[3.30.06]
Kathleen Alcala always has plenty of news to share with us. She recently attended the AWP Conference in Austin, contributing to a reading which honored the 30th anniversary of Calyx. Alcala writes: "This was a magazine started with the expectation that after five years, there would no longer be a need for a feminist press!" She's recently published essays in Re-Markings, The Pen and the Key and One Wound for Another / Una herida por otra, Testimonios de Latinos in the U.S. through Cyberspace. Nibir Ghosh, the editor of Re-Markings, also recently published Multicultural America: Conversations with Contemporary Authors, in which Alcala was profiled along with Octavia Butler, Colleen McElroy and others. Alcala also reports "I was privileged to work with the science fiction cooperative on Bainbridge Island as it published its second anthology, Obliquity."

She's done some teaching as well for Seattle's premier writing hub, The Richard Hugo House, where she also serves as secretary; her class, entitled “Called to Witness,” discussed writing after disaster, which led to some excellent essays.

And speaking of Octavia Butler, Alcala will speak about the much-beloved science fiction writer, who recently passed away, at this year's Rainbow Bookfest on April 29 (Margin will be there, too, selling Southern Revival: Deep Magic for Hurricane Relief). She will also present before a conference of educators in June concerning her book, The Flower in the Skull, and if that weren't enough, she's shopping an essay collection right now and working to complete a second collection of short stories under the working title, Cities of Gold.

[3.30.06]
Margin contributor Katherine Grace Bond has been running a series of workshops and events geared toward teenage writers for quite a while now. Today, she announces Teen Write 2006, a 3-day "hero's journey" scheduled to take place at Fort Worden (near Port Townsend, WA) on August 18-20. For more info

[3.30.06]
Zelda Leah Gatuskin, whose Ancestral Notes excerpts we reprinted, with accompanying digital collages, back in 2001, announces the Ancestral Notes website, a repository for all the family history information, interviews and stories she gathered while writing her book, as well as related research and creative writing she has done since. One of her first big projects is a virtual tribute to her grandmother, Sadie Gordon, a prolific artist/craftswoman who served as her first mentor and role model. Writes Gatuskin: "I hope she will inspire other creative women in all fields as she continues to inspire me."

[3.30.06]
The Underwater Hospital, Jan Steckel's first poetry chapbook,will be released from Zeitgeist Press next week. Steckel points out: "The title poem, which I consider magical realist, is appearing until April 21 in The Pedestal Magazine." She'll be reading and signing copies of her chapbook at the Albany Library in Albany, California on Thursday April 6 at 7 pm. You can pick up a copy of her book through her website.

[3.30.06]
Dan Jaffe's interview with Ruth Knafo Setton appears on the online literary journal, Bibliobuffet. Setton will also be reading, with other contributors, from the literary journal, Zeek, at Makor in New York City on May 18th. Read her poem, "Holy Thighs," here. Meanwhile, she's just finished her latest novel, Darktown Blues, and a poetry collection, Dance of the Seven Skins, which she describes as "prose/poetry that interweaves the Hansel and Gretel story."

[3.27.06]
Great news from Katherine Vaz: She's just been named a Radcliffe Fellow for 2006-7. She'll be taking a break from being the Briggs-Copeland Fellow in Fiction at Harvard to complete the Radcliffe fellowship, then will return to her Harvard work in a year. She also announces that she has a story about Lisbon set to appear in the Spring, 2006 issue of The Harvard Review. Congratulations, Katherine!

[3.27.06]
Today's The Rocky Mountain News features young stage director Wendy Goldberg, who is currently directing The Clean House at Denver Center. "I think it's magic," she says of the production. "I think you can label it as magical realism if you want. All of the memory scenes are not literal, and so how to articulate that is a lot of fun, how to bring those background memories into the house." The play runs through April 22.

[3.23.06]
Naomi Ayala recently announced a new poetry series in Chicago. Palabra Pura is a collaborative endeavor sponsored by the excellent organization, the Guild Complex, with Letras Latinas of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and the Rafael Cintron-Ortiz Latino Cultural Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Palabra Pura "promotes literary expression in more than one tongue through a monthly bilingual reading featuring Chicano and Latino artists." The series is held the third Wednesday monthly. More info.

[3.16.06]
Writing it Real, a terrific resource for writers on the web, recently featured Janice Eidus on the subject of Reading for Writing. Eidus's essay, "The Best Authority," is not to be missed—a lively account of writing from the perspective of Otherness. [Note: This essay may require logging in.]

[3.22.06]
Today, Margin launched its vernal equinox edition, Earth~Words: The Nature of Magical Realism, to celebrate the beginning of spring as well as the extraordinariness of Mother Nature, who might be considered the most amazing female magical realist of all…

[3.21.06]
Yesterday, Cynthia Ozick confessed that Christopher Robin inspired her to write Heir to the Glimmering World at a reading she presented before The Writer's House at the University of Pennsylvania.

[3.21.06]
Saturday, folks in Palm Beach can don their smartest headwear when they attend Zora Fest, a celebration of the life of Zora Neale Hurston , the Harlem Renaissance writer, folklorist, anthropologist and author of Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston, the author of 30 books and plays during the 20s and 30s, was well known for wearing what the Palm Beach Post describes as "a snappy chapeau." Going with that theme, a salute to the author—"Hattitude"—happens from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. as the first event in this year's annual Zora Fest in Fort Pierce, to be held at the Koblegard Student Union at Indian River Community College. Zora Fest continues April 28-30 with lectures on Hurston's life and work, music and a festival on April 29 at Lincoln Park Academy in Fort Pierce. Hurston died in Fort Pierce in 1960, taught for a brief time at Lincoln Park Academy and worked for The Chronicle newspaper in Fort Pierce.

[3.12.06]
Out of Alaska comes Ella Bandita and Other Stories, a collection of dark adult fairy tales written by Montgomery Mahaffey. Mahaffey won a $5,000 Individual Artist Project Award from the Anchorage-based Rasmuson Foundation and applied it toward her collection, which has been described by Fairbanks Daily News-Miner as "more akin to magical realism or the modern fables of authors such as Paulo Coelho." Oh, I can't wait to read this one!

[3.20.06]
TODAY ONLY! A special musical performance of Oprah Winfrey’s production of Alice Walker's novel, The Color Purple, will play tonight only at the Cadillac Palace Theatre to a hand-picked audience in Chicago. More info.

[3.20.06]
Now this is exciting: Animation film director, Hayao Miyazaki, has optioned the rights to Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea six-volume cycle, which Miyazaki plans to adapt into one movie. Stay tuned, this could be one of those amazing adaptations that's long in the making (i.e. The Lord of the Rings).

[3.19.06]
This Thursday, folks in Garden City, NJ can catch Gloria Naylor discussing her popular novel, The Women of Brewster Place, about a community of black women, at 1 pm at the College Center Building at Nassau Community College. The event is free; for more info, call 516.572.7082.

[3.16.06]
Ann Patchett will appear before audiences at the North Carolina Festival of the Book in late April 2006. The festival will take place at Duke University and other locations in Durham and will feature as many as 80 authors. More info

[3.14.06]
New Zealand's independent news media, Scoop, showcased Louise Erdrich all last week as part of their "Writers and Readers Week." According to the article in Scoop: "She spoke…about how the storytelling traditions of her family and heritage have influenced her and about writing from outside the mainstream culture."

[2.23.06]
Okay, so you may have heard of cowboy poets, but what about fisher poets? Margin contributor Erin Fristad, who also works as a commercial fisherwoman, fits that bill. Her work as a poet and poetry instructor recently made waves in Astoria, Oregon, when an entire fleet of fisher poets took up residence to celebrate their art. Read the article in The Daily Astorian.

[4.03.06]
Melissa Mia Hall recently gave Alice Hoffman's latest release, The Ice Queen, a major thumbs up, declaring it her “best novel since Practical Magic bewitched readers in 1995.”
Editor's note: Don't ask me to explain how it is that today is March 13 but the publication date of Hall's review is April 3…

[3.12.06]
Hampton University welcomes Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker (The Color Purple) as part of the university's annual Read-In event on March 23. Walker will discuss the relationship between her novel and its film adaptation. For more info || Walker's novel, which has been adapted already for Broadway, will hit the road for a national tour in 2007, beginning with at least 3 months' staging in homegirl Oprah Winfrey's Chicago in April, according to Broadway.com.

[3.12.06]
Okay, so it's not magical realism per se, but Margo Hammond's article, "To tell the truth, we should value fiction" (reprinted here in The Kansas City Star), addresses the subject of fiction, fabulation, embellishment and memoir in a thoughtful manner. Indirectly, it has everything to do with magical realism, which has had its detractors over the years who've disparaged its writers for their interest in contrivances and artifice.

[3.10.06]
The Washington Blade, in its spring 2006 preview, mentions that a new critical book examining feminist writer Kathy Acker, Lust for Life: On the Writings of Kathy Acker, is set for release in May.

[3.07.06]
Amy Tan's short story, "Immortal Heart," will be staged this coming Friday by Word for Word, a theater company which performs short stories and other texts with every word intact. The performance will be held at Pacifica in San Francisco. The story eventually became the basis for her novel, The Bonesetter's Daughter. For more info

Speaking of The Bonesetter's Daughter, the San Francisco Chronicle reports that Tan's novel has been commissioned by the San Francisco Opera for production during the 2008-09 season. Composer Stewart Wallace will adapt the novel. Imagine, Amy Tan in choruses.

[3.06.06]
The 11th annual Orange Prize, which honors the year’s best female-written, English-language novel published in the U.K., announced its longlist at the London Book Fair last Monday. It's not just U.K. writers that have qualified this year; American author Nicole Krauss's title, The History of Love, is up for an award. Look for the shortlist in April and the winners announcement in June. Read the Book Standard review here.

[3.06.06]
The Washington Post's occasional series reconsidering notable and/or neglected books features Toni Morrison in a piece written by Jonathan Yardley. A great recap of Morrison's œuvre, if you're not already a huge fan.

[3.06.06]
On Wednesday, March 8, magical realist author Carmen Tafolla will present a one-woman show, "My Heart Speaks a Different Language," at the College of Southern Idaho's Fine Arts Center. The performance has been seen by audiences throughout the United States and in England, Spain, Germany, Mexico and Canada. According to an article in the Twin Falls, ID Times-News: "In her stage presentation, she appears as bag lady, a first grader, a college student, a retired soldier, an outspoken black janitor and other characters. Each portrayal emphasizes in its own way the strength and beauty of the individual and cultural diversity." The performance begins at 7 pm.

[3.06.06]
On Thursday, March 23, Gloria Anzaldua will be the featured subject of an ongoing program on KHSU-FM 90.5 and KHSR-FM 91.9 (broadcast in and around Eureka, CA) entitled "The Mirrors of Metis, a collaboration between KHSU, Humboldt State University and the community. Meant to educate radio listeners about the important contributions of diverse women throughout the world, the program recently trained the spotlight on Toni Morrison. For more info

[3.06.06]
And speaking of Toni Morrison, work inspired by her novel, Beloved, is included among a variety of creative efforts from Miami Beach High School students which comprise the "Avant Garden: An African-American Slave Garden." Locally, the Center for Emerging Art provided the art supplies and the research to teach the children about African American slave gardens. The Beloved piece, an acrylic painted by 17-year-old Leila Ali, depicts the love between slaves and their families. Recently, the exhibit was displayed by the Miami Beach Botanical Gardens, which plans to incorporate a slave garden among its themed gardens. For more info

[3.03.06]
Guilford College has been presenting "A Year of Spirit and Spirituality" for 2005-2006. Upcoming contributions to that event include lectures by both Amy Tan (March 30) and Linda Hogan (March 31). For more info

[3.03.06]
Adam Begley, for The New York Observer, reports that Houghton Mifflin will release Cynthia Ozick's fifth collection of essays, The Din in the Head, in June.

[3.01.06]
Jessa Crispin of Bookslut.com gives Rebecca Brown’s latest book, The Last Time I Saw You, a big thumbs up, comparing her work to Kathy Acker's, in a recent column in The Book Standard.. "In the end, the book didn’t have Acker’s sharpness, but her stories did remind me why I won’t be renewing my subscription to the New Yorker: It should be publishing stories as fearless and nonlinear as Brown’s, not the pat white-people-getting-a-divorce stories they go for."

[2.27.06]
On April 30, novelist Sandra Cisneros will be presented with the First Annual Distinguished Gloria Anzaldua Scholar/Activist Award by the UC Santa Cruz at the campus's Chicano/Latino Research Center (CLRC). For more info

[2.26.06]
Fans of Zora Neale Hurston might be interested in this interview in The Detroit News with her niece, Lucy Anne Hurston, who presented a talk about her aunt before the State University of New York at Albany. The talk, which contributed to the Department of Africana Studies' commemoration of Black History Month, discussed Zora Neale Hurston's involvement as an anthropologist, among other things. The younger Hurston is a professor of sociology at Manchester Community College in Manchester, CT. She has produced a documentary about her aunt and has directed stage productions of her works as well as authored the biography, Speak, So You Can Speak Again: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston (2004).

[2.24.06]
Carol Emshwiller's short story, "I Live With You," which appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction in March 2005, has made the final ballot for the Nebula Awards, according to Locus Online

[2.23.06]
Author Aimee Bender will appear before Penn State University's Erie Campus School of Humanities and Social Sciences as part of their Creative Writers Speaker Series celebration of Women's History Month on March 16. For more info

[2.16.06]
Cinema Blend reports that the controversial director Bernardo Bertolucci will write and direct the film adaptation of Ann Patchett's Bel Canto. No word on cast or release date thus far.

[2.05.06]
Louise Erdrich's novel, The Painted Drum, is up for a Minnesota Book Award this year. The 18th annual Book Awards ceremony will be held in Minneapolis on April 29.

Check out WOMEN'S WISDOM: Celebrating National Women's History Month at Margin throughout March. Currently, you can find feature essays on Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston, as well as overviews of Native America's magical realist women, magical realism's "blue-stockinged" heroines and an American Top Forty list of key magical realist divas. Forthcoming: a discussion of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" as a magical realist treatise on suffrage. Also, in March our newsblog is entirely devoted to magical realist women authors from the US; we'll keep you posted on what's happening throughout the month.

[3.2.06]
Alice B. Hoffman's lovely young adult story, "Aquamarine," was released as a feature film that will probably interest "tweens" more than adults, according to USA Today. But that's okay, the story is simple and lovely. I read it to my kids last summer and it left them in a romantic buzz. I hope the movie does that to them as well.

The socially conscious speculative author Octavia Butler died yesterday after sustaining head injuries from a bad fall outside her home in the Seattle suburb of Lake Forest Park. She was 58.

Isabel Allende
[2.15.06]
Isabel Allende will be a major contributor to an International Women's Day project sponsored by The International Museum of Women. The 2006 global project, "Imagining Ourselves: A Global Generation of Women," will commence on March 8, 2006. Of the project, Allende has this to say: "Giving voice to the unheard women of the world through the power of storytelling and conversation will help create understanding and change at a time when it is most needed."

[2.10.06]
In case you missed it: Ms. Allende was one of eight women to carry the Olympic flag into opening ceremonies at the Games in Turin, Italy, representing the continent of South America. The honor was doubly rewarding, as it was the first time that women were allowed to carry the flag for the international ceremony. The Marin Independent Journal reports that Allende said she would "remember Turin for its youthful energy and passion…There were signs all over the city—'Passion Lives Here.'"

[2.09.06]
A recently released revision of the 2001 anthology, Her Fork in the Road : Women Celebrate Food and Travel [Lisa Bach, ed.) includes short fiction from Ms. Allende, along with work by foodie laureates M.F.K. Fisher, Ruth Reichl and Frances Mayes. Definitely worth checking out.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez
[2.23.06]
J.M.Coetzee writes a thoughtful comparative analysis between Gabo's Memories of my Melancholy Whores, Cervantes's Don Quixote and Yasunari Kawabata's House of the Sleeping Beauties for The New York Review of Books.

Toni Morrison
[2.18.06]
Today is Ms. Morrison's 75th birthday! We wish her many, many more!

[2.18.06]
The Toni Morrison Society will present Morrison with an inaugural “bench by the road,” as part of a new community outreach initiative at Princeton University in New Jersey. Ten signature benches are planned, with each commemorating sites that are significant to both African American history and Morrison's novels. Suggested locations for future roadside benches include Harlem; the site of Emmett Till's death in Mississippi; certain train station sites in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi; and an all-Black town in Oklahoma. Each of the benches created for the project, expected to meet completion by 2011, will include a commemorative plaque, the donor's name, the Society's name, and the date.

[2.15.06]
Robert P. Waxler's new manual, Finding a Voice: The Practice of Changing Lives Through Literature, includes a discussion of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. Waxler is co-founder, with former Bristol County District Court justice Robert Kane, of the 15-year-old "Changing Lives Through Literature" program at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, which exclusively enrolls probationers, a probation officer and a judge. According to Waxler, most offenders sentenced to the program are intelligent but come from marginalized communities. "They feel like they've lost their voice," he said in a Standard-Times article, explaining the origin of the title of his book. Does teaching literature like Morrison's help to reconnect probationers with mainstream life, to guide them to resolve personal issues, to assist in building them into better citizens, to prevent their further criminal behavior? It's hard to say, but these are certainly great reasons for promoting literature, we think.

Salman Rushdie
[2.07.06]
The infamous Danish cartoons of recent note, which have stirred violent controversy among Moslems, certainly bring back memories of 18 years ago, when a fatwa was launched against Salman Rushdie, his family and his publishers for his notably blasphemic sentiments in Satanic Verses. To draw comparisons to the current violence surrounding the cartoons, you might want to check out comments made by Rushdie expert, professor Pnina Werbner of Britain's Keele University, who says in an interview with Spiegel Online that "there are some lessons (the British) learned from The Satanic Verses that I'm afraid others in Europe still need to learn."
[The Spiegel Online link refers to their English language site.]

According to the New York Press, Rushdie expressed that he thought it was "quite understandable and reasonable for people not to print the cartoons out of fear." As for Blair and Clinton's "pandering" to Islamic fundamentalism, he was more blunt, describing their strategies as "completely chickenshit.”

Rushdie knows about that fear. But interestingly, if you think Rushdie was ever taken off the hook for his "crimes" against Iran back in the 80s, think again. On February 14, the anniversary of the 1989 edict issued by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran's fatah renewed the infamous death sentence against the British author, citing that the condemnation will remain in force "forever." One can't help but wonder if Rushdie's back to looking over his shoulder again, despite his judgments of Blair and Clinton…

Don't miss out on our "Isn't It Romantic?" edition of Margin (the question is meant to be a little pointed). Love masquerades as all sorts of things besides what we've come to expect. Imagine:

an unanswered question dropped into a bowl ~ a love letter to the dead ~ a zombi's touch ~ a lover's bed in a city showered by bombs ~ the weight of feelings like so much baggage ~ a postcard depicting the explosion of a heart ~ the fondling of gills ~ the original song between the world's first lovers

Featuring:

Ellen Behrens ~ Allison deFreese ~ William Orem ~ Amy Ratto ~ Alicita Rodriguez ~ Tamara Kaye Sellman ~ Erik Sheldon ~ Rosanna Warren (as Anne Verveine) ~ artist Shwydkij Andrej …and Lord Byron

Other announcements:

• Congratulations to Stephen Gibson, G.L. Grey and Nnedimma Okorafor, who Margin nominated for the SLF Fountain Award. We're keeping our fingers crossed!

• Check out the crystal ball icon on our contents page. Roll your cursor over it and you will foresee into a bit of Margin's future for 2006!

• ACTIVE CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS! Our Hurricane Relief project, Southern Revival: Deep South Magic for Hurricane Relief is off to a good start. We're collecting donations and manuscripts for this special edition of Periphery, which will be released in Spring 2006. Interested in reserving your copy, submitting a manuscript (deadline March 1) or giving a donation? We're asking for $10 minimum, 100% of each donation forwarded to First Book. Our goal? $2,500. That amount of money will enable First Book to provide 5,000 books to hurricane-devastated libraries in the South (including all communities devastated by hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma). That's almost an entire library for a small community!

• Our general reading period is still CLOSED. Sorry, we've got 2006 filled! Stay tuned for news about upcoming calls for submissions, and see Southern Revival, above.

• Because we're in the midst of a vortex of cool changes at Margin, we're inviting everyone and anyone to give us their FEEDBACK. What's worked for you? What hasn't? What would you like to see at Margin that we haven't already done? What really isn't worth our effort? Go to the survey page to download your poll and let us know how we're doing. Your responses will help shape the coming future of Margin.

• Not yet a subscriber? You should be! Seriously. It's free, automated and private. Also, after August 2006 we'll be revamping our subscription service and it could mean that new subscribers will have to pay a little something in order to join the Margin community. If you like what you see, please subscribe; you won't be disappointed.

• Coming in March: a special feature on Women's History Month.

[2.10.06] Marina Warner stakes a toothsome claim, that Angela Carter's work is not magical realist, in her recent article for The New Statesman. But we forgive her. Her review of Carter's Nights at the Circus, adapted by Tom Morris and Emma Rice, simply glows.

[2.10.06] Sneak Preview: Margin offers a short list of magical realist romance films to consider viewing over St. Valentine's Day. take a peek

[2.09.06] And speaking of romance films: Melora Koepke for Hour.com suggests Lawn Dogs, of all things, describing the film as "an odd magic-realist romance-that-isn't-a-romance between Mischa Barton when she was a kid and her family's gardener. It's one of the most beautiful nonsexual love stories I've ever seen, if that's what you're looking for." Okay, we're game.

[2.09.06] Theater critic Hedy Weiss for the Chicago Sun-Times condemns Jorge Ignacio Cortinas' rendition of Blind Mouth Singing as being "derivative," but also describes it in this way: "Part heterosexual fairy tale, part homoerotic fable and part anguished meditation on the way people often remain trapped even when they manage to escape, Cortinas' play is rich in mood and shot through with some vividly written scenes and characters." The play runs through March 5 at Chicago's Teatro Vista.

[2.06.06] Maya Jaggi for the UK's Telegraph doesn't get it right, frankly ("Last week's inaugural Hay festival in Cartagena confirmed that Latin American literature has moved on from magic realism"—huh? Is magical realism something that people cut their teeth on? Wrong!), but her article about Gabo's relationship with Cartagena is still a worthwhile read. Yes, Maya, thoughtful readers understand that not all Latino writers are magical realists; does it mean slurring a beautiful literary mode in order to make your point? We think not. Gabo is certainly no beginning author, even when he was a beginning author…

[2.07.06] Congrats to Margin contributor Cantara Christopher, operator of Cantarabooks.com. On the heels of the nationally successful film, Brokeback Mountain, which features Academy Award-nominated actor Jake Gyllenhaal in a supporting actor role, Cantara has announced the June 2006 release of the book, Claptrap: Notes from Hollywood by Gyllenhaal. The title includes an introduction by Jamie Lee Curtis. For more information

[2.05.06] Lucy Ellman doesn't give Kathryn Davis's latest novel, The Thin Place, the best review in last Sunday's New York Times, but she doesn't pan it either. Even when Ellman describes Davis's magical realism as being "annoying" and "of The Lovely Bones variety," she concludes: "Nonetheless, she has done something great here, something heathen, anarchic, democratic. She has given everyone and every thing a voice: animals, plants, children, coma patients, even the earth itself."

[2.02.06] Magical realism isn't only for audiences in southern climates. North Dakota's Dickinson State University recently featured Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum in their annual Film Festival sponsored by the college's Department of Language and Literature. Movies featured in the Film Festival are subsequently added to what has become a burgeoning film collection in that university's Stoxen Library.

[1.17.06] Fans of Isabel Allende's young adult trilogy featuring Alexander Cold will be pleased to know that the first book in that series, City of Beasts, has been slated for film production. No more details available yet, but fans of the series (City of Beasts was an international bestseller in 2002, and Kingdom of the Golden Dragon and Forest of the Pygmies followed in 2004 and 2005, respectively) will be delighted to see a collaborative effort between publisher HarperCollins, Walden Media and Walt Disney Pictures, who brought the recent success, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, to the silver screen last December.

SPOTTED IN THE BLOGOSPHERE

Canadian Girl Out and Aboot—What I've been reading lately…:

"3. A short history of Indians in Canada— Thomas King. I love Thomas King. This collection of stories doesn't disappoint. Some of the stories are creepy, some are funny, some are creepy and funny. He excels at magical realism, and at making points about culture and ethnicity in Canada. He definitely read the writing book where the teacher stressed, 'Show, don't tell.' "

Peace:

"After reading 'The Jewbird' your spirit feels elevated. At first it is very difficult to understand everything but eventually you can enjoy the way that it is written. The idea of choosing a bird to represent one of the characters says a lot of the imagination of the writer and gives a magical realism tone to the story."

Janet Miles Live Journal:

Janet gives an overview of the Guests of Honor for this year's Wiscon, which include Jane Yolen and (sometimes magical realist) Kate Wilhelm. Definitely a worthwhile "con" to attend, if you can.

Together in Spirit:

Regarding Anne Patchett's Bel Canto—"I think Patchett didn't do [Garcia Marquez's magical realism in the same form—no people levitating or having second sight or whatever—but she certainly espoused what I would call an emotional version, whereby all sorts of traumatised and afflicted and trapped people suddenly find themselves wildly happy, fulfilled, loving and talented. Even singing scales, as has been noted, is delightful as a dawn chorus. This isn't normal, is it?"

Madrun's Live Journal:

RE: Harem by Dora Levy Mossanen—"I was expecting a book-length Orientalist fantasy painting, what I got was a complex emotional story about a line of women in medieval Persia. Mossanen's writing is fully immersed in Magical Realism, a genre I love (using the old definition), and reminded me strongly of Laura Esquivel. Don't expect historical accuracy though, the exact place/time is garbled, some details rang true while others seemed way anachronistic. The henna references made me twitch. I still loved the book, and look forward to reading her second novel, Courtesan."

Miss Johnson: Books I Recommend:

RE: The Magical Adventures of Pretty Pearl by Virginia Hamilton—"This book is a little bit difficult to get into at first but it is a good read. It combines African myth and folktale with an adventurous story of exploration. The main character travels from Africa to America. It talks about slavery and human condition but in a way that includes a lot of magical realism. I would suggest it for Grade 6/7 readers or an independent reading shelf in an intermediate classroom. My mom got it for me as an intermediate reader and I enjoyed it."

Mary's Library :

"I thought magical realism had run its course. Now comes Kafka on the Shore (2002, English translation 2005), by Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel. This novel is another of the NY Times’ '10 Best Books of 2005.' … I didn’t get much beyond Chapter One. I’m not sure whether the critics would call this magical realism or fantasy or what. It’s hard to pigeon-hole a 'serious' or 'literary' novel in which 'cats and people carry on conversations, . . . a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky.' After applying the Pearl Formula (minus 30 pages) I would call it unreadable."

And You Will Know Me By The Trail of Books:

RE: Forever by Pete Hamill—"A good read but not a killer. 18th century Irishman lands in NY and saves an African shaman from a lynching. Shaman grants him eternal life so long as he doesn't leave the island of Manhattan. I think a lot of New Yorkers feel this way and if I had enough money, I would agree. Nice touches of magical realism. Features an interesting take on what a good guy Boss Tweed was."

Real Travel:

"One of the things that is unique to travel, especially foreign travel, is the ability for the traveler to suspend their disbelief. When you are on familiar ground, everything seems rational, or easily rationalizable. But, in an unknown city, where things pop up out of context, it is so easy to give into the belief that that thing is not to be understood by the mind. … And, if there were any city I've been where these sorts of inexplicable events might take place, it is Barcelona."

SONG OF BELOVED
[2.05.06] The operatic adaptation to Toni Morrison's major magical realist undertaking, Beloved, moved its way into Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that "[r]arely is the best-known person in an opera program so far down in the billing. But no matter where Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison is in the pecking order of Margaret Garner—the new opera composed by Richard Danielpour, starring Denyce Graves and co-commissioned by the Opera Company of Philadelphia—you can be sure she did more than contribute the words of the libretto. The force of her values, opinions and vision was felt in the set, stage direction, and even the manner of the music."

FAMOUS FIRST WORDS
[2.04.06] Here's something fun. Central Illinois's Pantagraph.com reported on a "100 Best First Lines" list written by the American Book Review, a nonprofit journal published at the Unit for Contemporary Literature at Illinois State University. Perhaps you can identify the books to which these lines belong? [If so, contact Margin's editor]

#3. "A screaming comes across the sky." — (1973)

#4. "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." — (1967) [Editor's note: Wait a minute, this should be #1!]

#13. "Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested."—(1925)

#14. "You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler."—(1979)

#19. "I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost:—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me."—(1759)

#23. "One summer afternoon Mrs. Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary."—(1966)

#26. "124 was spiteful."—(1987)

#27. "Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing."—(1605)

#44. "Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board."—(1937)

#52. "We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall."—(1988)

#66. " 'To be born again,' sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, 'first you have to die.' " — (1988)

#71. "Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there's a peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me."—(1959)

#73. "Hiram Clegg, together with his wife Emma and four friends of the faith from Randolph Junction, were summoned by the Spirit and Mrs. Clara Collins, widow of the beloved Nazarene preacher Ely Collins, to West Condon on the weekend of the eighteenth and nineteenth of April, there to await the End of the World."—(1966)

#79. "On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen."—(1980)

#81. "Vaughan died yesterday in his last car-crash."—(1973)

#83. " 'When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets,' Papa would say, 'she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing.' " —(1983)

#99. "They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did."—(1966)

REMEMBRANCE
[2.01.06] One way to honor the recent passing of Coretta Scott King would be to read Toni Morrison's Remember: The Journey to School Integration, suggests The Philadelphia Daily News. Morrison's book won the Coretta Scott King Author Award, given by the American Library Association, just last year.

NOT EVERYONE IS A FAN, I GUESS…
[1.26.06] Parents Lisa Friedrichsen and and Sherry Millen of Johnson County, KS, lost their bid to pull a Toni Morrison title off the library shelves in the Blue Valley School District. Both cited that The Song of Solomon (among various other titles by other authors) contained inappropriate language and graphic sex and violence. This is the second bid against a Morrison book by Friedrichsen, who also tried to censor Beloved earlier in this academic year.

OUR ETERNAL THANKS
[1.23.06] Nellie Kay, who was among the first to champion the work of African American authors, Toni Morrison in particular, passed away on January 22. Madison, WI's Capital Times writes: "McKay was best known as the co-editor of The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, written with Henry Louis Gates Jr. She was a pioneer in the movement to make black studies an academic area of higher education. … She was the author of a 1988 volume, Critical Essays on Toni Morrison, the first full book on Morrison, who would go on to receive the Nobel Prize for literature." Sending you our eternal thanks, Nellie.

[1.30.06] Good fun for fans of Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus—if you can attend, you should see the Kneehigh production summarized here by Independent stage reviewer Paul Taylor: "Sizeable tracts of the novel have been excised—including the final Siberian section. But with the central couple eventually somersaulting in a rapturous aerial display of hard-won parity, Carter's myth has not had its wings clipped." Taylor gave it 3 stars, but his review seemed more glowing than that to me; at any rate, it sounds like just the ticket for fans of the carnivalesque.

[1.30.06] Okay, we heard that Gabo was suffering from a spell of writer's block? He now admits to not having written a word for the entirety of 2005, and that he does not plan to write anymore. It's all over the web. Boohoo, say it ain't so, Gabo.

[1.30.06] Box Office Prophets Monday Morning Quarterbacks have been giving the recently released family film, Nanny McPhee, a strong set of predictions for the coming weeks. Writes Reagen Sulewski: "It's tough to go wrong with magical realism these days…" [cheers from the MARGIN home office!] but then Sulewski continues, "—Harry Potter really opened things up." Oh, don't get me started. Harry Potter is not MR. Harry Potter is not MR. Repeat after me… I haven't seen the latest take on Mary Poppins yet, but when I do, I'll let you know what I think [TKS, editor].

[1.30.06] Sundance Update: Congratulations to Vancouver director Julia Kwan, who won a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival last Saturday for her debut feature film, Eve & The Fire Horse, featured here last Friday.

[1.30.06] Discovered, today: A wealth of imagination in PEN America 6: Metamorphosis. This wonderful issue came out in 2005 but I'm only now perusing it. What a treasury! A veritable showcase of some of MR's finest [Edith Grossman, Salman Rushdie, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Pablo Neruda, Angela Carter, George Saunders, Ben Okri, Yusef Komunyakaa, Luis Bu?uel, Jorge Luis Borges]. Get thee to their website and order your copy now!

[1.15.06] Overhead at a local poetry reading at the Jewel Box Theater in Poulso, WA: a wonderful magical realist poem by John Willson. You'll be able to find the poem, which features a literate aardvark, among other things, as part of a broadside series presented by the Bainbridge Island Arts and Humanities Council this coming spring. Stay tuned for more info.

[1.27.06] BBC News ran a lovely tribute to Gabriel Garcia Marquez today as part of it's Faces of the Week feature. Meanwhile, The Independent reports that Gabo "has confessed to suffering from that most humble of literary problems: writer's block" for over the course of a year. Garcia Marquez, 78, has suffered lymphatic cancer over the last 7 years, and certainly blames part of his lack of productivity on that, but also attributes some of his challenges to "computer difficulties." Someone get that man a better computer! His fans are chomping at the bit, waiting for him to pen the second and third books in his trilogy of memoirs, Living to Tell the Tale. Chin up, Gabo. You've got your work cut out for you.

[1.27.06] Okay, Steven Soderburgh's latest release, a humble little film entitled Bubble, is getting rave reviews from AP Movie Writer David Germain for "minutiae, the painstaking detail—creepy tableaux of dolls’ heads, lingering shots of inanimate objects that take on import later, tiny moments of magical realism." The movie will be released in dramatic fashion, with a near-simultaneous release on screen, TV (tonight on HDNet) and DVD (Tues Jan 31) that marks a first test case for potential film distribution in the future.

[1.27.06] British author Clive Sheldon released his magical realist novel, Love, Loss and Oranges today. From the press release: "At times hilarious, at times heart wrenching, the story, in the style of magic realism, follows the attempts of the central character to come to terms with the death of his estranged wife. Strangely unmoved by this event he is more concerned with the apparent disappearance of oranges from the world."

[1.26.06] Canadian filmmaker Julia Kwan made her Sundance film festival debut January 26, internationally premiering her production of Eve and the Fire Horse, which is competing in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition, a new distinction offered by the film festival. According to the report in The Vancouver Sun, "Eve and the Fire Horse is steeped in a sense of magic realism as it tells the story of two sisters struggling to reconcile their traditional Chinese heritage with North American culture." Hmmm, a Canadian Maxine Hong Kingston? A review in BC's arts mag, The Westender, isn't so sure. "Eve and the Fire Horse is beautifully shot and cast with actors who offer understated performances. But loveliness comes at a price, as the movie… becomes a oozefest 20 minutes in." Stay tuned.

[1.25.06] New in paperback: The Autobiography of God by Julius Lester. Vikas Turakhia, book critic for the Cleveland Plain-Dealer writes that "Booklist acknowledged that many readers will 'be shocked and angry' by [Lester's] portrayal of God but found the blend of 'magic realism and fierce spiritual debate with a gripping contemporary story' full of 'irony and intensity and sometimes dark comedy.' " Sounds like stimulating reading for fans of Jewish magical realism.

Headlines from the last 2 weeks

[1.22.06]
What can I say? I am still so proud to see a short story like "Brokeback Mountain" turned into a major feature film. What does that have to do with magical realism? Well, if you recall, "Brokeback Mountain" was penned by the illustrious E. Annie Proulx of The Shipping News fame. One of this blogster's favorite North American magical realists, Proulx has out a new collection of magical realist work. Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 (Scribner) follows up her successful first collection, Close Range. Connie Ogle reviews Proulx's latest effort here.

[1.22.06]
Here's a nice tribute to Franz Kafka, written by Jacob Stockinger for the Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. Stockinger's explication of the popular term, kafkaesque, is given a thorough once over in this bit written to preface last Sunday's feature presentation, a free screening of the Orson Welles 1963 movie adapation of Kafka's The Trial, featured by the local Classic Book and Movie Club in Madison.

[1.22.06]
We've talked about young American playwright Sarah Ruhl here before (does Eurydice or Passion Play seem familiar?). As the San Jose Mercury News reports, she's back with The Clean House. Writes the Mercury News, "Ruhl's work often has been likened to magical realism, a label to which she has a mixed response. 'For me,' she says, 'theater is always about transformation. I think the only time I kind of object to the term magical realism is when it relegates what happens onstage to some fantasy realm.'"

[1.22.06]
Riffing on our recent article on Jewish magical realism/fabulism, here's a link to a new novel evoking Yiddish folklore. The World to Come by Dara Horn was recently reviewed by Ron Charles for the Washington Post. Charles wrote: "A doctoral candidate in Hebrew and Yiddish literature at Harvard, she's more devoted to ancient mysticism than chic magical realism." [Editor's note: wince…why must magical realism be characterized as chic? Is Cervantes' Don Quixote or Gabo's One Hundred Years of Solitude or Green Mansions by W.H. Hudson chic?]

[1.19.06]
Ring the dinner bell! Laura Esquivel (Like Water for Chocolate) has come out with what sounds like a literary recipe collection that fans are likely already salivating over. Here's a review of Intimas Suculencias, Tratado Filosofico de Cocina by Vicky Cowal for El Universal, in English for The Miami Herald.

[1.15.06]
Judy McAulay Grimes gives children's book author Julius Lester the thumbs up in The Clarion-Ledger in her review of his book, The Old African (Dial Books, 2005; illustrated by Jeremy Pinkney), for being an "inspiring book" on "black history." Which, of course, begs the reminder: next month is Black History Month. This magical realist tale might just make the perfect bedtime story or classroom feature for ushering in this important month.

[1.13.06]
The New York Times recently reported on Louis Sachar's most recent young adult release: Small Steps, which features the beloved character, Armpit, from Sachar's popular previous title, Holes. Reviewer A.O. Scott points out that this is a far more realistic storyline than that in Sachar's previous book, which might explain why Scott says that "Small Steps is likable and readable, but it never quite emerges from the shadow of Holes." This is quite a risk for Sachar, whose other work is typically infused with magical realist touches. Will reader expectations dilute the efficacy of this author's latest efforts?

Quik Piks

[1.08.06] Canadian author Paul Auster has recently written what the Toronto Star calls his "warmest, shaggiest novel" yet with The Brooklyn Follies. The story, about a man who obsessively photographs the same streetcorner on a daily basis, is a typical Auster effort, as his "fiction concerns how narrative shapes reality." The unusual temporality of the story nudges it into near-magical realist territory, though perhaps not as much as his Mr. Vertigo, which tells the tale of a boy who can walk on air.

[1.06.06] Get this: Emily Carter for the Star Tribune reviews Zakes Mda's novel The Whale Caller with this utterly amusing statement at the beginning: "The term 'magical realism'…, applies to Zakes Mda's novel, The Whale Caller. But this truly magical book transcends any such tidy labels." Tidy? Wow, we've heard magical realism slandered for being many things, but never Tidy. Hmm. Wonders truly never cease.

[12.08.05] Okay, so it's old news, but here's what Seattle's The Stranger wrote in promoting Margin's final fifth anniversary reading in Ballard last December: "Kathleen Alcala, Tamara Kaye Sellman, Wayne Ude, and others read from a genre of writing involving the occurrence of weird shit." Well, it's not quite how we'd characterize magical realism, but I think it's a little closer than Emily Carter's view [above].

Quik Piks

[1.04.06] The Australian's Ben McIntyre explores the "filmability" of the magical realist work, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, in his article, "Epitome of eccentricity delights in dotty difference."

[1.03.06] Jonathan Zabel reviews Sean Stewart's Perfect Circle at Blogcritics.org.

[1.01.06] We excerpted from Jose Sarney's Master of the Sea in November; here's a review of the same book by Nick Owchar for the Los Angeles Times, as it appears in the Modesto Bee website.

[1.01.06] The Miami Herald credited Aimee Bender with producing one of 2005's best books with her novel, Willful Creatures. Read the article in its entirety.

[10.19.05] Not a brand new headline, but here's a terrific interview by Robert Birnbaum for The Morning News featuring Jonathan Lethem, in which Lethem tears into the idea of "realist" vs. "anti-realist" fiction.