Luna Digest, 3/16

Luna Park has an interview with Versal editor Megan Garr by Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé (pictured at right with a copy of the magazine). Among other things, Garr explains translocality:

It’s a casual story with the usual suspects: lonely writers, a foreign town, alcohol. When I moved to Amsterdam in 2001, no literary community existed that was accessible to foreign residents. I was surprised. Naïve, I guess, that Amsterdam would be like what I thought Paris would be like; well, really that all great European cities would have these shadowy expatriate writers in bars, some sense of international literary exchange that was going somewhere. I grew up as a poet within strong literary communities, and finding none here, I decided to build one. Versal and our community work all started in an effort to extend Amsterdam’s literary spirit with the international reach it already had, but wasn’t using.

(Also check out some poetry from Desmond Kon in Everyday Genius and other interviews by him at Cerise Press and Retort Magazine. And at Luna Park this week, more notes from Cave Wall and a guest post by David Backer of FictionDaily.)

Mary Miller edits the new flash fiction issue of Ekleksographia, with work by Jeff Landon, Claudia Smith, Kim Chinquee, and many other talents of the form.

Following (in a way) TriQuarterly‘s lead, venerable lit mag Shenandoah is leaving print for online. Their final print issue will be dedicated to Flannery O’Connor.

Issue one of Bookcourt’s new literary journal, Reminder, is due out this month. Will include work from John Wray, Emma Straub, Alice Notley, Jonathan Lethem, etc.

Collagist editor Matt Bell has a symphonic new story up at Guernica, “Quella, Querida, Quintessa,” which begins liltingly: “How beautiful our daughter is in her white Tethering dress…”

The Asian American Literary Review has an upcoming event they’d like you to know about: a day-long literary symposium on April 24th at the University of Maryland.  Featured readers will include Karen Tei Yamashita, Ed Lin, Srikanth Reddy, Sonya Chung, Peter Bacho, Kyoko Mori, April Naoko Heck, and Ru Freeman. More info on their Facebook page.

“Seven Little Stories About Sex” from Eric Freeze and Boston Review, including this bit of wisdom for new fathers:

The boy understood that this was how every human being started, the proliferation of two cells dividing. But the father forgot to explain the sex part, how the sperm and the egg got to be in the same place at the same time and so for years the boy thought the sperm flew out of the man and through the air to where it entered the woman and multiplied like cancer.

And I don’t know how I missed this fantastic (and really long) interview with Jim Shepard in the December 2009 issue of Vice. (And why hasn’t Paris Review done an interview with him yet?) Here’s a funny bit on writing:

I will sometimes do more than one piece at a time, but it’s usually a sign that one of the pieces is in trouble, at least temporarily. I don’t think I’ve ever worked on two pieces at once that were both going beautifully where I’m like, “OK, it’s Tuesday. It’s Roman-soldier day,” whereas Wednesday is angry-Italian-relatives day.

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.