We announced here earlier in the year the inclusion of two ZYZZYVA pieces in the forthcoming Best American Essays and Best American Short Stories: respectively, Dagoberto Gilb‘s “A Little Bit of Fun Before He Died” (Issue No. 95, Fall 2012) and Karl Taro Greenfeld‘s “Horned Men” (also Issue No. 95). Today we learned ZYZZYVA made the Notable lists for both prestigious anthologies, too. Ron Carlson‘s story “Line From a Movie” (Issue No. 96, Winter 2012) won recognition in BASS, and two nonfiction works were similarly recognized in Best American Essays: Rick Barot‘s “Morandi Sonnet” (No. 96) and Luis Alberto Urrea‘s […]
Category: News
ZYZZYVA news.
In the Fall Issue
by ZYZZYVA
In our newest issue, ZYZZYVA asks: Having kids—what could possibly go wrong? In Eric Puchner’s “Heavenland,” a stalled L.A. artist finds his style—and his relationships—severely cramped after the birth of his son. In Vanessa Hua’s “A River of Stars,” a pregnant mistress in Southern California is cornered by the wishes of her married lover in China. In Nana K. Twumasi’s “Pica,” a widowed father tries to make sense of his young daughter’s troubling eating compulsion. And in Kate Milliken’s “A Matter of Time,” a suburban mother hopes a dinner party with an old and successful friend can salvage her dreams. […]
Chiapas, the Zapatistas, and the Moral Opportunity: Q&A with Michael Spurgeon
by Matt Markovich
On January 1, 1994, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional or EZLN) marched out of the jungles of the Mexican state of Chiapas to occupy its capitol, San Cristóbal de las Casas. Like his protagonist Henry Singer, author Michael Spurgeon had a bird’s-eye view of the occupation from the balcony of his girlfriend’s apartment directly overlooking the city’s main square. In his new novel, Let the Water Hold Me Down (Ad Lumen Press; 372 pages), Spurgeon chronicles how the events surrounding the Zapatista uprising stir Singer out of a state of relative inaction as the […]
A Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays One-Two Punch (Update: And Now a Pushcart: We Hit the Trifecta)
by editor
It looks like the Fall 2012 ZYZZYVA (No. 95) has some sort of magic working for it. Earlier this year, we were thrilled to learn that a story from that issue, Karl Taro Greenfeld’s “Horned Men,” would be included in the 2013 Best American Short Stories. And today, we received a call informing us that Dagoberto Gilb’s nonfiction piece from the same issue, “A Little Bit of Fun Before He Died,” will be included in the 2013 Best American Essays. We offer our warmest congratulations to Dagoberto Gilb and Karl Taro Greenfeld. And if you don’t have the Fall 2012 […]
In the Spring Issue
by ZYZZYVA
The newest ZYZZYVA features a special section of work by authors who divide their time between the West Coast and elsewhere, as well as … Stories about love and grieving (Marianna Cherry’s “The Endurance”), about love and its opportunities: grand (Chris Leslie-Hynan’s “Hunter’s Moon”) and grim (Herbert Gold’s “The Passion of a Fussy Man” and Michelle Latiolais’s “Gas”), irrevocable (Dani Shapiro’s “Cardioplegia”) and fixed to place (Molly Giles’s “Life Span”). Fiction on the writing life—whether pursued in a classroom (Lori Ostlund’s “Clear as Cake”) or very much alone (Debbie Graber’s “Northanger Abbey”)—and fiction about teachers, young and veteran, learning the […]
The Outlaw Barney Rosset
by Alan Kaufman
Because my brother Howie and I collected comics as poor kids in the Bronx, hoping to score a prized first edition of, say, Avengers #4 (which heralded the return appearance of Captain America) or Amazing Fantasy #15 (containing the origin of Spiderman) we haunted the sleazy second hand bookstores around the Bronx of the 1960s, dark moldy storefronts stacked with boxes full of lurid paperbacks and stag mags. In such a shop, I found a wooden grapefruits crate containing back issues of a magazine called Evergreen Review, edited and published by one Barney Rosset. Fred Jordan, the other name prominently […]
‘A Great Scandal Is a Masterpiece’: Q&A with ‘Forged’ Author Jonathon Keats
by Silvia Pareschi
Interviewing your spouse might sound a little strange, but I’ve done worse. I’ve translated him. Several years ago Jonathon Keats published a collection of fables, The Book of the Unknown (Random House), and I translated the book into Italian. As an experienced literary translator, I found it exciting to have “my” author sitting next to me during the translation process. I could ask him any question I wanted, and I could tell him when I didn’t like his answers. Now that he’s published a new, non-fiction book – Forged: Why Fakes Are the Great Art of Our Age, which just […]
Serving and Defying the Tyranny of Motive
by David Corbett
David Corbett, who lives in Vallejo, Calif., is a former private investigator and is the acclaimed author of four novels: The Devil’s Redhead, Done for a Dime (a New York Times Notable Books), Blood of Paradise (nominated for an Edgar), and Do They Know I’m Running? His most recent book is The Art of Character: Creating Memorable Characters for Fiction, Film, and TV (Penguin). At nearly 400 pages, The Art of Character, which publishes in late January, is a generous serving of Corbett’s knowledge on the craft of writing. Part reference book, part volume of essays, it’s insightful, entertaining, funny, […]
In the Winter Issue
by ZYZZYVA
“If you care about contemporary fiction, if you want to know the future of the American literary scene, you need to be reading ZYZZYVA.”—Adam Johnson “Zyzzyva is a snouted beetle, as any dictionary kid knows. It’s a word that nearly can’t be played in Scrabble, on account of all the Z’s. But those are novelty uses. The real meaning is this superb literary journal, which has real meaning. If you want to learn the things that literature can do with language, read it.” —Ben Greenman The newest issue of ZYZZYVA offers the same engaging mix of compelling writing and art […]
The Poetry of Apples, Maple Syrup, Blackberries, and Sandwiches: ‘The Hungry Ear,’ edited by Kevin Young
by Jerome Blanco
The need for food and drink is universal. The preparation and partaking of meals mark events ordinary and extraordinary. Because of this, food has naturally found itself a subject of poetry for as long as can be remembered. Celebrating the many facets of food and drink, poet Kevin Young, author of seven books of poetry and editor of six previous anthologies, has compiled The Hungry Ear: Poems of Food & Drink (Bloomsbury, 336 pages). In his introduction, Young writes, “Love, satisfaction, trouble, death, pleasure, work, sex, memory, celebration, hunger, desire, loss, laughter, even salvation: to all these things food can […]
An Alternative Universe, One Where Her Son Still Lives: J. Robert Lennon’s ‘Familiar’
by Molly Falck
Somewhere on an Ohio interstate, where bored drivers can be counted on to whiz past the paranormal events happening in a middle-aged woman’s Honda, a crack in Elisa Brown’s windshield transports her from one brief, thirteen-page-long reality—of facts and blunt tragedy—to another. She finds her fingers gripping a different steering wheel, her toes jammed inside pumps instead of her usual sneakers, a husband who actually calls to see when she’ll arrive home, and, in place of her once bony frame, a plumper one that hasn’t suffered the death of her youngest son, Silas. J. Robert Lennon’s new novel, Familiar (Graywolf […]
A Publishing World Gone Beastly: Howard Jacobson’s ‘Zoo Time’
by Lucy Schiller
Guy Ableman fixates on Amazon.com the way that he fixates on the runaway success of “The Girl Who Ate Her Own Placenta,” or on his mother-in-law, or his wife, or monkeys – with a gleeful sort of disgust. The protagonist, if you can call him that, of Howard Jacobson’s new novel, Zoo Time (Bloomsbury, 376 pages), is nothing short of feral. “Feral!,” Guy exclaims upon described as such. “From the Latin for an unruly beast. Guy Feral. Feral Guy.” These, however, are feral times. The publishing industry has, in Guy’s view, dissolved and reconstituted itself into a gelatinous mass of […]