The Lit Mag Mash! It Was a Lit Mag Smash!
Passing of Granta Editor; AGNI 50th anniversary; Irish lit scene; new editors at Hobart; cancel culture; 150 + markets for your work
Welcome to the bi-weekly news roundup.
Greetings Lit Magumpkins,
Today’s newsletter begins on a sad note, with the news of Ian Jack’s passing. Jack served as the Editor of Granta from 1995-2007. Publisher Sigrid Rausing writes,
“Ian – a newspaper journalist and editor – carried on what had become the Granta vocation, or voice, or tradition – a history of privileging story over literary art and truth over story. Looking outwards, not inwards.
…The original, the interesting and the true: his benchmarks were Chekhov and Orwell, ‘alert to, and inquisitive of the world they lived in.’ That was the point, for Ian – not the hybrid form, not literary value for its own sake, but sending writers out to report on interesting things happening in the real world.”
You can learn about Ian Jack’s life and work in this Guardian obituary and this column where Guardian “colleagues pick must-read pieces from [Jack]’s remarkable body of work.”
In other news, if you’re in the Boston area and looking for ways to get more literarily involved, you might want to check out AGNI’s 50th anniversary party. The Boston Globe reports, “Fifty years ago, writer and editor Askold Melnyczuk founded AGNI, a literary magazine burning with countercultural fire and international energy.” The celebration, which will include readings from several renowned authors, will take place on November 4th.
If your interest is of a more international nature, you might want to take note of Ireland’s “young new literary scene.” According to Le Monde, “Independent bookstores, literary magazines, publishing houses, writing workshops... In the country of Yeats, Joyce and Beckett, a new young literary generation has emerged to make its own imprint on this hallowed cultural landscape.” The article goes on to profile Declan Meade, Founder of the lit mag The Stinging Fly and who “continues to bet on aspiring writers.”
Also in that neck of the woods, it appears a fight has broken out between editors of Oxford Magazine and Oxford University management. The Telegraph reports,
“In its illustrious 150-year history [Oxford Magazine] has published the early works of some of the country’s greatest literary figures, including JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis and WH Auden.
But now the Oxford Magazine has been forced to cease publication, with [editors] accusing the university’s management of a successful attempt to ‘kill it off’ on account of its critical articles.
‘This is management trying to squash a free speech vehicle because it might be free speech that it doesn’t want to read,’ one senior [editor] told The Telegraph.
‘They are saying it is to do with GDPR and data protection – but we think that is nonsense. We assume that they just don’t like it because it is occasionally critical of the university’s great and good. I suspect they are just using this as an excuse to kill it off.’
Speaking of free speech and chaos at lit mags, Hobart has announced a new editorial staff following the recent sudden resignation of its editors.
Those editors resigned upon the publication of a now-well-known interview with writer Alex Perez. For anyone who’s interested, Perez discusses the fallout from that interview here, with Stephanie Yue Duhem.
Writer John Pistelli has also added some important analysis to that interview and its aftereffects. He writes,
“But whatever I agree with or don’t in Perez’s discourse, I take pleasure in hashing it out. We find no such pleasure in the ‘cancel’ mentality, the all-the-editors-resign and please-pull-my-story mentality, which, to be frank, merits only contempt from anyone who ever wanted to live in a free or pluralist society. A literary journal in the internet age is not a workplace and should not be governed by workplace rules. A different opinion than your own, even pungently expressed, doesn’t endanger you. And if official literary institutions continue operating this way, they only hasten their probably inevitable irrelevance.”
For those of you looking for open magazines this fall, markets and opportunities abound.
Erika Dreifus’s latest newsletter shares a wealth of no-fee submission calls.
Erica Verrillo has posted 42 Writing Contests in November 2022 - No entry fees and 73 Calls for Submissions in November 2022 - Paying markets.
The Masters’ Review’s latest Literary Roadmap provides “a non-exhaustive list of Minnesota’s new and established fiction publishers.”
As for us, there’s lots going on here in the weeks ahead! Be sure to keep your eyes out for a Save-the-Dates message, which will tell you about all the interviews and info sessions happening this month.
And a reminder: For November, The Lit Mag Reading Club will be reading Harvard Review, issue 59. Editor Christina Thompson will join us on 11/29 to discuss the issue. If you’d like to participate, make sure to order your issue asap!
Click below for the full schedule of magazines, editor interviews and for the Harvard Review journal discount code:
It is never too late to become a paying subscriber and join the Lit Mag Reading Club. You can find all the information about it here. Or drop me a line if you have any questions.
And that you alive-forever vampires who only come out in night’s full darkness, you howling werewolves hairy and hoping the moon will one day hear your hungry hallelujahs, you who are a haunted house, you who are already in daily and disorienting disguise, you whose broomstick will fly you to whichever witch is which and you who needs no zombie for indeed, your brain has already been eaten long ago, you stuck inside the world wide spider web and you out there casting spells with your very own brand of sweet spooky strange but surely sincere supernatural spastic charm, you and you, everywhere and all around all the time all at once, in your costumes, consuming candy corns, creeping and crawling in a cacophony of cat-screechy curlicues, embraced always and eternally by the star-spun and mysterious orange night, is the news in literary magazines.
Happy Halloween, my dear friends!
Fondly,
Becky
Got a question, comment, idea, bone to pick, axe to grind, unassailable truth, thoughtcrime or infinite jest?
Know some friends, lovers, teachers, students, friendly librarians, quiet readers or flamboyant self-obsessed celebrities who need this newsletter right now?
Want to support this endeavor, join the Lit Mag Reading Club, attend monthly info sessions, have full access to all the articles on this site, rebel against your parents and scandalize the neighbors?
“But whatever I agree with or don’t in Perez’s discourse, I take pleasure in hashing it out. We find no such pleasure in the ‘cancel’ mentality, the all-the-editors-resign and please-pull-my-story mentality, which, to be frank, merits only contempt from anyone who ever wanted to live in a free or pluralist society. A literary journal in the internet age is not a workplace and should not be governed by workplace rules. A different opinion than your own, even pungently expressed, doesn’t endanger you. And if official literary institutions continue operating this way, they only hasten their probably inevitable irrelevance.”
Word.