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CONTENTS
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS:
We’d like to invite editors and writers to participate in our new series on issues and representations of race, class, gender, and sexuality in independent publishing. How do these issues affect you as an literary magazine editor interested in publishing underrepresented communities, or a writer who wants to challenge dominant notions of identity? What are your thoughts, concerns, ideas about how literary communities reinforce, respond to, and confront racism, classicism, sexism, and homophobia? Contact Marcelle Heath at lunaparkonline@gmail.com.
"Reading a literary journal is not like eating your vegetables. We’re not doing this so it can be preserved in a museum while people actually enjoy movies, television and video games."
—Eli Horowitz, McSweeney's

SERIES: Race, Class, Gender & Sexuality in Indie Publishing
Questions of Authenticity
By Michael Copperman
"The question of authenticity, then, especially authorial authority conferred on the basis of phenotype or racial background, is the wrong line of inquiry."
Community and the Body
By Sherisse Alvarez
"My work has appeared in various publications interested specifically in issues of identity. I still struggle at times with the notion of the “mainstream,” how my work relates or does not relate to the canon."
Jarrett Haley, BULL: Fiction for Thinking Men
"That I am not a sociologist or gender-studier by trade I should make clear to begin with."
I Don't Know How to Write About Race
By Roxane Gay
"This is only about race."
INTERVIEWS
Megan M. Garr, Versal [TBA]
Jarrett Haley, BULL: Fiction for Thinking Men
Laura van den Berg, Part II
Laura van den Berg, Part I
Allison Seay, The Greensboro Review
Mary Miller
Eilis O'Neal, Nimrod International
Erin Fitzgerald, Northville Review
Don Bogen, Cincinnati Review
Andrew Porter
Nam Le
Benjamin Percy
LUNA DIGEST
Luna Digest, 1/5
"One of the more interesting literary magazine discussions to come about in recent months has happened via email, twitter feeds, and blogs about Andrew Whitacre’s post titled “The End of the Small Print Journal. Please.” on the identity theory editors’ blog."
Luna Digest, 12/15
"The Atlantic Monthly decides not only to be the first magazine to sell single short stories for the Kindle, but they will also charge 4 times as much as One Story does for a single story. And One Story will actually print the story out and mail it to your house."
Luna Digest, 12/8
"Today’s the day The San Francisco Panorama from McSweeney’s hits the streets. The idea is to put out an exciting newspaper edition to show the power of the medium in a world of declining newspaper publishing incentives."
Luna Digest, 12/3
"For most people who read fiction and spend much time online, this won’t be news: Electric Literature recently twittered the entirety of Rick Moody’s story “Some Contemporary Characters” over three days with the assistance of several co-publishers, of which Luna Park was one."
Luna Digest, 11/24
"I’ve been stumbling across some great excerpts recently from David Shields’s upcoming book Reality Hunger: A Manifesto..."
Luna Digest, 11/17
"Just how much did Salman Rushdie have to do with Alex Clark’s resignation from Granta? (Nothing at all, according to him.)"
ARTICLES
There Is No Visible Circus
"Jennifer Atkinson's "A Leaf from the Book of Cities"— an ekphrastic poem written after Paul Klee's painting of the same name—caught my attention in the most recent issue of Cave Wall..."
Panorama Week Part 5: All the News
Panorama Week Part 4: The Comics
Panorama Week Part 3: Section One (or The News)
Panorama Week Part 2: The Book Review of the Future?
Panorama Week Part 1: Opening the Package
Teachers: Use Literary Magazines
By Nicholas Ripatrazone
"Before I go any further, I should admit that I could be doing a much better job in my financial support of literary magazines....but those who have worked in public education know the difficulties of working within community-voted budgets. Literary magazine subscriptions at the classroom level are an educational luxury, not a need. But that’s not a sufficient excuse."
Aiming High: The Impossible Ambitions of Versal
By Sam Ruddick
"I have no experience with gorilla suits or child soldiering, myself, but I think it’s reasonable to suspect that standing around in a gorilla suit is better than being coerced into shooting people, or getting shot at."
Espresso Book Machine
By Marcelle Heath
"On Demand Books's digital photocopier, book trimmer and binder, and desktop computer that can produce a trade paperback book in five to ten minutes."
Poets Publishing Poets: A Review of Cave Wall 5
By George Held
"When a young prize-winning poet decides to publish her own poetry journal, readers get to see how her taste compares to her talent."
I Don't Know How to Write About Race
By Roxane Gay
"This is only about race."
Interview with Former Greensboro Review Poetry Editor Alison Seay
By Jordan Elliott
"I don't know that it's a matter of being comfortable in our skin as much as it is our belief in the importance of the tangible book."
On Nimrod International: An Interview & Notes
By Jeffrey Tucker
"For poetry, we dislike poems that are actually more like journal entries rather than poems. For fiction, we see a lot of stories that are really just “talking heads,” stories in which people stand around and talk and yet nothing happens."
Dismissing Africa
By Greg Weiss
"One of the many risks of Witness, 'the magazine of the Black Mountain Institute,' presenting an issue dedicated to the theme of Dismissing Africa is that the very notion of dismissing 'Africa' already dismisses the individuals who live in Africa."
Poets and Prose: Gerard Manley Hopkins and Fiction Theory
By Nicholas Ripatrazone
"Robert Olen Butler is careful in his definition...he is not arguing that yearning is individual to the short short story form. Rather, yearning is endemic to fiction."
Literary Magazines in Peril?
By Travis Kurowski
"At least part of the problem is the usual one: All of these magazine have no doubt a vastly greater number of people desiring to be published in their pages than they have readers willing to financially support their endeavors."
Interview:
Erin Fitzgerald, Northville Review
By Marcelle Heath
"I like when someone's
very quietly or very openly fooling with an emotional
manipulation dial."
"While
my stories aren't autobiographical, I really do believe
in the whole write-what-you-know thing. One time I wrote
a story from the point of view of an old sick man and
it was just terrible. It was like really bad Carver. The
man sat around watching daytime television and eating
pie."
"James
Harms offers a contemplative effort in a lean essay that
turns the prose poem discussion in a noteworthy direction..."
"Setting
aside, for now, its ideological nomenclature, its appeal
lies in the interpretative dynamic between text and image..."
"We
started KO because we wanted to try something
that was different than we'd seen in other literary magazines,
both in terms of thematic slant and in terms of mission..."
"He
said that if he were asked to be poetry editor of a magazine,
he would aim for unity. I told him that was more or less
the exact opposite of what I wanted to do..."
"I
imagine party-goers huddled around a fire pit as they
share stories about stalking a would-be lover..."
"Contemporary
flash fiction has been slugged, whipped, and slapped:
dragged through the literary mud, pegged as incidental..."
"Kayla
Soyer-Stein recreates the wonderful magic and sense of
the uncanny that fairy tales offer..."
"Recently
I won a best humorous poem competition, and it appears
I have a knack for healthy self-ridicule..."
"I
think about that a lot—about the balance of light
and dark and about allowing my characters to have an open
destiny. I think that’s one of the most important
aspects of story writing..."
"It
calls itself the 'farthest north literary journal for
writing and the arts,' which sounded a bit suspicious
to me, so I did a little poking around to verify the assertion..."
"The
history of Poetry is a history of resistance
in all directions..."
"The
1990s was a wild, wonderful, idealistic decade in Prague.
Excellent exchange rates and the possibility of a relatively
uninhibited way of life lured expatriates in droves to
the Czech capital. In short, it was the perfect time for
the founding of a literary journal..."
"One
author climbs to the top of a tree trunk support beam
that’s part of the architecture of the writing space.
Another is balancing a couch cushion on his head and explaining
wog: a dog who uses a dog-sized wheel chair to get his
back end around San Francisco..."
"While
literary niches often result in suffocation, eighty pages
of plaid, The LBJ’s aviary focus proves
malleable enough..."
“'In
consideration of what looks like a total collapse of our
economic system,' he said, 'I thought the bookfair went
very well...'"
"There
are two wooden figures on my husband’s desk. Figurines.
They are meant to resemble humans, black humans. African-Americans..."
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How
to Criticize: A Writer Attends Meeka Walsh’s Workshop
on Art Criticism
By Nigel Beale
Her
mother was happiest in the Arctic. She, on the other hand,
seems most content reading and writing about art, happiest—if
there must be a place—in
the pages of an arts magazine Robert
Fulford has called “indispensable.”
She is Meeka Walsh, editor
of that indispensable arts magazine, the Winnipeg-based
Border
Crossings. One Saturday afternoon at the Ottawa
Art Gallery, I attended Walsh's workshop on reviewing,
held as part of the Gallery's Articulation series on writing
art criticism.
Before discussing the nature of reviewing
and the expectations she has for material published in
Border Crossings, Walsh got political. Arts magazines,
she said, are essential outlets for critical writing:
they record culture, review what is important in creative
output, and report on its presentation. Magazines are
among the few venues where measurable distance exists
between the commissioners of art exhibitions and those
who write about them. Catalogues, though instructive,
are rarely critical. A robust community of independent
publications producing a multiplicity of views and voices
and objective assessment is essential if serious arts
culture is to survive in Canada.
This self-evident truth is evidently not
so truthful to the Canada Council. They've cut grants
to the magazine sector in recent years, cuts that threaten
to cripple the arts in this country, including putting
publications like Border Crossings out of business.
This, we are informed, does not please Walsh.
Holding to the philosophy that reviews
should be written with a spirit of generosity, Walsh,
as a general rule, commissions writing only from those
who both admire and demonstratively understand artworks
that are assigned; she favors reviews with outlooks large
and capacious, and advises they be written “as you'd
wish them to be written of your work.” When assessing
potential magazine contributors, she looks for those who
know the artist's oeuvre, its location on the theoretical
spectrum, its creative context, and the comparable efforts
of others. In other words, writers who know their stuff.
But this still is not enough. Writers
must have discernible style; must be able to write clearly
and accessibly without making a spectacle of their words,
without eclipsing the work under review, without jargon—in
short, without showing off. Or, as Fulford describes it:
they must be able to communicate art ideas to non-artists
and artists alike, explaining what matters to the first
group without boring or appalling the second.
Writing about exhibits should also create
a feel for the event. It should make the reader want to
be there, or, failing this, to search for more, to learn
more, to be curious. To achieve this, the writer has to
display enthusiasm and a sense of engaged interest. In
order to get their opinions published, writers must evoke
more than describe the show, and let readers know, with
some emphasis and flair, exactly how they feel.
Subscribing to the axiom that the best
way to learn is to do, Walsh presented several examples
of “full,” “successful,” and “mature”
Border Crossings review articles. Winning qualities
included fairness, thoroughness, accessibility, and just
the right degree of cranky opinionatedness. Openings were
declarative and intriguing, the type that require a certain
authority. Politics, artistic period, and curator intent
were all explained. The writing also corresponded to the
nature of the show examined. For example, here is what
Brian Joseph Davis says about "The Downtown Show:
The New York Arts Scene, 1974-1984":
Large
and unwieldy blocks of time past are ripe for the ham-handed
reductions and glib wall cards that often turn big exhibitions
into lifeless kiosks, but ‘The Downtown Show’
has turned the unwieldy to its advantage. The result
is something cramped, complex, loving, messy and brilliant
- like a neighborhood.
And this part Walsh loves:
Several
artists float from one section to another, and punk,
in the form of flyers and constant soundtrack, is a
note that hovers through it all - perhaps a little too
much. In a gallery context, punk always carries the
sad air of a zoo animal about it.
Walsh also speaks highly of veteran Border
Crossings contributing editor Robin Laurence, whose
article "Fred Herzog: Vancouver Photographs"
is accessible, free of jargon yet erudite, and instructive
without being didactic. Laurence hooks the reader, then
offers context, locating the photographer in history and
practice. Her prose dances with a sense of rhythm Walsh
appreciates:
He
also shows back alleys, fairgrounds, gaming arcades,
rooming houses, parking lots, concession stands, billboards
and neon signs. Lots of neon signs, glowing red, orange,
green and blue against a nighttime drapery of rain and
darkness.
In addition to rarefied text, we also
get a neat summary of subject, material, period, and setting—what
Herzog was and wasn't interested in, who he is and what
he does. An interesting pastiche of opinion and background.
Walsh will, on rare occasion, publish
negative reviews, but only if she knows the artist can
take it. The young and tender need not worry. But if the
piece contains qualities mentioned above, if the attack
isn't gratuitous, if it's grounded in genuine informed
and passionate anger, and it lets loose with some memorable
zingers—then she will damn the torpedoes.
*
For those interested in submitting articles
to Border Crossings, Walsh suggests reading back
issues and noting the style, which is a typical recommendation
of magazine editors. For example, don't send manuscripts
containing footnotes, they aren't used in the magazine—do
so at your peril. Also, choose your subject carefully.
Select exhibitions that are current,noteworthy, traveling,
catalogued, and controversial. You must prove you are
informed, not only about the art, but about things associated
with the artist, the show, and the environment. Most importantly
perhaps, you must present a compelling reason for its
publication—and be persistent.
Finally, to hone your skills, browse and
critique lots of reviews. Read, read, read. (Walsh especially
recommends The
Nation and Frieze
magazine.)

Motivated by an insane, deep-seated
love of books, Nigel Beale has, during the past several
years, traveled the globe interviewing an impressive selection
of award winning authors and accomplished booksellers, publishers,
collectors and book experts for a radio program he hosts
called The
Biblio File. He’s also snapped
a few photos of bookstores along the way. He blogs at
www.nigelbeale.com
where most interviews conducted for The Biblio File can
be found. |
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FEATURED
MAGAZINE / FEB 2010

New England Review volume 30 number 3, Middlebury College; Editor: Stephen Donadio; Published: Middlebury, VT; Est: 1978. http://www.nereview.com/
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