fiction

MU Undergraduate Runners Up

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Yesterday, we introduced our winning writer, Kirstin Smith.

We also have some talented runners up to acknowledge:

  • Sabrina Brons for her story, “Gossip”
  • Sabrina Heffern for her story, “On the Wings of Her Fledglings”
  • Kelly Schoessling for her story, “Is it Distance or Space?”

They have also been invited to share their submissions at our reading event at the George Caleb Bingham Gallery, located in the Fine Arts Building on the MU Campus on Tuesday, February 27th at 5:00 p.m.

Stick around after to celebrate at SRLBX x THERETHERENOW (206 Hitt St.) and enjoy snacks, refreshments, and art.

Winner of the MU Undergraduate Juried Writing Competition

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We are proud to announce that Kirstin Smith is the winner of the 2018 MU Undergraduate Juried Writing competition!

Our judges, Jordi Alonso and Anna Wehrwein, chose Kirstin’s intense work of flash fiction, “Milk Carton Faces.”

Kirstin Smith is a sophomore at the University of Missouri, majoring in Biology and minoring in Anthropology. Her writing career began at a young age with successes such as being published in the Young Authors chronicle with many other aspiring writers as a fifth grader. From there, she devoted many hours to writing hundreds of fan stories of the DC universe, Batman specifically, and amassed nearly 500 works by her junior year of high school. She continues writing in her free time to cope with depression and aims to one day help others with her words.

You can read “Milk Carton Faces” any time at the George Caleb Bingham Gallery or SRLBX x THERETHERENOW.

Better yet, you can hear Kirstin read her work at our reading event at the George Caleb Bingham Gallery, located in the Fine Arts Building on the MU Campus on Tuesday, February 27th at 5:00 p.m.

After the reading, we’ll carry on celebrating with an after party at SRLBX x THERETHERENOW (207 Hitt St.) Stop by for refreshments and art!

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Pre-Order the LED Anthology

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We’re eagerly awaiting a proof of the paperback LED Anthology, which means it’s time for you to place an order. If you pre-order the anthology, we’ll ship your copy with some sweet letterpress ephemera, hot off the press. Don’t wait though, once we approve the proof and our books ship, any purchase will just be a regular ol’ order (still a pretty swell deal at only $6.00).

You’re probably wondering where you can place your order. Allow us to introduce our new website! Partial Press is the umbrella organization behind LED (you may have noticed it on our about page) and now that LED is moving on to this exciting new phase, we decided it was time to launch Partial Press and begin rolling out other exciting publishing projects. Visit the Catalog Page to ore-order the LED Anthology and be sure to check out our other publications for sale.

LED news will continue to be posted here with our archive, but you’ll want to check Partial Press for other announcements and opportunities in the realm of experimental and small press publishing. The Partial Press Facebook page (formerly our LED page) will continue to feature LED content. You can also follow Partial Press on Tumblr if you’re into that.

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Here’s a mock-up we’ve made in the meantime. Designing a cover that spoke to the nature of the LED display and still took advantage of the codex form was a fun challenge. We can’t wait to feel it in our hands!

“The Dragon Imelda” at Genesis Art Supply

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Earlier today we installed our December publication, The Dragon Imelda, by Cecilia Pinto at Genesis Art Supply. (Then we spent a fair amount of time walking around and look at art supplies!)

Don’t worry if you’re not an artist, Cecilia’s short story is well worth the trip, and it will be up in the front window for the next 3 weeks!

Please enjoy these photos from earlier this evening.

December Installation at Genesis Art Supply

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At long last we can announce that we will wrap the year up at Genesis Art Supply!

For those of you who aren’t familiar, Genesis Art Supply is a local business now located on Elston, just West of Damen. They’re also the brick and mortar store behind artsupply.com. They’re the place to go for airbrush supplies especially, but they have a nice selection for all sorts of art-making.

Beginning Sunday, Cecilia Pinto’s Piece, The Dragon Imelda, will be up for about 3 weeks. You’ll have plenty of time to catch it as you do your holiday shopping for the artists in your life.

Genesis Art Supply is located at 2525 N Elston Ave, Chicago, IL 60647.
Click here for a map.

Their hours are as follows:
Monday-Friday 9:00-8:00Saturday 9:00-7:00
Sunday 10:00-6:00

December’s Writer

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We are pleased to announce that our December writer is Cecilia Pinto, who will be sharing her prose piece, The Dragon Imelda. We will be installing her work this weekend. We will announce the location on our site very soon, so make sure to check back.

In the meantime, congratulations to Cecilia!

Cecilia Pinto is a writer working in various genres and have published fiction, poetry and non-fiction. She is a graduate of the writing program at the School of the Art Institute and teaches writing at the Chicago High School for the Arts.

Our Installation Process

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Our first installation went as smoothly as we could have hoped, and we even managed to snap a few photos of the process. We devised a portable frame for the LED display so we could take advantage of the storefront’s elevated window and avoid mounting anything in the ceiling. Our friends at Knee Deep Vintage were very accommodating, and the whole process took less than two hours.

Almost all of that time was programming Kanga’s piece, Aubrey Graham, into the display. We did this with a remote control, one letter at a time! Though slow, the process is fitting for Literature Emitting Diodes. The project investigates the impact of constraints on literature, for writers, readers, and publishers alike. Just as the writers are limited to 500 words, and the readers are constrained to the scrolling speed of the display, so are we publishers held to the limitations of the process.

Part of our fascination with limitations in art and literature is with their relative nature. Surely a remote controller is slower than a computer keyboard, but what about other methods still used by small presses? The slow pace and disorienting experience of only seeing a few characters at a time reminded us of setting metal type for letterpress printing. With so many contrasts between these two publishing media, their common ground as a generative constraint is one of the reasons we are so excited to see this project progress!

“Aubrey Graham” by Surabhi Kanga

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We are thrilled to share some documentation of our inaugural publication, Aubrey Graham by Surabhi Kanga.

We first photographed our LED display as soon as the text was programmed.  Knee Deep Vintage was still bustling with Friday afternoon shoppers and Literature Emitting Diodes was just one among many elements in the storefront. Competing and collaborating with graffiti, posters, reflections and more, LED calls attention to the rich layers of language that inhabit the urban environment.

At dusk, the context changes. The LEDs glow brighter and the writing reads differently though, of course, the text has not changed. The writing scrolls on by, as it will do thousands of times before the end of July, unaware of the constant changes around it. Every reader will have a different experience, as we do each time we return to photograph the installation.

We hope our readers find this as exciting as we do, and we would be happy to share photos and videos taken by our readers as they experience the piece in their own respective ways.