In her Editor’s Note, Abby Holcomb writes: “Technological advances have certainly expanded our worldviews, yet they have also managed to diminish our attention spans and cheapen our appreciation of art. Much like Marx described the alienation of the worker from the fruits of his labor, James might identify the disconnect that certain technologies have created between an artist and his art and that art and its audience. This debut issue of Buzzard Picnic will deal thematically with the matter of alienation in all its manifestations.”
Featured in this inaugural issue is an interview with Hannah Tinti, “Bibliophilia,” an essay by Lauren Avirom, a review of E.L. Doctorow’s Homer and Langley by Shelley Huntington, fiction by Ingrid Wenzler, Dominic Preziosi, and Steve Duno, and poetry by Mather Schneider and Gary Leising.
Edited by Abby Holcomb and Lauren Avirom, with web designer Jason Thompson, Buzzard Picnic is open for submissions of short fiction, memoir, essay, criticism, book and story reviews, and author interviews; relevant comic strips, art and/or design will be considered for publication.
Delta House Publishing Company, and home to Indian Bay Press, will end their seven year run of publishing Poesia with the Spring 2010 issue to be released April 1, 2010.
Check out these book-ish photos by Parsley Steinweiss on InDigest Magazine.
The newest issue (159) of The Antigonish Review includes the winners of the 2009 Great Blue Heron Poetry Contest – First, Jennifer Houle; Second, Eve Joseph; Third, Eleonre Schomaier – and the Sheldon Currie Fiction Prize – First, Sheila McClarty; Second, Laura Rock; Third, Ian Bullock.
Jelly Bucket – once the term used for a coal miner’s lunch pail – has become something quite different at the hands of the Eastern Kentucky University Creative Writing Program. An annual of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction and artwork, the publication is unique in providing an eight-page color insert in each issue dedicated to visual art that incorporates text and/or features an aspect of the book arts. This first issue highlights the poetry and handmade journals of poet/artist Hank Lazer. Also included in this issue are works by Mary Molinary, Dan Sociu as translated by Adam Sorkin, Roger Pincus, Tony Crunk, Gaylord Brewer, Heather van Deest, and many more.
American Short Fiction welcomes Jill Meyers as its new editor beginning with the Winter 2009 issue. In her editor’s note, Meyers discusses Rebecca Solnit’s 
Phil Thompson and Stan Madson, owners of Bodhi Tree Bookstore (Los Angeles), reportedly told their staff last week that the store will be shutting its doors in a year’s time after almost 40 years in business. With both owners in their 70s, they decided to sell the building on Melrose Avenue to a real estate developer. Read more on WEHONews.com.
The Friends & Enemies of Wallace Stevens in Hartford, CT, dedicated the Wallace Stevens Walk this past summer: thirteen granite makers, each etched with a stanza from his poem “Thirteen Ways to Look at a Blackbird.” The walk retraces WS’s steps from his workplace, The Hartford building at 690 Asylum Avenue, to his former home at 118 Westerly Terrace. If you can’t make it there in person, the organization’s website includes an aerial map and photos from each of the thirteen marker locations.
Edited by Alicia K. Clavell, the Southern Women’s Review is a newly established on-line literary journal that allows others access to artistic excellence through Southern Literature and Photography. The second issue features over 100 pages of creative works from poets, fiction and creative non-fiction writers, photographers, and more. The next reading period for the publication begins March 1, 2010.