CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS:

If you still need a reason to write for Luna Park about your favorite literary magazine, your least favorite literary magazine, your hero editor, a killer short story you just read, a head-exploding poem, a revelatory essay, some seamless editing, some kick-ass lit mag design or cover art, or even your favorite local magazine rack in your favorite local bookstore---read Matt Bell's post "Blake Butler and Dan Wickett on Being an Open Node." Then go ahead and read Butler (from No Colony and Lamination Colony) and Wickett's (from Dzanc and Emerging Writers) original posts on the subject. Don't have time to keep up with lit mags in the world of Web 2.0? Rarely Likable has posted a list of lit mags with RSS feeds. Daryl Scroggins has posted at Clusterflock, that hybrid of blogging, the complete table of contents for the first 25 issues of Gordon Lish's The Quarterly (1987-95). Together, the contents are a trip through one of the most influential lit mags of the second half of the twentieth century. And, speaking of highly influential (and popular) lit mags, Joseph McCrindle, founder and editor of Transatlantic Review (1959-77), has died (an issue of the magazine is pictured above). More than just a fine editor, McCrindle was a literary philanthropist, establishing the Henfield Foundation, which gives out the lucrative and highly respected Henfield Prize (past winners are Ethan Canin, Walter Mosely, and our own staff writer Sam Ruddick). Finally, Ben Myers writes for The Guardian about porn, literature, and The Erotic Review.

[Above image is of Transatlantic Review 29, an issue often cited for its inclusion of J.G. Ballard's story "The University of Death."]

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's...McSweeney's tutoring cousin 826 Valencia's opening a Superhero Supply Company in Brooklyn's Park Slope? In America's other literary capital: it is again that time of year for Chicago's celebration of publishing, the 4th Annual Printers' Ball on August 22, hosted by Newcity, Poetry, and the Museum of Contemporary Art. (Of course, not to be out done as Lit Capital of the World, the Brooklyn Book (and lit mag) Festival is coming September 14). Speaking of cool American cities, not only does the Austin public library have a blog, it also shouts out about the Texas library's stash of literary magazines. If you're not over here reading about lit mags, check out these blogs: NYTimes' Paper Cuts writing recently on James Dickey's daugher writing in Oxford American (pictured at left) and Canadian lit mag sub-Terrain, and The New Yorker's Book Bench on the best reference for modernist literary magazines: the Modernist Journals Project. Caleb Crain posts his comments from the June n+1 debate "The Internet: We All Live There Now" at Steamboats Are Ruining Everything. Latest issue of failbetter.com has an interview with literary magician Steven Millhauser. White Chapel, discussion board of online post-apocalyptic comic book Freak Angels, hosts a conversation about its readers' favorite short fiction magazines. The first issue of 2008's most talked most about and most feared new lit mag No Colony is now available. The prize judges didn't even compose a short-list before awarding short fiction wunderkid Jhumpa Lahiri the O'Connor Prize. Finally, British poet Elizabeth Bartlett has died.

(And, since the Olympics is an event of hybrid locality for everyone, it is not off-topic to mention that, yes, Chinese writers are still being imprisoned.)

[Above image is cover of the Oxford American's "Best of the South 2008" issue.]

Binyavanga Wainaina's Kenyan literary magazine Kwani? has received a considerable amount of press in the West (such as from Vanity Fair), as has South Africa's Chimurenga (in The New York Times)--but what of other African literary magazines? A writer in The New Times wondering about Rwanda's literature posits that the nation's writers need literary magazines. There is a new magazine covering Punjabi literature of the Indian/Pakistani border: Sanjh. On the other side of the globe, news from Antigua: Bim, "possibly the most significant literary magazine the Caribbean has ever known," is planning a relaunch. In an essay from Granta online,"J.M. Coetzee and his censors," Coetzee is quoted saying that writing under threat of censorship from the South African government is "‘like being intimate with someone who does not love you." The 2008 Beijing Olympics are on the way and all eyes are on China (especially over at PEN). In the most recent Paris Review, eccentric Chinese interview phenom Liao Yiwu interviews Yang Wenchang, forty-year-old survivor of the recently devastating eight-magnitude Sichuan earthquake. While you're at the PR site, check out Andre Aciman's Ellie nominated story, "Monsieur Kalashnikov." If you haven't read it, you are missing one of the most enjoyable depictions in contemporary fiction of the immigrant experience. Coming up, the local news...

[Above image is the cover of Paris Review 185.]

Mississippi Review online has just put up its latest issue: "The Literary Magazine at 100." The issue title is in reference to the 100th birthday of the contemporary literary magazine (meaning the literary magazine as we recognize the form today), placing its contemporary beginning at Ford Madox Ford's The English Review launch in 1908. (For further information on this, see Steve Evans's essay "The Little Magazine a Hundred Years On.") More than just a celebration of the form, the issue functions as an investigation into and commentary on the literary magazine of past and present.

The online issue of MR functions as a teaser for the upcoming fall 2008 print issue of the magazine, which will contain everything from the online issue, along with a variety of other pieces--such as new fiction from John Brandon and Rene Houtrides, an interview with the editor of Antioch Review, a roundtable discussion between editors of some of the nation's best literary magazines, an oral history of the literary magazine (in the tradition of Plimpton), and, of course, much more.

[This special issue of MR is guest edited by Travis Kurowski, editor of Luna Park, and Gary Percesepe.]