Kickstarter Spotlight: ‘Distilled Lit’ Magazine

“Write dangerously” is coined from Nietzsche’s “Live dangerously.” We believe if you’re not writing dangerously, not taking risks, not telling secrets, not being vulnerable, not throwing yourself into into the craft, then you’re not truly writing.

These are fighting words from the Kickstarter fundraising campaign page for an exciting new literary journal based in South Florida called Distilled Lit. South Florida, you say? Quite so. This region rarely receives the attention it deserves for its literary scene. I remember the constitutionals I used to take in my youth, several hundred years ago. I loved to lumber dashingly through the knee-high marshes of Florida, swatting egrets and singing Baudelaire at the top of my lungs. Ah, youth! Those halcyon days cause a swell of nostalgia to flow through me like a churning tsunami through the ocean of time!

Anyway, Distilled Lit proclaims its intention – feistily, no less – to champion the “ignored voices of South Florida writers,” especially those writers who have been “ignored for your unknown name, lack of awards or prestige, lack of titles, or lack of conformity to a contemporary aesthetic…” Hear, hear! This journal has won me over. Let’s offer them our support.

Visit their fundraising campaign page sometime in the next 41 days and contribute whatever you can, humans. As of this moment, they only have $2,379 left to raise. Sally forth, I say! And do your duty.

Also, if you know of another plucky journal, underrated author, or dogged artiste that would benefit from a tad of internet publicity (a la sasquatch), refer them to me! Little birdies may tweet me @City_Sasquatch or email me at chetsasquatch@humanoid.net

 

Interview of the Month: Jonathan Franzen

Among the curious tidbits scattered among the larger morsels in The Paris Review‘s 2010 interview with blockbuster author Jonathan Franzen for that journal’s series titled The Art of Fiction, we might find:

• The six books on Franzen’s desk at UC Santa Cruz – Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, four works by John Steinbeck, and a study of William Faulkner.
• His stance on the writing process: “The writer’s life is a life of revisions.”
• The two emotions associated closely with writer’s block: “Shame and fear.”
• Word most hated by Msr. Franzen: Creative.
• A speech that highly influenced the author: Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Nobel acceptance speech.
• His most surprisingly un-writerly admission: “I just like attention, I do!”
• And finally, the length in pages of Franzen’s manuscript of his first novel, The Twenty-Seventh City, completed when he was twenty-five: Thirteen hundred.

A florid bow to The Review Review‘s founder and editress, Becky Tuch, for recommending this article in a profile of Tuch at The Missouri Review blog.

A Warm Review of Lit Mag ‘The Brooklyn Rail’

It thrills me – ahem – to inform you all that my ghostwriter has published a bit of nonfiction on the world interweb net, a piece that will be of some interest to you literati out there. You can now read his glowing review of local Big Apple journal The Brooklyn Rail on that perfectly-charming and helpful site, The Review Review.

If you write or read words, you will in all likelihood appreciate this wonderful – and wonderfully-free – journal. Read “New York and Other Diverse Countries: Brooklyn Lit Mag is Home for High-Quality Prose and Art Criticism” now.

As I said, I am just so vicariously happy for my ghostwriter – emphasis on ghost – I could climb a tree and stay up there for several days.

Wise Words From Mr. Lish

“Writing is not about telling; it is about showing, and not showing everything.”

The famous editor Gordon Lish, who edited Raymond Carver, Barry Hannah, and Amy Hempel (from an essay titled “Seduce the Whole World” by Carla Blumenkranz)

Read These Journals, Humans

Recently, thanks to the wonderful editresses at The Review Review, I stumbled across a list of “29 Amazing Literary Magazines You Need To Be Reading” at Buzzfeed. Their list is certainly not exhaustive, but it consists of a refreshing variety of staunch old names like Ploughshares and Poetry alongside lesser-known publications like One Throne and Winter Tangerine Review.

Peruse it, dear bibliophiles, and tell me what you think. Though I was a bit miffed to see that The Hot Wind Review was not mentioned above… Oh well – it’s not the first time I’ve been lost in plain sight.

Unappetizing Statistics

Projected number of Adult Fiction books sold in 2015 – 130.8 million

Projected number of snack bars and granola bars sold in 2015 in the U.S. – 1.07 billion

 

Advice On Advice, For Writers

The internet is a big place. A veritably infinite gamut of information gamely surfs the invisible waves of the digital sea. But there’s one type of information that, in my humble opinion, the web still lacks: that of unsolicited advice.

That’s where I come in. Aren’t you glad you’re reading this?

In response to some well-intentioned submission strategies for the working literati over at The Writer’s Circle, I propose to you, my earnest idolaters, this unsolicited bit of counsel: write either with a pen, a pencil, or at a keyboard. This approach should solve most quandaries quite directly. However, contrary to the Circle’s second rule of submitting, I see no reason why you should read your work over. You’ve just written it. Why read it again?

If you do insist on reading the piece you’ve just produced, then allow me to suggest a heuristic which you might find helpful. Have you been writing with your eyes closed? Open them. I think you’ll be surprised at what you’ll see.

If that glittering emerald of advice doesn’t tide you over, there’s always this brisk run-down of helpful ways to think about your writing, thanks to the enchanting editors at The Review Review.

 

Brick City Speaks – June reading

Thank heaven for the tall ceilings in Hell’s Kitchen Lounge in Newark. I was able to fit in the doorway to join the audience for the June installment of one of my favorite literary readings, Brick City Speaks, a series that draws from local institutions like the Rutgers-Newark MFA program and the Portuguese-American community of the Ironbound section of Newark to create a unique and enthralling environment for literary monsters and homo sapiens alike.

This month, the dapper Mel King shared a touching love story, augmented by evocative prose, while the enchanting and altogether otherw0rdly Elizabeth Palamara (@EbethPalamara) allowed listeners a peek into her novel-in-progress. The wonderful dynamic between a tattoo artist and his client-turned-crush nicely paralleled Msr. King’s nonfictional themes. Then Melanie Tolomeo bewitched us all with her amiable stage presence and lyricism. Renaissance man Timothy Ruiz (@writertimothy) rounded out the evening with poems and a rousing performance of original music. All in all, a tour de force! Magnifique! Other French idioms would also suffice!

Don’t miss the next Brick City Speaks reading on the second Monday of July at 8:00 pm.

 

Sixfold Lit Journal

This week, Sixfold – an “all writer-voted” literary journal with no traditional editors – finished its latest session of evaluating fiction and poetry submissions. Sixfold is different from other journals in that it uses an American Idol-style evaluations system – minus the celebrity talking heads – to determine what is published and what isn’t. In sum, whoever submits a story or a poem to the journal is then asked to read and rank 6 of their peers’ submissions. Then, the process repeats twice more. After 3 rounds of crowd-editing in which the top pieces from each round advance, 3 submissions from the slush pile float to the top. The authors of these receive monetary payment and publication in the journal.

I applaud Sixfold for its innovative and refreshingly democratic approach to the slush pile problem that has plagued us for years. On the whole, I recommend this brave expose of the problem by Electric Literature’s Lincoln Michel (@TheLincoln). It’s worth a read.

Sixfold‘s approach is unique, and, according to them, “rigorous, thorough and fair.” I won’t question that description of this trailblazing journal. After reading some of their submissions, it seems to me that the majority of their citizen editors might harbor an appreciation for that ubiquitous author of thrillers, James Patterson. In which case, I ask you, how could hundreds of James Patterson fans ever lead us astray?

But don’t take my word for it. Read The Review Review‘s review of Sixfold and email me your own opinion at chetsasquatch@humanoid.net!

 

Jonathan Durbin’s “Dad Thing”

Do you, dear humans, ever feel small?

I do. And that’s why I appreciated Jonathan Durbin’s recent short story, “Dad Thing,” in Electric Literature‘s repeatedly rewarding online series, Recommended Reading. In this piece, the narrator is visiting his ailing father in Los Angeles and agrees to meet an old friend, a successful sport agent named Neal, at Neal’s beautiful home, which is “secretly” being renovated by a film crew for a reality television show. Through the course of their nostalgic conversation, Neal reveals that everything in his dream world is not as perfect as it seems from the outside. When Neal’s drunken girlfriend, Soraya, arrives, the truth of the situation begins to penetrate the thin veil of Neal’s tales. Despite the obvious tension, the narrator keeps silent, withholding a great deal of buried pain and concern for his sick father. Will he spill the beans, as it were? The question at the heart of the piece becomes this – do other humans forfeit their right to the benefits of a normal friendship if the blind themselves with arrogance?

Durbin’s character of Neal, the wealthy sports agent, made me feel small. Small, dear reader! In this hardscrabble world of publishing, 7 feet and 8 inches is simply not tall enough. These days my failure to publish my manuscript – Beautiful On The Outside – leads me to feel downright deflated. Almost like Kim Kardashian prior to 2006.

On the bright side, unlike the narrator from “Dad Thing,” I have no trouble expressing my insecurities to you, my precious homo sapiens. Your awe and praise gives me hope.