Our cover story is a profile of Haitian American author Edwidge Danticat, who never considered writing a memoir until the events of one extraordinary year left her without a choice.
September/October 2007
Features
The Most Important Story of Her Life: A Profile of Edwidge Danticat
Haitian American author Edwidge Danticat talks about her first memoir, the story of one extraordinary year for her family.
Spinning Through the Possibilities: A Profile of Stephen Dixon
At seventy-one, with dozens of books under his belt, fiction writer Stephen Dixon shows no signs of slowing down.
Chasing the Whale: A Profile of Junot Díaz
Eleven years after the publication of his best-selling debut story collection, Junot Díaz’s follow-up has finally arrived.
Tags:
Noble Rider: A Profile of Bin Ramke
With the publication of his ninth collection, poet Bin Ramke has emerged as one of the avant-garde's treasured half-secrets.
Tags:
Independent Presses
Eight Great and New: Literary Start-Ups Looking for You
Independent presses reveal their criteria for publishing: what works, what doesn't, and when to submit.
Lightning Strikes Thrice: When Small Presses Win Big Awards
Small presses garner national poetry awards.
San Antonio's Wings Press: Flying High for More Than Thirty Years
Bryce Milligan has been running the independent press for ten years.
News and Trends
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 Cave Wall, 1913: A Journal of Forms, Alehouse, Avery, Cadillac Cicatrix, and Rattle.
Tags:
Poets Resort to Guerilla Marketing
A covert collective called the Guerilla Poetics Project takes poetry distribution to another level by stashing free broadsides in libraries and bookstores.
Tags:
Small Press Points
Small Press Points highlights the happenings of the small press players. This issue features Dalkey Archive Press, Open Letter, the New York Review Books Classics, New Directions, Archipelago, Caketrain Press, and Octopus Books.
Tags:
Q&A: Teresa Weaver’s View of Reviews
The former Atlanta Journal-Constitution books editor discusses the public response to the elimination of her job and the future of book reviewing.
Tags:
Editors Who Can Handle the Truth
The release of three anthologies of creative nonfiction (or literary nonfiction or narrative nonfiction or whatever you choose to call it) proves that while difficult to label, there’s little challenge finding representative work for the so-called fourth genre.
Tags:
On the Road, Again
Festival organizers, scholars, publishers, and readers celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Jack Kerouac’s scroll-inscribed classic with special events and new books about the famous novel.
Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin
Page One offers a sample of titles we think you'll want to explore. With this installment, we offer excerpts from Cion by Zakes Mda and (Not That You Asked): Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions by Steve Almond.
Tags:
The Practical Writer
Workshop: Pimp My Writing
A creative writing teacher walks a fine line when workshopping students' poems.
The Big Cover-Up: A Writer’s Role in Book Jacket Design
From conceptualization to marketing and sales, novelist Timothy Schaffert reveals the ins and outs of book jacket design, offering examples and tips on how authors can work with their own agents and editors to facilitate the process.
Tags:
The Literary Life
Imperative: The Creative Nonfiction Crisis
A writing teacher questions the truth behind creative nonfiction.
A Short History of Everything: The End Is Nothing, The Road Is All
A fiction writer recounts his novel's journey to success.
The Art of Reading Cormac McCarthy: The Darkness and the Light
Cormac McCarthy has published ten novels during his forty-two-year career, combining elements of Southern gothic, American western, and Celtic lyric traditions. His most recent work, The Road, won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in fiction.