There's an article in this week's Village Voice that's been causing quite a stir in the literary community; entitled "I Will Not Read Your F-cking Script" and penned by Josh Olson (Oscar-nominated adapter of A History of Violence), it essentially argues that it's unfair to ask a professional writer to review your unpublished manuscript for free, or at least no more fair than asking a doctor to set a broken bone for free, or an interior decorator to redo your living room as long as he's over for dinner anyway. And while I couldn't agree more with this sentiment -- after all, a successful writer is way too busy actually writing their own stuff to have time for anyone else -- I did want to remind everyone that, as an arts administrator, I'm in a very different position; it's part of my job, in fact, to read unsolicited manuscripts, and the truth is that I love finding that occasional gem of an unpublished story that no else has discovered yet. And as a matter of fact, CCLaP Publishing is seeking its next project as we speak; so if you have a mid-length story (15,000 to 40,000 words) that you think fits the center's sensibilities (and see CCLaP's submission policy for more on what exactly this means), I highly encourage you to send it along to cclapcenter [at] gmail.com. No need for an agent if you don't have one, although of course agents are welcome here too.

Don't forget, by the way, that the reason CCLaP is seeking another unpublished manuscript right now is because we're just three days away from releasing the center's latest book, the youth/war novella Too Young to Fall Asleep by local college student Sally Weigel (who actually wrote the first draft of this story when she was still in high school, believe it or not). CCLaP's army of volunteer proofreaders have been hard at work on it this week, and believe it or not have caught over 50 errors that Sally and I both missed, so needless to say that I'm grateful for all their help. I do hope you'll have a chance to stop by here again on Monday for the official release of the book, which don't forget you will have a chance to download for free if you want; like all of CCLaP's books, it is being released under a "pay what you want" system, with "nothing" being one of the perfectly valid payment options.