Oxford American's "Best of the South 2008" issue

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.)