Luna Park contributing writer Nick Ripatrazone has written a great essay on the use of literary magazines in the classroom:

I teach public high-school English full-time.  My schedule includes advanced and introductory creative writing courses, as well as a course called Advanced Placement Literature and Composition.  I use contemporary literary magazines in all of my courses as often as possible, and—at least based on my perception of student performance and the feedback from alumni—to a fair amount of pedagogical success.  Sure, it’s important for students to read Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 and Flannery O’Connor’s “Parker’s Back,” but it’s also important for them to know that both writers had published work in The Kenyon Review, among other literary magazines.  The Pynchons and O’Connors of the present are doing the same—and it would be a short-sighted injustice to avoid the good work accumulating in these “little magazines” and instead pining for and discussing in classrooms the latest novel release.

On that note, CLMP’s Literary Magazine Adoption Program for Creative Writing Students is now live. Go sign up.

One of the more interesting literary magazine discussions to come about in recent months has happened via email, twitter feeds, and blogs about Andrew Whitacre’s post titled “The End of the Small Print Journal. Please.” on the identity theory editors’ blog. Among other things, Whitacre argues for greater cognizance among small literary magazines regarding the potential of electronic publishing. In other words, no more websites “created around 1999 when editors thought ‘Maybe we should have a website?’, then made one, and still oddly maintain them within their ten-year-old frames.” Fair enough.

There’s some good commentary on Whitacre’s post from Roxane Gay on HTMLGIANT.

Justin Taylor experiments with anonymous reviewing in the recent issue of The Believer.

Did everyone else notice that 3:AM Magazine published a ton of great interviews last year alone? Alice Notley, Haruki Murakami, Andrei Codrescu, Jedediah Berry, and many, many more.

The newest issue of Lapham’s Quarterly focuses on religion, which editor Lewis Lapham finds in the most unlikely—and most perfect—of places:

A religion still hidden, like the yeast in the three measures of meal, in the secular disguise of environmentalism. The foundational metaphysics already have been incorporated into rituals of devout observance. The worshipful recyclings of eggshells and orange rinds celebrate the resurrection of the disembodied spirit; the eating of free-range chickens and organic heirloom tomatoes signifies the partaking in a feast of communion. Like the Councils of Nicaea and Trent, international conferences addressed to the problem of climate change seek to certify the existence of the Holy Ghost. The miracle is the rabbit, not the pulling of the rabbit out of a hat.

Electric Literature editor Andy Hunter looks back on “Lessons from the Rick Moody Twitter Project” for the website Publishing Perspectives. Moody himself adds to the conversation recently for NPR, explaining that it is a part of the writer’s job to explore the possibilities of fitting content to form, whether that form is a 140-character twitter feed or a haiku.

This week is Panorama week on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, so if you didn’t fork out the $5 or $16 bucks for the issue, you can now read some of the content free on the website all week. (Just in time, too: We finally got our own Panorama late last week and will be doing a week-long section-by-section look at the issue beginning on Monday, 1/11 at the Luna Park site.)

“Friends & Neighbors: The Asian American Literary Review.”

Poetry Magazine philanthropist-maximus Ruth Lily, who donated $175 million to the magazine, has died.

Memorious has launched their own editor blog, simply titled: Memoriousmag’s Blog.

Keyhole has now joined Dzanc Books, a conglomeration which also includes Absinthe and Monkeybicyle.

Finally, Five Dials is offering up their upcoming special issue on David Foster Wallace for free, just send them an email:

As we like to overload our friends with gifts for New Year’s, you will also be receiving an email in the next few days to let you know where you can download our special issue on David Foster Wallace, featuring writing by Don DeLillo, Jonathan Franzen, Zadie Smith and others. Don’t worry, you won’t have to sign in, or give us your mobile number, or type in a code word. If you know any David Foster Wallace fans who would like to receive a link to the issue please tell them to subscribe to the magazine. It’s free. Get in touch using this address: hamish@hamishhamilton.co.uk

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.

To kick off the New Year, Fictionaut begins a new series, Fictionaut Faves, where Fictionaut members discuss one story they have faved. We thought it would be great way to revisit some wonderful writing that has appeared in the community by offering personal and critical analysis by other writers. Some of the stories may be familiar, others new discoveries, but all share the admiration of their peers. Enjoy! —Marcelle Heath

On Katrina Denza‘s “Soap”
by Laura Ellen Scott

I always yammer on about how Katrina Denza‘s “Soap,” published in Wigleaf in 2008, is a model of how very short fiction revives contemporary, realistic story-telling. It turns out we’re not as tired of domestic travails as we had thought; we’re just tired of the way those stories are told. (You know what I’m talking about. White people and their cancer/adultery/dying mom stories.) But “Soap” describes a suspended moment, quite literally, and as it does so it opens up a truth about realism and drama-like Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow.”

That said, my response to “Soap” is actually very personal. I don’t write anything like it, although finding it was crucial to my present focus. “Soap” moved me at 45 the way “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” moved me at 16, the way that “That Evening Sun” moved me at 20, the way that “That Pederson Kid” moved me at 25, etc. I suppose it’s a hormonal thing, but when I read and re-read “Soap,” I feel like I’m in the presence of something honest and important.

On Sean Lovelace‘s “Someone Emailed Me Last Night and Asked if I Would Write About Nachos”
by Jon Davies

One of the first stories I faved on Fictionaut was “Someone Emailed Me Last Night and Asked if I Would Write About Nachos” by Sean Lovelace. I wasn’t, at the time, aware of Lovelace’s work–or of his obsession with bar food. I was glad to get this introduction to Lovelace, and this particular piece remains my favorite of the various writings I’ve read of his. In most of the work I’ve liked, Sean Lovelace tears up our English language to make something I find fun to read. By that, I mean he both reinvents language in creative new ways and tears down language as we generally think about it. In this short piece, a set of simple declarative sentences (well, mostly simple, mostly declarative, mostly sentences), Lovelace waxes poetic on “junk” food. Once he’s done, though, I’m thinking this can’t be junk food, not when Lovelace is writing about it. It’s art. I’m so glad that someone e-mailed Lovelace and asked him to write about nachos.

On Siolo Thompson‘s “Making Small Things”
by Heather Fowler

One of my favorite stories on Fictionaut is actually a flash fiction piece by Siolo Thompson called “Making Small Things,” which was published in Rumble magazine in 2008.  It’s a flash, granted, quick to read, but each time I read it, it seems that time both contracts and expands as the narrative thread gleams forth with a frightening combination of childhood descriptions (innocent), dark sexuality (immediate), remembered loss (severe), and unending consequence (dire).  Thompson uses language well, poetry well, density well–slipping into lovely and unexpected word combinations with her cadence, image, use of the surreal, and starkly subtextual events.  One example of this would be this zinger found at the end of paragraph one, where the narrator discusses her attributes as a girl child and seamlessly reminds the reader of her adult presence:  “I had brown hair and blue eyes and only three small freckles behind my left shoulder (you can see them still when you are fucking me from behind).”  Rather than ruin the impact of this piece with further discussion, I’d rather simply recommend that interested readers here take a moment and read it.  Thompson’s work is a black gem, sparkling in the gloaming. I read everything she posts.

Marcelle Heath is a fiction writer, freelance editor, and assistant editor for Luna Park. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Nicki Pombier Berger is just a cool, talented writer. A few times, she gave me and Myla Goldberg a lift to Bed-Stuy Brooklyn after we had all been working hard in Myla’s Novel Workshop, which is where I was first stunned by Nicki’s work. I thought Nicki innovative and gifted, complicated, and a joy to work with. She was hip and smart and when I heard she was gracing Fictionaut with her awesome presence, I couldn’t have been more excited. I think she still has my copy of Janet Fitch’s more recent novel, Paint It Black, which reminded me of the mystery within Nicki’s work. Atmospheric and rocking, this writer, and universally likeable. She is a moderator at the Underwater New York group along with another MFA colleague of ours, also who also has same name as us, Nicole Haroutunian, whom I also remember as a fantastic writer and editor and voice within our program. I decided because the crew is avant-garde and this interview is running on the 1st of the year, to ask the crew just 1 question.

Underwater New York is an online collection of stories, art and music inspired by objects found underwater in and around NYC. Myself and my co-editors, Helen Georgas and Nicole Haroutunian, met in the MFA Writing program at Sarah Lawrence. Last spring, around the time I was graduating, I read an article by Chris Bonanos in New York Magazine that itemized all this crazy evocative stuff under the waters around our city. I couldn’t stop thinking about how fun it would be to imagine stories behind things like a Formica Dinette standing upright at the bottom of the East River around 16th St, and the grand piano dredged from the harbor, and the dead giraffe found by the Army Corps of Engineers, and the fleet of Good Humor ice cream trucks that comprise an artificial reef off Rockaway Beach. I sent the article to a bunch of my writer friends and invited them to imagine stories, and what began as that fun summer writing project grew when I saw how enthusiastic people were about the idea. Nicole and Helen came on board, and when we connected with Adrian Kinloch, our designer and photographer extraordinaire, together we built out a vision for a website that could house diverse creative content – art, stories, music – inspired by underwater objects. We launched the project this October with a party on board The Frying Pan, a lightship that was once underwater itself and is now a rusty, barnacled party boat docked in the Hudson River. We’re planning future events as well – next up is Underwater New York at Free Music Friday at the American Folk Art Museum, March 5 – and we hope to lead excursions to explore our city’s edges, as we did with a recent trip to Dead Horse Bay, a beach littered with early 20th century toys and bottles and other once-underwater detritus. We take story submissions in any medium and any genre on a rolling basis, and our list of objects is always growing, as is our list of contributors. I think people are really taken by this notion that castaway objects have some value: as signifiers or symbols, or artifacts of some lost moment, individual or historical, or simply ways into a story waiting to be told. It’s been very exciting to see the creative work that has come of this project so far, and we’re hoping with our Fictionaut group to inspire even more great fiction!

Curtis Smith is the author of two novels (Sound and Noise, An Unadorned Life), a story collection (The Species Crown), and two collections of short-short stories (In the Jukebox Light, Placing Ourselves Among the Living). The coming year will see the release of his next story collection (Bad Monkey, Press 53), novel (Truth or Something Like It, Casperian Books), and his first essay collection (The Agnostic’s Prayer, Sunnyoutside Press). His stories and essays have appeared in over fifty literary journals and have been cited by The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, and The Best American Spiritual Writing.

Q (Meg Pokrass): What story or book do you feel closest to?

I love Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises and Catcher in the Rye—they were my first introductions to literature as art. When I first started writing, I returned again and again to Rick Bass’s first collection, The Watch, and Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. As far as individual stories go, I’d have to say I’ve always had a fondness for Barth’s “Lost in the Funhouse” and Amy Hempel’s “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried.” I can return to them almost any time and be moved.

Do you have a mentor?

No. I did go the MFA route—I went to Vermont College in the early-to-mid 90’s. Sometimes when I’m working on a piece, I think of all the talented people I met there—and when I think of all the folks out there doing the same thing I’m doing, I find the motivation to keep searching for a better phrasing or image. Perhaps that counts as a kind of mentor.

How do you stay creative? What are your tricks to get “unstuck?”

I never worry about getting stuck because I’m always working. Some days are harder than others; the mess of life spills over into the time I’d hoped to set aside for writing, but as long as I’m putting pen to paper, I know I’m making some sort of progress. And the process involves so many different facets—planning, brainstorming, writing rough drafts, editing and revising, studying the market—that there’s always some activity that appeals to my frame of mind.

What are your favorite websites?

I visit Duotrope and New Pages a lot. I enjoy following the work of other writers via their Facebook posts. As far as reading goes, I dig Smokelong and Mississippi Review.

What are you working on now?

I’m revising a novel right now. And when I’m not doing that, I’m working on a bunch of flash fiction pieces. I’m also working on the edits for my upcoming essay collection.

What do you do for pure fun and silliness?

I watch Steven Seagal movies. Seriously. And I like to wrestle my son–but not at the same time.

What animal/animals do you own or would like to own?

We don’t have any pets currently. I like dogs, but they’re a lot of upkeep. I’d have a cat, but the others in the house are allergic. I’d welcome any suggestions.

Do you have a favorite Christmas movie?

You can’t go wrong with Capra. ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ really is great–and I don’t think it gets enough credit for having some rather dark undercurrents. ‘Meet John Doe’ is my favorite–Cooper and Stanwyck are wonderful. And not many films get away with addressing both Christmas and American fascism.

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is an editor at Smokelong Quarterly, and her stories and poems have been published widely. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

Q (Nicolle Elizabeth for Fictionaut): The metadata in the spaceship tells me Matchbook is our most “happenin” group currently. What’s the deal here, you bribing people?

A (Edward Mullany): We’re excited about the way Fictionaut is establishing itself as a place for both writers and groups of writers to read and discuss literature in an atmosphere that is positive and serious. The publishing industry is in flux, and it’s necessary for a place like Fictionaut to exist during (and beyond) this time so that everyone involved in publishing – writers, editors and imprints alike – can have an opportunity to affect the outcome of this flux. By offering a forum for a specific kind of discussion, matchbook hopes to encourage the expression of ideas that will help articulate the concerns of contemporary literary artists.

What’s with the time frame thing, you’re organized like the KGB, 2 week updates or something how come why is that whats going on here? I have no idea if this question is English.

We update our site once every two weeks because, although we publish only one author per posting period, we hope to give each author a generous amount of time on the site’s homepage. We hope too that the regularity of the posting schedule makes it easy for our readers to get a sense of when to check back to see what is new.

Who the heck is Matchbook anyway? Full birth and familial history accepted, is there a legend?

Brian Mihok is the creator of matchbook. I met him two years ago, when I moved to Northampton, MA, where both he and my wife, Anjali, were students in the MFA program at UMass, Amherst. He had an idea for a journal that focused on ‘short, indeterminate prose,’ and that, as we discussed it, came to include the possibility for a critical companion piece; our thinking was that, although creative writers don’t always like to discuss their work in terms of its critical context, a journal that actually encouraged that kind of discussion might have value. The title of the journal, we hope, is reflected in the simplicity of the journal’s design and purpose.

Love that Michelle Reale “Canadian Nickel” story on Matchbook itself right now. I mean LOVE. What’s the deal with the critical thought thing on the right? Kinda matchbooks with the Fictionaut feel amirite? Pretty cool stuff.

Michelle Reale’s piece is a good example of how the ‘critical thought’ can shed light on challenges faced by an individual writer as well as challenges that are universal to all writers. When Michelle writes, “Have you thought about the story further than the last line?” she is asking a question I think most writers would ask themselves about their own work. We’ve found that most of our contributors enjoy writing the ‘critical thought,’ as it isn’t something they typically have the opportunity to do.

You’re closed when are you opening up shop are your readers working with Santa toward world peace?

We’re temporarily closed to submissions, but will open up again as soon as we’ve caught up with the many stories in our inbox. We’re grateful for all the submissions we’ve received so far, and to the writers we’ve had the opportunity to publish. We encourage our readers to check back with us in the near future.

What does Matchbook like to read?

We like to read all sorts of submissions, though our focus is on ‘short, indeterminate prose.’ The reason we describe the kind of writing we publish this way is that we are less concerned with genre than we are with whether a piece of writing achieves the effect it intends to achieve.

What does Matchbook think is good advice for anyone about anything?

Seek not to follow in the footsteps of men of old; seek what they sought. – Basho

Anything else you would like to tell me here, if you scan a print of your hand I will google about the life and fate lines and get back to you.

I’m not sure I want to find out what my fate is, though I’m tempted to ask. One thing matchbook is excited about is the upcoming publication of a very short story by Stephen Dixon, the short story writer and novelist who taught for twenty-seven years in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, and who is currently writing his 15th novel. Mr. Dixon’s short stories are admired for, among other things, a sort of tangential and exploratory insistence, as if their narrators are at once crazy and holy. We’re fortunate to have the opportunity to publish this story, apparently the shortest he has written.

Nicolle Elizabeth checks in with Fictionaut Groups every Friday.

Matt Bell is the author of How They Were Found, a fiction collection forthcoming in Fall 2010 from Keyhole Press, as well as The Collectors, a novella, and How the Broken Lead the Blind, a chapbook of short fiction. His fiction has been published or is upcoming in Conjunctions, American Short Fiction, Willow Springs, Gulf Coast, and many other magazines. He is also the editor of The Collagist and can be found online at mdbell.com.

What story or book do you feel closest to?

There are books that are never far from my desk, that I put back on the shelves every time I clean only to get them back out again: Dennis Cooper’s Guide. Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son. Ander Monson’s Neck Deep and Other Predicaments. Brian Evenson’s novels The Open Curtain and Last Days (and now his new collection, Fugue State.) Matthew Derby’s Super Flat Times. Sam Lipsyte’s Homeland and Venus Drive. David Ohle’s Motorman. Chris Bachelder’s U.S.! and Stanley Crawford’s Log of the S.S. the Mrs Unguentine.

Michael Kimball’s How Much of Us There Was has lived nearby for much of the last year, because it’s one of the finest examples I can find of a book in which every new sentence absolutely requires the one that precedes–It feels like Kimball tapped into a stream of inevitable language, of progressive sentences that each require both the preceding sentence and the following one. That’s how I want my work to feel too, and I’m working on it.

Similarly, Robert Lopez’s Kamby Bolongo Mean River has been on my mind since this summer, and I’ve read it twice now as well as worked on a long essay about it. It’s a great book that continues to open up more and more on further study, and I’m really learning a lot from it even beyond its immediate emotional impact.

Do you have a mentor?

I’ve been lucky enough to have a number of more established writers help me over the years, at various stages. One of the first writers I got to know was a man named Bill Sternman, who lived in Philadelphia and corresponded with me online when I was twenty and twenty-one and living in an area with no other writers. I’m not even 100% sure any more how we met, but we e-mailed consistently for a long time, and he helped me tremendously with the very first serious stories I wrote. I had several professors take an interest in me when I was a community college student, both of whom I’m still friends with, although we rarely share work directly anymore. More recently, I’ve worked closely with Michael Czyzniejewski, whose help has been so pervasive as to perhaps be impossible to quantify in both my work and my conception of what it means to be a writer and editor.

I’ve had a lot of people encourage me and help guide me over the last ten years or so, and I can’t say enough how much that means to me, and how important it is to my work. I’ve also had a fantastic group of peers to work with and be inspired by in various configurations of writing groups in the last few years, including Blake Butler, Ryan Call, Josh Maday, Aaron Burch, Elizabeth Ellen, Sean Kilpatrick, and Barry Graham, plus my many fine classmates in my MFA program.

How do you stay creative? What are your tricks to get “unstuck?”

I get “stuck” like anyone else, but since the first day of 2008, I’ve been writing nearly every single day, for at least two or three hours a day. At the time I was working fifty to sixty hours a week, and so I would take my work schedule and schedule writing time around it so that I knew that if I stuck to my calendar I would get fifteen hours of writing in a week. That alone has been enough to break the wider kinds of writer’s block, and so the kind of stuck I get now is more often that of not being able to figure out a certain scene or sentence rather than not being able to write at all. If you honestly write a couple hours a day, you’re making so much language that it never seems hard to just make more, or to go work on something else while the stuck idea simmers.

Beyond that, the secrets aren’t secrets at all: I read a lot. I’m on pace for 80 books or so this year, plus all the lit mag reading. Plus the reading I do for The Collagist. I also find it incredibly rewarding and instructive to work with my writing group partners, to work close with Collagist contributors on edits, and so on. Writing a book review will help me learn what makes a book tick at a little higher level than just reading it would. All of these things keep me fresh, and keep me from feeling stuck in my own work.

One thing we rarely talk about as writers is the effect of service upon on our own work, but I think it can’t be underestimated. For me, doing things like editing journals and volunteering at DCWS and teaching my writing residency students and editing other people’s work and writing book reviews and blog posts about other people’s stories, these are all the things that inspire me and help me create my own new works. Being a writer can be such an inward-facing way to go through life, but for me I’ve always found more inspiration in service than I have in introspection. All those other activities feed the part of me that writes, and keep me from feeling jammed too often.

What are your favorite websites?

I assume you mean writing websites? I “grew up” in some ways on Zoetrope, and met a lot of my first writer friends there, even some that have become both close personal friends and professional peers, like Aaron and Elizabeth. I used Fictionaut a lot during its beta period, and have a little less since it opened up, but mostly just due to time constraints–I’m very curious about the site, and how it’s going to evolve (both in purposeful ways and in community-driven ones). It seems like a positive thing, and I’m glad to see anything that brings more writers together, because so few people have the peers they need. Hopefully it continues to be as positive an influence as it already has been.

As far as literary reading, some of my favorite journals that are either exclusively or partially online include: Conjunctions, Hobart, Barrelhouse, PANK, Keyhole, American Short Fiction, Monkeybicycle, elimae, Wigleaf, Guernica, Failbetter, Memorious, FRiGG, DIAGRAM, SmokeLong Quarterly, JMWW, Everyday Genius, Necessary Fiction, Storyglossia, The Quarterly Conversation, Night Train, Lamination Colony, NOÖ Journal, and Juked. I hate to even make a list like this, because I’m sure I’m leaving off places I read all the time simply because they won’t immediately come to mind, but those are all ones I visit regularly and read most of what they publish. It’s a big list, and so maybe doesn’t fit into “favorites,” but there are 1200 online lit mags or so, so I guess picking 20-25 is still a pretty good narrowing.

What are you working on now?

I just finished a novella-in-shorts I’ve been working on since July. It’s a series of parenting stories, all of which are cataclysmic, apocalyptic, or post-apocalyptic in nature. A number of excerpts are forthcoming already, in magazines like American Short Fiction, Unsaid, Sleepingfish, and Annalemma. Beyond that, I’m back writing some stories for a while, which is great. I was working on a novel revision then a new novel then this novella for most of 2009, so it’s been a while since I made an unrelated new story, and I’d definitely missed the process.

What music can you not live without?

I’m an obsessive music listener, probably listening to eight hours of music a day, at the very least, and often all night as well. My favorite album of all time is Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, so that’s one I couldn’t go without. There are other bands that I’m always listening to, like The National, Okkervil River, The Hold Steady, Why?, Wintersleep, Wolf Parade (and the various members’ side projects), Murder by Death, The Mountain Goats, etc., etc.

There was a month or so this year where every day I listened to The Antlers’ Hospice for the first part of my writing time, and then The Handsome Furs’ Face Control for the next. I often end up with little twin writing music obsessions like this: One quiet or droning to start my writing with, and then another more upbeat or excitable band to get the second half of the day started. I write in the mornings as soon as I wake up, and I find this to be a pattern that fits my brain that time of day: Quiet and dreamy to begin, then loud and driving as I settle into the groove whatever I’m working on.

If your current life (the last 4 mos. of 2009) were a reality show, what would you title it?

Well, no one would probably watch a show unironically titled Happiness, but it’s been a pretty good year. Probably my best year, actually. I really can’t complain about any of it. I’m feeling pretty lucky and thankful these days, but that wouldn’t make a good show either: Who would watch These Lucky and Thankful Days? Where’s the drama in that? Not even Lifetime would show a series that sappy.

What did you want to be when you were a kid?

I wanted to be a ton of things when I was a kid, but I definitely had a prolonged astronaut phase.

This is an exceedingly embarrassing story, but as I recall it, I didn’t learn to tie my shoes until I was in the fifth or sixth grade, when I started being teased constantly for wearing Velcro shoes. I just couldn’t understand why everyone was picking on me: Didn’t they know that ASTRONAUTS wore Velcro shoes? What could be cooler than astronaut shoes?

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is an editor at Smokelong Quarterly, and her stories and poems have been published widely. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

Luna Digest is taking a break for the holiday week, and so, in the spirit of things, I’m instead posting this strange Christmas card by Etgar Keret that I received by email today from Electric Literature. This was my first email xmas card from a literary magazine, though I did receive a very nice holiday postcard from Howard Junker and family by regular mail yesterday. Happy holidays. -LP.

Christmas Card

By Etgar Keret

There was this guy who could walk on water. Not that that’s such a big deal. Lots of people can walk on water. They usually don’t know that because they don’t try. They don’t try because they don’t believe they can do it. In any case, that guy believed, and tried and did it. And that’s when the whole mess began.

That guy had an apostle who was very close to him and sold him out. Not that that’s such a special thing either. Lots of people are sold out by someone very close to them. If they weren’t very close, then it wouldn’t really be considered being sold out, would it. Then the Romans came and crucified the guy. Which, also, isn’t very unique. The Romans crucified a lot of people. And not just the Romans. Lots of other nations crucified and killed lots of people. All kinds of people. Ones who performed miracles and even ones who didn’t. But that guy, three days after they crucified him, was resurrected. And by the way, even that resurrection thing didn’t happen here for the first time, or even the last, for that matter. But that guy, people say, that guy died for our sins. A lot of people die for our sins: greed, jealousy, pride, or other, less well-known sins that haven’t been around for such a long time. People die like flies because of our sins and no one bothers to even write a Wikipedia entry about them. But they wrote one about that guy. And not just any old entry, but a really big one with lots of pictures and blue-colored links. Not that a Wikipedia entry is such a big thing. There are dogs that have Wikipedia entries about them. Like Lassie. And there are diseases that have entries there, like scarlet fever and multiple sclerosis. But that guy, they say, unlike multiple sclerosis and Lassie, achieved what he achieved through the power of love. Which is something we’ve also heard before. After all, there were those four English guys with the hair and the beards too, just like him, except that they were a little less famous, and they sang many songs about love. Two of them are already dead, just like him. And they, by the way, have a Wikipedia entry too. But that guy, there was something special about him. He was the son of God. Except that, actually, all of us are God’s children, right? We were born in his image. So what the hell was it about that guy that turned him into such a big deal? Such a big deal that so many people throughout history were saved or killed in his name?

Anyhow, every year, around the end of December, half the world celebrates his birthday. In many places, it snows on his birthday and everyone’s happy. But even in places where it doesn’t snow, people are happy on that day. And all because of what? Because a skinny guy who was born more than two thousand years ago asked us all to live lives of love and morality and was killed because of it. And if that’s the happiest thing this weird race has to celebrate, then it deserves a Wikipedia entry too. And actually it’s got one. Go to the nearest computer now. Type in “humanity” and you’ll get the entry. Short. Very short. Not a lot of pictures. But even so. One whole entry on a fascinating and slightly baffling race. A race that could have walked on water and never tried. A race that could have killed all those who believe the world can be a better place and in most cases, made sure to do just that. So merry Christmas to you too.

So I asked Rick Moody to contribute a story to Fictionaut. Maybe his first published story, for Line Breaks. And he said, does it have to be my first? How about my third? And I said sure. So he looked around, and hunted, and searched, and a few weeks went by, and then today I had this e-mail in my inbox, which I am delighted to share with the Fictionaut community. Because Rick Moody is a mensch. –Gary Percesepe

Gary, I pulled it out of a hat! I found that story, “Fragment from an Untelevised Revolution!” I think it came out in 1990, in a magazine called BIG WEDNESDAY, which only put out five issues, all stapled and photocopied. It had some good people in it, notwithstanding. Anyway, this was probably like my fourth piece published, and it’s not quite as homely as the other three, and it is certainly, at least, somewhat original. Embarrassing, sure, but not anything like American short fiction at that moment, which was embarrassing in a different direction.

And because it’s so short I managed to type it all out by hand (and fixed a couple of tiny things).

I hope it’s not too awful . . .

All best,

Rick Moody.

Rick Moody is the author of four novels and three collections of short fiction. Line Breaks is a regular feature in which accomplished authors introduce and share their first published stories with the Fictionaut community. Line Breaks is curated by Gary Percesepe. You can read “Fragment from an Untelevised Revolution” on Fictionaut.

I truly loved what Cynthia Reeser had to say about spotting potential in raw form.

Fine, thanks.

The little guys have to get started somehow. From day one, I’ve wanted the publication to reflect content that ignores names and biographies and looks instead at quality. When I read submissions, I jump straight to the content and read the bio afterwards. What good is having a journal that publishes only big names, only to promote them further? There is plenty of excellent writing out there from writers no one has ever heard of. And for anyone who looks down their nose and asks who those people are, I would respond that they are the potential future of literature. Along the same lines, we’ve always had a commitment to spotting excellent work, even in its raw form. That means we work with authors on edits, and help them to develop and shape their work. It’s a learning experience for both writer and editor. I’ve become a better editor from this practice, and writers improve their craft and learn what editors look for.

I think both our form and our content reflect an enduring quality. We are quarterly, which of course means that what we publish stays up longer. All of our issues are archived. By the same token, looking at what we publish, we tend away from genre pieces and anything with a flavor-of-the-month or trendy quality, opting instead for work with a sense of timelessness. After all, one of the qualities of great literature is that it stands the test of time. A lot of journals have a particular style preference, and well, that’s ours. I’m not saying that everything we publish is going to be remembered or anthologized a century from now, but my editors and I all make our careers in writing and literature, and I think our selections reflect our background and experience.Being that the journal is quarterly and not monthly or daily–and I guess this most nearly answers your question about how being quarterly is helpful–we have longer to go through submissions. We get such a high volume of submissions that the extended time is, I guess, useful. But we also publish a wide variety of work–fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, articles, book reviews, and visual art. We’ve also started posting podcasts, which are interviews with authors, and those are updated between issues. As far as how being quarterly makes things difficult–it doesn’t. I think no matter what the frequency of publication, you’re going to run into challenges, and they won’t necessarily have anything to do with how often you publish.

Discussions, and I’ve noticed a lot of workshopping, which takes place in the form of people sending their work to the group, and getting feedback via story comments. The common denominator there is that people seem to want feedback on specific pieces, rather than just having discussions. I would like to see more happening by way of discussion though, and will try to foster that; I also think contests sound like a good idea for the near future.

(Unrelated: I adore Fictionaut. I just wish I had more time to spend on it.) Three ways? I don’t know if I can give you that many, but I would like to be able to see when someone responds to a comment that I’ve made on a story. I know that’s been brought up before, and there was talk of some sort of window or queue on the site that shows responses to stories you’ve posted on. I think that’s a good idea, rather than flooding an e-mail inbox with notifications, like you get with Facebook.

We have plans to launch a print component, which will essentially make us a publisher. We’ll be publishing a novel in early 2010. While I have no immediate plans to create separate print issues of the journal,  we’ll continue to hold Fiction and Poetry Open Competitions, perhaps once or twice yearly, and those do result in print and Kindle editions. We plan to co-host a reading with Barry Graham of Dogzplot in mid-June of 2010 in Pensacola, Florida, where yours truly is currently based. Be there or be square, yeah? Beyond that, grants, workshop hosting, relocation with establishment as a publisher to the place where all the publishers hang. Et cetera.

I first met Bob Eckstein through Fictionaut and it was curiosity at first sight, quickly making him my wedding planner for my virtual Facebook wedding. But he’s today’s subject for Fictionaut Five because he is the world’s only snowman expert, author of the popular book, The History of the Snowman and a cartoonist for The New Yorker. He not only appears on Facebook and Twitter (snowmanexpert) but is (or was) a regular in places like Reader’s Digest, Details, Time, Sports Illustrated, GQ, The Spectator, Barron’s, Spy, National Lampoon, Harvard Business Review, Village Voice, The New York Times and many others. He is also a renowned illustrator, interior designer and the only person I know with an iPhone app named after him.

Q (Meg Pokrass): The late great actress Ruth Gordon said, “Never give up. And never, under any circumstances, face the facts. She was speaking of the life a creative person. Do you agree?

Ruth Gordon said that? Wow. I do agree. Writing a novel is not a good business model and requires a reckless leap of faith. If it wasn’t for my wife, my book would have never gotten finished. After 6 years of research I started to doubt I had it in me as I began to feel the gravity of writing the first book about the history of one of man’s oldest art forms. I really psyched myself out and only until I stopped facing the facts-that so much was riding on this (accounting for 7 years of work) did I get it done. Being creative truly does require to take on child-like attributes including discarding life’s real demands.

Just thought of something. That could also apply to someone not facing the facts that they suck. How else do you explain how so many crappy books got finished?

What is new in your world? A turbulent world for writers and cartoonists, I might add!

I’ve become a New Yorker cartoonist which has been an all consuming thing. I would have finished my next book by now if I wasn’t working what seems like around the clock trying to get in that publication.

How did this (incredible!) New Yorker cartoonist status come about?

Here is how I ended up a New Yorker cartoonist, something that had previously seemed impossible. Bear with me here, this was a round-about journey!

I finished my book The History of the Snowman, and after seven years, I decided it would be cool to include an intermission in the middle of my book!

I think my editors thought I was nuts and tried talking me out of it. In the end I convinced them to let me have my intermission-a collection of the world’s funniest snowman cartoons.

But it was to me to pay for the rights of the artwork (as well as the photography and quotes peppered throughout the non-fiction book). I had spent about $3,000 at the Cartoonbank for the use of a dozen New Yorker cartoons.

One of the cartoonists, a hero of mine and one of the greatest living cartoonists, Sam Gross invited me to their famous Tuesday lunch of my birthday. There I meet many fabulous New Yorker contributors and I had a great time. Afterwards I asked how I could get in on that action and it was explained to me how to submit work. I was a never really a cartoonist before that-I’d do cartoons for Spy and National Lampoon and stuff but I was mostly writing jokes-

Anyhoo, I went in the next week with ten sketches and miracles of miracles I get in. Someone said getting in on first try is unheard of. But then it was over a full year before I got in again. I was about to quit.

Wow. And in the meantime, what about your persona as “Snowman Expert”?

On the side I did a book tour and did a lot of talks as a snowman expert. My agent and publisher demonstrated how important it was to understand it’s not enough to be just a writer if I was going to sell books but become an expert and a speaker. That scared me, as I have stage fright. I did two open mics to get over it and then started doing book events. My first was at the Barnes & Noble Lincoln Center in NYC and over a couple of hundred showed up. Had no idea it would be all downhill from there including a book signing in a blizzard up North where not one single person showed up. But now – I really know the business inside and out.

This year I did over 60 TV and radio interviews, doing the Good Morning America thing, People magazine, etc. The reason I feel like a know it all is because a close friend of mine writes on the subject and a couple of my neighbors are executives at a couple of big houses (although somehow they are not buyers of my books or anything).

How have sales been? It’s a rough time, we all know that.

For the past two years I’ve been trying to turn the book into a TV movie. It’s been a rocky start. Initially a fan of the book, Monty Python’s Michael Palin was who I wanted to star in the movie. But we lost funding-the investors simply went bankrupt at the stock crash.

When we started over I rewrote the script to produce a slight different show, actually a more expensive, elaborate movie. We have some name actors and NPR’s Mo Rocca would star it in if we do manage to pull this off. Filming is supposed to start in Europe in January.

How has this frenetic pace effected your writing life?

Well, of course there’s not enough hours in the day but we try to keep moving forward. I’m watching less TV and try to eliminate distractions. Right now I’m writing a diary in the form of a graphic novel. Set in 1850 it’s based on the real circumstances of the Queen of England offering a fortune to find the missing John Franklin who was lost in the North Pole searching for the Northwest Passage. Sailors were ill-prepared for the journey because many actually believed mild climates awaited them up North. The book is filled with a lot tragedy, death and stuff. It’s a comedy.

To get in the mood, I gutted out my attic and redid the space as a captain’s quarters on an old ship. It now really feels like your inside a ship. My computer and printer and stuff was all refitted into old crates. The door to the office has a porthole. MacLife recently featured the room. I hope the book lives up to the buzz the office is getting.

Well, of course there’s not enough hours in the day but we try to keep moving forward. I’m watching less TV and try to eliminate distractions. Right now I’m writing a diary…”

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is an editor at Smokelong Quarterly, and her stories and poems have been published widely. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.