‘Tis the season to support small presses. Once again HTMLGIANT is hosting its Annual Indie Lit Secret Santa. Lots of indie publishers like The Lifted Brow and Keyhole have already begun offering up special offers for Secret Santa participants. Here are some details:

From now till December 15, sign up to play Secret Santa at HTMLGiant. It’s easy! On the sign-deadline, you will find out your recipient and her or his address, and by Christmas (it’s December 25, this year, I think), send them a book from an indie press or a subscription to an indie mag. And you get one too! Sounds like it was a great success last year, and it’s sure to be this year, too.

Press release about McSweeney's San Francisco Panorama issue

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. (Click image at right for more details.) Flavorwire put up some last minute news on the event along with a brief interview with publisher Oscar Villalon.

Though not a literary magazine, exactly, this is not to be missed: The New Yorker has published an excerpt of David Foster Wallace’s forthcoming posthumous novel Pale King. (Via Flavorwire.) Here’s how it starts:

Once when I was a little boy I received as a gift a toy cement mixer. It was made of wood except for its wheels—axles—which, as I remember, were thin metal rods. I’m ninety per cent sure it was a Christmas gift. I liked it the same way a boy that age likes toy dump trucks, ambulances, tractor-trailers, and whatnot. There are little boys who like trains and little boys who like vehicles—I liked the latter.

The translation of Maupassant’s story “A Parisian Affair” in the new Five Dials 8b starts with the intriguing line: “Is there any keener sense known to man than woman’s curiosity?”

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