{"id":2103,"date":"2009-10-27T17:02:54","date_gmt":"2009-10-28T00:02:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2009\/10\/throwdown-at-the-bee\/"},"modified":"2009-10-27T17:03:46","modified_gmt":"2009-10-28T00:03:46","slug":"throwdown-at-the-bee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2009\/10\/27\/throwdown-at-the-bee\/","title":{"rendered":"Throwdown At The Bee"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/speakeasy\/2009\/10\/27\/a-literary-night-out-spelling-bee-humiliation-and-celebrating-pen-america\/\" target=\"_blank\">from The Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<h1>A Literary Night Out: Spelling Bee Humiliation and Partying With PEN<\/h1>\n<p>By Steven Kurutz<\/p>\n<p>The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses [CLMP] was holding its annual spelling bee at the Diane von Furstenberg Studio. Since 1967,\u00a0 the CLMP has offered assistance to literary publications, ranging from the well-known (N+1; Virginia Quarterly) to the obscure (Les Figues Press). <a href=\"https:\/\/www.clmp.org\/bee\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/letitbee.jpg\" alt=\"letitbee.jpg\" border=\"0\" hspace=\"15\" vspace=\"15\" align=\"right\" \/><\/a>To simultaneously raise money and humiliate writers, each year the organization holds a charity auction and spelling bee. Last year\u2019s winner was Harper publisher Jonathan Burnham, who edged out Sara Nelson, former editor of Publishers Weekly and current books editor for \u201cO: The Oprah Magazine.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Nelson was determined to avenge the defeat, but said her desire hadn\u2019t translated to hours spent reading the dictionary. \u201cI studied one year and got knocked out in the first or second round,\u201d she said. \u201cNow I don\u2019t study.\u201d Other spellers included novelists James Frey and Francine Prose, Vogue editor Sally Singer, Village Voice mainstay Michael Musto, former New York Times reporter Alex Kuczynski and New Yorker staffers Nancy Franklin and Ben Greenman. The event was emceed by literary agent Ira Silverberg, and judged by Oxford English Dictionary editor-at-large Jesse Sheidlower, who took visible delight in tripping up accomplished writers with deceptively simple-to-spell words like sacrilegious (which knocked several contestants out).<\/p>\n<p>[ <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/speakeasy\/2009\/10\/27\/a-literary-night-out-spelling-bee-humiliation-and-celebrating-pen-america\/\" target=\"_blank\">click to continue reading at WSJ.com<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from The Wall Street Journal A Literary Night Out: Spelling Bee Humiliation and Partying With PEN By Steven Kurutz The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses [CLMP] was holding its annual spelling bee at the Diane von Furstenberg Studio. Since 1967,\u00a0 the CLMP has offered assistance to literary publications, ranging from the well-known (N+1; Virginia [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}