ThumbScribes presents an exquisite corpse co+creation series hosted by South African writer and winner of the 2011 Arthur C Clarke Award Lauren Beukes.

Want to collaborate on a story with Lauren Beukes? Now’s your chance.

Lauren Beukes is the author of the juju noir Zoo City set in Johannesburg’s inner city slums winner of the 2011 Arthur C Clarke Award and Moxyland, a cyberpunk neo-apartheid thriller. She’s a TV scriptwriter, a recovering journalist who occasionally falls off the wagon and recently wrapped up both her first documentary, Glitterboys & Ganglands and her first comic, All The Pretty Ponies for Vertigo’s Strange Adventures.

Inspired by the Surrealist word game Exquisite Corpse*, writers will be invited to collaborate on a series of short stories with writer Lauren Beukes where Lauren will write the first contribution for each collaboration.

After Lauren begins the tale, we'll hand it over to the hive-mind and the collaborative series will end after the last entry is written.

* Exquisite Corpse is game where each writer can only read the last word given, and adds one word to a sentence."The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine” (Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau) was the first sentence ever created using the game. In our version, you’ll be able to read the last contribution before adding your part. The full Exquisite Corpse will only be viewable in its entirety once the last contribution is submitted.

Follow Lauren on Twitter

Lauren Beukes' Website

Stephen Powers & Joey Garfield host a series of collaborative Valentines.

A LOVE LETTER FOR YOU seamlessly mixes documentary and narrative, love and loss, community and solidarity, art and crime, to paint a compelling portrait of two artists and their impact on the neighborhood they grew up in. It was filmed in concert with a series of 50 murals, painted around the city of Philadelphia in the summer of 2009 when ESPO returned to his hometown and wrote a love letter across the rooftops that can be viewed from the ride on the cities elevated trains.

Collaborators will be prompted to co+create a series of Valentines on collaborative platform ThumbScribes that begin with the words from the A LOVE LETTER FOR YOU murals. Join in and add your own 300 character ode to love at www.thumbscribes.com starting Sunday February 13th at noon.

The writing will continue through Valentine’s Day – allowing lovebirds to create a collaborative card, which will evolve and change before being published to share with the world.

Stephen Powers is a former graffiti writer, artist and Fullbright Scholar, and the mind behind the conceptualization, design and painting of the mural project. Powers has shown at The Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, The 49th Venice Bienalle, Deitch Projects and had his first museum solo show at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art in 2007.

Joey Garfield is an award winning documentary, music video and commercial director. Joey's feature length documentary BREATH CONTROL: THE HISTORY OF THE HUMAN BEAT BOX has won several awards and continues to screen all over the world. Joey also directed STYLE WARS REVISITED, is a founding father of the Barnstormerʼs artist collective, and a contributing editor of Juxtapoz Magazine.

Ghost robot is a creative production company based in New York City, which makes and distributes content across all platforms. Ghost Robot is the producer and sales agent for the film.

ThumbScribes presents a collaboration with Significant Objects.

Significant Objects is the brainchild of journalist Rob Walker, whose Consumed column appears in the New York Times Magazine, and Josh Glenn, whose book Taking Things Seriously looks at how we invest ordinary objects with extraordinary significance.

The idea. A talented, creative writer invents a story about an object. Invested with new significance by this fiction, the object should — according to their hypothesis — acquire not merely subjective but objective value. How to test our theory? Via eBay!

Pie-shaped Container Object is the second of two stories created for Significant Objects by participants in Thumbscribes, a collaborative-writing platform. Thumbscribes is auctioning both objects on ebay,
and will give proceeds to a literary charity or nonprofit.

ThumbScribes presents a collaboration with Significant Objects.

Significant Objects is the brainchild of journalist Rob Walker, whose Consumed column appears in the New York Times Magazine, and Josh Glenn, whose book Taking Things Seriously looks at how we invest ordinary objects with extraordinary significance.

The idea. A talented, creative writer invents a story about an object. Invested with new significance by this fiction, the object should — according to their hypothesis — acquire not merely subjective but objective value. How to test our theory? Via eBay!

Decorative Egg-shaped Object is the first of two stories created for Significant Objects by participants in Thumbscribes, a collaborative-writing platform. Thumbscribes is auctioning both objects on ebay,
and will give proceeds to a literary charity or nonprofit.

ThumbScribes presents EXQUISITE SHORTS with Aimee Bender
- A Collaborative Short Story curated by Electric Literature.

Want to collaborate on a story with Aimee Bender? Now’s your chance.

Inspired by the Surrealist word game Exquisite Corpse*, Electric Literature invited writers to help compose a collaborative short story with writer Aimee Bender where Aimee wrote the first contribution.

After Aimee Bender began the tale, it was handed over to the hivemind. The story opened with Aimee's first contribution: "She was startled by what she saw on the bridge; it did not seem to have a shape, and yet it was moving toward her, and she found herself inexplicably compelled to stay put". and ended after the 100th entry was written.

24 hours later, the final product was published on Electric Literature’s Outlet Blog.

ThumbScribes asked Aimee Bender a few questions about the collaboration:

Did you enjoy watching the story unfold?
"It was just fun to click on the link a short time after it started and see all these people online adding to it! Like watching a plant unfurl, a very very strange plant."

Was it hard to let go of the control once the story started and you saw where people took it?
"Not at all-- part of the fun of something like this is letting it go."

Electric Literature’s mission is to use new media and innovative distribution to return the short story to a place of prominence in popular culture. Electric Literature publishes a quarterly anthology of five top-notch short stories, delivered in every viable medium.

Aimee Bender is the author of four books: The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1998) which was a NY Times Notable Book, An Invisible Sign of My Own (2000) which was an L.A. Times pick of the year, Willful Creatures (2005) which was nominated by The Believer as one of the best books of the year, and The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (2010) which recently won the SCIBA award for best fiction. Her short fiction has been published in Granta,GQ, Harper's, Tin House, McSweeney's, The Paris Review, and many more places, as well as heard on PRI's This American Life and Selected Shorts. She received two Pushcart prizes, and was nominated for the TipTree award in 2005, and the Shirley Jackson short story award in 2010. Her fiction has been translated into sixteen languages. She lives in Los Angeles, where she teaches creative writing at USC.

* Exquisite Corpse is game where each writer can only read the last word given, and adds one word to a sentence."The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine” (Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau) was the first sentence ever created using the game. (In our experiment, you’ll be able to read the whole story before adding your part.)

ThumbScribes presents 'Dr. Wyndeaux is anxious'
a unique Exquisite Corpse co+creation by the writers at
Black Clock.

Singular, idiosyncratic and a little mysterious, Black Clock is one of America’s leading literary journals. Since its inception in 2004, the publication has featured work (by Don DeLillo, Richard Powers, Joanna Scott, Jonathan Lethem, Rick Moody, Lynne Tillman, Samuel R. Delany, Joseph McElroy, Aimee Bender, Brian Evenson, Geoff Nicholson, Shelley Jackson, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, David Foster Wallace, William T. Vollmann and many others) that has gone on to be anthologized in best-of-the-year collections, nominated for O. Henry and Pushcart Prizes, and win National Book Awards. Black Clock is also regarded as among the country’s most beautifully designed magazines. Edited by Steve Erickson, it is published semi-annually by the California Institute of the Arts in association with the MFA Writing Program.

Visit the new Black Clock Blog the faithful online companion to the leading literary journal, Black Clock, the blog is a must-read for keeping a pulse on established and emerging writers; trends in literature, publishing, and media; and the literary landscape of Los Angeles and beyond.