We’re on the 2013 Stranger Genius Award’s shortlist! Huzzah! (Emphasis on ‘short’).

Since 2003, the Stranger has awarded a $5,000, no-strings-attached grant to five artists in five disciplines. Past winners of the Genius Award in Literature include small press writers and artists Matt Briggs, John Olson, Rebecca Brown, Sherman Alexie, Stacey Levine, Jim Woodring and Ellen Forney. We’re honored to have the chance to join such illustrious company. 

The full list of nominations for the 2013 Genius Awards will be released in the Summer issue of A&P, the Stranger’s arts quarterly, which is due out in June. Winners for the Genius Awards will be announced at an event in September.

Today in Stuff #1

Welcome to the first edition of Today in Stuff, our mostly literary-themed roundup of things that caught our eye.

First off, congrats to a boatload of super-talented Portland writers. The 2012 Oregon Book Awards Finalists were released today, and some of our favorite writers (and people) made the cut. Among the cream of the crop are
- Aidan Koch (in the Pacific Northwest College of Art Graphic Literature Award) for her beautiful The Whale (Gaze Books);
- Matthew Stadler (in the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction) for Chloe Jarren’s La Cucaracha (Publication Studios) [and yes, I am aware that his ‘website’ is a sorta overwhelming internet text experiment essentially saying that, no, Matthew Stadler is not on the internet; you should go there anyway]
- Emily Kendall Frey (in the Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry) for The Grief Performance (Cleveland State University Press)
- Carl Adamshick (in the Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry) for Curses and Wishes (Louisiana State University Press) [Carl Adamshick also runs the excellent Tavern Books]
- Lidia Yuknavitch (in the Sarah Winnemucca Award for Creative Nonfiction) for The Chronology of Water (Hawthorne Books)
- Sarahlee Lawrence (in the Sarah Winnemucca Award for Creative Nonfiction) for River House (Tin House)

There are plenty of other great finalists; check them all out here.

A little bit of stop-motion video love for you as well, to soothe the passing of a Monday. Try not to think about much work this took.  (Via GalleyCat and Goodreads)