We are excited to have Mary Gaitskill judging fiction submissions and Mary Jo Bang judging poetry.

Contest winners in the categories of fiction and poetry will have their work published in Fence, as well as the participating literary journals in Canada, Lithuania and Kenya. Additionally, they will have the choice of attending (airfare, tuition, and housing included) any of the SLS-2010 programs – in Montreal, Quebec (June 13 – 27); Vilnius, Lithuania (August 1 – 14); or Nairobi-Lamu, Kenya (December).

Second-place winners will receive a full tuition waiver for the program of their choice, and third-place winners will receive a 50% tuition discount.

A number of select contest participants, based on the overall strength of their work, will be offered tuition scholarships, as well, applicable to the SLS-2010 programs.

Contest Deadline: February 28, 2010.

Click here for guidelines & to submit.

Fence is looking for a new poetry editor to join its current three editors (Katy Lederer, Charles Valle, Max Winter), who all report to editor Rebecca Wolff. Responsibilities include: Vetting approximately 500 submissions per year through an electronic submissions manager; participating in group editorial meetings (online and/or in person); sporadic soliciting; correspondence with accepted poets and with Fence management. This position is unpaid. A two-year commitment is required. Interested parties should send a six-page writing sample, resume, and letter of interest to associate editor Colie Collen at: iwannabeyourpoetryeditor@gmail.com. Women and persons of color are strongly encouraged to apply.

& >>> Our new issue is up online! With work from Catherine Wagner, Philip Jenks, Gillian Conoley, Alice Notley, Lara Glenum, Rilke, Noah Eli Gordon & MORE. Order a subscription here, or single issue here.

& >>> Brandon Downing’s Lake Antiquity received a starred review from Publishers Weekly:

Lake Antquity Brandon Downing. Fence (UPNE, dist), $40 (189p) ISBN 978-1-934200-27-8

In this heavily illustrated collection of hyperkinetic text and image collages, Downing—poet, visual and video artist—presents a wild array of unexpected juxtapositions. Found text is cut and pasted atop images culled from flea market crates of various paper ephemera, and these pages are brimming with chance-operational meditations on innocence, experience, and empire; readers will be left stunned by the “highly colored evening scene,” for example. With hallucinatory intensity, Downing depicts an America under miraculous spell: “If you could see a picture of what has happened in the last thousand years in the United States, you would probably be surprised” are among the words superimposed on a print of urns, kettles, trunks, and saddles. This is an America obsessed with illusion—with taxidermy, film, and theme parks—and always lusting after the next frontier. While impossible to summarize in words—the poems at times feel secondary to the images—Downing’s collages create a bizarre and incredible universe.

Order Lake Antiquity (at a discounted rate) here.

& >>> Douglas Kearney (author of NPS winner The Black Automaton) on the radio: the Moe Green Poetry Discussion, w/ Rafael F J Alvarado & Brett Candance

& >>> An interview with Laura Sims, author of Stranger, here at Coldfront. New reviews of Stranger here and here.

& >>> Our Fence Modern Poets Series contest is open through the month of February. Past winners include Prageeta Sharma, Geraldine Kim, Christopher Janke, James Shea, Macgregor Card, and Nick Demske. The winning manuscript will be published by Fence Books in 2011. Guidelines and entry forms are here.

the irrepressible Rebecca Wolff

the undeniable Douglas Kearney

the unassailable Macgregor Card

the irrubrical Catherine Wagner

and the unflagging Brandon Downing

Nick Demske–important as a winter weather advisory.

Happy Monday.

and so does our friend Aaron Sinift, who’s making this (in honor of that):

Visit 5yearplan.org to find out more about this super-inspiring project, and how you can help make it a reality.

“5 Year Plan is love in action.”