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on February 18
David Shook
Posted project update #3Endangered Language and Poetry Project Update
Post CommentThank you, fellow language activists, for your generous support of our project, endangered languages, and the Isthmus Zapotec poets of Oaxaca. Our Kickstarter fundraising campaign has come to a close and our pledges did not meet the goal. We appreciate your generous support, and would like to let you know that we will not receive the amount you pledged on Kickstarter and that your credit/debit cards will not be charged. Our time on Kickstarter has been great for our exposure and enthusiasm, and we're very grateful to you, our Kickstarter supporters, and the Kickstarter team. We are still very excited about the next steps of this project and we need your support as we raise awareness about endangered languages and literatures in Mexico!
Please visit our new project website where you can read about our plans and progress, and donate to us directly via PayPal or by check. I do hope that you'll consider funding our project through that site, which will soon feature a streamlined contributors benefit program.
Again, an enormous thank you for standing with us on this journey! We hope you'll visit our new site.
David, Ben, and Víctor
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on February 7
David Shook
Posted project update #2Poetry Tuesday - Spread the word!
Post CommentA quick poem for your Tuesday afternoon, read first in English by me, then in Isthmus Zapotec by Víctor. Click here to enjoy!
If you were a city
I could give perfect directions
to wherever they asked me.I think this poem proves that our donor rewards make great Valentine's Day gifts—Víctor writes exquisite love poems, and what's more romantic than saving an endangered language? Make your lover(s) proud, look cultured yourself, and hopefully your donor rewards help you get lucky!
We'll have some more updates for you later this week, but in the meantime, please spread the word! Facebook updates, tweets, blog posts, word of mouth—we need it all.
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on January 28
David Shook
Posted project update #1Three Weeks to Go!
Post CommentDiuxquíxepe' lii! Thank you! First to our Kickstarter partners—we can't do this without you guys, and we really do consider you partners in our creative endeavor. Ben, Víctor, and I have been encouraged by your outpouring of support at all levels.
Our first week on Kickstarter has netted us lots of link love: we were plastered on Facebook walls, tweeted about by the American Literary Translators Association and World Literature Today, selected as a Kickstarter Staff Pick, and supported by 17 wonderful donors.
I'd like to point you to a special guest post I wrote for Three Percent, one of the best translation blogs on the web, edited by translation advocate Chad Post, associated with his great publishing house Open Letter and the much-needed Best Translated Book Award. In the post I talk about my own background as Víctor's translator, and how he inspired me to pursue this project.
I also wanted to mention that World Literature Today has an inspired essay on their website now, by Clare Sullivan, who won an NEA Grant to complete her translations of Natalia Toledo's Isthmus Zapotec poetry. That essay, evocatively subtitled "Can Poetry Save an Endangered Culture?," summarizes poetry's role in preserving the Isthmus Zapotec language and culture. It certainly inspires me, and serves as an important companion piece to our Kickstarter page. WLT also features an image gallery with work by several Isthmus Zapotec artists, and a bilingual audio gallery featuring work by Natalia Toledo, Irma Pineda, and our own Víctor Terán. Clare is doing some important work as a scholar and translator, and I'm proud to count her among one of our earliest Kickstarter supporters!
I hope you'll continue to spread the word about our project by posting it on Facebook, Twitter, and any other online venues. Ben, Víctor, and I are happy to offer ourselves to be interviewed, to write guest posts, or do almost anything in support of our project, and we appreciate any connections you can facilitate or suggest. We've come a long way, but we've got an even longer way to go to get to Oaxaca, so we hope we can count on your continued support.
Diuxquíxepe' lii! Thanks again!
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on January 19
David Shook launched a project
Language Activists | Endangered Language & Poetry in Mexico by David Shook
Víctor Terán faces an increasingly common problem: his language is dying. His solution is radical—he is an Isthmus Zapotec poet.
Funding Unsuccessful (02/18/2012) -
on January 6
David Shook
backed a project
Astral Dick by Hanna Hall
A "whodunit" involving a police psychic, CAP'N, and his "paranormal guinea pig," Lieutenant LEO FLECK.
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105% funded $2,101 pledged
- 51 backers
- Funded Feb 14, 2012
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on November 29
David Shook
backed a project
Slake: Los Angeles—Dirt, the Fourth Issue by Laurie Ochoa & Joe Donnelly
The new city journal revitalizing literary LA with its devotion to narrative journalism, fiction, poetry, photography and art.
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106% funded $26,523 pledged
- 283 backers
- Funded Dec 25, 2011
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David Shook
Los Angeles, CA
David Shook is a poet, translator, and writer in Los Angeles. He studied endangered languages in Oklahoma and poetry at Oxford. He's currently at work on a poetry documentary shot in Equatorial Guinea and a collection of travel poems.
