Thirty First Bird Review

Check out our awesome new store at Cafe Press 31st Bird Merchandis

Weare selling cool T-shirts, mugs, beer steins (of course), post-cards,greeting cards, posters, prints, tiles, tote-bags and briefcases. Mostproducts have our snazy mystical bird logo, and some select productscontain our "Guide to Seventeenth Century English Heretics." That wayyou will always be prepared should you encounter an "Adamite, Libertineor Iesuit." (Check under the Collection Plate tab if you are curious asto what this looks like). Some wonderous products actually have bothour logo and our handy English Civil War era guide. Everythingis well made and reasonably priced, and all purchases will directlyhelp in the printing of our inaugural issue. 

Also, pick up a copy of my book "On Daring to Eat the Pear: Heretical Narratives" at Lulu.com, and stop by Carnegie-Mellon University's Regina Miller Gallery for the Pittsburgh Small Press Festival, where I will be selling copies of my book (and giving away free stuff to! - though the free stuff will be "Eh.") and speaking on a panel with other great Pittsburgh area editors.

June 18-19 RGM Gallery at CMU

I have been extremely happy about the rate at which the site has grown. Wehave published almost twenty authors so far, with several from the Pittsburgh area, but even more from throughout the United States, and as far as Mexico, Belgium, and Australia.I have been really satisfied with the evolution of the journal as a distinctly Pittsburgh institution (I can use that word, right?) with a growing U.S. and international component. The quality of writers has been incredible to me, with established authors from Edgar Aviles, published in an anthology of the best Mexican short story writers, to Hal Sirowitz, the former Poet Laureate of Queens, New York; as well as several current MFA students who are just rising to prominence now. The submissions I have been sent so far have been exemplary in terms of embodying what it is that I am trying to do: to create a journal that looks at religion, problems and all, and tries to evoke what it is that humans find so crucial in the search for the transcendent. We receive dozens of hits each day (but let's try and make it hundreds - no thousands!) from throughout the U.S.and the world, with readers on every single continent. Please send submissionsin, and encourage your friends who are writers to contribute as well. We especially need more submissions in stories, drama, criticism and reviews, theory, and theology. I want this to be a gathering of the unexpected, where seminary students try their hand at fiction and poetry, and where creative writing MFAs put down their theological thoughts, where literary theorists do a bit of philosophy, and philosophy PhD's do literary theory. I will also be in attendance at the Pittsburgh Small Press Festival, and I hope that this further promotes this project in the public eye. There are a number of (I hope) great ideas that I would like to implement, to publish an even more diverse range of concepts and voices. If you are in the area (or can get to the area) I am hoping to plan some sort of literary reading mid-summer, so get the word out. Maybe a little bit of fundraising, some donations, some grant money, and we can have a top notch first edition print journal at the end of the year, a reading and release party to match the quality of our work, and maybe, just maybe, the possibility of being able to pay authors (just a little bit) more then in copies. Keep me updated on how you think I am doing.

-ES

Print submissions are now officially open! We will be taking your writing from today (June 1st) till October 1st, and remember, the print theme is "Creation." All submissions will be considered for both online and print, with the possibility of appearing in both. We have some great new content on the website, including our June Canonical section (and canonical and "Old, but not Canonical" sections will be in the print journal as well). If you are new to the site, welcome! And please drop me a line. 

The site seems to be coming along nicely, we are finally at the point where each link links to something, even if said pages till have minimal work on them. Also, my first two books of poetry are up at my store at Lulu.com, and I have descriptions of both of them on the web store, a link to Lulu will be up shortly. Site traffic has increased considerably, we are now listed on several creative writing websites, and the first few submissions have started to come in. We also have a new micro-fiction section for the online journal only, which is described on the front page of the site, and flyers are slowly going up through Pittsburgh. If anyone is interested in helping me to generate interest in other places, I can send you a flyer to xerox and post around whatever places you live. And remember to join the site, and to sign the guestbook,

-Ed S.

One last thought, I am thinking of adding a recipe section - bare with me - using the logic that nobody ever discards something with a recipe in it. First one: Eucharistic sangria? (Is that too terrible? Are constant asides becoming trying?)

Just a quick update; we now have a Facebook group, which I am hoping will direct a lot of people to the site, and hopefully generate some interest. I also posted on a couple other Pittsburgh literary group's walls, though Facebook then banned me from doing so (since I was distributing spam apparently...) Please let any creative writer types know about this new, fledgling, wailing, crying infant of a journal, and encourage them to submit. And people who like reading, 'cus there ain't no journal with no readers.... and make people up and have them join the facebook group.....

I have also added a new section for author bio's called, nauseatingly enough, "Hagiography." I am not sure if my religious themed titles for the pages are clever of annoying.... Let me know.... It's also a bit presumptuous I suppose, since the only writer is me, and I only have two things posted, but with any luck I will be able to put some more up there soon.

I have designed a relatively prosaic poster that for what it lacks in oomph hopefully makes up for in easy to digest information. I am hoping to post it up around Pittsburgh in the places where the ragged people go this weekend. If anyone would like me to email them the document, and would be saintly enough to post it up in your own town / city / village / reservation / alternative farming community, let me know.

Currently I am considering having only the print addition (there I go being presumptuous again) be themed, and letting the website be a little more anarchistic. Once again, let me know.

I would like some sort of fundraiser while this is being put together, there are enough abandoned churches in Pittsburgh that are bars or barbeque joints that we should be able to have some kind of unity with the central purpose of the journal itself. But we get ahead of ourselves....

Drop a line if you are new to the site (so far, everybody is new to the site.)

Ed S.

so, per the earlier post, I have decided on Thirty First Bird Review, sounds better, and each reader and writer can think of themselves as that extra bird traveling on the conference of birds. To inaugurate the new state of affairs, I poneyed up and actually paid for the real domain name of thirtyfirstbird.com. I hope that this will help to show the real urge I have to make a legitimate, and interesting literary and creative journal. More to follow....

As you can probably tell, I have been fooling around with the name for the journal, variously going between Thirty Bird, Thirtieth Bird, and Thirty First Bird Review. Currently I am leaning towards the last name, I think it has the best ring to it. Soon we will be ready to fully ask for submissions, and I plan on putting up flyers around Pittsburgh, though with the colleges out for the summer it might be hard.