Hello music writing lover,
I'm the editor of the Best Music Writing series, an anthology now in its tenth year of publishing the year’s best writing on topics music-related. I’m honored to be working with Greil Marcus for the upcoming 2009 book, and hope you can help me make this the best book in the series.
My job is tough. I am responsible for reading all the music publications in the English language and selecting 100 pieces from these publications for possible reprint in the volume. It helps a lot to get suggestions from writers, editors, and music writing fans who read every day.
This year, as in every year, I am looking for brilliant features, essays, profiles, news articles, interviews, creative non-fiction, fiction, book reviews, long-format reviews, blog posts, and journal articles on musical and music culture-related topics. When I say “music” I mean that broadly to include all genres, time periods, and performers. And just in case this matters, I am do not consider books, book chapters, liner notes, or transcripts of broadcast journalism.
I ask you to please send your own best work, work you’ve edited or overseen, great work of your friends and colleagues, or work that you have admired in passing throughout the year. You can send me email links, hard copies of articles, whole publications (please paperclip or post-it the pages to read), or if need be, just email me with the author name/article title/publication title/date and I will search the piece out myself.
If you are an editor, please limit the number of submissions to your publication's best, most favored, most original and important works. You can share my email with your writers too, so they can nominate their own works.
Feel free to mail me multiple times as you find more pieces that you love, and you can send items between now and February 1, 2009. Of course, you are free to forward this and repost it – please just make sure my contact information is contained:
Email to: musicwriting@gmail.com
BMW2009
603 West 115th Street #120
NY, NY 10025
Many thanks,
Daphne Carr
2012 Fundraising Campaign
Our Kickstarter campaign was, as you can see, a success! Thank you!
Past readings for the 2011 Best Music Writing Book
December 6, powerHouse Arena (NYC)
December 8, Housing Works Cafe (NYC)
January 10, Politics and Prose (DC)
BMW 2011
Buy 2011's edition, guest edited by Alex Ross, here:
at Powell's Books
or through Indiebound
What is BMW?
Best Music Writing is a beloved anthology that celebrates the year in music writing by gathering writing from essays to Tweets on every sound and style of music from hip-hop to R&B to jazz to pop to blues. It is essential reading for anyone who loves great music and accomplished writing. Scribes of every imaginable sort—novelists, poets, journalists, musicians— are gathered to create a multi-voiced snapshot of the year in music writing that, like the music it illuminates, is loud, irreverent, loveable, odd, and always original.
Follow @musicwriting
Praise for the BMW Series
"Da Capo's annual Best Music Writing series is as close as rock scribes get to the Oscars."—Village Voice, 2010
"Essential, as usual."—Booklist, 2009
"The Best Music Writing series from Da Capo Press has been putting out consistently impressive collections of each year’s most important music writing for the last decade, and this year’s special 10th anniversary edition is no exception."—PopMatters, 2009
“The stories behind the music can be as inspiring as the music itself…
will likely inspire the reader to seek out a lot of new music.”—New York Press
“…one of the few regular publications to be dependably open to every type of music imaginable…Whether an authoritative aggregation or merely a starting point,
it’s a shame it’s only an annual.”—Relix
“In all it’s quite a celebration of the vast enterprise known as music.”—Signal to Noise
More praise for BMW
“Our favorite year-end read.”—Cleveland Scene
“Terrorism, sexual misconduct, and wholesome nostalgia, treated with a discernible backbeat and sprightly writing make for an excellent anthology.” ––Booklist
“the book finally reflects the current state of not just music journalism but music listening… These essays encapsulate a chilly, malefic year for music indeed.” —The Stranger
“Da Capo’s Best Music Writing 2006’s essays create a confrontational, challenging, and varied portrait of music criticism that highlights a visceral reaction to music over academic posturing…”—VenusZine
