Introducing a New Indie Press (And Another Reason Print Won’t Die)

The editors at Vol. 1 would like to draw your attention to a new non-profit publisher, Madras Press.  A literary and philanthropic project, this new printing press publishes individually bound stories and novella-length booklets featuring writers such as Aimee Bender, Trinie Dalton, Joy Williams, and Rebecca Lee.  All of their proceeds are donated to a list of charitable organizations chosen by their authors. Directly from their website, “The format of our books provides readers with the opportunity to experience a […]

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Bites: A Woman’s Wit, James Franco is on Daytime TV, So What?, Aerosmith Understands the Internet, and more

The New York Times reviews “A Woman’s Wit: Jane Austen in Life and Legacy” on exhibit at The Morgan Library & Museum. Lit. Even though there are approximately one billion newly published food memoirs per American second, everyone’s still obsessing over Jonathan Safran Foer and his book about that ultra-modern idea of vegetarianism. Wells Tower is also still writing for Outside Mag. According to the Rumpus, this is one example of why fiction writers make good journalists. The Guardian reviews […]

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“Dangerous” Choices in Ugly Man by Jonathan Reiss

Reviewed by Jonathan Reiss According to the back cover of Dennis Cooper’s new book of short stories, Cooper is “the most dangerous writer in America.” What constitutes a dangerous writer? The Catcher in the Rye has been banned on and off by schools and libraries since its publication and was cited by Mark David Chapman as his reason for killing John Lennon, despite the fact that the book isn’t even about killing rock stars. In Ugly Man, the majority of […]

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The Year of the Short Story

I initially resisted Harper Perennial’s Fifty-Two Stories, a website on which a different piece of short fiction will be posted every week for a year because it is first and foremost a marketing tool. Since last week’s post, though, of “Radical Adults Lick Godhead Style” by Peter Wild, en suite of Willa Cather’s “The Sculpter’s Funeral,” I’ve abandoned, if only for the moment, such righteousness in favor of real admiration. As an increasingly peripheral writer – and more personally, my […]

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