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Monthly Dispatch #7 — November 2023
A letter from the editor[s]
This month we ran ANONYMOU[S], a series of pieces submitted, read and published anonymously. Initially, there wasn’t much more to the concept than to see what it would throw up. There were other reasons too, of course, like a puckish desire to call bluff on that oft-peddled canard: “I write for the pleasure of writing! Publication, recognition … they sure are nice, but that’s not what literature is all about …”; as well as wanting to express an understanding that what we’re doing at Minor Lits, what we do by writing, really doesn’t matter as much as we might hope (we are all of us ultimately anonymous, after all).
But more so than these (half-flippant) provocations, it really goes back to one of the founding principles of the site. The goal was to create something “cooperative, voluntary, independent, and outside of the logic of the market / industry.” In a world where name is brand, and the struggle to build readership, get views — get eyes — is constant, anonymity can feel like a gesture of revolt.
And its potential goes further than mere defiance. By negating a single subjectivity, anonymity can destabilize complex systems of dependence and mediated valuations. It can liberate the territory, pluralize it, overcoming authorial singularity in a way that opens out the space for other modes of creativity more adequate to — and necessary in — the times.
There are two more pieces to come, and, with some tweaks to the formula, hopefully we will be able to run similar series in the future. In the meantime, we will be opening for fiction submissions from December 3rd. Send us something, and if literature truly isn’t about the clout, “fame” or validation for you, tell us and we’ll publish it without your name …
The Editor[s]
Monologue for the Pont de Passy & Other Pieces
“This for the chalk track, this—for the mutterers and putterers. The punters of L’Atalante aloof of the reel. And the puttering …”
Tony
“In April of 1903, Samuel Eaton IV shot a white rhinoceros on an expedition in British East Africa …”
Venue of Youth
“Condition: Death of the father
Procedure: Laparoscopy to examine damage incurred by parental remnants …”
Seven Samples
“The first was in the office bathroom: you had to shuffle one leg in and straddle the bowl in order to close the cubicle door behind you, the room overlit by blank LED …”
UNDERTAKING AN ANTIPODAL MIGRATION BETWEEN ISLAND & LAKE — Niamh Mac Cabe
“05:00
Standing by an Irish lake, Loch Dhá Ghé
I think of a tree, the world’s most remote tree
is it a thousand years old …”
Niamh Mac Cabe is an Irish writer of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and hybrid prose, published internationally in over sixty journals and anthologies. Twitter: @NiamhMacCabe
ALL OF A SUDDEN THE MILITARY DESCEND ON MILE END RD — Jak Merriman
“I’m coming to pick you up,’ and I think no you’re not, no you’re not coming near me, rogue sirens passing me on Mile End Rd, men in military uniforms, pigtails and tramp stamps fighting them off …”
Jak Merriman (he/him) is a working-class queer and a faggot. He writes on queer cultures/starting your stupid band/digital-age faggotry/queers of history/grief. Music in the background. Instagram: @jakmerriman
Feedforward — Yoana Pavlova
“If you are reading this, in all likelihood you belong to the 62% of humanity with an internet connection …”
Yoana Pavlova has been pursuing a career as a freelance writer, curator, and researcher since the mid-2000s. She is founder and contributing editor of Festivalists.com, a playform for experimental media criticism, as well as author of the Fuck Godard avifesto (2018). Twitter: @roamingwords
Factory — Sylvia Warren
“The factory is hot and humid, long rows of women bent double over the low workbenches. The windows, set high into the walls, are sheened with dust and oil so the light that comes through is a sickly nicotine-brown. The women often feel sick …”
Sylvia Warren is a writer and academic editor. Their fiction has been published in the Brick Lane Bookshop Short Story Anthology, Minor Literature[s], Open Pen, and Rituals & Declarations amongst others. Twitter: @sylvswarren
Åmodt — Will Lupens
“And then Åmodt—really, I should have seen it coming—Åmodt starts going on and on about Norway …”
Will Lupens lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. He is the author of the novel Cares of a Wandering Boy, and the story collections Neighbor and The Institute of Solace.
The Room and the Street — Genta Nishku
“The room overlooks the street.
Because the room overlooks the street, the borders of the street and the borders of the room are hard to distinguish. Because it is hard to distinguish these borders, it is difficult to know where the room ends and the street begins …”
Genta Nishku is a writer, translator and literary scholar. Her research focuses on silence, testimony, and resistance in contemporary Albanian and post-Yugoslav literatures. Twitter: @gentanishku
Portal / Tomb — Eoghan Carrick
“I’m following Google Maps.
The blue line is a thinning footpath hugging the outside of Cabinteely Park. On my right, the park’s high boundary wall. On my left, a thin, two-way road. Beyond the road, high gates and tree lined driveways and well kept houses …”
Eoghan Carrick is an artist based in Dublin, Ireland. As a writer, he’s had work in the Belfield Literary Review and the 2023 edition of The Stony Thursday Book. View a range of current and past projects at www.eoghancarrick.com.
For Katharina — Sharon Kivland
“He had been giving psychoanalytic treatment to a young lady. She was on friendly terms with him and his family, a matter of certain discomfort to him for it was a mixed relationship between private and professional lives. The treatment ended, with partial success only, for some somatic symptoms remained …”
Sharon Kivland is an artist and writer. Her work considers what is put at stake by art, politics, and psychoanalysis. She is also an editor and publisher, the latter under the imprint MA BIBLIOTHÈQUE. Her novel Abécédaire was published by Moist Books in July 2022.
Festival of Queer Literature in Spanish in London 2023: An Interview with Jorge Gárriz — Silvia Rothlisberger
Jorge Gárriz is the founder of Romancero Books and the Festival of Queer Literature in Spanish in London. Romancero Books CIC is an online bookshop of Spanish and Latin American literature based in London. Their catalogue covers themes such as Lorca, female writers from Generación del 27, writers in exile and diaspora and new LGBTQI+ voices as well a large programme of cultural events called Romancero Talks. Twitter: @romancerobooks // @jorgegarriz
Silvia Rothlisberger is a journalist and writer based in London. She is contributing editor at Minor Literature[s], with a focus on literature in translation and Latin American culture. Twitter: @silviarothlis
Better Shopping Through Living III: The Catastrophe of Postmodernity
“In the article “The Postmodern Theatre of the Ukrainian Counter-Offensive,” published by the New Statesman on September 25, 2023, Philip Cunliffe challenges the prevalent understanding of the Ukrainian counter-offensive …”
Writer and translator Frank Garrett shops in Dallas, Texas, and is essays editor at Minor Literature[s]. His series Better Shopping Through Living will appear monthly. He sees that the once great marketplace of ideas is now nothing more than an abandoned mall overrun by raccoons.
Al Ras — Elisa Taber [22/11/2019]
“The bare sole she holds in her hand bleeds. Pricked by a protrusion in the soil. A conical thorn shed by a silk floss tree? The tip of a miniature t-shaped stake. Genoveva stands in a field of miniature crosses …”
Elisa Taber is a writer and anthropologist. She explores the ontological poetics of Amerindian literature. Her stories and translations are troubled into being, even when that trouble is a kind of joy.
Coming in December …
The final ANONYMOU[S] texts, fiction from Haroldo Conti and Ian MacClayn, Francis Keaton on queer reverie, and Frank Garrett’s monthly column …