Yep. You read that right. Here’s the official press release:

HARPERCOLLINS TO PUBLISH COLLECTION OF NEWSPAPER BLACKOUT POEMS

July 8—HarperCollins has signed Austin Kleon to write a collection of his popular Newspaper Blackout Poems for a book due from Harper Paperbacks in September 2009. Instead of starting with a blank page, the Austin-based writer and cartoonist picks up a newspaper and a permanent marker and eliminates the words he doesn’t need. Kleon’s poems, which he began posting on his popular blog, have been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition and in Toronto’s National Post, and have been widely linked to on the internet. In addition to original poems by Austin, the book will contain submissions from his fans which will be solicited through a contest on the author’s website starting in August.

Though he will be updating his site periodically, Kleon will be taking a break from daily blogging to complete the book. Check back on the site in August to find out how you can submit your entry and be published in the upcoming book!

For press inquiries, please contact Audrey Harris at 212-207-7185 audrey.harris@harpercollins.com.

This has been in the works for a couple of months, and it’s KILLED me not to be able to share it with y’all. But now you know. Couple of thoughts:

• The book is going to be made up of completely new, never-before-seen poems. Although it isn’t out until Sept. 2009, the manuscript is due by the new year, so I’m going to be incredibly busy for the rest of the year making poems.
• While I won’t be posting new poems for the next six months, there’s still going to be a lot of activity here on the blog. In August, I’ll have more details about the contest. (So get out your newspapers and start practicing!)
• Obviously, this is huge, and Meg and I are really excited about the opportunity. But, to paraphrase Hugh MacLeod: I’m keeping my day job. The book might sell big, might not. In the meantime, I’m going to keep doing what I’ve been doing: writing, drawing, and blogging.

As always, thanks so much to all of you who read the poems, comment, and link to them. If it weren’t for you and your support, I would have given up what started out as just a writing exercise a long time ago.

Stay tuned!

Today the poems were featured on NPR’s Morning Edition:

Read Between the Lines to Find Texas Poet’s Verse
Morning Edition, May 9, 2008

A poet in Texas is blacking out words in order to write. Instead of starting with a blank page, Austin Kleon grabs the New York Times and a permanent marker — and eliminates the words he doesn’t need. He recently transformed an article about a piano concert into a poem that begins: “Forget about trying to speak … the image is the travelogue.” The newspaper ends up more black than white, and shows another way to read between the lines.

My wife and I are huge NPR junkies, so this was quite a Friday treat. Welcome to new visitors, and thanks again to everyone who’s spread the word about them! You guys are awesome.

PS. Did this one on the bus this morning.

Lots of love for the blackout poems floating around the ’sphere lately.

Wim Lockefeer (Belgium) wrote a nice little post about them on his excellent blog, The Ephemerist:

Austin Kleon is a cartoonist and poet from Austin, Texas who has a quite original and intriguing way of working. He takes a page from an existing book and blacks out words until he finds a new and hidden meaning in the text, using the block of text as a visual and poetic element, on a par with the actual words….Some of the results are hilarious, some are profound and even unsettling, but they are never bland or boring.

And Greg Wind (Newton, MA) wrote a really flattering post over at Radio Exile:

Part “writing with constrictions,” part happy accident, part found art, part design challenge, the images/poems strike you as a tangible form of indie rock. The materials are easy to find, but making it more than a novelty or parlor trick takes a particularly trained eye and a lot of deep-seated ideas that will find expression through any outlet you make available. The expression subsumes the form….Austin keeps it coming from an honest place, and you can imagine that for every piece that makes it to the site, there are a dozen that couldn’t provide the right word or went in a bad direction. The collection in no order other than chronological gives a well rounded and consistent view into a guy most of us would want to buy a beer (or wouldn’t mind getting this round as long as he’s buying the next).

Big thanks to all you other readers, bloggers, and Stumbleupon folks who support my work! I really appreciate it.

UPDATE (5/8): Jason Kottke linked to the poems, and since then a terrific number of folks have pointed this way. Thanks, everyone!

For those of you reading via RSS, pop over to my homepage real quick and check out the new front page and updated portfolio.

Why the change? I’m hoping that the front page will now be a more friendly portal to newcomers.

For those long-time readers, if you want to skip the frontpage and go straight to the blog, update your bookmarks:

http://www.austinkleon.com/blog/

I should also point out that there’s a new subscription options page. If the blog feed isn’t enough for you, you could always upgrade to the Blog + Tumblelog Superfeed!

And for those of you with eagle eyes, you’ll have noticed a (gasp!) shopping cart. Yeah, it’s just a teaser for now, but one of our projects this summer is trying to get some merchandise up for sale. We want to start small with maybe just some mini-poster prints, and then move on to bigger and better things.

A couple questions:

• What’s the most successful way to sell products online? Paypal? Etsy? Ebay?
• What would you like to see sold in my store? Prints of poems? Mini-comics? T-shirts?

If anybody has any advice or comments, please let me hear them!

When my father-in-law was down from Cleveland last week, he brought me an envelope sent to our old address, postmarked Europe. I couldn’t imagine what European would be sending me anything, so it was a real treat and a surprise to find two copies of La Cagouille No. 6—a little zine that a couple of French folks put out. I had totally forgotten that way back Gabriel Papapietro had asked me if they could print an old comic of mine called “Rendezvous.” The package contained a note from Gabriel…so nice to get handwritten letters!

Other than my comic, everything else is in French, so I’m piecing my way through. Here’s a spread from Gabriel’s comic, “Royan Sur Brie,” which you can read online if you add him as a friend on Myspace.

Very cool. Thanks for the mail, Gabriel!

I was really surprised (but pleased!) when Samantha Grice called me last week and said that the National Post in Toronto was interested in running a few newspaper blackout poems in the “Avenue” section of Arts and Life. The National Post is a fairly conservative newspaper, but they’ve won several awards for their layout and graphic design. The article ran yesterday, and here’s what Samantha wrote up:

How to find poems buried in the headlines of this newspaper using only a Sharpie and your wits

BY SAMANTHA GRICE

National Post

The financial pages make the worst poems.

“No offense to business writers, but in one article the same word will repeat itself over and over,” explains Austin Kleon, a writer and comic artist from Cleveland who started making blackout poems a year ago. “I did a poem recently where the word was acquisition and it was repeated several times.”

Kleon prefers the city or arts sections for optimum poetic artistry. His newspaper of choice is The New York Times for no other reason than his wife has a subscription to the Gray Lady and big stacks often pile up in their apartment. Kleon figured he should do something artsy with them.

“I really like Sharpies and I was playing with a Sharpie one day and it just happened,” he explains. “I wish I had a better story.”

For a while Kleon was doing a daily poem, but one day he stopped and didn’t do another for almost a year. When several blogs recently lauded their genius, Kleon picked up his Sharpie again. “The problem is they are fairly time-intensive, believe it or not,” he says of the poems. “They take anywhere from a half-hour to an hour and for what you get, it seems like a long time.”

Fans of the poems have told Kleon they are thrilled with what they have got from his efforts. “They say, ‘Omigod, I love them. I’m going to go home and try one right away,’” he says. “And I think as an artist that’s one of the coolest things you can hear. Isn’t that what it’s all about?”

The DIY factor does make blackout poems attractive as an interactive pastime. One can imagine taking up blackout poetry on their daily bus commute in place of sudoku or the crossword puzzle. Kleon says they are incredibly fun to do. “I come from a creative writing background in college and nothing takes the fun out of writing like taking a class on writing,” he says. “These are a joy to do.”

But not perhaps as easy to do as one might think. “My wife said to me, ‘You weren’t home the other night and I tried to do one and I couldn’t do it. I don’t know how you do one every day.’ I told her it’s a lot of sitting around and running your hand through your hair.”

Omigod! Haha.

I’m ridiculously pleased that Gerry and the folks at Backwards City Review will be publishing my 5-page comic, “After The War,” in their fourth issue, which will be hitting the shelves soon. Not only is this my first paper-published comic, it’s also the first longer-format comic I ever worked on (drawn specifically with BCR in mind), and a rougher version of the technique I’m using to do Calamity. If you can tell, I was looking at a lot of Lynd Ward woodcuts, Frank Miller’s Sin City, and the illustrations for Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend:

Next to MOME, BCR is my favorite journal, one I go out and buy after each issue, so this is a real treat. Gerry and I have similar tastes (check out the blog!) and he’s even managed to get graphic work from Lynda Barry, Kenneth Koch, and Kurt Vonnegut.

I really suggest you check it out. Library Journal named it one of the best magazines of 2004, and called it “a flawless mix of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and comics—yes, comics” that “easily surpasses most of the more established literary titles at the local Barnes & Noble.”

For those of you who live in Cleveland, Suzanne carries it at Mac’s Backs in Coventry.