Our annual Independent Publishing Issue features a special section on a new generation of small presses that is changing the way we think about books, plus a profile of novelist Louise Erdrich, an interview with graphic novelist Chris Ware, an essay on backstory by Benjamin Percy, practical advice from agent Rebecca Gradinger, and more.
November/December 2012
Features
The Color and the Shape of Memory: An Interview With Chris Ware
With his hugely popular graphic novel, Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth, and now Building Stories, published in October by Pantheon, Chris Ware is drawing attention to a highly emotive, visual form of creative writing.
Never the Same River Twice: A Profile of Louise Erdrich
Even longer than Louise Erdrich's bibliography, which stands at twenty-eight books, including her new novel, The Round House, is the author's to-do list.
The Future of Independent Publishing
All in the Family: Ig Publishing, Two Dollar Radio, and Small Beer Press
Contributing editor Michael Bourne highlights the trend of family-run indie presses and explores how the editors champion innovative authors whose work is often considered by commercial publishers to be unmarketable.
The Medium Is the Message: The Print-Digital Divide and the Books of Tomorrow
Carrie Neill explores the ever-evolving publishing landscape and highlights independent presses experimenting with the increasingly fluid interaction between print and digital, analog and interactive.
Strange How These Things Happen: Featherproof Books and the Big Small Literary Magazine
Amelia Gray reports on Featherproof Books’ recent release of a compilation of thirty issues of the Minus Times, which originated as a broadside and evolved into an eclectic literary magazine showcasing the work of a new generation of American...
The Aha! Moment: Michael Wiegers of Copper Canyon Press
Copper Canyon Press executive editor Michael Wiegers provides an in-depth analysis of one of John Taggart’s poems to exemplify the value of the poet’s work and explain why he decided to publish Taggart’s collection of new and selected poems.
News and Trends
Q&A: The Oxford American's New Editor
Roger D. Hodge, a former Harper's editor and the new editor of the Oxford American, discusses his new role and the future of the esteemed Arkansas-based literary magazine.
The Written Image: My Ideal Bookshelf
In this issue we offer a look at My Ideal Bookshelf, a collaboration between artist Jane Mount and editor Thessaly La Force, to be released by Little, Brown in November.
Small Press Points
Small Press Points highlights the innovative and can-do spirit of independent presses. This issue features Toadlily Press, the Chappaqua, New York–based poetry publisher whose annual anthologies include the chapbooks of four different poets.
Literary MagNet
Literary MagNet chronicles the start-ups and closures, successes and failures, anniversaries and accolades, changes of editorship and special issues—in short, the news and trends—of literary magazines in America. This issue's MagNet features Triple Canopy, Carve Magazine, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and Sea Ranch.
Digital Digest: Balancing Collaboration and Control
With an increasing number of user-driven publishing platforms cropping up across the digital landscape, many online publishers are trying to strike a balance between collaboration and ediorial control.
Serious Monkey Business
One of the few existing literary magazines in translation, Monkey Business is a new journal of Japanese writing, translated into English by founding editors Motoyuki Shibata and Ted Goossen and published annually in the United States and Canada by the Brooklyn-based A Public Space.
University Presses Feeling the Pinch
As financial hardships continue to affect universities and colleges across the country, an increasing number of university presses are facing the threat of closures—and some aren't going down without a fight.
Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin
With so many good books being published every month, some literary titles worth exploring can get lost in the stacks. Page One offers the first lines of a dozen recently released books, including Matthew Dickman's Mayakovsky's Revolver and A. M. Homes's May We Be Forgiven, as the starting point for a closer look at these new and noteworthy titles.
The Practical Writer
Making David Sedaris Laugh: Lessons Learned on the Book Tour
Best-selling novelist Chuck Palahniuk writes about the successes and failures of the often exhausting, but always necessary author book tour.
Agent Advice: Rebecca Gradinger of Fletcher & Company
Literary agent Rebecca Gradinger explains why writers need agents and offers tips about best practices for finding one.
The Literary Life
Don't Look Back: The Problem With Backstory
Fiction writer Benjamin Percy cautions beginning writers to avoid overusing backstory in their fiction, offering strategies for moving the story forward by slipping a character’s history into the dramatic present.
The Art of Reading Gerard Manley Hopkins: Austerity Made Sublime
Novelist William Giraldi celebrates the work of nineteenth-century poet Gerard Manley Hopkins and contemporary poet Geoffrey Hill, who first introduced Giraldi to Hopkins’s verse.
Turning Pages: What Happened to the Book?
Fiction writer Ana Menéndez examines the sanctity of books in the technological age and how some artists have transformed them into pieces of art.
Why We Write: The Man in the Shoebox
After the exciting rise and disappointing fall of his debut book, travel writer Dan White corresponds with a professor from his alma mater and gains insight about what it means to be a writer.
Don’t Look Back: The Problem With Backstory
Benjamin Percy cautions beginning writers to avoid overusing backstory in their fiction, offering strategies for moving the story forward by slipping a character’s history into the dramatic present.