Ted Striphas will challenge every entrenched notion you have about the publishing industry. You think Big-box retailers like Borders and B&N have put independents out of business? Striphas argues that other factors often contributed to the indie’s close, that the big-box retailers rectify the social/financial inequalities present around indie’s, and that big-boxers have a history […]
In a high school English class unit called Love/Gender/Family Unit, Kathleen Reilly taught short stories by David Sedaris, Laura Lippman, Stephen King and Ernest Hemingway. But not anymore. She recently resigned, after parents demanded she remove the stories from the curriculum. Parent Sue Ann Johnson was one of the more vocal objectors to the stories, […]
The shortlist for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story prize is out, and they did much better at creating a shortlist than last year, when the Jhumpa Lahiri coup took down the prize. An Elegy for Easterly by Petina Gappah (Zimbabwe) Singularity by Charlotte Grimshaw (New Zealand) Ripples and other Stories by Shih-Li Kow (Malaysia) […]
Brilliant and lengthy article at Fast Company on the changing landscape of books, publishers and e-books. The book industry is especially vulnerable because it is a “hits” business, with a small number of breakaway titles (Harry Potter, The Tipping Point, Twilight) subsidizing all the rest. Take away publishers’ best-sellers and you’re left with stacks of […]
The stories in “Fugue State” will haunt you. Brian Evenson has a remarkable ability to come up with creepy tales that won’t be extracted from your head. For example, take “Invisible Box.” Imagine a girl sleeping with a mime, a mime that’s still dressed up with the gloves and the face paint. During the completely […]
In the fourth story of this collection, “A Guide to San Francisco,” the narrator says, “I have to admit I have never been as moved by the realists or the world-creating fabulists as I am by the pattern-makers.” If you agree with that aesthetic preference, you should read Damion Searls’ “What We Were Doing and […]
Before I get to a micro review of the collection itself, I have to admit that I’m impressed by Naiqian’s bio. Growing up in a rural section of China, he didn’t start writing until 37, as a result of a bet with a friend. He still has his day job as a detective (!) for […]
Here’s John Freeman brilliant description of the role of literary journals: Their primary function, after all, is to undermine this economy of prestige, to promote gross miscegenation, messiness, conflict and disorder; to subvert the market; and to place writers in unexpected places, where they can create their own unlikely community of readers.
Narrative has become the current gold standard for online literary magazines, wading in the fray and dominating the competition in a relatively short time. Well, watch out. Electric Literature just launched, and it looks like a doozy. True to the name, EL is distributing electronically, through a host of formats: e-book, Kindle, and iPhone, plus […]
At the Guardian, they review the new anthology “Ox-Tales,” structured around the four elements, and “Park Stories,” a set of eight specially commissioned short stories all corresponding to a major British park. Explaining the rationale behind the parks, editor Rowan Routh said: “There’s a kinship between parks and short fiction – both are confined things.” […]
