Best of the Web Announcement: It's me y'all!

Dzanc just announced their call for nominations for next year's Best of the Web, and also that I will be the guest editor. Whoa. I am excited like crazy and honored like sane. The yearly anthology is important as a roundup of what's happening in literature, and since I think that the most consistently innovative stuff is happening online, then naturally the Best of the Web is a leading point in these trends. I think BotW also used to be a key player in making online literature "legitimate," but that battle is over and won, as Matt Bell made clear in his introduction to the 2010 edition. There is cheering in the cloud. Here is the announcement in full:

Dzanc Books' Best of the Web series is a yearly anthology compiling the best fiction, poetry, and non-fiction published in online literary journals. Previous editions have been guest-edited by Steve Almond, Lee K. Abbott, and Kathy Fish, and have published award-winning writers such as Chris Bachelder, Robert Olen Butler, Dan Chaon, Kim Chinquee, Elizabeth Crane, Brian Evenson, Amelia Gray, Stephen Graham Jones, Ander Monson, Christine Schutt, Terese Svoboda, and Kevin Wilson, as well as many of today's most exciting emerging fiction writers, poets, and essayists.

I'm happy to announce that this year's guest editor will be Adam Robinson, the founding editor of Publishing Genius, a small press based in Baltimore, and the author of two books of poetry, including Adam Robison and Other Poems.

There are many reasons we asked Adam to be a part of Best of the Web this year, but among them is the powerful and unique way he's leveraged the internet in the service of literature. I first became aware of Publishing Genius through its This PDF Chapbook series (now called Chapbook Genius), which published chapbooks in both online formats (Issuu and PDF) as well as printable, DIY print versions. Since then, Publishing Genius has not only expanded its print operations to include full-length books, but it has also added a daily online magazine called Everyday Genius—which last year had several pieces selected for Best of the Web 2010—as well as IsReads, an innovative outdoor magazine. Publishing Genius is a true force in the online literary world, and one of the finest examples of how the internet might be used to reach readers, writers, and other members of our community.

Of course, that's just his work as an editor and publisher, and doesn't even begin to cover his own writing, or his blogging, or his passionate and heartfelt promotion of the work of others through book reviews, interviews, and live events. We couldn't be happier about having such a champion of independent literature working on this year's Best of the Web, and I trust his unique eye for quality and innovation will help provide the core of another excellent volume.

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As in past years, Best of the Web 2011 will include interviews with contributors, a list of the year's other Notable Stories, and a comprehensive index of over 900 online journals considered for inclusion in the anthology, including information on how to submit to each journal. This additional content will offer an added value by providing new opportunities for readers and writers alike.

All editors of online literary journals are also invited to submit their nominations for this year's edition. Please see the guidelines below for further information, as well as the Best of the Web section of our website.

Feel free to pass this call for nominations along to other editors or to post it online at your journal's blog, as our e-mail list—while extensive—is certainly not complete, and there may be journals we have not yet reached who would be interested in submitting nominations and in being a part of our index.

Thank you so much for your time and for all the hard work you do with your own publication and as part of the online literary community. We're very excited to once again read for this yearly celebration of your own efforts and those of your fellow editors and writers. If you have any questions, feel free to email me at mdbell79 at gmail dot com (but note that you might want to send a separate email, rather than reply to this--This thread inevitably gets very, very long, and I'd hate lose your question.)

Sincerely,
Matt Bell
Adam Robinson
Steven Gillis
Dan Wickett
Dzanc Books

HOW TO NOMINATE WORK FOR BEST OF THE WEB 2011

Writing in Best of the Web 2011 will be selected by guest editor Adam Robinson alongside series editor Matt Bell and other in-house Dzanc editors.

Nominations for will be accepted from September 15, 2011 until October 31st, 2011. Each online literary journal is allowed to nominate up to three works they've published, in any combination of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction.

To be eligible, works must have been published exclusively online between November 1st, 2010 and October 31st, 2011.

To nominate your three choices, please use the form on our website, making a separate entry for each nomination and being sure to fill out the required fields completely. Not only will this ensure that we receive your nomination, it will also help us include your journal in our index of online literary magazines that will appear in the 2011 book and here on the website.

Our judging process will be complete by early January, after which we will send e-mail notifications to those editors whose works have been selected for inclusion in this year's anthology, as well as requests for reprint rights from the writers selected.

Thank you very much for your interest in Best of the Web, and for the impressive work you do at your individual journal. It's our deep belief that the internet publishing scene produces much of the most innovative and interesting work being printed anywhere, and it is our great honor to read your nominations in the hopes of spreading the very best of that work to new audiences.


Please click here for for full nomination guidelines and to submit work from your magazine for consideration in Best of the Web 2011.

PRAISE FOR THE BEST OF THE WEB SERIES

"The offerings run the gamut from biographical essays on literary greats to short stories of magical realism and are nearly universally superb. The book lends itself to browsing or reading in short spurts, with its succinct pieces quickly gripping the reader and ending within a few pages... Highly recommended for short story enthusiasts as well as those interested in contemporary literature." —Library Journal 

"The book is heartily significant, featuring work that is sometimes surprising... and sometimes exhilarating—not unlike the Web itself." —Los Angeles Times 

"Such a development could not have come at a better time for online literary publishing." —NewPages  

"The book, which canvasses both fiction and poetry, really cooks... in the melding of the two genres... The Internet is built for this work: short and weird, just what one’s attention span wants when clicking through. And Almond and Leslie wisely pick up on that, making the book worth paging through, as well." —Time Out Chicago

"Though publishing online provides us the opportunity to present fiction free from economic imperative, permitting us, our authors, and our readers to relish in the experiment of expression, one of our great regrets is forgoing the sensation of binding it, printing it, holding the work we proudly select in our hands. Then along comes Dzanc Books, and this gift of a book, Best of the Web, that feels, to us, like the presentation of an award." —Aaron Petrovich and Alex Rose, editors, Hotel St. George Press

"Reading, poetry and prose written for the Web calls for a different kind of writing than one might find on the printed page and this annual volume is a terrific reminder of great possibilities and experiments in style and form... These pieces offer ground for optimism that those hours at the keyboard, mining for gold in the form of artful language and interesting ideas, are worth hours of search." —Elizabeth Taylor, The Chicago Tribune