Article Archive

Showtime's Californication—a series about a best-selling writer (played by David Duchovny) who succumbs to the glitzy West Coast lifestyle—is renewed for a second season and leaves contributor Ken Gordon wondering, "What's the appeal?"

With more than forty years of experience in the business, agent Lynn Nesbit discusses how she signed some of her biggest clients, how a writer can get an agent’s attention, and what’s wrong with the publishing industry.

Low-budget literary magazines are struggling to absorb the impact of the Postal Regulatory Commission's recent ruling in favor of a new pricing structure that favors large-circulation publications with heavy advertising.

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 American Short Fiction, American Poetry Review, Conjunctions, Fence, Tigertail: A South Florida Poetry Annual, Cave Wall, and Poetry.

Two years after the demise of the Contemporary Poetry Series, the University of Georgia Press, in conjunction with Virginia Quarterly Review editor Ted Genoways, begins a new series with a traditional editorial approach.

Page One features a sample of titles we think you'll want to explore. With this installment, we offer excerpts from Rhode Island Notebook by Gabriel Gudding and Bowl of Cherries by Millard Kaufman.

Small Press Points highlights the happenings of the small press players. This issue features Akashic Books, the New Press, Melville House, Seven Stories Press, Disinformation, the Feminist Press, Slope Editions, Essay Press, and Rose Metal Press.

A. J. Jacobs is an editor at large for Esquire and one of the premiere immersion journalists and humorists working today. His previous book, The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to be the Smartest Person in the World (Simon & Schuster, 2004) recounted his attempt to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. His new book, The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, published this month by Simon & Schuster, tells about another quixotic endeavor. Needless to say, it was a difficult one, given the Bible’s eight hundred explicit rules, many of which are bizarre and unexplained—no mixed fibers; no touching unclean women—plus lots of guidelines and suggestions.

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.

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.