In the Huffington Post’s brand-new book section, Jürgen talks about the ideas behind Fictionaut:

What would happen, I wondered, if you gave in to that pull and let anyone publish? There are a great many writers worth reading, many of them published and many more who never make it past the traditional gatekeepers. Could we trust social features and a recommendation algorithm to help each other find them?

Read “Why Anyone Can Publish on Fictionaut.”

The Digest took a week off and a lot happened, beginning here. Since Fictionaut went public last week, lit mags have invaded en masse the groups section of the site, joining the many magazines already established there. A few recent additions: NOÖ Journal, Barrelhouse, Flatmancrooked, Storyglossia, Gigantic, The Southeast Review, Short Fiction, Bull: Fiction for Thinking Men, Staccato, Prarie Schooner, and Bartelby Snopes. And on the blog, editor Ben White takes a moment to talk about Nanoism and Fictionaut groups.

And just when things couldn’t get any more self-referential here, I can’t help plugging PANK associate editor Roxane Gay‘s commentary on race and literary publishing over at Luna Park, “I Don’t Know How to Write About Race.” From the piece:

Talking about race is not a call for liberal guilt or apologia. To say that people of color are underrepresented in publishing, independent or mainstream, is not an accusation to any person or entity. It is a fact. People of color are underrepresented almost everywhere. Encouraging a conversation about ways in which we might increase that representation within the independent publishing community does not necessitate somehow taking responsibility for the deficit.

SMITH Magazine has launched The Pekar Project. Harvey Pekar of American Splendor fame has teamed up with artists Tara Seibel, Joseph Remnant, Rick Parker, and Sean Pryor in an ongoing webcomic series for the magazine. Updated every other week.

Hadn’t heard of Things Magazine, but their recent post is full of interesting things, such as Museum of the Phantom City.

And they mention this: MagCloud. Possibly the easiest way to start your own lit mag?

Interesting polemic on the lit blog Bookish Us: “Why Don’t Aspiring Writers Read More Literary Magazines.”

According to Wired, “iPhone Scarab Reinvents the Literary Journal.” Sounds like a far-fetched claim—especially with magazines like Electric Literature out there and established magazines like McSweeney’s with their own apps already—but certainly worth the look.

A literary magazine dust-up down under.

Check out Hobart 10. The cover (at right) is probably worth the price alone.

The Rumpus summarizes the recent news of 50-year-old print journal TriQuarterly‘s name being handed over by Northwestern University to graduate writing students in order for them to create a new online literary magazine with it. This news about TriQuarterly has been the talk of the blogosphere the past weeks. What’s more The Rumpus asks, if you care, say something:

The how: the president of Northwestern is Morton Shapiro, and he can be reached at nu-president@northwestern.edu.

The why: in short, TriQuarterly is an excellent and groundbreaking literary magazine, founded in 1958, that was the first to discover writers ranging from Amy Hempel (by publishing her heartstopping and oft-anthologized story, “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried”) to, more recently, Aleksander Hemon. As per an email sent out by TriQuarterly’s associate editor, Ian Morris, the decision was made by the university — and handed down to the review’s editors — only hours before a press release went out.

And: Have you always wanted to write for The Rumpus?

The mixtape for Carousel‘s latest issue is up, live, and free.

Finally, a bit about the salad days of lit mag publishing from The Paris Review founding editor George Plimpton’s last interview before he passed away in 2003:

No, but I got into trouble with Congress. I published an anthology called “The American Literary Anthology” – the best work published from small publications, a little bit like the Pushcart Press. It was the best of the quarterlies. Among other works, it included a one word poem by Aram Soroyan, a calligraphic poem. The one word was “lightht.” His idea was that if you put it on the page in a certain way, it would give the impression of light. For this the author, Soroyan, was paid $500 and the magazine in which it had appeared, The Chicago Review, got paid $750 of the taxpayer’s money. You can imagine what a stir it caused. I was called down to try and explain this. Imagine trying to explain calligraphic poetry to a bunch of Congressmen sitting angrily at one end of the table. The National Endowment for the Arts really thought it was in terrible trouble because of this. There was also a piece by Ed Sanders, who was the Fugs poet, describing a jar of cold cream that Allen Ginsberg used to lubricate Peter Olovsky. You can imagine what a stir that caused.

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.

I generally work in one of four locales: the bathtub, the woods behind my house, my swingin’ 70s Dodge Forester motor home (I camp about 70 days, annually), and the room in this picture, which is my office in (believe it or not) a relatively clean state. Not pictured here are the four dogs usually sleeping side by side on the ugly green couch. The couch is so big, we had to take the door off its hinges to get it in the room. My wife wants me to get rid of the thing because it stinks like dog, but the hell if I’m moving that elephant around the corner and up the stairs again.

A few notes of interest (or not): First, my nemesis, the yoga ball, which is only there for when my yoga-teaching mother-in-law drops by to improve my posture, which is about once a month. Usually, it just sort of rolls around and gets in my way. Second, something you should know about that studly portrait of Jesus in the center of the photo—it’s signed! Yes, signed! I got it for thirty bucks on E-bay. Can you believe that? Thirty bucks for an autographed Jesus portrait! You can’t even get Tori Spelling for thirty bucks! I’m the king of E-bay. That white pad on the floor is for when I get a hemroid, something you probably didn’t need to know. The chaos on the floor is a partial draft of my current novel, “The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving,” which is the fifth novel I’ve written in this office. I usually write here about four to six hours a day, if I don’t have a hemorrhoid. That gray heater on the floor is always on, even when it’s 80 degrees, which is why (ahem) that lotion is on the desk, so my skin doesn’t dry out—and if you believe that, I’ve got an autographed Jesus portrait I’ll sell you for 35 bucks. But really, I like working in a super hot room. I also like the hum of the motor. That’s a bong next to the lotion (“Keep it down up there—I’m trying to work!). That orange box on the floor has a basketball in it. My old man sent it as a gift for my newborn son Owen. Who sends a newborn a basketball? My dad, that’s who. I predict the orange box with the basketball inside will be sitting right there for about four years, which is about as long as that yoga ball has been rolling around.

All in all, this has been the most productive working space I’ve ever occupied. For the record, I clean my office between novels, or between major drafts of novels, thus the mess you see in this picture, is a work in progress. If you wanna’ see real chaos, ask me again in six months.

Jonathan Evison is the author of All About Lulu (Soft Skull 2008) and the forthcoming West of Here (Algonquin, Fall 2010). His official site is jonathanevison.com, and he is the ambiguous fourth guy at Three Guys One Book. Writing Spaces is a series dedicated to the desks, cafes, libraries and retreats where Fictionaut writers work, providing a window to the physical places where some of the stories on the site originated.

Adam Robinson and Ben White in conversation about the Fictionaut groups they are admins of and how the literary press and journal they are involved with fit in the picture.

Q (Nicolle Elizabeth): Adam Robinson, I see you have a Publishing Genius Press Fictionaut group going. Have you ever seen my favorite movie of all time starring George C. Scott and Kathy Bates called Angus which is based on a short story by Chris Crutcher? It was an indie 90s movie, Green Day did the soundtrack. So, Angus, the hero, is a “fat kid who is fair at football and good at math” and he is desperately in love with Melissa Lefever who is a popular cheerleader. He says the line, “I just want my moment.” Think of this as “a moment” for the Publishing Genius Fictionaut group, here. Don’t think of me as Melissa Lefever though, she would probably think i was odd. What is Publishing Genius, what does it do, what is it all about?

A: Ha, what, no, I never saw Angus but it sounds pretty good. I always just want my moment so this is perfect. Publishing Genius is my small press that publishes books — mostly short paperbacks — with an eye toward the unconventional and the pretentious. I mean that in a good way.

Q: What do you hope for the Fictionaut Publishing Genius group to achieve/do/accomplish if anything?

A: I hope it will be fun. I feel a little overwhelmed by the Internet. Like, I don’t know how to do Facebook that well, but I have friends who use it to great advantage. But I don’t have time to invest in Fbook, since it’s firewalled at work. And there are so many distracting bells and whistles, and everyone is just promoting their stuff all the time, and it gives me a headache. So I just started the Fictionaut group for Everyday Genius because Fictionaut seems so simple, so streamlined. Everything here seems to be about the work. Like, no one is saying “quick buy my book, come to my concert, someone just gave me a chocolate milkshake” — so I’m hoping I can turn the EDG group into a venue for people to read and respond to the awesome writing that gets published in the journal.

Q: Why the internet?

A: The Internet makes it happen. I feel so enabled by the Internet. I have met people through the Internet that I am glad to know. I’m on the Internet right now! I AM ON THE INTERNET. It’s not fun for me though. It’s toilsome. For real. It hurts my head. Still, I love the Internet. Thank you Internet!

Q: What is your favorite thing/moment about the Fictionaut Publishing Genius group so far? has it been helpful in any way if so how?

A: Well, it’s really new to me but my favorite part of the group so far is either David Erlewine or the logo. I hope I figure out some good things to do with the group.

Q: How if at all have you enjoyed Fictionaut in general, a specific moment in time would be so awesome, if there is one. if not we can try to mail you a beer but i have no idea if that’s legal.

A: My favorite moment came right after I posted a story and then suddenly a bunch of people read it and gave me comments about it. That blew me away. I really like the openness of the community. And I like Kathy Fish‘s stories a lot. I had been hearing about her a lot but I don’t know her work. Now I’ve read her stories, a bunch of them.

Q: Tell me anything else at all here you’d like to say, tell me.

A: Well, gee, there’s so much I’d like to say. I saw TripleQuick started a group here. That’s exciting.

Ben White for Nano

Q: What is nano and how does the Fictionaut group for nano represent nano to readers, if at all? if its gone completely sideways and upside down from nano’s “feel” then what has come of that and why do you think this is?

A: Nanoism publishes thrice-weekly ridiculously-short stories aka “nanofiction.” Because we simultaneously publish all of our stories on Twitter, a nano-story can be no longer than 140 characters (no titles either).

On Fictionaut, we’re here to continue getting the word out, inspire some people to embrace brevity, be a place to see some itty-bitty fiction, and maybe talk a little. As far as I’m concerned, ’round these parts we can stray from the somewhat arbitrary word counts, so long as we capture the spirit of literary distillation.

Q: Ben, once and a blue moon they send me around to ask people their Fictionaut group’s favorite exothermal reaction. if you could describe nano, (the journal’s fictionaut group of which you are an admin’s) favorite (or most similar to the group’s feel) scientific phenomena, what would it be? (40 pages or less will do we are running a tight ship, here.) Is the nano group a flying piece of rock from the moon? a black hole? a lightning storm? lobsters mating? why?

A: Nanoism would be a black hole. As a singularity, it’s the super-dense, super-compact result of big-ass bright star collapsing to a single point in space. It’s not always easy to see the whole story on the surface (because light cannot escape a black hole, obviously), but if you know how to look, you can see the effects of its gravity.

I think that horrible extended analogy just cemented my place in nerddom.

Q: How if at all has the nano fictionaut group been fun/exciting/helpful/scary/dangerous?

A: It’s a pretty new group, but I have hopes that we’ll get some people to write reeeally short who might not otherwise be so inclined. If nothing else, I can pat my contributors on the back and say, “you’re awesome.”

Q: Has nano come to know and/or publish any new authors through Fictionaut or is it mostly a celebratory group of a similar bunch of writers?

A: Mostly a champagne party, but some recent submissions have come through Fictionaut.

Q: What can we expect from nano this upcoming year?

A: In addition to continuing our tiny status quo, December will be a special theme/contest month (details here; entries accepted through October 31st). We’ll hopefully have our second big nanofiction contest in the spring. And sometime in the nebulous expanse of time called the future, maybe something you can hold in your hands. Maybe.

Q: Anything else you want to tell me should go here. (this isn’t like when you were in college and your friend got sick and people were like ‘What did he take?!? Tell me what he took?!”)

A: We can be hesitant to embrace the never-ending shortening and shortening of fiction and argue its merits, but at the end of the day, if the words move you, if the words get you thinking—well then mission accomplished.

For some people, it’s an exercise in brevity or a good way to save good sentences, good images, good ideas. Why you write short doesn’t matter, that you share it with people does. In the end, it’s not about catering to the internet attention span of thirty seconds, it’s about offering up writing that fits in the cracks of your day.

Nicolle Elizabeth checks in with Fictionaut Groups every Friday.

Published in 1995 by Knopf in a tiny chalkboard-colored hardback, In the Year of Long Division by Dawn Raffel can now be had at Amazon or Alibris for about two bucks.

The book is related to what Ben Marcus calls Gary Lutz’s “plastic art” of writing sentences. By this, I take Marcus to mean that a prose sentence can have a shape like an object such as a Coke bottle, coat hanger, or turnstile. Raffel, like Lutz, writes sentences that balance between serving the function of fiction to represent action, character, and place and the existence of these figures in words. “Inside was warm,” Raffel writes in “The Trick.” “No draft blew in. The bird in the clock plucked the accurate time.”

The qualities of her sentences — the order of words, the repetition of sounds within and between words, and the words she has chosen — have been tuned to their function within the story. Sometimes, in fact, the necessity to find the perfect word forces Raffell like a person solving a crossword puzzle to dig into old dictionaries and rules of word formation. In a monster run-on sentence describing the actions of a suburban neighborhood in “The Other R’s,” Raffel writes, “…children: G’s, J’s, us–C and DR, clovering and fighting and whuffing picky milky balls of weed off weeds…”

Whuffing? Whuffing is a fantastic word that doesn’t appear in most dictionaries. I had to turn to the Oxford English Dictionary to find it. I also found this discussion on whuffing in regard to woodstoves:

When this pocket of air hits the fire, a mini-explosion occurs, and the resulting sudden extreme pressurization inside the firebox forces smoke out through the draft control, door gasketing and other tiny openings that exist in even the most “airtight” woodstoves. This brief period of pressurization is followed immediately by extreme depressurization (because the explosion consumes all the available oxygen in the firebox), and another gulp of air can be pulled down the chimney, causing the process to repeat. We call this “whuffing”, due to the accompanying sound of muffled explosions.
— chimneysweeponline.com

The OED agrees with this usage as well, “To make a sound as of a forcible blast of breath or wind; trans. to utter with such a sound. Also as int. imitating such a sound.” It is the perfect word for blowing dandelion seed.

Fine, Raffel is handy with a phrase, but what is Raffel’s book about? I remember when I first started studying creative writing and someone would ask me what my stories were about that I would think this was a gauche question. I couldn’t answer the question. Well, then tell me the story, they would insist. I couldn’t tell them either. I thought my stories could be about anything because they were writing. I considered my stories distilled art like distilled spirits. Did it matter that vodka came from potatoes? This ended up being a kind of stupid way of going about writing and I thankfully gave it up because I couldn’t just write about anything. I had to write about something. Raffel here could actually be writing about nearly any subject and the subject would be transformed into a Raffel-style story. Would it matter if her stories were made from potatoes? But she isn’t just writing about anything. She is writing about lower-middle-class people in the Midwest. These are people in their homes struggling through winters, rainstorms, and accidental death and separation. Her book is about rules being set and rules being broken.

Each story is a feat of prose style, too. They accomplish the improbable task of discovering a way of writing something that matches her subject. She uses sentence fragments and run-ons. She omits names, preferring sometimes pronouns, letters, and generic names like Mother and Father. She uses lists. One narrator writes:

I was the kind of girl to write lists:
Tar.
Rope.
Bone.
Glass.
Hook, I think.
Nylon.
Sand.
Peau de soie.
Chunk.
In the night, on the skin, erasable, rinsable. Or only in the skull.
Imagine.

While related to the plastic sentences of Gary Lutz’s Stories in the Worst Way, In the Year of Long Division seems more like pointillism. Raffel draws connect-the-dot pictures in words.

Rediscovered Reading is a regular series in which Matt Briggs reviews overlooked collections of short fiction. Matt is the author of Shoot the Buffalo and other books. He blogs at mattbriggs.wordpress.com.

We just lifted the password curtain and made Fictionaut visible to the world. After a year of private testing, we’re delighted to reveal a thriving community along with the terrific writing posted and discussed over the past twelve months.

While still in the beta phase, Fictionaut has been featured in the L.A. Times and VenusZine, and co-founder Jürgen Fauth was interviewed in SmokeLong Quarterly. James Robison had “A Few Grateful Thoughts About Fictionaut.”

Since we began sending invites, Fictionaut has attracted a heady mix of published authors, flash fiction addicts, MFA students, experimental novelists, independent publishers, New Yorker editors, slam poets, bloggers, memoirists, and — most of all — curious and discerning readers.

The site is already bursting with wonderful and surprising short fiction and poetry by emerging and established writers such as Pia Ehrhardt, Matt Bell, Jedediah Berry, Marc Fitten, Mary Miller, Roxane Gay, Maud Casey, Barry Graham, Marcy Dermansky, Ginnah Howard, Kathy Fish, Jim Ruland, Noria Jablonski, James Robison, Kim Chinquee, and Terese Svoboda, and too many promising newcomers to mention. You can follow the constantly updated stream of new and recommended stories on the front page or dig into the archives.

Fictionaut is also quickly become a burgeoning hub for a growing number of diverse literary scenes. Since we introduced groups, magazines and publishers such as Prairie Schooner, Wigleaf,  Matchbook, Keyhole Press, Featherproof Books, Toronto Quarterly, and Mississippi Review have formed their own subcommunties, along with groups dedicated to styles, places, writing programs, and more.

With the help of regular contributors Matt Briggs, Travis Kurowski, and Nicolle Elizabeth, the Fictionaut blog has grown into a destination in its own right, and we’re grateful to everyone who contributed to our ongoing “Writing Spaces” and “Fictionaut Five” series. We’d also like to thank the illustrious Fictionaut Board of Advisors for their ongoing support. Most of all, we’d like to express our gratitude to the Fictionaut community, without whose humbling  passion, patience, generosity, and talent, there’d be no site.

To ensure the community’s ongoing vitality while we work on technical improvements, Fictionaut will remain in the invite-only stage for now. If you’d like to join, you can sign up here to be notified as invites become available. We’ve also added tools for sharing stories to help you spread the word.

As an experiment in community-sourced literary publishing, Fictionaut has come a long way, but we believe that we’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s possible. We’re thrilled about the prospects for growing Fictionaut into an even more rewarding place to discover, share, and discuss great writing. Stay tuned.

Some bigwigs/hoodlums on the advisory board thought it’d be a funny idea to let me run around with a microphone asking our group leaders how things were shaping up in the communities within the community, since we are so grateful they have come to us with their journals, their projects, their discussion ideas for groups, workshopping, editing, and support. The groups are a lovely way to join in the Fictionaut community on an even more personal level and it is exciting to see things blooming. Discussions within the online community about the online community are so meta, aren’t they? I am really looking forward to my ghost coming back to haunt a classroom at NYU in discussion on the early stages of the literary internet in one hundred years. This will be fun to catalogue as we go and grow and evolve, here, first generation members of Fictionaut, n’est pas?

Wigleaf Editor Scott Garson (who provided us with poetry) and Paper Hero Press Founder aka Dogzplot founder Barry Graham (who provided us with humor) were some of the first gentlemen to humor me with our first round of questions, and true to their work and journals they did it in style and in the original voices we have come to celebrate. Thank you sirs, you are gentlemen, scholars and incredibly original and talented writers and editors. Everybody else: be prepared, you’re next and as is the case with a great deal of the internet content, we are going on guts, instinct and a general drive toward truth, and I have absolutely zero idea what I am doing!

Q (Nicolle Elizabeth aka who is that kid anyway for Fictionaut): Hey Scott! I see you have a Wigleaf group going here on Fictionaut. Dude, explain yourself for us. What’s Wigleaf and what are the hopes for the Wigleaf Fictionaut group? (talk nice, investors read this sort of thing)

A (Garson): Wigleaf is yippidy hep. Wigleaf is follidy kap. And then Alice woke up. I was reading the most awesome very short fiction, she told her sister. It was in this webmag. Wigbert? Figleaf? …. I’d been thinking about the possibility of a Wigleaf group for awhile. Facebook seemed the most obvious place, but Facebook groups are more like notice machines. I’m really happy about starting a Wigleaf group here: there’s more of a chance of real community–readers talking back and forth. That kind of thing is just aces…

Q: Are you going to apply your various roles as reader and editor to steer the group or are you going to watch what i would call, the internet ants under a picnic basket theory? People will come, eat, build their own colonies, start their own societies, forge their own heroes? (i love ants i want a tattoo of an ant)

A: Ants, I guess, yeah. I mean, I’ve started all the discussion threads so far, but I’d be thrilled if other people started starting them…. I love that some people have posted new stories, ones that haven’t run in Wigleaf or anywhere else. For me, that makes the group seem more alive: it’s connected to Wigleaf, but it’s its own thing. Related to this, possibly, is the question of Ravi. Ravi Mangla is an admin of the group, too. If he wants, he can change it overnight, make it into a fanclub for motorcyclists or something. That’s something that could happen in a Ravi Mangla story anyway…. *note from Nicolle* Hey Ravi! Here’s where I plug your Fictionaut profile, Ravi Mangla: click on his profile for a good time. awesome top shelf craftsman of the word.

Q: What are your thoughts on interneting in general? (and specific if you want i’ve got all day i have no life)

A: Well, the internet is pretty addictive. If I could quit it and beer… Well, I’d be a better person, I’m sure. I do think–as far as lit goes–that the internet is changing things faster than anybody’s really grasped. That’s part of why it’s such a kick to be involved right now: we’re living in boomtime. People will look back and try to figure out what all happened.

Q: In what ways if any have you found Fictionaut helpful, interesting, or neither etc.

A: As a platform for a wider community of writers, Fictionaut is primo. Really it amazes me: if you got this many writers together in an actual room, there’d be all this, you know, in-group/out-group stuff, vague attitudes, private humiliations…. I don’t see much of that on Fictionaut. Enthusiasm and support seem to predominate here.

Q: As writer yourself, can you make the distinction between how you use Fictionaut from writer to editor and what the differences and purposes are if any and how you use it differently if any?

A: I loved James Robison’s piece about Fictionaut. He was talking about how, as a writer, you might consider giving something a trial flight on Fictionaut (He said it a lot better than that). Anyway, that’s what draws me most as a writer. I think I’ve put up four or five things in the year that I’ve been around, and all but one have been new things–or things that haven’t yet been published. A few weeks ago, I put up one called “At the Beach Hotel,” and though it’s hard to say how exactly, the response to it gave me a much better idea about where I might try to place it. I have, in the past, played ‘editor’ here, scoring sweet stories from Meghan Austin, Barry Graham, and, in a less direct way, Erin Fitzgerald. These days, though, we get so much in the inbox. I’m not really looking to expand the pool. That said, Ethel Rohan‘s “Gold,” which I loved here when I first read it, just got accepted as a regular submission. So, you know, there’s that….

Barry Graham for Dogzplot:

Q (Nicolle Elizabeth aka who is that kid, anyway? for Fictionaut): Hey Barry! I see you have a Dogzplot group going here on Fictionaut. dude, explain yerself for us. What’s Dogzplot and what are the hopes for the Dogzplot Fictionaut group? (talk nice, investors read this sort of thing) are you worried it is going to get out of hand? Dogzploters (myself included) are notorious for being infamous, deviant and party animals.

A (Graham): www.dogzplot.com. You decide.

Q: Are you going to apply your various roles as reader and editor to steer the group or are you going to watch what i would call, the internet ants under a picnic basket theory? (i love ants i want a tattoo of an ant)

A: Actually I’m not much of a steerer. I think the best way to make things happen is to act as a source of inspiration and see how others respond. I’m not suggesting I am an inspiration, only that that is my theory on leadership. I would expand on this but I think my explanation is clear enough. I’d rather be Dr. Seuss than Napoleon. Also, I’m glad you love ants. “Ants are the strongest of all living creatures. It is no coincidence they are so easily crushed.” I wrote that in high school. Isn’t it beautiful? If you agree to get matching ant tattoos with me I will agree to pay for them… deal?

Q: What are your thoughts on interneting in general? (and specific if you want i’ve got all day i have no life)

A: Wow. This question sort of feels overwhelming because the internet is so many things. I’ll just say that I like it a lot. I actually met my future wife through the internet.

Q: In what ways if any have you found Fictionaut helpful, interesting, or neither etc.

A: I’m a huge fan of Fictionaut. I am a strong supporter of writers getting together by any means, even virtually in this case, and fellowshipping. Sharing ideas and creations and having discussions and getting people excited about writing and inspired to write. Can I get an Amen?

Q: As a writer yourself can you explain the differences between using Fictionaut as an editor and reader vs. as a writer if any? If the answers no its fine i’ll just hide down here in this moat no problem.

A: I’m a writer? Hmmm. I can’t see any major differences. I mean, there are stories I’ve read on here that make me want to read more words written by particular people (and no, I’m not gonna do the name drop thing), but I would feel that way as an editor or a writer.. I have heard of editors asking writers to submit stuff to their journals after reading their stories on Fictionaut. I’ve even done that a time or two, so I guess there’s that.

Q: Thanks this ruled in my head.

A: I’m afraid I’ve disappointed you. Sorry.

This was a spare bedroom and now it’s my work office. I share it only with my cat (not pictured—he is outside, fighting for the block dominance). I have a good view of the back yard, singing birds, copulating squirrels and pooping deer.

Mark Budman is the publisher of a flash fiction magazine Vestal Review. His novel My Life at First Try was published by Counterpoint in 2008. His website is markbudman.net. Writing Spaces is a series dedicated to the desks, cafes, libraries and retreats where Fictionaut writers work, providing a window to the physical places where some of the stories on the site originated.

First, has anyone been paying attention to Fairy Tale Review of late? Somehow the magazine’s new press has quietly become one of the best things going; their third book, Lily Hoang‘s Changing, just won the 2009 PEN/Beyond Margins Award. This isn’t actually so shocking—even for such a new press—if one considers the consistently great writing already being published by the magazine, which includes work by Jedediah Berry, Arielle Greenberg, Kim Addonizio, Tracy Daugherty, Rikki Ducornet, Joyelle McSweeney, Stacey Richter & etc.

Esopus magazine—the super-high-production-quality art & literary periodical from NYC—has published online several pieces from back issues for your free perusal. For example, check out this Flash presentation of Suji Kwock Kim’s “22 Drafts of the Poem ‘Generation’” from Esopus 6. And possibly even better: They are offering full-length streaming tracks from all of their sold-out back issues. Tracks by Kimya Dawson, The Mountain Goats, The New Year, Devendra Banhart, Grizzly Bear, The Earlies, you get the picture.

Kyoto Journal talks story with Maxine Hong Kingston.

Way cool: African Cities Reader, from Chimurenga magazine.

There is always a new border to push in the literary magazine world, or, in this case, the literary blog world. The New Post Literate: A Gallery of Asemic Writing publishes asemic writing, or writing with “no specific semantic content.” Yep. (Example at right is from work by Nico Vassilakis.)

Dave Housley, “one fifth of the Barrelhouse Editorial Squadron,” would like a word:

I’m writing to let you know (and, obviously, see if you’d be interested in posting something) that we have a whole lot of stuff going on right now. We just relaunched our site, and also launched a new online issue, with work from Kevin Wilson, Molly Gaudry, Sean Lovelace, Tara Laskowski, and Kevin Winchester. We also have a Patrick Swayze tribute up right now—for the past five years, we’ve ended every interview with the question “what’s your favorite Patrick Swayze movie?” We’ve put all the responses online, including some writers (Chuck Klosterman, Malcolm Gladwell), Barrelhouse contributors and friends (Dan Wickett, Aaron Burch, Blake Butler, Matt Bell), and pop culture people (the Hold Steady, Patterson Hood, Ian MacKaye).

The Fall 2009 issue of The Paris Review just hit the stands containing a new story by Richard Powers, which is—and I quote—“set in a future in which man’s existence has been reduced to the view from his whole-body browser.” Body = Internet Explorer. Here’s a line from the story: “Nothing the boy remembers about the book will ever match anything produced by any search engine.”

There’s also new work in the issue from Sam Shepard, a series of stories called “Four Days.” From the beginning:

“We stop in a place called Smith’s in Paso Robles and order turkey-gumbo soup and lemon-meringue pie with black coffee. This ensemble somehow fits together although it sounds as though the tastes might clash. The theme from The Godfather is playing on the jukebox; very dreary and always reminds me of that shocking scene with the decapitated horse head. What goes on in Coppola’s mind? How could a guy come up with that? You must have to be Italian.”

Finally, in an email from editor Rhett Iseman Trull a few months ago (before Ben Vernanke declared an end to the recession), Cave Wall asks for your support (and, of course, the magazine is not alone):

There has never been a better time to subscribe to Cave Wall than this month, during our September 2009 Back Issue Sale, where current and new subscribers can purchase back issues 1-5 for just $4 each. If you have been wanting to subscribe, or if your subscription has lapsed and you missed a few issues, now is a great time to act. Also, with the holidays approaching, what better gift for a poetry lover than a complete set of Cave Wall back issues? In these difficult economic times, Cave Wall appreciates your support more than ever.

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.

Brian Evenson calls Shya Scanlon “a new and vital voice in fabulist fiction.”  His novel Forecast, which is currently being is serialized on 42 blogs and literary sites across the web, is “part SF, part noir, part road narrative and part love story […] tipping its hat to authors like Stacey Levine, China Miéville and Jonathan Lethem.”

Jacket Copy and the Huffington Post have more to say about Shya’s innovative Forecast 42 project.  Shya Scanlon’s collection In This Alone Impulse will be published by Noemi Press in 2009. Shya received his MFA from Brown University in 2008.

If you weren’t a writer, how would you spend your time?

The funny thing about this question is that the first half of it feels very much in the direction of vocation, while the second half veers off into avocation. In other words: If I weren’t a writer (by trade), how would I spend my (free) time? I like it, because it asks me to think like a writer. Not just what Character X does, but what, by extension, Character X might be interested in. So what I’ll do, then, is give you an alternate-life hobby I might have, had I a non-writing primary occupation, without saying what said primary occupation would be: in all likelihood, I’d spend my time writing.

Which book do you wish you’d written?

Based on its longevity and influence: The Bible. But I’d doubtless make some changes.

What are the websites you couldn’t live without?

I truly, desperately hope I could live without any. However, in the spirit of the interview, I’ll envision a world in which Internet connectivity were as necessary for life as air, water and food.

My first impulse is to list the sites I spend the most time on (the first, without question, would be www.nytimes.com), but the fact is, I could quite easily migrate elsewhere for the information I get from news and pop culture sites. So the qualifications would need to blend importance and singularity. A web site that gives me a vital perspective or a voice, perhaps, I couldn’t replace. I’m having a hard time preventing my answer from spiraling into sarcasm, here, and I think it’s because I don’t really look at the Internet as something that provides me sustenance. More often then not, it’s really just a distraction. Most often, I use it to communicate, via email, for instance, and more recently Facebook and Twitter. But I’m in the midst of something like a crisis of interests, right now, wherein I simply don’t know what to be passionate about. Or how one arrives at such passion. Is it organic? Should I wait for it to strike like a bolt of lightning? Or is it something I should actively develop, as some describe the act of faith? Or have I missed my window? Am I destined to spend the remainder of my days in a purgatory of mild amusement?

What are you working on now?

Mostly I’ve been revising my novel Forecast, which I’ve been serializing online. Happily, it’s been picked up by the innovative small press FlatManCrooked, who will be releasing it in print sometime next year. My next novel-for which I’m only just taking notes-involves mass delusion in the face of a distant but inevitable apocalyptical event. In other words, it’s non-fiction.

Do you listen to music while you write? What?

It really depends on what stage of the process I’m in. If I’m in the midst of a longer project I tend to be able to quickly get into the “flow,” in which case music can act as a buffer between myself and the world, defend the process from distraction. If I’m just getting started, however, or trying to compose a difficult passage, I need silence.

I tend to listen to music without lyrics when writing-probably not unusual-and my tastes run the gamut from Miles David to Debussy to Roni Size. Sometimes I do choose lyrical music, however, and in these cases opt for something deeply familiar, something I grew up listening to. Bob Dylan, for instance, or Neil Young, or Joni Mitchell. Yes, my parents were hippies.