The Daily Rumpus
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From Stephen Elliott
...moreWe reached out to several of the worst offenders to ask where they thought they had gone wrong…but got very little in the way of responses. So we decided, instead, to reach out to the editors of the publications that actually had managed to show a relatively gender-equitable byline distribution in 2012.
Yuka Igarashi of Granta wrote an introspective piece on the trappings and fussiness of copyediting.
The presence of the unedited, the wrongfully edited, and the misspelled can be infuriating to an editor. Igarashi discusses her fight against the urge to edit beyond the office and scrutinize the grammar of her surroundings.
...moreGranta and ZYZZYVA are getting together in San Francisco for a “traditional British pub quiz with a California twist.”
There will be a show-down between teams comprised of audience members and contributors to both magazines, followed by music and dancing!
...moreThe Commonwealth Short Story Prize has announced its five regional winners.
Granta will publish each of the winning pieces online this week. Today, they share the winning piece from India, “Radio Story” by Anushka Jasraj, along with an accompanying author interview.
...moreGranta interviews Tania James whose collection Aerogrammes and Other Stories is out this month. James discusses writing from a child’s perspective, scriptology, and the short form.
“Certainly novels can and should take risks but maybe I feel more freedom in the short story form because if it fails halfway in, I don’t feel an urge to toss myself out the window.”
...moreAleksandar Hemon writes about finding a way to play soccer after moving to the States, the characters on his team, and most importantly, this:
“…The moment of transcendence that might be familiar to those who practise sports with other people; the moment, arising from the chaos of the game, when all your team mates occupy the ideal position on the field; the moment when the universe seems to be arranged by a meaningful will that is not yours; the moment that perishes – as moments tend to – when you complete the pass; and all you have left is a vague, physical, orgasmic memory of the instant you were completely connected with the world around you.”
...moreHelen Dunmore wrote the beautiful new introduction to Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, published online by Granta, in conjunction with their latest, feminism-themed issue, The F-Word. The beginning of summer and the new intro are both reasons to revisit this classic.
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“Short stories are hard because you have to start over every time, but they’re what I did first. I like living in a novel, as a writer and as a reader, but sometimes you can’t see your way out.”
This week in New York, Granta’s Sex Party, The Moth Mainstage presents Saints and Sinners, SLEIGH BELLS perform, Emily Gould celebrates her new memoir with a party, Sebastian Junger discusses his latest work, Chip Kidd, The Thing Quarterly presents issue 10 with Starlee Kine and Arthur Jones, Eteam in a group show Resurrectine and Jonathan Horowitz’s exhibit “Go Vegan!” returns.
“When, they ask, are things going to get dirty again?
“If you want an answer to that question, ladies and gentlemen, let me propose one. In 2010, the only sex that’s truly dangerous and unbounded is solitary.”
In response to Granta’s latest Sex Issue, Guardian UK takes a provocative, one-handed stance.
...moreThe books blogs always like to talk about the future, but this week was like some sort of official book blog crystal ball week, what with this new decade they tell me we’re in now and everything.
We’ve already linked to Richard Nash’s take on the next ten years, but the NBCC’s Critical Mass has lots of different perspectives.
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John Wraith’s penis is a neat literary device. It provides character depth and motivation, and is central to every plot twist in the book.BookExpo America is back in New York at the Jacob Javits Center with a show, conference and special events. What’s nice about Book Expo is that all the booksellers come to town, the bookstore owners and employees from across the country.
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“. . . This is a critical time not just for Granta but also for the future of the literary journal as an art form. It is no longer enough for a literary magazine to publish ‘good writing,’ or even ‘new writing.’ We’ve got the Internet now.”
So says Dan Crowe in his article “Publish and Be Damned,” which is part review of the 100th issue of Granta, a British “magazine of new writing,” and part call for a literary revolution.
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