I Would Walk 500 Lit Mags!
PEN America in turmoil; CLMP pulls out of PEN festival; update from Guernica's Founder; antisemitism in literary world; serial plagiarists; Tikkun, Juked, Superstition Review, Goddard closing, & more
Welcome to our bi-weekly news roundup!
Greetings Lit Magentry,
Whew, lots to cover this week. Let’s dive in.
Many of you are likely already familiar with the turmoil rocking PEN America. In short, as LitHub reports,
Less than a month out from the 20th incarnation of its flagship World Voices Festival, the protests against PEN America’s response to the war on Gaza are continuing to mount.
In just the last few days, several authors have withdrawn their books from PEN awards consideration; esteemed translator Esther Allen, who co-founded the PEN World Voices Festival in 2005, has declined the 2024 PEN/Ralph Manheim Award for Translation; and the judges of the 2024 PEN Translation Prize have publicly chastised the organization.
One publisher also “declined to participate [in the contest] this year.” Judges for the translation prize put out a statement that they are “not proud to be associated with PEN America at this time.”
Last week, LitHub reported that both the awards and the upcoming World Voices Festival “are on the brink of collapse.” Many well-known writers “have already declined invitations to appear.” In a recent addendum to February’s open letter to PEN, writers have called for “PEN America to conduct an external review of its historic and current policies and statements regarding Palestine and the Israeli occupation,” while others have called for PEN’s CEO Suzanne Nessel “to step down.”
Today, news came in that the awards ceremony has been altogether canceled. “The move follows months of steadily mounting criticism of the organization over its response to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza…The $75,000 prize accompanying the PEN/Stein award will be donated, this year, to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund at the direction of the Literary Estate of Jean Stein.”
Of particular relevance to lit mags is this news: “A representative from the Community of Literary Magazines & Presses [CLMP] also confirmed to Lit Hub that the organization will no longer be co-presenting the Indie Lit Fair at this year’s festival.”
Questions from this statement abound. What exactly does this mean for the lit mags involved in this indie lit fair? Were those lit mags part of this decision? Have they been notified?
I reached out to an editor and CLMP member to get more information. He was not consulted on CLMP’s decision to withdraw from the festival. (He was not participating in the lit fair.) Nor has he yet been notified of this decision by CLMP. What obligation does CLMP have, if any, to include its members in these sorts of decisions? What obligation does CLMP have, if any, to notify all its members that such a decision has been made? As of now, CLMP has not mentioned their decision to withdraw from the festival on their website or social media page.
In related news, Guernica’s Founder and new publisher, Michael Archer and Magogodi aoMphela Makhene, respectively, have posted the “more fulsome explanation” we were all left waiting for when Joanna Chen’s essay was retracted weeks ago. In defense of the essay’s retraction, Archer writes,
Given Guernica’s long history of publishing the sharply crafted prose that pull from intimate terrains of impact, this piece felt jarring in both its timing and its approach. Rather than mine the personal to expose the political, individual angst was elevated above the collective suffering laid bare in the extensive body of work Guernica has published from the region.
Meanwhile, at Tablet, “A new survey reveals an alarming degree of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bias in American literary circles and institutions.” Writes Maxim D. Shrayer,
Some Jewish poets feel that poetry publications are actively discriminating against Jewish and Israeli content, and against Jewish American poets who stand with Israel. Jewish poets collectively articulated the sense of an unfolding literary confrontation…[S]everal respondents privately expressed anxiety over being unable or unwilling to say in public that they are experiencing anti-Israel targeting, antisemitism, and cancellations.
At The Jewish Book Council’s site, Yardenne Greenspan writes,
One of the greatest blows was delivered when Guernica Magazine took down a piece…Like Chen, I am a Jewish-Israeli writer and translator…The fact that voices in the liberal literary world could not tolerate a piece of writing that strived to find room for compassion and coexistence because it was written by an Israeli person…told me in no uncertain terms that my voice was no longer welcome in many literary spaces — I barely passed as human in them.
On his Substack, ONE ART Editor Mark Danowsky asks, “What are the Top 5 issues in the literary community?” Among other concerns, Danowsky writes,
There was a shift that started on October 7. If you’re paying attention, and engaged on social media in the literary community, you have felt this. Almost immediately, I started to receive notes from poets and writers through backchannels that they had become fearful about sharing their view publicly.
…Antisemitism was mentioned repeatedly as a top concern.
And in this podcast, Erika Dreifus joins the hosts of The Canadian Jewish News to discuss “her own work in searching out publications still friendly to Jewish and Israeli Jewish writers and the broader ramifications of an ever-more-restrictive literary environment.”
Moving on, Poets and Writers has covered the plagiarism of John Kucera. Writes Enma Karina Elias,
Since the news about Kucera broke in mid-January, it has been discovered that dozens of plagiarized works—of poetry and fiction— have been published under that name in Bending Genres, Moon City Review, Philadelphia Stories, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, and elsewhere; some of the poems have even won contests. Kucera has also been found to use the alias John Siepkes. While the name has been called out on social media, Kucera shows no signs of stopping, reportedly submitting work under a third pseudonym, R. J. Franz…
And it appears we also have another serial plagiarist in our midst. On X Adedayo Agarau posted:
Sadly, many venues have announced their closing.
Tikkun Magazine’s Founding Editor Rabbi Michael Lerner states,
Unfortunately, my body and mind have made it impossible for me to continue as its editor, and the staff is working to close the magazine soon…These are difficult times for anyone seeking a world of love and justice…May those in your life—your children, grandchildren, friends, coworkers, people you meet along the way—learn from you to reject the cynical belief that money and power is what gives people lives of joy and meaning.
Superstition Review is closing. In a touching YouTube farewell message, Editor Patricia Murphy wrote,
I am writing to announce my departure from Arizona State University, and the subsequent suspension of Superstition Review. I am deeply grateful for the experiences I had during my 31 years teaching, particularly the opportunity to found the magazine 17 years ago. I celebrate our 33 Issues, 2750 blog posts, and impressive presence on nine social networks.
Juked Magazine posted:
As of today, the Juked website is down.
All this comes in the midst of Small Press Distribution closing down, as I covered earlier this month. In response, Rose Metal Press has paused sales and launched a fundraiser. “[Founding Editor Kathleen] Rooney said more than 300 books were being held hostage in a warehouse somewhere, and now she’s asking for help.”
To top all this off, Goddard College has announced its closing. Yes, the entire college, whose MFA program includes two lit mags, The Pitkin Review and Clockhouse. “The decision to close at the end of the semester was heart-wrenching but unavoidable as the school, created in 1938, faces financial insolvency, the board said in a statement Tuesday.”
In response to news of certain lit mags closing, Conor Sweetman has written about the role of lit mags in a spiritual life, and Christianity in particular. Sweetman writes,
As Christians, it is our responsibility to be aware of how we are satiating our hunger for beauty. Are we developing a taste for what is good and an aversion to the acrid flavor of evil? Are we more influenced by beauty that orients us to the strange and unexpected work of God in the world—or by political slogans and self-help books?
The power of the small literary magazine is in its ability to confront us with new ideas, to expand our palates to the overlooked, the strange, the serendipitous, the delightful. This will never be very measurable, but that does not make it unnecessary.
For those of you looking for work in the (thriving!) (bustling!) landscape of lit mags:
Frontier Poetry seeks Guest Editors.
For those of you looking for homes for your latest & greatest, check out the newsletter from earlier this month, which has dozens of April listings.
As for us, we have two events remaining this month: our Lit Mag Reading Club discussion of Florida Review and our interview with Florida Review’s editors. You can learn about both events here:
Registration links for these events can be found here:
For May’s reading club, we will be reading Zoetrope! I’ll have a discount code for that journal and dates and times of all May events out for you soon.
And that you recipe followers and fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants egg scramblers, you out there discovering the joy of cooking and you whose very life is its own sort of pressure cooker, you with your crock pot, you who’d rather be high on pot, you sautéing slivers of sliced onions and you dicing chicken livers with vine-ripened knives, you with your one thing or another always on the back burner and you with the flame set much too high (please stop cooking olive oil on a high heat!), you whose sauce simmers at a setting so low it sometimes seems the heat’s all but disappeared and you relaxing to the sounds of stir-fry sloshing in its oil-scrimmed pan, you chopping your way to vegetable heaven you and lambasting the roast for its many recent misbehaviors, you and you, out there, frying, baking and braising, you with your effortless zest and you with your human coil all in a boil, you so minced by life’s bleak winters and yet, still, no matter what, daily and always, whisking those monsters and mayhem into perfect fluffiness, a soufflé of golden light, surrounded on all sides at every table everywhere by nothing less than mouth-watering grace, is the news in literary magazines.
Have a most nourishing week, pals.
Fondly,
Becky
“Antisemitism” is losing its validity as an allegation from misuse. Many American Jews seem to be claiming support for Palestinian independence and use of related slogans as instances of antisemitism, but it’s actually anti-Zionism/anti-colonialism, by definition. It’s making American Jews less safe, not more, to misuse such labels painting people as being against Jews for being Jews, instead of being against continuing oppression. Also, if supporting Palestinians is antisemitism, then supporting Israelis is anti-Arabism. One bigotry isn’t preferable (or shouldn’t be), they are both wrong.
It is the epitome of cognitive dissonance when some publishers sacrifice freedom of expression on the altar of political correctness and cancel culture, especially when many were founded to provide a home for previously marginalized groups. They are leading us back to the Dark Ages. It would be great if someone could publish a list of litmags who still choose pieces on their literary merit and not on the whims of the flash mobs of virtue signalers that are breeding like the maggots feeding off the literary body that they are.