The Winter 2009-2010 issue will be out in January. In the meantime, there is a nice profile of Whistling Shade on the Reading Minnesota blog:

http://www.readingminnesota.blogspot.com/

Raise a pint for the Tinker's Dam!

We had a wonderful send-off for Daniel Gabriel's collection of pub stories, Tales from The Tinker's Dam, at (where else) Kieran's Irish pub. Dan also did an interesting interview about the book for MPR: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/07/11/gabriel/

Book release

We had a nice book release last Friday for Jarda Cervenka and Norita Dittberner-Jax. Roughly 100 people came to Intermedia Arts to hear Norita read from her new book of poetry, The Watch, and Jarda read from his new collection of stories, Fausto's Afternoon. Both are published by Whistling Shade Press - for purchase info see www.whistlingshade.com/purchase.html.

Something to post about

Hey, all. I finally remembered we have a blog here. Thought you might be interested in what a local blowhard was up to this Memorial Day. Garrison Keillor doesn't like motorcycles, or implies motorcyclists are patriotic in an improper way, and that making them look at paintings will save the country. Or something. He's just a grumpy old git, apparently.

Spring issue hits the streets

The spring 2008 Whistling Shade is now in stock at most of the usual locations. Thanks to all who showed up for our issue release at Merlins Rest! I think the photo below by Kris Johnson captures the true spirit of an issue release.

Spring issue release April 19

Our spring issue should be arriving at my door any day now. This number has a little bit of everything—a ghost story, an essay of Goethe, Jane Austen's letters about the art of novel writing, poems about drunk parents and burning bodies, a little sci-fi, a little irony, two Graces (Metalious and Flandrau) and a Shady Dealings on the new MN poet laureate.

This three ring circus will have its premier at our issue release Saturday, April 19 at Merlin's Rest, a pub in South Mpls (3601 E. Lake St). 7pm. Come on down and raise a glass with us!
- Joel Van Valin

Submissions numbers

For the statistically-minded, here are a few hard numbers from Whistling Shade's submissions queue.

The last time our poetry editors met, I did an informal count of the submissions received and accepted. We accepted 5 poems out of 35 poets submitting. So, 1 in 7 odds are still pretty good. I don't have hard numbers for fiction, but the odds are more like 1 in 20. We get about an even volume of poetry vs. fiction submissions, but remember we publish 7 or 8 poems per issue, versus 3 or 4 stories.

Of course (as publishers are fond of saying) if your story or poem is a masterpiece, the odds of it being selected are nearing 100%.