Sorry! This weekend the site will be undergoing periodic downtime due to maintenance needs.

Rest assured, we’ll be back as soon as possible better than ever.

-John

Friends, writers, country(wo)men,

It is with great pleasure that we implore you to once again save the night for dublit.

Wednesday, July 23rd
7:05pm - 9:35pm
Make Out Room (3225 22nd St, San Francisco)
$5 at the door (first come first served) or
$5 pre-sale tickets available (guaranteed admission) here
Caveat: Post an audioshort of your own by midnight July 21st and get free admission!

Readers will include the indomitable Alan Black, intractable Mickey Disend, ineffable Rachel Howard, imprimateur Sean Finney, impactful Silvi Alcivar, and Jan Richman!

Eat music, drink snacks, see drinks, taste literature, and rub up with the friendliest, coolest crowd of lit-lovers you’ll find on either side of the Mississippi (Wait, what? That’s right - stick that in your computer and compile it).

P.S. Can’t make it? Listen to Alan, Mickey, Silvi and Rachel now at dublit.com. Try it…You’ll like it…

Vince, one of dublit’s network engineers, snapped this on his non-iPhone and emailed it to me yesterday afternoon from the Portland airport. Then he waited around to spot Chuck and talk to him.

After about 10 minutes and no Chuck, he wondered, “What would Tyler Durden do?” and he beat it out of there, headed straight to a bar, got wasted and picked a fight with a 215 pound Samoan lead singer of a 3 man punk rock band, who eventually threw him out a plate glass window. Luckily he wasn’t cut by the glass, although he says he has a huge bruise on his right ass-cheek. The cops came, saw how skinny he was and didn’t believe the Samoan (whose name was Lenny, or maybe Lonny) when he told them Vince started it, and instead arrested Lenny, even through several witnesses had vouched for him.

Then the cops in a second squad car gave Vince a ride to his hotel. He couldn’t believe it, but he got to drive the the policecar for about half a mile because one of the cops thought it would look funny if they both sat in the back seat while he drove down the main drag past all of the Thursday night college kid hangouts near the hotel. Lucky for them he didn’t just leave them in there, since of course the doors only open from the outside.

When he finally walked into to his hotel (the “W”), there was another fight in progress in the front lobby, and upon seeing the squad car (which hadn’t noticed them and was already driving away) one of the perps dashed out the back door into the woods behind the hotel. He thought about chasing after him like a good Samaritan but then thought better of it and decided to go upstairs and go to bed.

Before going to bed he ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and a glass of milk via room service. It cost $18.45 after a 2 dollar tip.

We are very pleased to continue offering tools designed to assist writers in their efforts to gain and connect with an audience, and to help them to connect to one another.

First, members can now use dublit’s internal messaging system to ask another member for advice, feedback, or to talk about common literary interests. It’s a great way for members to privately discuss stories or anything else that comes to mind. Access your messages via the “inbox” tab from your profile (dubpot) page. Note: Must be logged in for access.

Second, our audio widget now lets you EMBED a dublit audio player on an external website or blog, simply by copying and pasting one line of provided HTML code. This offers a visitor to the external site or blog the capability of streaming the audio file without even leaving the site. Here is an example:

This is a HILARIOUS excerpt from Alan Black’s new novel, Kick the Balls. More info

Stay tuned as we continue to introduce helpful tools that serve writers and the readers that love them.

Oh, and in case you missed the email version, the first issue of the “dublit Dispatch” eNewsletter was published last month. Click here to see if via the web (and register for membership to receive the next one in your email).

”dublit: Meet write hear” becomes “dublit: Met wrote heard…dined, drank, danced.”

Written by Amy Kniss
more party photos here

“I believe it was the coolest, hippest reading I ever had the pleasure to participate in. I plan on attending more dublit events as a fan.” Sincerely, Aimee Phan.*

dublit — a website and community for writers, readers and listeners to “Meet write hear” — debuted Thursday, April 24^th, at Space Gallery in San Francisco. Billed as “Literature for Listening and Libations for You Know What,” the dublit beta-website launch party and reading was a huge success. Well attended by nearly 200 writers, independent publishers, agents, lovers of literature, and technologists alike, the night sky was clear, the readings poignant and toward the end of the evening, the vision was blurry (for some).

The beta-release party featured readings by seven local writers, Space Gallery’s legendary sangria and an eclectic crowd. “Meet write hear” came to fruition, as writers became readers, listeners and friends in a standing room only venue. The stories shared over the course of the night seeded the ground for a community dedicated to cultivating the art of, and connecting to one-another though the power of the written and spoken word.

Fundamental to the dublit concept is storytelling — the artistry of our oral tradition. Listening to stories might sound an archaic entertainment, especially in a culture dominated by endless special effects. dublit accounts for this technocentric environment with this twist: stories are coupled with modern digital technology, formatted as mp3 audio files and distributed via the internet. Writers and listeners connect via dublit’s professional and social networking tools, both virtually (online) and in the real world (readings and events).

The intimate quality of stories — especially stories told by those who penned them — allows listeners to connect with characters and situations on a personal level and the opportunity to expand their own perspectives.

Brian Quinn, Director of Business Operations for dublit, says “Stories come from our human experience and allow us to explore the human condition. Stories not only catalogue our lives, they also expose important questions and experiences, and help us to better understand ourselves and those around us.” dublit creators hope that the act of sharing stories will evoke meaningful thought and conversation. “Ultimately,” says John Yi, Managing Director, “sharing stories promotes a greater, more sympathetic experience and allows us to connect on a meaningful level.”

“This community is writer-focused, writer-founded and relies on interactive writer support,” says Quinn. Writers are drawn to spaces, virtual and physical, that allow them to easily share their work with others and to obtain feedback from informed critics. As a publishing platform dublit provides a place for seasoned and emerging writers to converge and learn from one another — users may even create workshops or groups to get and provide feedback before “going live” with a final recording of their work.

The platform augments the process of traditional publishing and empowers the content discovery process with the social graph. John Yi explains, “dublit allows writers to gain exposure and voice their work in a public, semi-private, or private forum and to connect to one-another in what is a traditionally solitary profession. And readers and listeners can discover work they might never otherwise have enjoyed.”

Yi likens this opportunity to that which is well underway in the music industry, “Just a few years ago, before mp3 players and the internet, it was unheard of for independent musicians to reach a worldwide audience. Similarly, we hope to empower independent publishers and writers to gain a broader audience by leveraging the power and efficiency of modern technology.”

*Aimee Phan, our last reader of the evening, received her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she won a Maytag Fellowship. Her first book, WE SHOULD NEVER MEET, was named a Notable Book by the Kiryama Prize in fiction and a finalist for the 2005 Asian American Literary Awards. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, USA Today and The Oregonian. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the MFA Writing Program and Writing and Literature Program at California College of the Arts.

I’m a writer. That is, I write and I can’t stop, so I feel as if I can call myself a writer.

Writing is lonely sometimes. We wonder if our words will ever evoke meaning, ever inspire a thought that might not otherwise have been sparked, ever land upon a page which will be picked up by someone, somewhere, years from now.

Who’s listening to and reading the stories at dublit? Well, given that we are a brand-spanking new community, you’d expect that maybe our friends and family, or at least a small subset of them are taking note.

Well, here’s a graphical representation of the audience for your stories over the past 3 days. If you can’t count all the dots, that’s over 1100 people in 230 cities in 41 countries. What will this map look like once we’ve become popular (been open to the public more than 1 week?). Only our imaginations can tell us…

Write on.

Click here for full contest rules, deadlines and instructions! Good luck.

Remember - it’s $5 to enter, but free before May 24th. So hurry!

Today I was perusing our analytics (those statistics about how many people are coming to our private beta site), and noticed a big jump last Friday.

A little deductive analysis uncovered a blog posting on dailykos.com which was a response to one of our audioshorts, Steve Almond reading his responses to some of the 800 hateful emails he received after quitting his position at Boston College in protest of the impending commencement speech of Condoleeza Rice.

This blog post linked back to Steve’s audioshort, recorded at the Progressive Reading Series in San Francisco earlier this year, and continued the debate on dailykos, a very popular blog, described by the founder as “the premier political community in the United States, with traffic of about 600,000 daily visits.”

As a result, Steve’s work is getting much deserved attention (whatever your political leaning may be), which is exactly what the doctor ordered. We couldn’t be happier that through the power of the web and streaming audio, Steve’s message (and hence, any story posted to dublit) can reach farther and wider than ever before.

dublit, albeit still technically a secret, is alive and well…

Things have been a little bit quiet for the past few weeks on the surface here, but rest assured that the volume of the din is inversely proportional to the level of activity behind the scenes. Where to begin?

Content Partners and New Family Members

A few months ago, dublit was a virtually unknown entity among local literary circles. The secrecy was by design, as we had been working in “stealth mode” for a bit over a year. November 2007 marked our first “public” appearance with the announcement of a private beta site, and a memorable pre-launch party and reading (see post below).

Things have changed dramatically over the past several weeks: The word is getting out. How can we tell? We are now getting excited unsolicited requests from lit groups and writers, and when I introduce the concept to a new group, more often than not they have already heard about the dublit concept, love it, and can’t wait to join us.

Our list of content partners (those whose readings are now being recorded and uploaded to dublit on a regular basis) is growing like wildfire. We couldn’t be happier with our new partners in crime and the amazing stories, essays and poems that are building the dublit library into a true treasure trove for your listening pleasure.

The shortlist:

Inside Story Time (SF)
Writers with Drinks (SF)
Tell it on Tuesdays (Berkeley)
The Opening (Oakland)
Progressive Reading Series (SF)
Rebel Reading Series (SF)
Watchword Press (Berkeley)
Burstmarketing Podcast Network (Denver)
Fray Magazine (SF)
Kearny Street Workshop - Eating our Words Workshop (SF)
Literary Death Match (SF/NYC/Paris/London)
Stanford Spoken Word Collective (Palo Alto)
Douglass Readers (SF)
Friends of the San Francisco Public Library (SF)
Reading Between A and B (NYC)

These groups represent the best our local communities have to offer in literary cultivation and appreciation. They are the labors of love of our favorite kind of people - the kind that love sharing and connecting to one-another through stories.

Most hours of most evenings in most towns, someone is telling a story. dublit is proud to be a small new member of this literary tradition and to capture and cultivate these readings for all to experience, re-experience, and to share.

~ed

dublit’s first reading and pre-launch party on November 8th 2007 was a night to write home about. The dublit staff would like to take this time to thank our readers and guests for their participation in both the event and our mission here at dublit; giving stories a voice. dublit offers feedback to emerging writers and an ever-growing library of stories for lovers of literature, but at its core is about community.

One of our readers, Frances Lefkowitz, said, “It’s tough to combine partying with reading, but you did it, and did it well.” If you missed it, don’t worry – we’ll be doing it again after the New Year!

150 of our closest friends, local literati, independent publishers, agents, professional and semi-professional writers, writing students and countless lovers of a good story – converged on Space Gallery, a hidden gem of a art gallery, lounge and bar in the City’s illustrious Tenderloin district. On this evening the space was transformed into a stylish yet cozy storytelling haven. Our dublit resident DJ and VJ spun lively multi-media tracks to prime our spirits on a balmy autumn night.

The readings started with an excerpt from Matthew Iribarne’s new book Sacred Heart. Matthew is a local writer and instructor at the CCA (California College of Arts) MFA in Writing program. Matthew gave us intimate insight to the main character Catherine’s perspective on adolescence in a sometimes confusing and unforgiving world.

Next, Laura Fraser gave us all a laugh with her essay “My Not So Funny Love Life.” Laura is a journalist, author, writing teacher, and traveler. She is the author of best selling traveling memoir An Italian Affair. In characteristic style, when asked to give a word of advice to aspiring writers, she offered, “Marry rich.” Her sarcastic yet endearing sense of humor is evident both in her person and her work.

Our third reader, Francis Lefkowitz, shared what it was like to grow up poor in a rich world with her story “Saturn is the Biggest Planet on Earth,” an excerpt from the first in her upcoming “self help” series, a memoir entitled How to Have Not. Frances is a writer of both fiction and nonfiction and is the Book Review Editor of Body + Soul magazine.

At intermission we awarded two lucky guests an iPod chock full of dublit Audioshorts and other selected literary audio content culled from across the web.

After intermission, Nana K. Twumasi kicked off the second set of readers with her moving essay “A Rumination, On Heels.” Nana is an emerging talent from the Bay Area and she moved us all with her story about finally embracing her womanhood shortly after her mother’s death.

Anne N. Marino, a dublit Advisory Board Member and insider, was our next reader. Anne is the author of the acclaimed novel The Collapsible World whose film rights were optioned in 2004. Anne shared her short story “Dangerous Women.” The story is about a young woman who can’t seem to meet the standards of the gorgeous and exotic ex-girlfriend. Anne’s story is something many of us can relate to. Later that evening she remarked to me, “…Everyone knows what it’s like to never be good enough.”

Our last reader, Alan Black, shared a hilarious story about yoga at the YMCA, complete with “poses” for visual effect. The story was so funny that Anne Marino later said “There was nothing more worth it than to see Alan Black do yoga.” As well as a writer and publisher Alan is also a producer who has organized countless literature events at the Edinburgh Castle. Alan describes his passion for nurturing emerging writers thus: “Sometimes in the darkest corners you find the brightest talent.”