lit mag interview + time, again

"Do people still read? What do people read, or have time to read? Where, how, and why do people read? Are people still willing to pay for a little-known magazine filled with little-known writers when they have unlimited access to free literature online? If they are willing to pay, what compels them to do so? And why—why?!—start a new publication now, when it seems as though people generally have less time, less money, and less attention to devote to reading than ever before? In other words: What is the future of literature?"

that's what Knee-Jerk wanted to know. they talked with The Collagist, Artifice, and Triple Fiction, the iPhone application of Featherproof books. the interview is up here.

interesting sidenote: the interview with Mat Bell from The Collagist inlcudes a question that could also belong to the Living ?s Karyn sent for her interview with me:

Q: As an editor, how do you strike a balance between your personal literary interests and the magazine’s needs? Is there any difference? - Knee Jerk

A: Most days, I write as soon as I wake up in the morning. Whenever possible, I work on my own fiction from the time I get up until lunch, which leaves me the rest of the day to edit and read and work on the other things I'm doing. - Mat Bell
.

Fiction, Dead + Alive

it is a good week for the online lit scene: “The Millions” feature an article on the striving online lit scene: "Long Live Fiction: A Guide to Online Fiction"

the link got even picked up by The New Yorker in their book bench section, here the direct link to the post: "In The News.." --> second entry: "The Millions' roundup of the best online sources for fiction"

i added a comment about the oldest online literary magazines to the Long Live Fiction Guide. then i had a minor brainwave, and moved to the "Lost + Found Online Magazines" page of the re/visit issue of blueprintreview. the page already included some general articles, and i still had a tidbit of e-zine history and a list of "first online mags that are still alive" in a file. i added those, too, and now renamed this whole page - it now is titled: "Online Literary Magazines - Lost, Found, Dead + Alive".
.

Women + Men (or: Melusine + Thirst for Fire)

the new issue of Melusine launched: Melusine 2.1. the full title and description of the journal is: "Melusine, or Woman in the 21st Century, an online journal of literature and art by women (but not only women) about women (and just about everything else.)"

in a fe/male coincidence, Thirst for Fire launched the new issue almost at the same time: Thirst For Fire Winter 2010. and their new issue is 100% male: "Our all male writing cast gives us stories filled with lust and longing, drugged diaries, pornographic film sets, and boyhood memories."
.
so interesting, to browse both issues parallel - Melusine starts with fiction, and then moves to a strong poetry section. for a taste, here the opening of the first poem:

My water turns
mossy dark, viscous. A woman wearing

a Speedo slides through sparkling blue
as if she learned from sharks

- Envy's Lane, Jari Thymian

---
in contrast, the Thirst for Fire issue is all fiction, 8 stories, here the starting lines of the first 2 stories.

"I see this girl in the metro. Two stops into my ride she sits right in front of me and looks away." - Love: Hate, Yann Rousselet

"The smoke grew from the fire and separated, taking an existence of its own." - Ota Benga Figures it Out, Jarrid Deaton

typing this, i wonder: if there weren't names attached, would it be possible to guess the gender of the author?

and connected to the fe/male theme, here 2 links to recent virtual notes on gender ratios in the lit scene: "indie lit scene gender imbalance" and "poetry 2000-2009 + number trouble".

--------------------
update1, 5 hours later: WHITE HETEROSEXUAL MALE

just came across this conceptual idea for an online journal, from Embassy of Misguided Zen's Blog:

"if i had a lot of time and money i'd start these journals:
4. WHITE HETEROSEXUAL MALE
this journal would only publish white heterosexual male writers, though the stories would have to have black, asian, hispanic, gay, women, alien, animal, etc. narrators. the implicit demographic of the writers and their disparate content would be instructive, valuable, relevant. this journal would be about perception, both the writer's and the reader's." (link)

----------------------
update2, 7 hours later : I AM NOT SORRY I HAVE A VAGINA--
(pulling this up from the comments)
"Here's another article about writers and gender that Roxane Gay posted yesterday at HTML. htmlgiant.com/i-am-not-sorry-i-have-a-vagina// -coincidence????" - xTx

here the start of the article:
"The fiction section of the new issue (ETA: the set of stories that indicate they’ve been guest edited by Claire Messud) of Guernica is guest-edited by Claire Messud and she offers a brief essay, Writers, Plain and Simple, to introduce her selections, all written by women. In her essay, Messud writes of how Elizabeth Bishop did not wish to be known as a woman writer."

and here the direct link to the Messud essay, and the starting line: Writers, Plain and Simple
"Women make up 80 percent of the fiction reading audience in this country. So why, guest fiction editor Claire Messud asks, are women authors so frequently left off the best-of lists, and left out of prestigious book prizes?"

MillionWriters + FictionDaily

stories + stories + more stories:

the storySouth Million Writers award is open for nominations - eligible are short stories that got published in 2009, with a wordcount of minimum 1000 words. the nominations lists are a treat on their own, here the direct links: the editor nominations list, and the reader nominations list.

and there's a new webpage: FictionDaily. great simple concept: a short, a long, and a genre story per day, "good stuff to read in places you wouldn't normally look." no author names, no magazine names, just the words for starters. here the link: FictionDaily.
.

Independent Publishing Wiki

just in, via HTML Giant (link):

"A while ago I talked about how I wished there were some kind of resource for independent publishers great and small and then Dave Housley and I started talking about how it would be great to start a wiki and then well, we did. The Indie Publishing Wiki is still in its infancy but I thought I would share the project’s existence so people can start adding their knowledge and participating in what we hope becomes a valuable resource for editors."
- Roxane Gay
.

new: reprints magazine

and another thing i came across while browsing newpages: there is a new magazine in the making, following the same idea like the current blueprintreview reprints issue, only in magazine-size:

Revisitations - The first journal devoted to reprints.

"Why reprints? To circulate under-discovered work and to honor daring literary pubs that introduce the stories we want to remember."
- from their twitter-page

so good to see this. i am already curious for their first issue.
.

all fresh: YB wtf BS Cha

lots of new issues out all over the litzone. here's a 4-link-handful:

- YB issue 2 (new poetry with commentary)

- wtf pwm issue 1.1 (innaugral)

- Battered Suitcase Winter 2009 Vol. 2 (vagabondage)

- Cha November 2009 (2 year anniversary)

hf! (happy friday)
.

rumble / mirco fiction & interview

the new issue of rumble magazine is online since the last day of october - it's the "halloween edition".

included: Moby Dick, Headless Horsemen, and other micro fiction beings --- and also included: an interesting interview with Claudia Smith - lead by Molly Gaudry, who contributed "Faith" to the previous issue of BluePrintReview. the interview reaches from micro fiction to novels and from realism to domesticity, and also reflects on the new chapbook from Claudia Smith: "Put Your Head in My Lap" (Future Tense Books).
.

fictionaut: blueprintreview group

if you haven't checked it out yet, then take a look at fictionaut - a new forum for adventurous readers and writers that allows to post ones work, and comes with comment- and message options. all this, rather well done.

for some more background on fictionaut, here an article about the place: Transcend and Include: Fictionaut and the Future of the Literary Magazine.

one of the features of fictionaut allows to create subgroups. the idea of those groups: Fictionaut groups allow members to add previously published stories to the groups of journals they originally appeared in – thereby getting more exposure for their writing and, in turn, leading a new audience to discover magazines they might not have heard of otherwise.

to be part of the story exchange, i now registered a "BluePrintReview" group there -- here the direct link: fictionaut group - BluePrintReview.
.

word for word / otoliths

otoliths has put the new issue live: issue 15 ('southern spring')
lots of fascinating work, here 2 direct links to recent blueprintreview contributors:

Sean Burn
6 from svobodin - 6 visuals
(BluePrintReview#21: ristretto (carlisle) )

Marcia Arrieta
6 poems (the power of a symbol, (untitled), circular..)
(BluePrintReview#20: Map I / Map II )

and word for word is new, too -- also with issue 15 ('fall 2009'):
- poetry
- visual poetry (!!)
- political poetry
- essays and notes.
.

Writer's Bloc, Foliate Oak, Literary Mama

the new issues of Writer's Bloc, Foliate Oak and Literary Mama are out - and all of them include pieces of contributors who are featured in the current issue of BluePrintReview. here the double links:

Peter Schwartz
Artificial Light - a Writer's Bloc poem
(BluePrintReview images: mute knows how / Zoo)

Carrie Crow
Web / Wires / Doors - 3 Foliate Oak images
(BluePrintReview image: Vietnam in View)

Eileen Donovan-Kranz
O Canada - a Literary Mama story
(BluePrintReview poem: Granite)

congratulations all around!.
.

calls for submissions: Nano Magic in Process

here a quick list of upcoming deadlines / calls for submissions i recently came across:

Switchback -- Eleventh Issue: "Process vs. Product" -- deadline October 31
Nanoism - December Contest "five tweet serials" -- deadline October 31
Dogzplot - Winter 2010: "Magic" -- (deadline not stated)

and upcoming in November:
BluePrintReview - issue 23: "(dis)comfort zones" -- submit Nov 1-30
.

into the past IV: Whalelane & Blue Moon Review

just back from trailing the vast land of the wayback archives for the blueprintreview reprint issue.. this time i found:

- The Blue Moon Review, one of the oldest online zines (dating back to 1994)
looks like the archive is online, too, under 'back issues'

- Whalelane: writing, visuals, and hybrids. click the diagram fields to get to the archive.

- and i came across a beautiful fragment of the lost first issue of 'Suitcase Generation': "Why we travel" (from Adam Jeffries Schwartz)- which also fits with this archive work:

A long time ago,

you flung out parts of yourself to keep them safe.

---Now, ----you're collecting them.

~

Sundress Best of the Net

today, i revisited Sundress Best of the Net 2008. and good that i went there now, and not in a week: submissions for Best of the Net 2009 are closing September 30.

browsing the best-of-page, i was a bit surprised that i kept running into the Apple Valley Review. from the 22 chosen finalists, 3 were from this magazine. and more multiple magazines: juked, The Boxcar Poetry Review, and Mezzo Cammin, all with 2 finalists. makes 9 finalists from 4 magazines, out of 62 submitting journals. just noticing.

on a more random note, i followed the link to Tarpaulin Sky, and arrived at an issue merge:

The current issue of Tarpaulin Sky is the current issue of Trickhouse; i.e., the current issue of Trickhouse is the current issue of Tarpaulin Sky. Think of it as Trick Sky or Tarp House. Or just don't worry about all that, and instead proceed directly to the goods: Trickhouse Vol.5 / Tarpaulin Sky #16".

~

Cha, Zoo, Dance

the new issue of Cha is up - here the link: Cha August 2009. i instantly fell for the title artwork, and for the Swift quote and the combined reflections on it in the editorial.

I remember some other life as if it's mine.
My country has become a stamp, weather,
And what my mother says, over the phone.

~

also up and open now: J. A. Tyler's "The Zoo - A Going". which is: a whole novella, posted one piece a time. right now, there is the fox:

He says the fox is on stilts, my dad, when it passes by the place we are looking. We are up on a step, mom dad son, and we are watching past the edge of bushes, watching the fox on stilts walking circles around this thing, this rectangle.

to come next: the panther, the jaguar, the cheetah.

~

and a link from last week - i took a New Yorker short story with me for the flight: Sherman Alexie's "War Dances". the first line of it drew me in:

A few years ago, after I returned home to Seattle from a trip to Los Angeles, I unpacked my bag and found a dead cockroach, shrouded by a dirty sock, in a corner. Shit, I thought. We’re being invaded.

looks like a collection of short stories at first, but don't get tricked. it's one humorous & existential story.

~

words / passing

sometimes words connect in almost magic chain reactions. like this one:

3 weeks ago, i was about to turn off the computer at the end of some work sessions, then browsed the list of updated blogs for an evening read, and saw the marked line of the quarrtsiluni economy issue (which i follow closely since Dealing, curious for all the different turns this theme takes). plus, the new entry seemed to fit the mood: Evening. by Angela Koh.

it wasn't what i had in mind at all for a leisure evening read. but it caught me right away, and went under my skin. i read it 2 times, 3 times, then followed Angela Koh's blog link, and bookmarked it.

fast forward to last week: during a coffee break, i browsed bookmarked blogs.. and came across a post that amazed me. it's title: Superhuman. at first i couldn't remember how i came across this blog in the first place. then i saw the quarrstiluni link, and things clicked.

now, 2 mails later, Superhuman is up in just a moment. i also added some labels - one of them is "time". curious (as ever) for other j.a.m.-posts that would come up with it, i clicked "time" after i applied it. and words connected.

turns out, time now moves from one road trip to another, connecting in two lines about ghosts that almost read like a time mirror reflection:

The past and their spirits, the precursor staring wearily at the future generation that drives by on bald tires. The feared world they must have left. I wanted to make them proud.

ghosts of passing cars, flaky and white in soundwaves uninvited to a melancholy willing
to remain like all the wrong memories that litter the floor with half-empty coffee cups

here the direct link to the connection in time.

(and yes. it's things like this that get me through days like this. now, back to the 42 things that still wait to get done today.)

~

LITnIMAGE: from "tides" to "transcend"

"LITnIMAGE features art in the here and now. We like art that's edgy, that has yet to be labeled or attributed to a movement. We embrace thought-provoking work that causes viewers to broaden the way they see and feel. We enjoy work that guides and challenges our ideals. Content is significant; aesthetics follows its lead. LITnIMAGE recognizes not only the skill and creativity of artists, but the time and hardships they undertake to wake their audience. We're proud to spotlight the results of their efforts."

some submissions are easy. you see, you send, you get accepted, the work goes online. some are more complex. like LITnIMAGE. i had the link noted since a while, and came back to it after a collage-session with Steve Wing. we had 3 collages, each of them following 1 theme: "tides", "growth" and "microstructures". we thought they would make a real good series, and submitted them.

some days later, i wasn't so sure about the series anymore - the images felt a bit too diverse. plus, i was working on the shortcuts/detours issue of bluerprintreview, and had just received an invasive life question poem - and felt, "growth" would be the perfect match for it.

then litnimage wrote back, with an acceptance for "tides", a pass for "growth" and "microstructures", and the invitation to send some more images.

that's how things started to fall in place.

"growth" became part of the shortcuts issue, it's up here: "Invasion".

"tides" turned into the base for a series of black-white collages in which Steve and i experimented with different approaches of combining 2-3 photos. the full series we came up with consists of 6 images, which are all online now in the summer issue of LITnIMAGE, here the direct link:
tides / latitude / constructures / drift / transcend / merge

looking at it now, i am really glad that litnimage didn't accept the first collage series, and instead asked for something different - which let this series come together. my personal favourite is: "Transcend".
~

into the past III: The Surface & Taint

i am still stunned by the waybackmachine, and the way it brings the pages of lost magazines back into the present. today i went digging for bytes again, and found:

The Surface
- Surface Myth & Magic issue (click on left sidebar for Poetry/Prose/etc)
- Surface Money issue
- Surface Sound issue

and i checked the link of another past magazine - taint - and found that it still has its archive online:

taint magazine
- archive (starting with 'Columny', keep scrolling down to get to 'Fiction' and 'Poetry', and even further to reach 'Critique')
- some direct links: Domestics by Diane Payne, Xliberated by David Barrenger - and one of mine: maybe certainly (funny to find this at the end of the fiction section, with the subtitle "almost definitely").

~

into the past II: surgery of modern warfare / artistry of life

a couple of days ago, i found archived pages of Turk Magazine and Dicey Brown Magazine via the waybackmachine (here more about that: into the past I). today, i searched for other magazines thought lost. and i found:

Surgery of Modern Warfare
here the goodbye-page.
and here, the Surgery archives. looks like they are complete and functioning. i found a piece i wrote years ago: "lines on paper".

and also:

Artistry of Life
here the archive page. it first looked like it's complete, the issue pages come up, like this one: issue 10 - The Pilgrimage of Childhood - but only very few single pieces come up. here is one that worked: J.A. Tyler - "913 Mansfield Drive". my "Small Sins" next to it remain lost.
some of the older issues (issue 3, issue2) seem to be almost complete.

~

a boy, a lifeboat, an island

in between bits and bytes, 3 fun / funky / interesting online trips:

- an art studio tour to Vietnamese painter Do Hoang Tuong

- a series of short stories, all including a boy, a cat, a lifeboat.

- and in qarrtsiluni: "Isles and Lakes". (without lifeboat).

all those amazing pages out there made me think of the Time cover in 2008 again: The Time Person of the Year: You.

~