Ian Morris has taught courses on literature, writing, and publishing at Lake Forest College in Illinois and Columbia College Chicago. He was managing editor of TriQuarterly magazine for over a decade and is the founding editor of Fifth Star Press and the author of the novel When Bad Things Happen to Rich People. Joanne Diaz is associate professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University. She was an assistant editor at TriQuarterly and is the author of two collections of poetry, The Lessons and My Favorite Tyrants.
"The Little Magazine in Contemporary America is a fascinating set
of responses to the two great changes in writing and reading since
1980. The first is the internet, which has given a new face to the
drive of letters toward action-for-change, enabling immediate
distribution of readers' insights in answer to the work of
artists--and in answer to postings by other web readers. A little
magazine today can speak to audiences who never read the magazine
itself; they can gather around the magazine's comment sites for
warmth, argument, and validation. The second great change in the
world of letters during the past 35 years is the transformative
effect of creative nonfiction as a cross-genre mode. For it has
encouraged heady mixtures and a renewal of rhetorical poise in the
art of many fine poets and prose writers, breathing delight into
the work of making it new."-- "Mary Kinzie, Northwestern
University"
"The Little Magazine in Contemporary America is an important
book--one that is long overdue. It provides a different perspective
on the role of little magazines that is valuable and not readily
available anywhere elsewhere. Particularly impressive are Jane
Friedman's and Don Share's essays, which wrap up the entire volume
brilliantly, both giving a sense of the potential for independent
magazines in the future while acknowledging the rich history of the
past."-- "Jodee Stanley, University of Illinois,
Champaign-Urbana"
"The Little Magazine in Contemporary America, a much more
manageable collection of interviews and essays that was published
in April, looks at the years since then, the years that
included--so say the book's editors, Ian Morris and Joanne Diaz--
"the end of the ascendancy of print periodicals," meaning that the
best small litmags have moved online....A new journal needs a
reason to exist: a gap that earlier journals failed to fill, a new
form of pleasure, a new kind of writing, an alliance with a new or
under-chronicled social movement, a constellation of authors for
whom the future demand for work exceeds present supply, a program
that will actually change some small part of some literary readers'
tastes. None of this has changed with the rise of the Web. Nor has
the other big truth about little magazines which emerges from Diaz
and Morris's book, or from a day spent with anybody who runs one:
it's exhausting, albeit exciting, to do it yourself."-- "The New
Yorker"
"At the zenith of print culture, modernist writers aspired to renew
civilization or dynamite it, to subvert consumer capitalism or make
a name or a buck from it, in a relatively new print genre--the
little magazine. Morris and Diaz have now asked a score of the
little magazine editors and writers who have shaped our own
literary culture to reflect on the present and future of the genre
"during the most radical paradigm shift since the invention of
movable type." This collection reassures us that the internet not
only affords new modes of writing and reading but also leaves
plenty of room for print experiments--from zines and boxes of
printed documents to the survivals of modernist-era or
university-based magazines. Future readers will look back to The
Little Magazine in Contemporary America as a key document of the
American literary periodicals of our age."-- "Mark Morrisson,
Pennsylvania State University"
"It's been thirty-five years since the last comprehensive
examination of little magazines, during which time the advent of
the Internet and evolving publishing constrictions have presented
unique challenges to these little engines that could. Morris and
Diaz's anthology...addresses these challenges and the ways in which
many little magazines have turned them into advantages, including
the opportunity for more and specialized promotion and
differentiation. Public discussion and debate is essential to
literary and artistic work, and these essays speak to the
opportunity for this collective conversation to reach a wider
audience in the digital age. The Little Magazine in Contemporary
America is a welcome and compelling update, one that offers
substantive hope for the future and continued significance of its
subject."
-- "Newcity"
"Little magazines, known for their experimental nature and
independent spirit, are the focus of this absorbing collection of
essays, written by leading editors working over the past thirty
years. This fascinating anthology brings to life the literary,
cultural, and political landscapes intrinsic to avant-garde
publications and deepens our understanding of their immense
significance. This book takes its rightful place on library shelves
next to earlier classics The Little Magazine: A History and
Bibliography and The Little Magazine in America. It's an
indispensable tool for scholars and a great read!"-- "Karen
Gisonny, New York Public Library"
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