Featured Magazine: July 2009

Cover of Conjunctions: 52

The latest issue of Conjunctions (a magazine begun by Bradford Morrow as a sort of homage to New Directions founder James Laughlin) themed “Betwixt the Between: Imossible Realism” reads as a continuation of their famous New Wave Fabulists issue from 2002, guest-edited by Peter Straub. That 2002 issue was a landmark publication in contemporary remixes of literary realism in the vein of stylists such as Barthelme, Gogol, and Marquez. (The issue was so influential that it even coined a new literary term.) It featured early work of Kelly Link and some fantastic new stuff by Lethem and Gaiman and others. According to editor Peter Straub—and others who have praised the issue—the issue blended the ever-blending genres a bit more by placing well-known sci-fi and comic book writers alongside writers thought of as more traditionally literary.

This new issue does much the same—and it is fantastic, the sort of literary ride one does not get in many literary magazine issues, even from Conjunctions. There are some cross-overs from the Straub bunch (Elizabeth Hand, China Mieville, James Morrow), but the issue is also packed with stunning work from such slight-of-hand writers as Stephen Marche, Ben Marcus, Jedediah Berry, and Karen Russel. As Charlie Jane Anders writes of the issue on io9: “Joyce Carol Oates and Jeff Vandermeer, Together at Last.“