Kirill Medvedev’s “America: A Prophecy” has been published for Triple Canopy as part of the “Immaterial Literature” project.
Back issues of the magazine are now on sale for $2!
Hey everyone. Our website is back in commission, and to celebrate we have put all issues of the magazine on sale. Right now you can pick up a copy of issues 1, 2 and the brand new issue 3 for under $10.
Support emerging Tumblr writers! And don’t forget to submit your work for issue 4 today!
Get three issues of N/A for less than the price of a movie.
Hot diggity.
Tomorrow is the last day to submit to the upcoming edition of N/A Literary Magazine
Remember, this time around the optional theme is “Memory”.
Give yourself a reminder to submit your prose, poetry, or creative-nonfiction pieces by midnight to:
NALiteraryMagazine@gmail.com
Submission guidelines:
Up to 5 poems, no more than 60 lines each.
1 piece of fiction, no more than 10 pages.
1 pierce of creative nonfiction, no more than 10 pages.Have at it! But don’t be an asshole.
Do it, all you aspiring writers. The more submissions we receive, the better literary magazine we can be.
Submissions for the March 1st issue closes at midnight!
Submit your poetry and short fiction to NALiteraryMagazine@gmail.com today!
- The Editors
Not the band.
The ACTUAL editors.
Be not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Where Characters Come From
The archives of the former Mississippi Review Online are once again available via its new incarnation, Blip Magazine, and include this 1995 piece from Ann Beattie:
In retrospect, I’ve realized that I’ve never begun a story because I wanted to reveal something about a character. It’s absolutely necessary that I do this, of course, but when I’m working on the first draft, I file that in the back of my mind and proceed to name some hypothetical being who, in my mind, is immediately seen clearly in one respect, standing in a room, or on the beach, or on a lawn. Because I see instantly the character’s context-because I understand the visual world surrounding the character, I’m able to know instinctively whether the story is in past or present tense. I pick up ambient sound before I begin to register dialogue (or awkward silence), I squint to see the character’s first tiny movements (Oh hell: he smokes), and by then, if I’m lucky, the room in which I write has in effect disappeared, and I’m in the room in which my cigarette smoking man stands.
[…]
They’ve come into my life in the same strange way so many things have. Years ago, when I lived with a bunch of people in Connecticut, we didn’t have a key to lock the door in our rented house, so through the years I went back to that house to find, for example, a dead raccoon in the sink with ice cubes dumped over its head (courtesy of the garbage man, who knew one of the people who lived there loved to make road kill stew). One day I encountered the dog catcher eating a sandwich in the kitchen. I don’t believe the dog had run away. Another time, after an entire day home alone, I went for the first time into the kitchen and found a young man meditating silently on top of the washing machine. He had hitched from Vermont to Connecticut and gone to the wrong house. I’m married to a man who moved to Charlottesville, VA for a semester to teach. One month before he left, he caved in to pressure from an acquaintance in New York and called me, having found the one expired phone book that printed my unlisted number.
[h/t Dan Cafaro]
Once artists realized they could just rape the audience, it was all over. Jackson Pollock shot his wad on the face of the nation and that was that.
Writing on the other hand, still relied on the ancient art of seduction. The reader deciding to let the the author in or not and if so, how deeply. Its amazing when you think of it, how many intimate lovers Whitman, Rilke, and Rimbaud had over the years. Even the awkward, trembling Poe was simple, yet charming enough to terrorize everyone from skid row to royalty. Terrorized’em right down to the marrow. Seduction, pure and simple.
When I was younger I tried to write. I might as well stood on street corner and howled about injustice and love like some half-assed preacher. A few kind and kindred souls left change and politely took leaflets, but most everyone scurried away. Then one day, a shuffling old man with a mustache put his arm around me and smiled. He escorted me into a bar. We had a shot and a beer, he began telling sly jokes to the indifferent butcher pouring drinks. Within 10 minutes, the old man had the entire place gathered round him, laughing. All while he held a blood covered knife in plain site! Not one of them even noticed when he slipped it in. Or if they did, they didn’t mind. Laughing until they cried and vice-versa.
Later the old bastard taught me a few things about art too. “There’re always new killers, in every art form.” he’d smile. “They bleed out your bullshit and call on something deeper.”
Of course there are plenty of con artist entertainers with nothing to say. We went to see one down at the big theater, it was a packed house. Everyone laughed and had a nice time. But the audience seemed tired and listless as they spilled out into the streets. “Why didn’t he slip them the dagger?” I asked the old man. “The fella didn’t have one,” he replied. “Well then whats the fucking point?!” I howled. “Oh,” he smirked, “people will still pay good money for a good hand job.”
Artists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on.
Kurt Vonnegut (via slekes)
But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
Mark Twain (via insaneisonlyanidea)
