journal
Brand new magazine 'Spook' seeks to even the literary field
“There are always one or two African American or Latino writers,” Parham told me when I met him on Sunday in Brooklyn. “But it’s never a complete book of us. And I wanted to create our own conversation. To say these are our stories and they are just as important and we can still be in dialogue with you guys and be just as good as you guys.“ More
(1)Jay Ruttenberg on his comedy zine, 'The Lowbrow Reader,' and its new tenth anniversary collection
Such pieces help to distinguish The Lowbrow Reader from its online counterparts. The focus falls on the immortal icons of the form, as well as the forgotten, cult-ish corners, rather than ephemeral recaps of sitcoms and stand-up specials. The book is refreshingly free of irony, and Ruttenberg claims a conscious effort was made to “avoid a winking appreciation” of the material discussed. However you may feel about Adam Sandler (who serves as a sort of talisman for the Reader as a whole), Ruttenberg’s “Billy Madison: A Love Letter” convincingly treats him as a profoundly influential benchmark of comedy’s recent past. More
You can't party inside a laptop: mini lit-mags convene to network and celebrate the season
Celia Johnson, the publisher of Slice, explained between greeting guests that she had come up with the idea for the event because of the limits of her own magazine’s “office.” Launched in 2007, the nonprofit magazine publishes twice a year and is almost entirely staffed by volunteers. “Basically, [the office] is my apartment in Bensonhurst,” said Johnson, 29. “Some days it’s a café; if I’m traveling, it’s a plane. It’s really my laptop.” Together with Bullock, she conceived of the Lit Mag Office Party as a way to “develop synergy” among niche and start-up literary magazines that exist physically only in laptops or similarly cramped spaces and who seek to “converse and enjoy one another’s company.”
