No word yet on which one of us is going to wear the Tyra wig and shout. Maybe we all will. Maybe it’ll be like our speaking stick.
Announcing: The Open Door Project (this press release via Big Yellow Taxi and Mike Deakin):
A five-day publishing introduction intensive in New York City– including a series of lunches with literary agents, book editors, and other publishing figures, a public reading, and a private cocktail reception with New York’s writing community will be awarded to the winner of the first Open Door Project fiction competition. The contest is open to gay men writing fiction with queer content who have not yet published a book of fiction. Accommodations and transportation will be provided to an out of town winner. Judges include Christopher Bram, Alexander Chee, Samuel R. Delany, Dennis Cooper, Robert Gluck, E. Lynn Harris, Scott Heim, Andrew Holleran, David Leavitt, Stephen McCauley, Dale Peck, and John Weir. Submit stories or stand-alone novel excerpts of up to 8,000 words by March 1, 2008. The winner will be announced June 08. There is no entry fee.
Submissions should be mailed to:
Don Weise, Open Door Project
c/o Oscar Wilde Bookshop
15 Christopher St
New York, NY 10014
Do not contact the bookstore for information about the Open Door Project. Queries can be sent to dweised@aol.com. No queries confirming receipt or status of submissions please.
Koreanish 
Alex- I wasn’t sure whether to address this to you, or to the email of the project. I had taken a fiction workshop with you at the Asian American Writers workshop a little over a year ago, so would I be correct in assuming that I could not submit an exceprt of the story I had workshopped there (even as it has changed since then) to the Open Door Project, since it was read and commented on by you?
Chris: Don’t worry.
For my former students reading this, and those of the other judges, you’re eligible. Each individual is expected to recuse themselves in any literary competition, if that sort of thing happens. Most people are pretty civilized about it, in my experience.