Monkey Puzzle Press

Happy Birthday Kerouac!

Nate — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:29:08 +0000

Jack Kerouac (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969)

“I am just water and earth transformed and combined, I’m just perception under restraint, I have no individuality in the matter, my True Mind of Intuition of the Universe is my True Mind…”

- Jack Kerouac -

Flash Fiction Contest – March 20th Deadline!

Nate — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:09:06 +0000

Monkey Puzzle’s 2nd ANNUAL FLASH FICTION CONTEST!

First Prize: $200.00 plus publication

Second Prize: $100.00 plus publication

Third Prize: $50.00 plus publication

Submit one story per entry, 1000 words or less.

$5.00 entry fee (check or money order) payable to Monkey Puzzle Press
We’re also accepting entry fees via PayPal:

Deadline: March 20, 2010 (postmarked)

Send your submission and entry fee to:

Monkey Puzzle Press
3116 47th St.
Boulder, CO 80301
Attn: Flash Fiction Contest

All submissions must include the writer’s contact information on the first page: name, address, phone number, and e-mail address. Include a SASE if you would like a reply via USPS.

We won’t be judging stories based on any particular content or context, just send your best piece of flash fiction! Please keep in mind that we do appreciate work exhibiting intelligence and creativity, socio-political-cultural awareness, and humor. To get an idea for the kind of work we like, check out our Issues page for free downloads of past issues.

Winners will be published in Monkey Puzzle #9!

All entries will be considered for publication.

For a flier, click here: Monkey Puzzle’s 2nd Annual Flash Fiction Contest!

Fact Simile – Call for Submissions

Nate — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:29:05 +0000

Fact-Simile Magazine is accepting submissions for their Spring/Summer 2010 issue through March 21st. If you or someone you know has some thrilling word-work that might fit nicely among its pages, the good people at Fact-Simile would love to take a look. Please send your submission/s to: submissions@fact-simile.com

RIP Charles Bukowski

Nate — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:26:49 +0000

Henry Charles Bukowski
(August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994)

“I only want to say that at this time it is tough for the writer who wants to put it down as it is, or was. The 90s have far more strictures than the 50s ever had. We’ve gone back, not so much in how we think but in what we can say. Each Age has borne its own contritions but the end of the 20th century is a particularly sad one. We’ve lost our guts, our gamble, our heart. Listen, believe me, when we say it and say it true, the women will love it, the blacks, the browns, the yellows, the greens, the reds and the purples will love it, and the homosexuals and the lesbians and all the in between will love it. Let’s not crap ourselves, we are different but we are one. We bring death to each other and death brings it to us. Did you ever see that flattened cat on the freeway as you drove by at 70 mph? That’s us, baby. And I scream to the skies that there should be no way, no word, no limit. Just a roll of the dice, the tilting of the dark white light and the ability to laugh, a few times, at what has trapped us like this.”

- Charles Bukowski -

Open Hearts and Open Minds

Nate — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:42:43 +0000

“Only those who slavishly worship success can think that effectiveness is admirable without regard to what is effected. For my part, I think it better to do a little good than to do much harm. The world that I should wish to see would be one freed from the virulence of group hostilities and capable of realizing that happiness for all is to be derived rather from cooperation than from strife. I should wish to see a world in which education is aimed at mental freedom rather than at imprisoning the minds of the young in a rigid armor of dogma calculated to protect them through life against the shafts of impartial evidence. The world needs open hearts and open minds, and it is not through rigid systems, whether old or new, that these can be derived.”

- Bertrand Russell -

Small Press Festival – University of Colorado, Boulder

Nate — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 15:51:14 +0000

Monkey Puzzle Press will be hosting a table today during the book fair at the Small Press Festival at CU Boulder. Check the flier for details – come by and see us!

For a PDF of the event flier, click here.

Subsumption of the Individual

Nate — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 20:14:31 +0000

“Ninety-nine citizens out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual.”

- William Torrey – U.S. Commissioner of Education, 1889-1906

Religions Are Babysitters

Nate — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 19:43:13 +0000

“All religions are babysitters. The goal of all religions is to no longer need a babysitter.”

- Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche -

None of Your Moonshine

Nate — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 00:44:25 +0000

“The merchants and company have long laughed at transcendentalism, higher laws, etc., crying, ‘None of your moonshine,’ as if they were anchored to something not only definite, but sure and permanent. If there was any institution which was presumed to rest on a solid and secure basis, and more than any other represented this boasted common sense, prudence, and practical talent, it was the bank; and now those very banks are found to be mere reeds shaken by the wind. Scarcely one in the land has kept its promise. It would seem as if you only need live forty years in any age of this world, to see its most promising government become the government of Kansas, and banks nowhere. Not merely the Brook Farm and Fourierite communities, but now the community generally has failed. But there is the moonshine still, serene, beneficent, and unchanged. Hard times, I say, have this value, among others, that they show us what such promises are worth—I where the sure banks are.”

- Henry David Thoreau -

Your Moment of Zinn

Nate — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:27:28 +0000

“The obligation that people feel to one another goes back to the very beginning of human history, as a natural, spontaneous act in human relations. Obligation to government, however, is not natural. It must be taught to every generation.”

- Howard Zinn -