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Notes from the Edge:
An Introduction of Sorts in Seven Parts & Hope

Lidia Yuknavitch & Lance Olsen

the idea : event horizon

Lance & Lidia lamenting the consumer & market-driven state of fiction over scotch several years ago musing about why there aren’t more event horizons for innovative fiction authors more gatherings more collective conversations. Wishing they’d had those things themselves when coming up. Talking about other times other places in history when writing & writers chose to seize a moment open a zone for themselves.

the desire : possibility space

Creating an interstice where innovative prose cultural questions aesthetic issues can find amplification. Providing writers ordinarily positioned at the outer limits of their literary communities, MFA programs, families, & friends the chance to become tribal. Inventing a possibility space for possibility spaces.

the writer’s edge

Almost no budget sure but lots of heart faith dreams waiting in fingertips. What if we didn’t wait for it to happen? What if we created it ourselves? & so: sponsored by FC2 & hosted by Portland State University the first annual Writer’s Edge conference—a series of workshops, panels, readings, multimedia displays, & conversations about innovative writing—held 28-30 July 2006 in downtown Portland, Oregon. Participants from around the country & as far away as Australia attending.

the workshops

At the core a set of five workshops. R. M. Berry: “What Is Writing?”: how is the principle mark of radically innovative writing its posing the question of its own nature & existence? Michael Martone: “Nixon Remix”: how can & why should we appropriate & manipulate history? Lance Olsen: “Fiction as Possibility Space”: what are the metaphors most creative-writing workshops use to envision fiction & how can we begin to think beyond them? Steinberg: “Writing Obsession, Writing As If Obsessed”: what are the literary structures of obsession? Lidia Yuknavitch: “Five Easy Pieces: How to Form, Deform, & Reform Narrative Using the Fictional Fragment”: what happens if we turn away from the idea that narrative form must be unified in traditional ways?

the contest

Editor of Portland Review Jeff Brewer approaching Lidia & Lance with the idea of a contest whereby faculty would nominate a fiction by a participant from each workshop, L&L would choose one that best exemplified the spirit of The Writer’s Edge, & JB would publish it in PR.

the emblematic

The pure plain pleasure before the difficulties of choosing. Learning again how through every example of itself innovative prose reveals an instinct to look for opportunities, seek out the dangerous places. How its writers are precisely those wired to want to challenge & be challenged. Kris Saknussemm’s unnerving “You Saw Me Standing Alone”: its haunted, crisp surreality, its slipstream oddness, its flash-fiction pacing & punch. Joel Weinbrot’s startling “Invoice”: its narrative dislocations, its undercurrent of violence, its continually surprising use of language. Our deep thanks to them for bringing these fictions into the world. Our deep thanks to the other nominees for their talent & energy & aesthetic audacity: Jeff Hansen, Sara Jaffe, Alyssa Perkins, Rob Stephenson. Our undying gratitude to Jeff Brewer for his vision & spark & commitment.

all tomorrow’s parties

Founded in 1974, FC2: one of America ’ s best-known ongoing literary experiments & progressive art communities. Wanting writers to exist at that brink where they begin to feel maybe they’re only pretending to be writers where they don’t know what they’re doing or why where it’s all risk-taking asking discovery. The architect Frank Gehry once reminding us that innovative art always-already poses the question: How does democracy express itself? This instant being how. The first rattle & hum of all tomorrow’s parties.