September/October 2002

Black Sparrow Press, based in Santa Rosa, California, began in 1966 as a vehicle for John Martin to publish the work that he loved, but went on to become a financial success. It published more than 650 titles, with annual sales eventually rising to more than $1 million, which is why it came as a surprise to many in the publishing industry when Black Sparrow went out of business last spring.

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 One Story, Chicago Review, Boston Review, Agni, Ploughshares, Poetry, Blackbird, and Creative Nonfiction.

A Word A Day: A Romp Through Some of the Most Unusual and Intriguing Words in English—a collection of 273 unusual, obscure, and exotic words inspired by Anu Garg's linguistic e-mail service, A.Word.A.Day—will be published by John Wiley & Sons in October.

Three new films based on books of fiction are scheduled to be released in October: Ethan Canin's The Palace Thief, Michael Cunningham's The Hours (which features an all-star cast including Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, Claire Danes, and Ed Harris), and Janet Fitch's White Oleander.

Over three hundred poems, short stories, and essays written in response to the events of last September have been collected in three new anthologies: September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond, Poetry After 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets, and 110 Stories: New York Writes After September 11.

The capabilities of memoir versus poetry.

How to minimize abstractions and use concrete nouns in your writing.