The deadline for the 2008 Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award, a $2,500 grant given to a woman writer of 32 years or younger, is this Thursday, May 15. For more information, click here. - - - -

A Convergence of Convergences: A Contest. - - - - For more information about this contest, click here. - - - - Contest Winner No. 11. - - - - Love and War. By Kim Wood - - - - This pairing of flea-market photographs has hung above my desk for as long as I can remember. It's something that just happens: the pictures in my collection gravitate to each other, uniting over time and continents with their image soul mates in balancing, contradicting layers. The delicate airiness of the canoodling lovers echoes back the earthbound, abandoned grace of the bucks. The heat of her breath, her hand caught in motion, counters the frozen stillness of arched neck and nuzzle of snout on velvet ear. The images resist each other on first meeting but have alchemical communion: in both, whispered secrets are shared. - - - - Weschler Responds. - - - - Nice catch, Kim. This one is exceptionally lovely. Although more and more haunting the deeper you look into it. Are we dealing with a Buckback Mountain situation here? Or are the two bucks not so much nuzzling as, well, precisely, bucking, endeavoring to establish supremacy and dominance? A question that then ripples back into the earlier photo. Yes, as you suggest with your title, love and war, the one endlessly blurring into the other. - - - - OTHER WINNERS. - - - - 1. Evolving, Evolved by Charlie Hopper 2. Primal Forces, Basic Colors by Andy Hunter 3. The End of the Beginning by Holly Dunsworth Intermezzo by Lawrence Weschler 4. This Is Not an Ad by Jimmy Chen 5. Catskills Vagina by Dan Clem 6. The Antipodes by Chris Zic 7. Self-Made Constriction by Sam Gaskin 8. We Are the Son by Danny Erker 9. Painfully Unaware by Dan Park 10. Gutshot by Jason Torchinsky Weschler's Second Interlude 11. Love and War by Kim Wood 12. Inside and Out There by Lena Webb 13. The March by Emily Marvosh 14. Feminine Divine Triptych by Margit Christenson 15. Time's Deliberate Convergence by Steve Denyszyn 16. A Rousseau/Hirshfield Convergence by Adam Webb Beirut/Warsaw by Lawrence Weschler 17. Clothesline Raising Over Carlisle, Indiana by Charlie Hopper Carnival of Convergences Weschler's Fourth Interlude Aftersquib to the Foregoing 18. Pelvises All the Way Down by John Peter Rickgauer 19. Ovary Night? by Maya Muñoz 20. Christ in Space by Jonathan Shipley A Pair of Convergences Off of Tina Barney Another Carnival of Convergences 21. Moral Confusion: Iraq, Munich, and Vietnam by Donald Rumsfeld 22. Seeing the Tree for the Forest by Walter Murch An Addendum to the Foregoing, and a Visitor Challenge 23, 24, and 25. Far Out by Michael Benson, Brian Christian, and Walter Murch 26. Jewish Bunk Beds by Monica S. Bland Those Damn Swedish Trees, Take 3: Convergence of the Blogs 27. Degenerate Boogie-Woogie by Lisa Lee Carnival of Convergences No. 3 28. Sand and Moon by Alison Cornyn Actaeon: An Ovidian Impromptu by Lawrence Weschler 29 and 30. Hoods and Veils by Vero Testa and Lauren Redniss The Onion/Bickle Convergence by Lawrence Weschler 31. The Lone Figure Against the Armored Swarm by Michele Siegel 32. Muscle and Flow by Benjamin R. Cohen An Addendum to the Foregoing: Cities, Brains, Orchestras by Lawrence Weschler Saint and Princess by Lawrence Weschler Beauty Queen and Baghdad Hummer by Lawrence Weschler Carnival of Convergences No. 4 Laughing, Clapping, Constantly Forgetting: A Trill of Readerly Associations by Lawrence Weschler 33. Lithographica by R.A. Villanueva 34. Papal Fire (Papa Lux) by Nick Feia Addendum to "Laughing, Clapping ..." and, More Specifically, to the Stalinist-Applause Anecdote by Lawrence Weschler 35. Disseminations: Internet, Dandelions, Flight Paths by Sarah Daegling 36. Black and White and in Color by Walter Murch Carnival of Convergences No. 5 Lee Friedlander's Visionary Trees: An Addendum to the Last Chapters of Everything That Rises by Lawrence Weschler 37. Shipwrecked Desperation by Charles Mudede via Matt Haber 38. Life Forms by Ariel Winter   MORE ABOUT EVERYTHING THAT RISES

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