Monthly Dispatch #18 — November 2024

A letter from the editor[s]

Like a lot people a fortnight or so ago, minor lits joined BlueSky. Or rather re-joined, having claimed our handle during a previous Musk Twitter “exodus”. We stopped posting in July, however, as we could see that our presence there was doing absolutely nothing to get the pieces we published read, and, being volunteers, didn’t need the extra hassle.

Perhaps this time would be different?

So far, not so. Although follower numbers have shot up, the number of those clicking on the links we share has not: readership via BlueSky is negligible.

Rather than (only) a cause to gripe, this raises the question of what we want, need and can realistically expect from using social media to promote literature — setting aside the cynical conclusion that the majority of engagement is self-serving, a means of seeking opportunity and getting to rub shoulders with the prestigiously published/cool/influential, etc..

According to a former editor, the age of mass, text-based social media is over, and the future is small-scale communities centred around newsletters and the like (welcome to the revolution…). Regardless, in the meantime the outlook is bleak.

From algorithmic strangulation to a refusal to play the clout-chasing games that seem necessary to viral success, there are myriad reasons why the numbers game is a losing one. But then, there are just as many reasons to say “screw it, we’re doing it anyway,” whether it be the grotesqueries of the global political landscape, the banality of mainstream literary culture, or the freedom that accompanies the recognition of futility. And that is where we are right now, whether you like, share, and follow — or even fucking read — or not.

The Editor[s]

P.S. We will open to submissions of fiction and non-fiction throughout December. You can find guidelines and details here.

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El Moudjahid — Louis Armand

“this isn’t yr war you shldn’t be here. like developing fluid smeared on expired filmstock. like an anachronism. like the colour of a cube balanced on one corner. don’t be fooled, the freedom fighter said, time is only out-of-joint …”

Louis Armand is a writer, artist & theorist. His most recent works of criticism are Entropology (Anti-Oedipus Press) and Festins de Desmando, trans. Jorge Pereirinha Pires (Barco Bêbado), both 2023. He directs the Centre for Critical & Cultural Theory at Charles University, Prague. www.louis-armand.com

Emerence et Ennemonde: Depicting European Peasant Life — Duncan Stuart

“The essay below, the extremely brief one beginning here, explores the peasants European literature presents. Being precise: two peasants, exactly …”

Duncan Stuart is an Australian writer living in New York City. His writings have appeared in 3:AM Magazine, Overland, The Critical Flame and The Cleveland Review of Books. Find him on twitter @DuncanAStuart

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Gods of Fathers — Preeti Vangani

“On the eve of India flying to the moon, Sameer Bhai is awoken by noises in the lower berth of the train heading from Mumbai to his home, Meerut. He prays to the god of moonlight infiltrating through the window bars to not reveal his face …”

Preeti Vangani is an Indian poet and writer based in San Francisco. She is the author of Mother Tongue Apologize (winner of the Redleaf India Poetry Prize, 2019). Her second book of poems Fifty Mothers is forthcoming from River River Books in February 2026. Twitter: @Pscripturient

For Those Who Wish to Go Forward into the Broad Sunlight — Brian Muraya

““You don’t look at the light, the light looks at you.” The moth says to me, secretly, trying to parse a sense of what I would, in the missing end, call ‘devotion’, but is, by some technical reduction, called ‘phototaxis’. I’m only half listening anyways. The moth is repeating the same phrases, “You don’t look at the light, the light looks at you,” all the while, all the while I am trying to write a letter …”

Brian Muraya is a poet from Nairobi, Kenya.

Lo Mira, Mira — Lion Summerbell

“On the first of January in the year 15XX, I, Domingo el Monje, translator and scribe, was ordered to the Office of the Holy Tribunal of the Inquisition in Toledo by the Lord Inquisitor Don Francisco de Pinar, then in the second year of his office …”

Lion Summerbell is a writer from Manhattan living in France. Twitter: @lionsummerbell

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ON REARRANGEMENT AND REWRITING — Jonathan Larson

“On April 27, I received an email and attached piece of writing from French poet Nathalie Quintane with the subject line “1 short text.” …”

onathan Larson is a translator-poet living in Brooklyn. His translations of Francis Ponge and Friederike Mayröcker were put out by The Song Cave and his translation of Nathalie Quintane’s The Cavalier will be put out by Winter Editions next year. Twitter: @murmurmuring

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Bebe — Julian George

“Our gang was out of control. Spit-wads and paper planes ruled. Then, like a busted clock or Kant of Königsberg overcome by Hume, time stopped: Dr K strode into the conference room to a large laminated world map and tapped it with his pointer …”

Julian George’s work has appeared in Fictionable (forthcoming), Exacting Clam (forthcoming), the Naugatuck River Review, Perfect Sound Forever, New World Writing, Slag Glass City, Panoplyzine, Ambit, The Journal of Music, Film Comment, The London Magazine, Cineaste and Art Review.

Goldfinch/Refusal: Mandelstam, Massive, and Form of the Novel in the Age of Atrocity — A.V. Marraccini

“Writing about Osip Mandelstam right now is difficult for two reasons. The first is that poets whose bodies are subject to state control torture are on my social media feed daily now, from Palestine to Ukraine. So, inevitably, is another self-serving editorial in some middlebrow paper or magazine of record toeing the neoliberal line that “literature shouldn’t be political”. Or that “it’s complicated”.  Wouldn’t that be convenient …”

A.V. Marraccini is an essayist, art historian, and critic. Her first book, We The Parasites, was published by Sublunary Editions in 2023. Her second book, These New Fragilities, is forthcoming from Seven Stories Press in 2028.

Holes — Hilary White

“A hole isn’t really nothing, but rather shows you nothing. This is an important distinction. You see it by the shadow it casts …”

Hilary White is a writer and researcher. Various forms of writing have been published in The Yellow Paper, RTÉ Brainstorm, Corridor8, MAP, Banshee, zarf and The Stinging Fly.

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“I wanted to create a world that wasn’t quite dystopian: not ending, but on the edge.”: An Interview with Vanessa Saunders—Cristina Politano

Vanessa Saunders is a New Orleans based professor and writer whose debut novel, The Flat Woman, is set in a not-too-distant future where a swiftly escalating climate crisis upends the life of a young woman struggling with a unique set of issues that threaten to collapse the distinction between herself and the outside world. I sat down to speak to Vanessa Saunders about the gendered nature of activism and culpability, the enduring hold that fairy tales have on our collective psyche, and the manifold small horrors that impending climate disaster threatens us with at ever-alarming speed.

Vanessa Saunders is a professor of practice at Loyola University New Orleans. Her feminist, experimental novel, The Flat Woman, won the Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize with Fiction Collective 2 and was published by University of Alabama Press. Her hybrid work, fiction, and poetry has appeared in Seneca Review, Los Angeles Review, Sycamore Review, Passages North, and [PANK] among others.

Cristina Politano is a writer from New Jersey. Her essays and fiction appear in Identity Theory, The Dodge, and La Piccioletta Barca, among other places. Twitter: @monalisavitti

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Leteo, de tus Aguas — E.N. Diaz

“—¡Qué sí, cabrón! Pedí la mitad de champiñón y pepperoni. Ahorita llega. ¿Qué pedo, pues? …”

E. N. Díaz is a bilingual poet, short story writer and translator. Their writings have appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Letralia, BULL Magazine, Strange Horizons, Revista Casapais, Revista Irradiación and others. 

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Massive, Kansas — John Trefry [24/11/17]

“As [dust] continues to rise into the air it becomes thicker and thicker, obscuring the landscape… a typical black blizzard… the very sun is blotted out… the dust has blinded you…”

—Farming the Dust Bowl, Lawrence Svobida

John Trefry is an architect and the author of the books Plats, Thy Decay Thou Seest By Thy Desire, and Apparitions of the Living. Current works-in-progress: Massive (a novel) & Inanimism (a nonfiction poem). More diminutive writings have appeared in various other outlets. He lives in Lawrence, Kansas. Twitter: @incastellated

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Coming in December …

Fiction from Stephan Crown-Webber and Sean Cavanaugh, essays from Kiani Rezakhanlou and Micheal Sutton, and extract from work by Zura Jishkariani, and an experimental text by David Harrison Horton …