McSweeney’s recently launched Lucky Peach (www.mcsweeneys.net
/luckypeach), a quarterly journal edited by David Chang, chef and owner of New York City’s renowned Momofuku restaurants, and food writer Peter Meehan. It’s a bit likeAlimentum—but less formal, more zany; fewer emerging authors and more celebrity chefs. The first issue, released earlier this summer, is brimming with essays, recipes, stories, and the ranting of food titans on all things ramen—“Tokyo Ramen Gods” by Mike Houston, “Mankind Is Noodlekind” by Karen Leibowitz, and “Instant-Ramen Showdown” by Ruth Reichl, to name just a few. The next issue, forthcoming in November, is centered on the theme “The Sweet Spot” and, as Chang recently told the San Francisco Chronicle, promises to be “a little bit more esoteric.”
The newly launched online monthly Hippocampus Magazine (www.hippocampusmagazine
.com) takes its cue from Lee Gutkind’s seventeen-year-old journal Creative Nonfiction (whose spring issue was devoted to food, by the way) and aims to “entertain, educate and engage writers and readers of creative nonfiction.” Founder and publisher Donna Talarico, who is currently accepting submissions through Submishmash, isn’t able to pay contributors, but she does offer writers the chance to have their work awarded the title Most Memorable if it generates enough Internet buzz.
The latest issue of Shenandoah (shenandoahliterary.org)—founded in 1950 by a group of faculty members and undergraduates (including Tom Wolfe) at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia—marks the final print edition. Beginning this month the magazine, whose sixty-one-year archive includes work from W. H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, and Flannery O’Connor, among many other luminaries, will transition to an online-only publication—“the kind of metamorphosisTriQuarterly experienced,” says editor R. T. Smith. Beginning September 20, the editors will accept submissions of poetry and prose for the new format via postal mail only.
The latest issue of Granta (www.granta.com), the venerable quarterly still available in all its printed glory (and as an e-book), is all about power. The power of feminism. Carrying the theme of “The F Word,” it’s packed with work by many of literature’s powerhouse women, including A. S. Byatt, Edwidge Danticat, Francine Prose, and Julie Otsuka. The website contains companion material such as Sevil Delin’s “Marriage Lessons From a Turkish Grandmother” and poetry by Sadaf Halai and Sharon Olds, among others. The editors are currently accepting submissions of poetry, fiction, and essays via postal mail only; visit the website for guidelines.
The latest issue of Calyx (www.calyxpress.org/journal), the biannual journal published in Corvallis, Oregon, that has celebrated women by dedicating its pages to poetry, prose, and visual art exclusively by women—Jane Hirshfield, Barbara Kingsolver, and Wisława Szymborska, among others—since it was founded thirty-five years ago, explores themes ranging from mental illness and death to motherhood and obsession. The editors will begin accepting submissions of poetry and prose, via postal mail, in October; visit the website for guidelines.
Mary Azrael and Kendra Kopelke, coeditors of Passager (www.ubalt.edu/passager), the biannual journal published by the University of Baltimore that focuses on “the passionate imagination of the older writer” (those fifty and up), commemorated the publication’s twenty-first anniversary by compiling Burning Bright, an anthology comprising select work from Passager’s fifty issues. Check the website for information about the next reading period.
