Luna Digest, 2/23

Tomorrow, February 24, Creative Nonfiction releases their long-awaited magazine redesign. You see an image of the new cover at left, which is a bit different from their previous, more somber design. The issue looks like it will also include some interesting things for CN—such as an encounter with Dave Eggers, Philip Lopate on using the imagination, and the history of Creative Nonfiction.

Granta online editor Ollie Brock wrote Marcelle the other day to mention a few new things up on the Granta site, in case we missed them (and we had). First off, Brock says Granta has restarted their New Voices project to exhibit six emerging writers each year. The first is Billy Kahora from Kenya with the story “The Gorilla’s Apprentice.” Kahora is also editor of the literary magazine Kwani. Brock interviews him about his magazine and African literature here.

Brock also mentions some imaginative histories on the site from journalist Jeremy Seabrook. Titled “Work I Never Did,” the essay is to be published in two parts, the first one here, the second here.

Here’s an enchanting pull-quote from Amelia Gray’s “These Are the Fables,” published yesterday in Cell Stories (quote via Matt Bell):

“Here’s the thing,” he said. “Your mama’s dead. And you’re forty years old. And I have a warrant out for my arrest. And I am addicted to getting tattoos. And our air conditioner’s broke. And you are drunk every day. And all I ever want to do is fight and go swimming. And I am addicted to keno. And you are just covered in hair. And I’ve never done a load of laundry in my life. And you are still technically married to my drug dealer. And I refuse to eat beets. And you can’t sleep unless you’re sleeping on the floor. And I am addicted to heroin. And honest to God, you got big tits but you make a real shitty muse. And we are in Beaumont, Texas.”

Speaking of Mr. Bell and excerpts, there’s an intriguing bit of Lily Hoang’s forthcoming novel The Evolutionary Revolution over at the recent issue of The Collagist. It begins unreliably, “We cannot be held responsible if some of these events are not quite in order, if some of the facts are slightly out of place. We did not live through this, and what few facts we do have are difficult to verify…” Hoang’s novel will be available June 2010 from Les Figues Press.

David Shields’s much talked about Reality Hunger: A Manifesto is to be released today—but in case you can’t or won’t get a copy, here’s yet another excerpt of the book, this time a bit on hip-hop on The Outlet, the blog of Electric Literature. “Art is theft”  Shields says, and “Language is a city.” Indeed.

Yet more responses to Ted Genoways’s now infamous criticism of contemporary fiction publishing: First, Jaime Wood wonders if the problem with fiction isn’t postmodernism for Bark. And more recently, David Backer offers up a guide to fiction online over at The Millions (within which, I must add, is the interesting but erroneous idea that Fictionaut is an imprint of Luna Park—maybe sometime in the future, after I purchase Google).

Sentinel Nigeria Magazine, a new literary magazine of Nigerian literature, is live.

Scott Esposito gets into the conversation about “Who Should Edit The Paris Review?”

Finally, The Cupboard never ceases to amaze with it’s micro-issue magic. Their latest volume is Bridge & Tunnel (& Tunnel & Bridge), by Joshua Cohen, a work which appears to be a fictional unpacking of the city, of the bridge, of the tunnel. Cohen—whose much looked forward novel Witz is forthcoming this year from Dalkey Archive Press—seems, much like his friend Justin Taylor, a writer to watch. Here’s a claustrophobic excerpt from Bridge & Tunnel:

When we stopped saying we were going to move out of the city, we had:

nothing to talk about at parties, nothing to talk about on the train, nothing to talk about to my aunt, nothing to talk about to her parents, nothing to talk about over pizza, nothing to talk about over good but insufferable sushi, nothing to talk about on the corner of Canal Street & Centre, nothing to talk about at jury duty, nothing to talk about in the bathroom at the theater before a movie began. When the bun place closed. The midnight movie theater in Midtown. When there was nothing to do in Midtown. No point to go. When the deli that pastramitized its own meats shut down, too. I really liked that bun place. When we stopped saying we were going to move out of the city, we became more bearable (we had to be). But, speaking just for me, more depressed.

Every Tuesday, Travis Kurowski presents Luna Digest, a selection of news from the world of literary magazines. Travis is the editor of Luna Park, a magazine founded on the idea that journals are as deserving of critical attention as other artistic works.