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CLMP Member Responses to COVID-19

As this pandemic continues to impact presses, magazines, writers, bookstores, and other members of the writing world, we are especially grateful for our community. We have put together—and will continue updating—the following list of resources being offered by CLMP members.

Thanks to all of these members for the work they are doing to address this crisis, and to everyone in our larger community for supporting each other so generously during this time.

Read our roundup of resources and funding opportunities available to publishers and other members of the literary community.

Community Resources

 

Virtual Book Clubs

  • Decameron: Words Without Borders is facilitating a virtual Decameron, gathering digitally around a different story every Friday for ten weeks. The editors will select a piece from their archive and send it to readers via email.
  • Self-Isolation Book Club: Seven Stories Press has organized this virtual book club, which will discuss around one of the press’s titles. The club’s book choice will be temporarily available as a free ebook, and ten percent of proceeds spent on the press’s website go to the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (BINC).
  • Restless Books’s Virtual Book Club: Restless Books is launching a new virtual book club in April, discussing Mary Shelley’s iconic novel Frankenstein.
  • #TolstoyTogether: With Yiyun Li, A Public Space is hosting a virtual book club around Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, in which people around the world are reading twelve to fifteen pages of the book a day and sharing their thoughts on Twitter.

 

Virtual Events

  • Away Message: A Virtual Reading Series: This virtual event is hosted by Apogee Journal’s poetry co-editor, Zefyr Lisowski. The first reading, held on March 27, featured Kay Ulanday Barrett, Cyree Jarelle Johnson, moira j., and Jesse Rice-Evans. Events are live streamed on YouTube and edited closed captions are provided shortly after. The series highlights queer/disabled writers who have lost income due to COVID-19.
  • Kenyon Review Reading Series: Many of the events scheduled for this spring’s Kenyon Review Reading Series events are now virtual, including readings with Marcelo Hernandez Castillo and Molly McCully Brown.
  • Montez Press Radio: Montez Press Radio, an offshoot of Montez Press, will be offering remote broadcasts online for the month of April to provide a way for the literary community to continue sharing experiences together during this time.
  • Notable Online: The Rumpus has begun a regular column—every Sunday morning—highlighting the many virtual literary events happening each week.
  • Remote Reading & Storytime Series: To support readers of all ages, Seven Stories Press has begun two virtual series: an evening reading series for adult readers and a morning storytime series for children.
  • The Social Distance Reading Series: Organized by The Vermont School and Green Mountains Review, this virtual reading series offers a platform to poets launching new collections of poems. Readings are held on Wednesdays and Sundays.
  • Zoom-Based Benefit: Four Way Books will be hosting a Zoom-based benefit to take the place of their annual benefit, which was cancelled due to the coronavirus. This virtual event will feature readings and discussions by some of the press’s authors, and attendees will pay a small fee to join and will receive copies of the readers’ new books.

 


Curated Content

  • The Art of Distance: For the duration of the pandemic, The Paris Review will be emailing an additional newsletter titled “The Art of Distance,” featuring pieces “that feel particularly helpful or resonant for this challenging moment,” including archival pieces, Daily essays about the crisis, and the efforts of peer organizations supporting the literary community.
  • Digital Care Package: Deep Vellum has created “digital care packages” that can be given as gifts. These packages, containing four e-books each and priced at $20, have different themes, including “The Traveler,” which features novels “bound up in travel to new places: the theory behind leaving home, the places one might go, and the reasons why. Through heartache and adventure, these characters explore memory, place, and discovery.”
  • Letter to America: Terrain.org is featuring COVID-19– and pandemic-related pieces in their Letter to America series, and will facilitate some online readings and events, with Trinity University Press, around the Earth Day launch of their book Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy. Terrain.org also recently published an essay by John T. Price—titled “Pizza Night on Planet Fitness”—on love, sweat, and community during the coronavirus.
  • Music for a Time of Crisis: This review by music critic Elizabeth Lyon in The Hudson Review discusses how concerts are being livestreamed during the pandemic. Many of the performances reviewed are still available to watch online.
  • Remote Learning about the U.S. Census: The Georgia Review is making the digital copy of their Spring 2020 issue free to educators who are reconceptualizing their courses for remote learning. This issue is themed around the U.S. census and “presents authors’ and artists’ explorations in various genres of what it means to attempt representation of the diverse communities that comprise the United States.”
  • What Rough Beast: Indolent Books is posting poems related to the COVID-19 crisis in their daily poem feature, What Rough Beast.
  • Voices from the Pandemic: Words Without Borders, which Forbes named one of the ten best resources for “quality edutainment” during the pandemic, is commissioning new work from contributors around the world to “offer humanistic perspectives on and literary responses to the COVID-19 crisis.”

 

Calls for Submissions

  • Coffee House Writers Project: Inspired by the WPA arts initiatives of the 1930s, the Coffee House Writers Project (CHWP) will commission original, short, digital-only works from those in the literary community whose ability to support themselves has been affected by the COVID-19 crisis. Contributors will receive $500.
  • Empower a Poet: Lucky Jefferson is collecting quotes, stories, and recordings for their Empower A Poet campaign/virtual event for National Poetry Month; the project is a way for writers to share advice and encouraging words during this time.
  • Letter to America: Terrain.org is actively seeking COVID-19– and pandemic-related submissions for their Letter to America series.
  • Postcard to a Stranger: Off Assignment is seeking submissions to a new series called Postcard to a Stranger in response to the COVID-19 pandemic; the series will be rolling out on Instagram in the coming weeks.
  • What Rough Beast: Indolent Books is soliciting poem submissions related to the COVID-19 crisis in their daily poem feature, What Rough Beast.