Fiction Nonfiction Poetry In Conversation Art […]
Issue No. 129
by ZYZZYVA Staff
Category: News
ZYZZYVA news.
Choosing Each Other: Q&A with Jemimah Wei
by Yohanca Delgado
When Jemimah Wei and I met as Stegner Fellows in fiction at Stanford in 2023, we became instant friends. And during our time there, I got to workshop what would become her first novel, The Original Daughter (368 pages; Doubleday), a story about betrayal and complicated relationships that won my heart from the start. There’s something magical about watching what was once a Word document become a beautiful, finished book. (The novel’s official publication date is today!) Part coming of age, part coming apart, this book, set in Singapore, charts the course of two unforgettable characters, Gen and Arin, from […]
Our New T-Shirts & Totes
by ZYZZYVA Staff
Celebrate ZYZZYVA while looking stylish, too! The cream T-shirt comes in all sizes, features a ribbed neck, and is made from 100 percent USA cotton. Manufactured by Los Angeles Apparel, with the design printed by San Francisco’s Babylon Burning, this T-shirt is about as California as it gets. Order here. People have loved our red-and-blue totes, but now you have your choice of two color schemes to choose from. Our new offering is a black canvas tote with cream lettering—at once bold and elegant. Order here. And if you’d like to get either of these items along with a subscription, […]
The (Re)Discovery of Peter Carr
by Andrew Tonkovich
On October 28, an exhibition titled “Peter Carr: Artist for Survival” opened at the Cerritos College Art Gallery in Norwalk, California. The show, which runs through December 13, is “the first comprehensive art historical retrospective of the poet, activist, and fascinating outsider artist,” according to the gallery. The following is by the show’s co-curator and ZYZZYVA contributor Andrew Tonkovich. The editor of the Santa Monica Review, Tonkovich was entrusted with Carr’s archive of “large-scale paintings, frenetic drawings, and homemade political posters, as well as his own personal notebooks, intimate sketches and studies, self-published books, and other biographically-significant ephemera” following Carr’s […]
Issue No. 128
by ZYZZYVA Staff
Order your copy of Issue 128 today! Long-Form Fiction Poetry In Conversation Art Order your copy now! […]
Feeling Through the Open Space: ‘Bashō: The Complete Haiku of Matsuo Bashō’
by Dean Rader
If you are the author of a country’s two most beloved poems, you have officially made it. And if that country happens to be Japan—where poetry is a fundamental part of the nation’s fabric—you’ve made it twice over. You’re like Shakespeare and The Stones. This is the case for Matsuo Bashō, whose influence within Japan (and beyond) is so great, it is impossible to map. Bashō (1644-1694) is more contemporary than many people imagine. He was born the same year Descartes penned Cogito ergo sum, and several years after the death of Shakespeare. Thus, Bashō, at least chronologically, is a […]
Home as the Uncanny: Q&A with Laura van den Berg
by Anita Felicelli
Laura van den Berg’s eerie latest novel, State of Paradise (224 pages; Farrar, Straus, & Giroux), resembles her other five acclaimed books—most notably an intense short story in I Hold a Wolf by the Ears and her first novel, Find Me, which was set during an epidemic that impacts memory—but deeply forges a path into original, glimmering territory. The book asks, What is real? And what if there are many realities and many ways of getting to them? For seamlessly meshing speculative and autobiographical elements, State of Paradise has been called “speculative autofiction.” (Van den Berg’s story collection Isle of […]
Issue No. 127
by ZYZZYVA
Order your copy of Issue 127 today! Fiction Poetry Nonfiction In Conversation Art Order your copy now! […]
Letter from the Editor
by Oscar Villalon
The following letter appears in the newest issue of ZYZZYVA. It’s the first issue of the journal that bears Oscar Villalon as editor on the masthead. The issue is available in bookstores and can also be ordered here. And you can subscribe here. Dear Reader, This is the 125th issue of ZYZZYVA. It’s a remarkable milestone when you consider all of the things that have to go right for a literary journal, one absent the shoring of a munificent college or regal institution, to make it that far. Firstly, there has to have been a steady and passionate readership. Our […]
Our Current Issue, Now Available
by ZYZZYVA
Order your copy of Issue 125 today! Fiction Nonfiction Poetry Art Order your copy now! […]
A new chapter for ZYZZYVA
by ZYZZYVA
Dear ZYZZYVA readers, After more than a decade as editor, Laura Cogan is handing over the duties of her role to Oscar Villalon, the journal’s managing editor. Laura will stay on as editor at large. Oscar is now only the journal’s third editor since its founding in 1985. During Laura’s tenure, work published in the journal was regularly acknowledged and reprinted in the Best American series and in the Pushcart Prize and O. Henry Prize anthologies. ZYZZYVA was also awarded the Council of Literary Magazine and Presses’ Firecracker Award in 2019 for Best Magazine, General Excellence, and in 2022 was […]
Remembering Book Editor Pat Holt
by Regan McMahon
When the Loma Prieta earthquake struck the Bay Area in 1989, Pat Holt remained at her desk, ignoring a co-worker’s urgent plea to take cover—choosing instead to stay on a phone call, making her passionate case to an author or publisher while her office swayed and rattled and books fell off the shelves around her. Such was Pat’s dedication to her work as the former book editor, critic, and columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Pat, who devoted her career to her love of books, died December 3 at her home in San Francisco following a brief battle with cancer. […]