Lit Journals

Digital publisher Electric Literature has launched a new digital literary magazine that will publish one story a week. Recommended Reading is a free online publication, available in ePub, Kindle and through email and Tumblr.

The first issue, which is sponsored by digital literary magazine Shelf Unbound, features a new story by Ben Marcus, with a “Single Sentence Animation” by Edwin Rostron. Future guest editors will include Aimee Bender, Jim Shepard, and Nathan Englander.

The idea for Recommended Reading was born out of a Kickstarter campaign that raised more than $18,000 to help pay writers. Trying to get out of the algorithm-based recommendation engines that dominate online, authors and editors will make personal recommendations for the stories to be featured in the new pub. Read more

Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

Granta magazine worked with fashion designer Paul Smith to create the cover for its upcoming issue, Granta 119.

Dedicated to the theme of “Britain,” the issue will be released in the U.K. on May 10th and in the U.S. on May 17th.  Contributing writers include Adam Foulds, Mark Haddon, Robert Macfarlane and Rachel Seiffert.

In the release, Granta artistic director Michael Salu explained the cover: “Britain’s oldest literary magazine creating an issue on ‘home’ needed a package of distinction. Why not ask a revered British designer to collaborate on creating the cover for ‘Britain?’ We worked with Sir Paul Smith and his team to create an image that we feel is beautiful yet disquieting and saturated with generations of British identity and understanding.”

Jane Friedman has been appointed web editor at the Virginia Quarterly Review. She starts in June, tasked with expanding the literary journal’s “online and digital content and a larger social media presence.”

Friedman has served as the editorial director of Writer’s Digest, but she now serves as the assistant professor of e-media at the University of Cincinnati.

Virginia Quarterly Review publisher Jon Parrish Peede announced the news: “I had the pleasure of watching Jane serve on a National Endowment for the Arts funding panel, and I can state from firsthand experience that she is gifted, energetic, and deeply knowledgeable about publishing and new trends in the field. We are particularly excited about her leadership in developing a greater community of online readers for VQR.” (Via Calvin Reid)

Sadie Stein has been named the new editor of Paris Review Daily, the online counterpart to the prestigious literary journal. She starts on April 1st.

The current blog editor Deirdre Foley-Mendelssohn will lead the books section at Harper’s magazine.

Here’s more from the post: “During Deirdre’s tenure as editor of the Daily, our readership has doubled, and so has the amount we publish. Truly we have grown by leaps and bounds … You already know Sadie from her groundbreaking reports on wine cake and exotic meats and “the old ‘do I give my crush a sexually explicit book’ conundrum,” not to mention her weekly roundup, On the Shelf.” (Via Maud Newton)

Amazon has given the Los Angeles Review of Books a $25,000 grant. The literary journal will use the funds to pay its contributors and launch the complete site.

Founding editor Tom Lutz had this statement: “Corporate underwriting grants like these are crucial to helping us realize our vision: to create and sustain the most innovative new multimedia forum for the vibrant, ongoing dialogue about books and culture.”

The grant was part of Amazon’s “Supporting the Writing Community” program, helping fund groups like 826 Seattle, The Asian American Writers’ Workshop, the AWP, Copper Canyon Press, The Lambda Literary Foundation, Write Girl and PEN American Center.

As literary journals around the world search for new ways to support themselves, The Rumpus has found an unexpected new strategy–readers can subscribe to receive a weekly letter (via postal service) from the literary website.

Check it out: “The Rumpus is finally starting a print subscription. We’d like to say this was the plan all along, but we’ve actually never had a plan. It’s called Letters In The Mail. Almost every week you’ll receive a letter, in the mail. Letter writers will include Stephen Elliott, Janet Fitch, Nick Flynn, Margaret Cho, Cheryl Strayed, Wendy MacNaughton, and Emily Gould. Think of it as the letters you used to get from your creative friends, before this whole internet/email thing.”

What writers do you want to receive letters from?

The new literary journal Unstuck is sponsoring a free micro-lit writing contest to promote its first issue. Submissions should focus on the theme of “Lovemarks.”

We’ve listed the unique submission guidelines below to help you format your entry. Here’s more: “we’re interested in work that explores ideas like: ‘respectful, intimate, committed, trust-based love relationships’ between human beings and corporations; corporate personhood; corporate mythology; corporate empathy; brand/product/design fetishism; and the mystery and ‘sensuality’ of logos and other everyday symbols.”

The annual journal will focus on “literary fiction with elements of the fantastic, the futuristic, the surreal, or the strange,” publishing work by Aimee Bender, Joe Meno and many others.

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Authors Ann Van­der­Meer and Jeff Van­der­Meer just opened Weird Fiction Review, an online journal dedicated to “an ongo­ing explo­ration into all facets of the weird, in all of its many forms.” In August, Ann VanderMeer and her staff were cut at Weird Tales.

Weird Fiction Review launched with a Neil Gaiman interview about weird fiction, an episode of the “Reading The Weird” webcomic by Leah Thomas, a translation of Thomas Owen‘s “Kavar the Rat,” and The art of New Orleans gallery by artist Myrtle Von Damitz III. While they don’t have the same editors, the journal will maintain “a sym­bi­otic rela­tion­ship” with S.T. Joshi’s print jour­nal, The Weird Fic­tion Review.

Here’s more about the site: “[It has] a kind of non-denominational approach that appre­ci­ates Love­craft but also Kafka, Angela Carter and Clark Ash­ton Smith, Shirley Jack­son and Fritz Leiber — along with the next gen­er­a­tion of weird writ­ers and inter­na­tional weird. The empha­sis will be on non­fic­tion on writ­ers and par­tic­u­lar books, but we will also run fea­tures on weird art, music, and film, as well as occa­sional fiction. Angela Slat­ter cur­rently serves as our man­ag­ing edi­tor, Luis Rodrigues cre­ated the site, and Larry Nolen and Paul Smith will be among the reg­u­lar colum­nists.”

On November 14th, actor and comedian Denis Leary will host the 40th anniversary gala for the literary journal Ploughshares.

Several celebrity guests  and authors will read ” their favorite selections from the Ploughshares vault.” The event will take place at the Paramount Theater on Emerson College’s campus. Follow this link to purchase tickets for the event or to make a donation.

Here’s more from the press release: “Some of the notable readers include: Alice Hoffman (author of Practical Magic, Oprah Book Selection Here on Earth); Dennis Lehane (author of Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone, Shutter Island); Cam Neely (Hockey Hall of Famer and current president of the Boston Bruins); Andre Dubus III (author of National Book Award finalist, House of Sand and Fog and Townie, a Salon.com “Mandatory Read”); Sue Miller (bestselling author of The Good Mother, Inventing the Abbotts, and Oprah Book Club selection While I was Gone); Wally Lamb (author of She’s Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, both Oprah Book Club selections); and Ming Tsai (James Beard Foundation Award-winning chef, Emmy Award-winning host of ‘East Meets West,’ and restaurateur).”

Today the Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB) launched LARB ePubs, a biweekly eBook series that will republish essays from the review’s growing archive that already counts 150 literary essays.

The individual issues will be sold at Amazon and the literary journal’s store for $4.99.

Here’s more about the series: “LARB ePubs will feature book reviews and cultural essays by prominent writers such as David Shields, Barbara Ehrenreich, Michael Tolkin, and others, delivering LARB’s exceptional content in a format that is tailored to the e-reader platform … LARB ePubs is part of an industry trend towards making long-form journalistic content available for e-publication.”

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