III

Pennsylvania Info

  • Bradford County
  • Center for Northern Appalachian Studies
  • Pennsylvania Wilds
  • Tioga County
  • Tri-Counties Genealogy and History