Topic: April 2006
[4.03.06]
We'll be forwarding over $1000 in donations today for First Book's Book Relief campaign as part of our fundraising effort, Southern Revival, a humble little journal we're producing with the not-so-humble goal of making at least $2500 to help restore Southern libraries and put books in the hands of evacuees who've been displaced across the country. We're almost halfway there, thanks to so many wonderful people who've donated to the cause. What does $2500 cover? Enough books to completely stock a small community library. Why not pitch in with your own donation? We're asking for a minimum donation of $10, a small price to pay to help bring first aid to the hearts and minds of our Southern neighbors. Learn more here
Currently, the staff for Southern Revival (full title: Periphery IV: SOUTHERN REVIVAL: Deep Magic for Hurricane Relief) is making content and artwork selections. Those waiting to hear from us will know very soon. Thanks for your patience! We received terrific material representing so many facets of the South; it will be hard to make our final decisions!
I'd like, at this time, to thank our volunteer staff (Susan Deefholts, Carol D. O'Dell and Shira Richman) for their dedication, brilliance and amazing heart.
[4.02.06]
Copper Canyon Press has just released Alberto Rios' latest book of poems, The Theater of Night. In a review by Joy Lanzendorfer for San Francisco Chronicle, his poetry in this book was described as "often surreal, sometimes bordering on magic realism, such as in 'The Drive-In of the Small Animals,' where insects, lizards and other creatures watch humans as if watching a movie at the drive-in." I met Rios briefly at the Port Townsend Writers Conference last
July and found him to be a gentle, personable man with a huge fan club. I highly recommend you take a look at his work. He's one of America's finest magical realist poets, in my humble opinion.
[4.01.06]
The lucky folks in Brattleboro, VT will enjoy the first-ever public screening of Jay Craven's newest feature film, Disappearances, this Thursday, April 6 at the Latchis Theatre. The film, starring Kris Kristofferson, is described in the Brattleboro Reformer as having, "in the midst of a fun, action story…a heady dose of what
Craven calls magical realism, which incorporates inexplicable occurrences and fantasy, or, in the case of the film, mysterious legend or folklore, which characters accept at face value and which influences the story. It's a device used in popular films as Being John Malkovich and Like Water for Chocolate." Sounds like a
keeper; I can't wait for it to make it to my corner of the country.
[3.31.06]
Robert Coover, who is perhaps best known among magical realism's fans for his 1977 novel, The Public Burning, led the workshop, "A Walk Through the Future: Technology Taking Literature Into a New Era," last Friday as part of the Our Lady of the Lake University's literary festival. In an interview with San Antonio Express-News book editor, Steve Bennett, Coover discusses what it means to be an unconventional writer and why, in part, he believes it is important for him to reintroduce myth into contemporary electronic writing.
[3.11.06]
Ah, scandal. It's been reported in Hindustan Times that "Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami accused his former editor of illicitly selling his handwritten manuscripts, saying many texts were now being traded on Internet auction sites and at second-hand bookshops for exorbitant prices. … Writing in Bungeishunju, a literary magazine released [March 10], the writer said a handwritten translation into Japanese of The Ice Palace by F. Scott Fitzgerald was put for sale at a bookshop for more than… $8,490 [USD]."
[2.19.06]
"The Birth House is a sweet little piece of fiction. Set in a small fishing village in Nova Scotia, it's a strong first outing for writer Ami McKay and
features an element of magic realism—call it a hybrid of fabulist Gabriel Garcia Marquez and prairie realist Sinclair Ross."—Patricia Robertson for the Toronto Star. Okay, who could not be interested in reading this?
[2.15.06]
Please Don't Come Back From The Moon,a first novel by Dean
Bakopoulos, "deftly melds magic realism with social satire," according to The New York Times. The story centers around the mass walkout of a Rust Belt working man's town in the summer of 1991 and the consequences thrust upon the grown sons of the protesters.
[2.05.06]
The author of Chocolat, Joanne Harris, delves into her obsession with the unexplained, the dark, and the superstitious in an interesting interview conducted by Uma Girish for California Literary Review.