January/February 2006

In her fifth novel, The Last of Her Kind, Sigrid Nunez continues her exploration of how we forge our identities in the tense space between what we reveal and what we withhold.

Features

A Truthful Space: A Profile of Ali Smith

by Jessica Murphy
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Ali Smith takes on politics and language in her new book The Accidental.

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In Search of David Foster Wallace

by Joe Woodward

Whether it’s a thousand-page novel, a single-paragraph story, or a footnoted essay, the elusive author always offers a complicated—and sometimes maddening—reading experience. But is there more to David Foster Wallace than words on a page?

Believe It or Not

by Joshua Clark

A writer who stayed in the French Quarter during and after Katrina measures the spirit of America’s oldest Bohemia before its reincarnation.

Writers, Interrupted

by Katheryn Krotzer Laborde

One writer's monthlong journey with her family from her home on the Gulf Coast to three different cities as she searches for a respite from the storm, meeting others along the way whose loss puts hers in perspective.

Finding the Right Words

by Michael Depp

A writer grapples with his decision to abandon writing, flee New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and become a passive witness to a narrative spun by nature.

The Secret Facts of Fiction: A Profile of Sigrid Nunez

by Renée H. Shea

In five books written within the past eleven years, incuding The Last of Her Kind, Sigrid Nunez has obscured and sometimes just ignored traditional distinctions of genre by blending elements of fiction and autobiography. 

Reflections on Writing Post-Katrina

Writers, Interrupted

by Katheryn Krotzer Laborde
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New Orleans writers try to return to writing after Hurricane Katrina.

Finding the Right Words

by Michael Depp
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A New Orleans writer faces the impossibility of writing while facing Hurricane Katrina.

Believe It or Not

by Joshua Clark
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A writer who stayed in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina reflects on what was lost.

News and Trends

A Cinematic Approach to Publishing

by Doug Diesenhaus

For those who don’t mind Hollywood versions of great literature, a new series of novels packaged with the DVD recordings of the films they inspired allows for a side-by-side comparison.

The Contester: More Contest News

by Kevin Larimer

The University of Georgia Press recently revoked the 2004 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction given to Brad Vice of Starkville, Mississippi, for his short story collection, The Bear Bryant Funeral Train, which was published in September 2005, after learning that one of the stories contained uncredited material from Carl Carmer’s Stars Fell on Alabama, a book of nonfiction published by Farrar & Rinehart in 1934 and later reprinted by the University of Alabama Press.

Literary MagNet

by Kevin Larimer

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 the Paris Review, A Public Space, lyric, Saranac Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Red River Review, the Canary, and River Styx.

Poets Move From Page to Stage

by Anna Mantzaris

In the second half of the twentieth century, a number of poets’ theater programs, including the Poets’ Theatre, which was established in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1950, and staged plays by John Ashbery, James Merrill, Frank O’Hara, and Richard Wilbur, provided venues for work written by poets for the stage. Now, a new generation of poets’ theater programs are raising their curtains for plays by poets.

The Politics of Fiction

by Daniel Nester

Can political fiction matter? Stephen Elliott, the editor of Politically Inspired, an anthology published by MacAdam/Cage in 2003, and its follow-up, Stumbling and Raging: More Politically Inspired Fiction, published by MacAdam/Cage this month, casts his vote in the “definitely yes” column.

Small Press Points

by Kevin Larimer

Small Press Points highlights the happenings of the small press players. This issue features Action Books, Fence Books, Verse Press, Wave Books, Tin House Books, Bloomsbury USA, Twisted Spoon Press, and White Pine Press.

The Practical Writer

Inside Publishing: How Editors Acquire Books

by Raya Kuzyk
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The book-acquisition process is examined in the first in a three-part series on publishing.

The Literary Life

Imperative: Finding Community Outside of Academia

by David Hollander
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Frustrated writers seek writing communities outside academia.

A Novel Lesson: The Value of the Modernist Gambit

by Arnold Weinstein
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The evolution of the novel from Don Quixote to Ulysses and The Sound and the Fury.

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