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Monthly Dispatch #9 — January 2024
A letter from the editor[s]
Starting out in 2024 we have couple of new ideas and plans to take the mag in directions it hasn’t gone before …
The most striking of these is minor [i]ncident, an evening of readings and discussion set to take place in Paris in October. There'll be more info later in the year, but the programme is starting to take shape and it’s looking like something you won’t want to miss. Consider this your “save the date” (and follow us on Twitter for news and announcements …).
Though less splashy, perhaps more significant are developments in what we plan to publish. During our recent fiction submission window there was a big increase in the number of previously unpublished works in translation, which was both exciting and satisfying to see. Keep an eye out for stories translated from German, Ukrainian and Asturian in the coming months.
And, as of Monday, we are now open for short texts in Spanish! Visit our submission platform for more details, but needless to say we are delighted to be able to open up a whole new dimension in the type of texts we put out and the voices we welcome. ¡Bienvenidxs a todxs!
All that said, we know there are areas where we’re lacking, and though we’re conscious of the limits of our reach, increasing the range and diversity of what we publish remains both a goal and an aspiration.
The year’s started out on a good footing, but let those be 2024’s resolutions: read more broadly, share more widely, and keep expanding the literary horizon.
Let’s fucking go.
The Editor[s]
Searchlights in People’s Hands [Excerpt]—Vivian Darroch-Lozowski
“Annie and I, with others, are having many discussions about language. We are doing this because we are treating the marks that arose on Hesh’s back and in the salt mine for Annie as linguistic signs that may portent something for humanity’s future …”
Vivian Darroch-Lozowski is Professor Emerita at the University of Toronto. She has authored several books. She continues to read, draw, and create various other traces and markings in her efforts to understand human nature.
Searchlights in People’s Hands is now available from Penumbra Press
Father Gustav, S.J., Recalls Seeing the Jackson Pollock Exhibit for the First Time at The Museum of Modern Art in New York (1967) — Jon Cone
“I had been working all morning, translating difficult passages and writing commentaries. My eyes were red and stung when I rubbed them. I was hungry and thirsty. I’d nothing to eat since last night. I thought to clear my head and so I went outside and began walking …”
Jon Cone lives in Iowa. His recent works include New Year Begun: Selected Poems (Subpress Editions: Brooklyn, NY, 2022); Liminal: Shadow Agent, pts 1 and 2 (Greying Ghost, Salem, MA, 2022); and Cold House (espresso, Toronto, Ont., 2017). He can be followed on X (Twitter): @JonCone
an introduction to what will never be written, part 2 — Isabella Streffen
Isabella Streffen is an artist. Her book Fabulae: How It Begins is available from Ma Bibliothèque. Twitter: @MinxMarple
Nanoglimpse — R.G. Vašíček
“I did not mean to do that. Nobody did. It just happened. As if, reality is self-programmed. I catch a glimpse. Maybe a billionth. A nanoglimpse …”
R.G. Vašíček is a lo-fi novelist in NYC. His most recent book is 404 ERROR: MEMOIR OF A NOBODY (Equus Press, Prague), a collaboration with UK experimental writer Zak Ferguson. Twitter: @rg_vasicek
Blank Moment — Brigitte de Valk
“Clouds open like envelopes. My fingers touch a damp sponge to white. I have limited time. Water trickles down my neck. Water pounds on the rooftop. The skin around my nose is hard to paint. I press the sponge more firmly to my face …”
Brigitte de Valk won the Cúirt New Writing Prize 2020 , and the Royal Holloway Art Writing Competition (2014). Her short fiction is published by Crannóg Magazine, Sans. Press, Happy London Press and Reflex Press. Twitter: @BrigitteCrossdV
Martel’s Position — Jake Romm
“Martel’s position is a strange one, very strange. Yes, strange, strange is the only word. You see, almost every morning when he wakes up (and, mind you, he often sleeps for days on end, so “every morning” is not quite right) he finds himself hovering a number of feet above his bed, suspended between the mattress and the ceiling …”
Jake Romm is a New York based writer and the Associate Editor of Protean Magazine. Twitter: @jake_romm
A Perfect Little Town of Donbas — Viktoriia Grivina
“2021
Everyone is tired of the war. So much so the tourists who wanted to see peaceful parts of the Ukrainian east (“before it was not too late”), had plenty of time to go and come back. Without its capitals Donetsk and Luhansk regions dispersed into a dozen towns, each busy producing their own fairy-tales and superhero stories …”
Viktoriia Grivina is a writer and cultural researcher from Kharkiv, Ukraine. Her current PhD study at St. Andrews University (UK) is dedicated to the mythological and aesthetic transformations of the cities in the times of war. Twitter: @brams884
Love (from the notebook of Arthur Hogg) — Max Blecher (tr. Gabi Reigh)
“… you can find plenty of silly justifications to support a good argument. Put simply, I have never been in love.”
Max Blecher was born in Botoşani, Romania, on September 8, 1909. He spent his childhood and adolescence in Roman, and upon graduating high school left for Paris to study medicine, but soon became ill and was diagnosed with spinal tuberculosis. After spending six years in various sanatoria, he returned to Roman where, confined to bed, he began to translate and to write. His only collection of poetry, Transparent Body, was published in 1934, followed by the “novels” Adventures in Immediate Irreality (1936) and Scarred Hearts (1937). His final prose work, The Illuminated Burrow, was published posthumously, first in an abridged edition in 1947, and then in full in 1971. He died on May 31, 1938.
Gabi Reigh was born in Romania and now lives in the UK, where she teaches English and translates. As part of her Interbellum Series she has translated a variety of work by Lucian Blaga, Liviu Rebreanu, Max Blecher, and Mihail Sebastian. Twitter: @gabi1981
“Does a writer have any real influence? I doubt it”: An interview with Max Blecher — Gh. A. Harabagiu (tr. Gabi Reigh)
“The writer should climb down from the “ivory tower” and join the “forum.” The point of view of intellectuals should be easily grasped by anyone who is interested in their work, as their purpose is to shed light on important issues and guide the masses who are interested in the opinions of today’s intellectual …”
Max Blecher was born in Botoşani, Romania, on September 8, 1909. His only collection of poetry, Transparent Body, was published in 1934, followed by the “novels” Adventures in Immediate Irreality (1936) and Scarred Hearts (1937). His final prose work, The Illuminated Burrow, was published posthumously. He died on May 31, 1938.
Gabi Reigh was born in Romania and now lives in the UK, where she teaches English and translates. Twitter: @gabi1981
Better Shopping Through Living V: Wojnarowicz in Love
“During the devastating global AIDS crisis of the 1980s, a profound tragedy unfolded along with the loss of human life: the irrevocable destruction of innumerable personal archives. This loss resulted from the pervasive disposal of individuals’ belongings, either summarily cast into the abyss of a landfill or heedlessly incinerated by grieving families and survivors. Motivated by misguided fears of contamination or in some cases prejudice against Queer content, these acts obliterated a wealth of personal histories and creative expressions …”
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 can die happy just as soon as he shits on Ronald Reagan’s grave.
The Momus Questionnaire — Gary Budden [09/01/2018]
“I don’t think anyone had any real expectations for me, other than to follow the usual (if such a thing exists) life trajectory: school university work marriage kids death. Becoming a writer and editor has come as a mild surprise to my family, but hopefully a welcome one …”
Gary Budden is co-founder of Influx Press, and a writer whose debut collection, Hollow Shores, is published by Dead Ink. A proponent of ‘landscape punk’, Budden’s writing blends weird fiction and landscape writing, with none of the distancing language that often mars psychogeography.
Coming in February …
Fiction from Jacqueline Feldman, Kirsten Mosher, and Daniel Adler; excerpts of new books by C.D. Rose, and Kari Hukkila; experimental prose from David C. Porter; an interview with poet Tzveta Sofronieva; Better Shopping Through Living VI, and more …