Luna Digest, 7/28

[Luna Digest will be on hiatus the following two weeks as we move operations to Pennsylvania. We will return to regular operations on 8/17/09. Thx, Luna Park.]

We missed mentioning this last week (even after we were so nicely asked to do so): Hannah Tinti, one of the founding editors of One Story, recently won the PEN/Nora Magid Award for her work on the magazine. Here’s Tinti on their latest issue, Joe Meno’s “Children are the Only Ones who Blush“:

“When I first read this story on the subway (where I seem to do all my reading these days), I found myself smiling at Dr. Dank giving therapy to the twins in those matching dentist chairs, then laughing out loud when Jill Thirby arrived, dressed all in yellow. At the same time, underneath this humor, the story was always working on a deeper level, so that when Jack makes his false confession at the end, it reveals a greater darkness.”

There is no more prestigious award for literary magazine editing (not that there are many such awards out there). So it would seem reasonable that, if you are a writer looking not simply for a place that will publish you, but also for an editor that will take the necessary time and effort, this list of some past winners of the Magid Award would be something to take note of. (Robert S. Fogarty over at The Antioch Review, who won in 2007, I notice is not on this condensed list.)

In other literary magazine news:

The American Short Fiction blog has posted some of the best literary magazines that accept submissions over the summer.

Also on the ASF blog: Copper Nickel editor Jake Adam York talks with Stacy Muszynski about the new Facebook cause “Support Literary Journals.” (And, yes, I signed on.)

Dzanc has finally come out with their Best of the Web 2009 annual (edited this year by Lee K. Abbott), which has “invaded the internet” at Perpetual Folly, The Short Review, Largehearted Boy, and elsewhere.

Across the Atlantic: Though Guardian blogger Jean Edelstein didn’t at first think she would care for Literary Death Match, she finally found out why she enjoyed LDM’s first London show: “The joie de vivre of the Death Match seems driven in large part by the very American optimism of the young literary scene on the left side of the Atlantic.” If you still aren’t convinced, LMD has put some video of the London event online. The show will be making the rounds in the U.S. again at the end of the month, first in New York, and then in Chicago for the annual Printer’s Ball.

A stunning short story (really) by Mary M. Davies online at Monkeybicycle: “At the Starlight Club with Felipe, 1990.” This was brought to our attention by PANK, one of the handful of literary magazines on Twitter.

Two poems from Craig Arnold–the poet who disappeared while touring a volcanic island in Japan–appear in the Summer 2009 issue of The Paris Review. Really touching, elegiac selections by the PR editors. Here’s a quote from “The Heart Under Your Heart”:

it is a beach at night
where the waves lap & the wind hisses
over a bank of thin
translucent orange & yellow jingle shells

Junot Diaz is everywhere these days: here and here and here. (Okay, that last one is from way back in January–but it’s with Samuel R. Delany of all people.)

Flarf poetry? The July/August issue of Poetry magazine devotes a section of the magazine to examining Flarf poems and Flarf writers, with a much appreciated introductory essay by Kenneth Goldsmith.

New, possibly badass, editorial ideas from Kakofonie: “This is all wrong. It’s all wrong. We don’t care about the language. French, English, Czech, Swedish. We don’t translate here, we publish.” (Emphasis mine.) Read the full editorial intro in issue one online.

Finally: Eyeshot magazine is no more. (Picture at right is from their final post.) Nathan Tyree spoke for many of us when commenting about the news over at HTMLGIANT, “Now I have to be rejected by less interesting people.”

Every Tuesday, Travis Kurowski presents Luna Digest, a selection of news from the world of literary magazines. Travis is the editor of Luna Park, a magazine founded on the idea that journals are as deserving of critical attention as other artistic works.