The creative writing department at Florida International University has released the ninth issue of their on-campus literary magazine, Gulf Stream. The issue features the publication’s first inaugural Author Roundtable – a discussion between agents and writers from the Miami Writers Institute and novelists Cathy Day and Marc Fitten.
Gulf Stream, Issue 9
Joan Didion: Model
Joan Didion: celebrated essayist and author, subject of upcoming crowd-funded documentary, style icon and model?
You Won’t Believe What Happens Next
“The New York Times said goodbye to roughly a hundred editorial staffers, with a similar number gone from the Wall Street Journal. Condé Nast might be shuttering Details and Self and will possibly unleash a bloodbath in the fall. Time Inc., Meredith Corporation, and Prometheus Global Media—owner of the Hollywood Reporter, Billboard—and other outlets have all recently cut costs.” Noah Davis on online journalism and the current state of affairs for writers, over at The Awl. Pair with Kate Angus’s essay on making money as a poet.
Requiescat in pace, TriQuarterly
TriQuarterly, the long-running trail-blazing literary journal more or less dreamed into existence by the late Charles Newman, is apparently no more, due to budget cuts at Northwestern University. Newman’s foreword to his first issue as editor, reprinted at A Public Space, should be required reading for anyone thinking about the purpose and future of the little magazine and its role in the artistic ecology.
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“If it wasn’t signed by some lawyer, I’d imagine ol’ Gentleman Jack penning it himself, twirling his bushy mustache.”
Earlier this month, Jack Daniel’s wrote Patrick Wensink a cease-and-desist order because the cover of Wensink’s latest novel, Broken Piano For President, bears a striking resemblance to the whisky’s logo. Surprisingly, instead of some whisky-soaked tirade, the letter is really, really nice.
Michel Houellebecq on the Art of Fiction
Susannah Hunnewell interviews Michel Houellebecq, France’s controversial literary icon, for The Paris Review’s “The Art of Fiction” series: “There is a need for intensity. From time to time, you have to forsake harmony. You even have to forsake truth. You have to, when you need to, energetically embrace excessive things.”
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Pale King Confusion
After our discovery yesterday that The Pale King was already on sale, the New York Times finds lots of angry booksellers, but not much by way of explanation.
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Rooted
The term “regionalism” doesn’t have quite the lustre for poets that it does for fiction writers, yet poets undeniably reflect their roots in their work. In an essay, Sandra Beasley makes the case for embracing regionalism in the poetry world, citing Claudia Emerson as a model for profitably committing yourself to one place.
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Back to School
Need your monthly dose of Hilary Mantel? The two-time Booker Prize winner has a new story in the London Review of Books (which you can read at their website). The story is a nice complement to our interview with the author from last year.