“As brisk and refreshing as an ocean breeze,” Booklist said of Beth Bauman‘s Rosie and Skate (Random House), a young adult novel about two adolescents on the Jersey shore. Beth is also the author of the short story collection Beautiful Girls, and her work has appeared in numerous publications, including the Barcelona Review and the anthology Many Lights in Many Windows. She has received fellowships from the Jerome Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts.

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

Lounging on the couch reading great books. Truly. If I had a trust fund. Without the trust fund, a children’s librarian, a wildlife photographer, or some kind of scientist.

Which book do you wish you’d written?

The Member of the Wedding. It’s pitch perfect, and interestingly, this slender novel about a 12-year-old contains the whole world.

What are the websites you couldn’t live without?

Actually I’d love to live without websites. I spend too much time on the computer.

What are you working on now?

I’m writing another YA novel based loosely on the title story of my collection Beautiful Girls. Beginnings are slow going for me. I’ve been working on five or six chapters for about a year now.

Do you listen to music while you write? What?

Music helps me when I’m thinking through my material, but not when I’m actually writing. Often when I’m leaping around the apt. to 70s rock, blues, or R&B (my aerobic workout), I get good ideas. Van Morrison, The Allman Brothers, Queen, Ray Charles…

Descant offers a preview of their newest issue “Immanence/Transcendence.” Poetry offers up their entire September 2009 issue, with writing by, among others, Reading Comics author Douglas Wolk. And Brevity‘s Fall 2009 issue includes a—well, depressing, but insightful short piece from Sherman Alexie, “Somebody Else’s Genocide.”

Raritan founding editor—and a founding editor of the Library of America—Richard Poirier has died.

Electric Literature‘s already been mentioned a few times on this blog and on the Luna Park site, but they’ve now begun a YouTube page with a Single Sentence Animation series, where artists put lines from short stories by Lydia Millet and Rick Moody to colorful video. Seems only a matter of time before other lit mags add such interesting videography to their productions.

Up on your Bengali literature? Kabitirtha, “one of the leading Bengali literary magazines today,” puts their September 2009 issue online. (It’s in Bengali, of course.)

Dark Sky Magazine interviews Night Train founding editor Rusty Barnes:

Social networking—I came to it a little late, sadly—gives us really incredible traffic. We double and sometimes triple our normal traffic just through short announcements on Goodreads and Facebook and Myspace. If I had enough patience to Twitter, that would help too, but besides being impatient, I’m embarrassed to use a service with such a stupid fucking name. There’s no dignified way to say you Twitter, so I simply ignore the whole phenomenon.

Talented Opium Magazine designer David Barringer has put a bunch of his work from the magazine online at Issuu. Barringer has offered up some entire back issues of the magazine. And, on a side note, while there I ran across more complete issues from Keyhole and Caketrain and Geist. A wonderful resource, no doubt.

Jonathan Lethem guest edits an issue of The Thing—which consists entirely of a pair of black glasses (pictured at right). A word from the editors:

Jonathan’s issue is entitled the “Chaldron Optical System.” It relates to his upcoming novel CHRONIC CITY and consists of a glasses case, a pair of clear glasses with text on each of the arms, and a care and maintenance manual written in both English and French.

The Literary Type explores the significance of Canada’s literary magazines in the series “A Mighty Small Mag.”

Also from Literary Type, Arc Poetry Magazine asks readers to help edit their magazine—or at least to help judge their poetry contest.

And Luna Park Review is finally back up and running. Check back for essays about, interviews with, and excerpts from literary magazines around the globe.

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.

Here is the luminous, fractious space I call my reading and writing room. I didn’t clean for this photo; it’s the true embodiment of how this space looks when there isn’t any company — and obscene, isn’t it — overflowing crap and clutter; quiet treadmill with strange flashlight holding court; woodbins with no wood; and several overflowing receptacles of paperwork that often reside untouched in the useable work space right beside me?

Sure, I’d rather it were neater, but with three children, a full-time job, and not a lot of self-time, I mostly see this room in the semi-dark (which improves the view of many messy rooms)-and, on the average day, I get up at 5 so that I can reply to emails, walk on that pictured treadmill, shower, drop off kids, and go to work. I come back to this space in the witching hours, free time windows, after the children have gone to bed. Mostly, this is when I create.

In the out of sight frame, largely obscured, you’ll note the fireplace walls behind bookshelves are painted metallic teal with tiny green and gold butterflies, bees, hummingbirds, and dragonflies I stenciled by hand. A Victorian carved, mahogany mantle covers the fireplace, its surface similarly laden with books, and above that fireplace stands a high shelf with glass pens and a big golden wood-carving of the word IMAGINE. On the other mantle-side, more bookshelves, and on the opposite wall, chocolate leather sofas, my large female nude painting, and a glass coffee table, also covered with books. Books extreme. Books galore! Books everywhere-the discussed word IMAGINE, above it all, reigning as the room guru, or instructive sign or symbol.

And now that you know about my voluptuously endowed book fetish, please re-view the above photo of my space: You’ll then know that the books kept desktop are my favorites, those to comfort and inspire. As I write, I often grab one and read a passage. Sometimes, I go to the undetectable couches, sigh, and reflect. This is how most stories start.

In this room, too, are audio recording equipment details, musical instruments, an easel-but the truth is that all tangible accoutrements here are just the vehicles for trapping my imaginative pursuits-just as the desk and unseen chair are solely the body’s holders as the mind escapes to different landscapes for making poetry or fiction. So if ever the book contemplated strands me shivering in freezing rivers or leaves me powerless in scalding desert winds-when I’m in that mental space, I’m fully there, and how this physical space serves most, before or after reading or writing, is to catch me as I freefall into other imaginariums or welcome me back as I return.

So, welcome to my landing zone, fellow thinkers and dreamers-the IMAGINE home portal, wild and magnificent as the minds that enter.

Heather Fowler‘s work most recently appeared in decomP, Pank, JMWW, and Night Train. Her website is http://heatherfowlerwrites.com. 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.

Online Writing: The Best of the First Ten Years (Snowvigate) collects poetry, fiction, and nonfiction from 115 writers and 56 online journals from Action, Yes to zafusy. Says Michael Kimball of the anthology: “The internet machine has been a great boon to innovative writing and it’s wonderful to see so much of it collected here in book form.”

Edited by Doug Martin and Kim Chinquee with an introduction by Brian Evenson, Online Writing: The Best of the First Ten Years will be available November 1.

How would you summarize the mood of Online Writing: The Best of the First Ten Years?

Doug: Although there is a fair share of traditional approaches to genre in the book, the pieces I enjoy most are the ones which tremble in the bliss of language.  In a sense, there is awareness by the reader that the pieces wrote themselves, that language controlled the author more than the author controlled language, at least during the first several drafts of composition.

Historically speaking, what cyber magazines were most influential in posting the types of fiction we find prevalent online today?

Doug: Elimae, 5^th Trope, Web Conjunctions, and MississippiReview.com were instrumental in the early days of cyberspace. Much of this writing fused prose and poetry into short form, and it is everywhere today, specifically in outlets like Double Room, one of my favorites.

What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of the current fusing of poetry and prose into hybrid forms?

Doug: The best writers today are working in a field of the blank page that obliterates all definitions of prose and poetry.  The blank page — or the computer screen — is a string theory universe, words flickering, looping, curling, shrinking and growing around themselves and into one another, in a myriad of dimensions.  The words vibrate across and down the written page/screen.  Space (the blank page) and Time (Narrative and Meter) get confused, the free verse rhythm of the sentence continues until the writing/reading stops. Joyelle McSweeney’s Nylund, the Sarcographer, is a wonderful example of this, and she has a piece in the anthology, also.

What direction or evolution — if any — will online fiction take in the future?

Doug: As we all know, writers are using YouTube to add visuality to their work, and some sites even have music to enhance the text.  All of this is interesting.  But ultimately humans have always needed the physicality of the word, whether that be by reading from papyrus, goatskin, or printed books. So books will survive.  The reader’s body needs the tactility of books, whereas the virtual word exists under water. I like to believe with Barthes that the reader is the real hero of the text today, and if the reader doesn’t focus specifically on the words, then the whole experience for both the reader and author gets demoted. Brian Evenson’s introduction to the book highlights some of the more typographical issues that distinguish online writing from printed writing, and it is a must-read.

Yet, since websites are so cheap to construct, the internet democratizes the word, and that scares people, but it is the most crucial aspect of writing on the web.  The internet is leveling the field for “star status” in contemporary literature, and that, itself, is as weighty as any book that can be held in the hands.

What type of books would Snowvigate Press like to publish in the future?

Doug: I like to read strange newspaper articles, scholarly journals, blogs on the paranormal, postmodern theology, Hindu scriptures, molecular biology texts, neurolinguistics (anything and everything to enhance my own work), so I’m open to anything written well, be it short fiction, novels, poetry, prose poetry, datebooks, essays, memoir, theory, or hybrid forms of all the above.

Doug Martin‘s poetry, fiction, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Double Room, elimae, Nimrod, 5_trope, Third Coast, Brooklyn Rail, New York Quarterly, Gauntlet, and others. A past poetry editor of Mid-American Review and founder of Snow*Vigate, Martin has been a recipient of a Theodore Morrison Scholarship in Poetry from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, an Academy of American Poets Award, and a Randi Eldevik Award in Old English Prosody. His Study of Walt Whitman’s Mimetic Prosody was published by Edwin Mellen in 2004.  He lives in Universal, a town of 100 in Indiana.

A message from Guernica: A Magazine of Art & Politics:

Four years ago, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. Author Pia Ehrhardt, a resident before and after the destruction, guest edits this issue. “What I hope the writing in this issue offers you,” says Ehrhardt, “are images and stories that give you pause and good reason to remember we are still down here, moving ahead, holding strong, but not moving on if it means forgetting what can happen.” Along with gripping work from established artists, Ehrhardt brings us moving essays, fiction, and poetry from voices largely unheard. In fact, to our surprise, Ehrhardt turned over the lion’s share of the magazine to high school students, some of the brightest in the N. O. area.

Former Punk Planet editor Dan Sinker (now a journalism teacher at Columbia College Chicago) launched a new website last Tuesday that will deliver a new short story every weekday to your cellphone: Cell Stories. Here’s some press on the launch from Reuters, Chicago Reader, and HTMLGIANT.

Fence has recently released a stunning (absolutely stunning) two book anthology of their first ten years—an anthology which should cement their place as one of the English language’s most influential poetry and experimental writing magazines. And they are throwing a party to celebrate, as they should:

Fence/Fence Books is delighted to request the pleasure of your company at a garden party in Brooklyn to celebrate the publication of A Best of Fence: The First Nine Years, Volumes 1 & 2. Saturday, September 12, 1 pm till 6 pm, 381 Park Place, #1, Brooklyn, New York. These two fat books will be available at a pleasing discount: One for $20/two for $35. And subscriptions to Fence for $10! Readings every hour on the hour by editors and contributors including but not limited to: Peter Gizzi, Matthew Rohrer, Lynne Tillman, and Max Winter.

A gorgeous Granta cover (and accompanying original sketch) by Chris Ware for the magazine’s upcoming Chicago issue. (Video with editor John Freeman after the jump.)

Another magazine has joined Bezos & Co: One Story has gone the Kindle. (Even as more and more news comes out about Kindle policies.)

From The New Yorker‘s Book Bench: “The hills of Pittsburgh are alive with the sound of an indie literary revolution.”

An international literary magazine for high school writers, Polyphonous H. S., offers professional editorial help for all of its submitters. Sort of 826 Valencia, the magazine?

Cha: An Asian Literary Journal has added Reid Mitchell on as the publication’s new consulting editor.

Tin House‘s still relatively new blog has an interview up with Zak Smith, author of many things, most recently We Did Porn. (Nine images from the book after the jump.)

The new issue of Poets and Artists in online…and free. This is their Self Portrait issue, with work by Stephen Wright, Denise Duhamel, Billy Collins, etc. (The editors also tossed the issue up at Scribd, if you’d rather read it that way.)

According to a post by January Magazine: “Wag’s Revue is off to a great start with interviews with Dave Eggers, T.C. Boyle and N+1 magazine founder Mark Greif as well as original poetry and fiction.” Their third issue is slated to be out in 11 days…

Hobart 10 is finally out.

And finally, the editors of PANK interview the anonymous editors of > kill author. Here’s a long quote from the unknown > kill author editors regarding their lit mag influences:

Robot Melon was a key influence on us when we were planning > kill author. We love its style – both the beautiful designs and the characteristic content. It seems to have a real ethos in what it features, that puts it out there and says “this is a Robot Melon piece”. And though Stephen Daniel Lewis is not anonymous as the editor, he also doesn’t loom large over the journal as a personality. Perhaps because of its air of mystery and its unpredictable publishing schedule, every new issue feels like an event.

We always dig DOGZPLOT for the breadth of what they publish across fiction, non-fiction and poetry, and the various print and online activities of Airforce Joyride / Greying Ghost / Corduroy Mtn always strike us as really elegant. My Name Is Mud is a must too, because we like little notes, glitter-covered fruit and vegetables, and words written out of carrots.

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.

My desk is a mess. In the summer, I enjoy a bigger one, not just the one foot square that usually surrounds my laptop. Thank god I have a landline or the phone would never be found. But it’s not just a matter of out-of-control physical space—the laptop screen is also a mess. In honor of the big projects, I put off reading all those attachments, in honor of summer, I download this and that, stuff I’ve been wondering about, interesting things. (Note the screen’s Final Cut Pro.) I have two books to put the coup de grace on by the end of summer, editors waiting. One, Pirate Talk, only in the voices of pirates, no description, so I’m forever sorting out dialogue, and the other, Bohemian Girl, who starts out as a slave to a Native American and I’m forever having to glue in something really prairie from some pile of research. Where is that description of Civil War balloons? And then getting the two sets of two hundred pages—I have to print out once in a while—mixed up. Even my feet are in a muddle—the dogs have room here to curl under them, and are forever leaping up to attack a dazed fly. Outside, traffic hesitates at the corner, then guns past. That three words get put in a row is the real wonder. Too soon it’s 11:45 a.m. and lunch looms, someone will have to make it, walk to the store and buy bread. There’s no deli, well, there is a deli a few blocks away but it’s too expensive. Figures of what cash remains comprise my marginalia, mess up individual pages. Can’t bills take a break too? Maybe if I lose them under a draft.

Terese Svoboda‘s new books, Weapons Grade: Poems and Trailer Girl: Stories, are coming this fall. Her official site is teresesvoboda.com. 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.

Chronicle Books published How I Came West, and Why I Stayed by Alison Baker 1993, just after Chronicle had become famous for producing lavish, photo-intensive cookbooks, and books featuring rich graphic design such as 1991’s Griffin and Sabine. Baker’s book was published in the era before McSweeney’s, back when fantastical fiction tended to be pigeonholed into magic realism. Although How I Came West And Why I Stayed is still in print, it was never reissued and bears the early-nineties obsession with Southwestern kitsch: the book has a cover with borders that would look at home on a piece of pottery. I bought my copy in a used bookstore in the mid-1990s. My copy carries the author’s signature, although I’ve never seen her read. You can find a copy of the book today at Albris for $1.99.

Baker writes stories that are not realistic nor are they allegorical in the fairy tale mode of Kelly Link or Shirley Jackson. Instead her stories are realistic but with very twisted facts. They are tall tales in the vein of Ambrose Bierce and Mark Twain. In the title story, a woman arrives in Montana hunting for wild cheerleaders who occupy the wilderness like cryptozoological fauna. Their cheers echo from distant snowfields. In another story, the narrator tells a vivid anecdote about the time the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead came to visit before a lecture at the university where the narrator’s father worked. The family decides to serve Mead authentic Midwestern cuisine: hot dogs and jell-o salad.

“Do you think she’ll get it?” said my mother, getting a package of hot dogs out of the freezer.
“She’s an intellectual, isn’t she?” said Aunt Roxie.

The narrator, a child in the account of the visit, gets ready to perform a made-up fertility dance. One of the professors from the university is fussily annoyed and says the narrator looks like “a mongoloid idiot.” The child doesn’t know exactly what this is, although she knows idiot isn’t good. Mead arrives “wearing a jacket like my father’s,” and a skirt. Mead is invited to dance in the made up dance, and she does. The detail is as specific and vivid as any first class lie.

After this account is over, the narrative, already clearly set from the point of view an adult looking back, informs us that after her mother died, the narrator and her sister examine the objects from the house. She asks her sister about Mead’s visit, and her sister has no idea what she is talking about.

“Jane didn’t remember any of it. ‘Our mother would never have served hot dogs to Margaret Mead,’ she said. The specific memory is met with a specific objection. We are left wondering then if this made-up story in a made-up story really happened.

The idea of the tall tale is to make the listener believe what they are hearing and then at some point to break the frame and say something like “Gotcha.” Although I suppose in a masterly tall tale, the author or storyteller may never let you know. Although they have a lot in common with myths, tale tales I think have less to do with allegories and more to do with surface of the story and the confusion of reality. In Baker’s book, the west, is an empty landscape waiting to be filled not necessarily with meaning, but at least with stories.

In “The Heaven of Animals,” the narrator says about the west:

As we drove across the miles and miles of flat gray countryside, I dreamed of the land we were approaching: towering mountains teeming with wolves; dark, uncharted forests heavy with the herds of buffalo. I’d read about the west: grizzly bears came right out on the road and looked in your car window. You could give them peanut butter, and scratch their ears.

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.

School is back in session for most and so too then are university sponsored literary magazines. Which now we are. Luna Park will be relaunching at its new home at the York College of Pennsylvania campus. Keep checking back.

Until that time, here are a few quick words from assistant editor Marcelle Heath on a heated literary conversation she ran across over at PANK:

From the “lack of color” in submission pools, how editors and publishers solicit work from underrepresented communities, women writers, exclusionary practices, the indie lit community, MFA programs, and the ways in which the arts are undervalued in general, associate editor of PANK Roxane Gay‘s post “Awkward Stuff: Race, Women, Writers, Editors” sparked an engaging, informative, and lively discussion. Gay writes, “I am consistently frustrated, frightened, and freaked out by the lack of people of color in the publishing world in 2009(!), and particularly in independent publishing…How are we all okay with this state of affairs?”

In a follow-up post, Gay provides damali ayo’s brialliant manifesto to end racism: “I Can Fix It”—which, judging from the incendiary nature of some of the comments to Gay’s earlier post, should be an essential read.

And, as usual, more lit mag news:

Oscar Villalon will join McSweeney’s as publisher of the literary journal. (I personally hope current publisher Eli Horowitz will continue being involved with the press, as his work there has been wonderful to say the least.)

South Asian literary journal Catamaran Magazine will be “suspending publication until further notice.”

Kaelan Smith (with special help from Molly Gaudry) write on how the cheap literary magazine commercial “out-innovated” that of a major publisher: Electric Literature vs. Simon & Schuster.

Oxford American publishes their first Southern Literature issue. I know what you are saying: “Isn’t the magazine always dedicated to Southern lit? Well, no. According to publisher Warwick Sabin, this is their first issue “dedicated solely to Southern Literature.” Inside, founding editor Marc Smirnoff writes about “The Irrelevancy of Southern Literature” and 134 writers & critics are polled for the best Southern novels of all time.

Since 2008, more than half the world’s population has been residing in cities for the first time in history. In each issue, Jewish magazine Habitus: A Diaspora Journal explores a specific city (Budapest, Sarajevo, Buenos Aires), and so enriching our understanding of our increasingly urbanized environment. Their latest issue focuses on New Orleans, with writing on the creole city from Andrei Codrescu, Rodger Kamenetz, and more.

A new issue of Southeast Review is finally out, with a nice group of interviews: Daniyal Mueenuddin, George Singelton, Rick Moody, BJ Hollars, and others.

Stumbled across this new Minneapolis-based literary magazine: Paper Darts. Their website is scheduled for a “grand unveiling” sometime today.

In case you need help sorting through all the online literary magazines, Dark Sky continues to offer a round-up Recommended Reading from Online Magazines. This week’s post mentions work from Thieves Jargon, anderbo, Cadillac Cicatrix & etc.

The editorial digs of Dossier.

A disturbing article at The Rumpus about corpses, coffins, and the hidden politics of literature by Andrzej Stasiuk: “Poetics and Slaughter.” (On a much, much lighter note, Rumpus founding editor Stephen Elliott has finally posted his “Why I Write” essay online for free.)

New online international lit journal based in the US and France, Cerise Press, has released their inaugural issue, with—among much else—poetry by Natasha Saje, Ray Gonzalez, and Laura Kasischke. The journal hopes to, “build cross-cultural bridges by featuring artists and writers in English and translations, with an emphasis on French and Francophone works.”

And finally, The Defenders Online has an interview up with a staple of contemporary African-American publishing, Mosaic editor Ron Kavanaugh. Here’s a sound bite from the piece:

When Chimamanda Adichie or Zadie Smith win awards, a conversation stirs around the expansive talents of post-colonial African (and south Asian) writers—specifically, specifically writers whose countries [of origin] won independence in the 1960s. Part of that is exotification, but the same conversations don’t seem to take place when an American of African descent wins an award. There’s no longer an exotic cool for African-American writers. Fashion models and white rappers are the new black literati.

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.

Ever since Fictionaut was nothing more than a few scribbles on a Café Bar napkin, the idea of letting members form sub-communities has been central to the concept. Today, we’re thrilled to roll out Fictionaut Groups, our most significant update since we started inviting beta testers to the site.

Groups multiply the ways in which you can use Fictionaut. Anybody can start a group about any topic, style, genre, or place. Groups can be public, private, or invite-only, and they come with their own pool of stories, a discussion board, and a list of recommended stories. So far, we have groups dedicated to novel excerpts, New Orleans, the Mississippi Review, and a workshop for critiquing previously unpublished stories. We’re awfully excited about the possibilities and can’t wait to see what you’ll come up with.

Along with groups, we’re also introducing new privacy settings for your stories. If you’re looking to discuss a work-in-progress with a select groups of friends but would rather not post it to Fictionaut’s front page, you can now keep it hidden from the public areas of the site.

Jump right in or check out the Groups FAQ for more info. We hope you take the new features for a spin, and please let us know what you think.

Daniel Nester‘s new book How to Be Inappropriate is forthcoming this Fall from Soft Skull Press. 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.