I’d like to introduce you to IR‘s dynamite new staff: Jennifer Luebbers takes the helm as Editor, and Katie Moulton is Associate Editor, Joe Hiland is Fiction Editor, Michael Mlekoday is Poetry Editor, Justin Wolfe is Nonfiction Editor, and Doug Paul Case is our first-ever Web Editor. I’m sad to leave my post, but I’m absolutely thrilled about the incoming team. I can’t wait to see what’s next for IR—it’s going to be a phenomenal year.

1. Why are literary journals significant?

MM: Tons of reasons! Literary journals are the vanguards of literature—they are where readers and writers first meet up, where our community comes together. Without journals, we’re just a bunch of rugged individualists, carrying only our own poems and stories and essays with us. Then we’re just landlocked, because it takes more than one branch to build a boat. Is that true? I don’t know. The great variety of journals being made and read right now means we can always find new inspiration, new writers to shake us and take us out to sea.

JW: I don’t know.  In historical terms, I can understand their importance, but in terms of right now, I’m really not actually sure?  I know that, in my experience, IR has been an important center to our literary community in Bloomington, but outside of that, I can’t say much else.  I’m sure former and future editors will be able to mount a rousing case for the continued cultural relevance of the literary journal, but I come from a blogging background and have, since I’ve been familiar with them, been resistant to what I perceive as the insularity of little magazines, the walled garden effect.  One of the reasons that I’ve taken this position is to try to break down or at least inform that resistance of mine, to better understand what a magazine like IR really does and what it means to our larger literary culture.  In other words: hopefully I’ll have a better answer this time next year?

DPC: Because they’re the future! It seems like everyone is bemoaning the death of literary journals, but while print might be fading, there are many, many online journals thriving and doing the same things literary magazines have always been doing: showing us the future of literature. Find me an important poet or story writer who wasn’t published first in a literary journal and I will buy you a cookie. If you’re interested in the trajectory of literature, you should be reading journals.

Continue reading »

At the IR Editors Showcase, we were presented with some challenging, excellent questions. I asked our outgoing and incoming genre editors to respond, and I’ve corralled their answers for you. Today, we have Fiction Editor Rachel Lyon, Poetry Editor Cate Lycurgus, and Nonfiction Editor Sarah Suksiri!

1. Why are literary journals significant?

RL: I think the most meaningful thing to me about lit journals is that they’re a way of forming community without necessarily sharing a space. We can read the work of other writers, and feel close to them, and participate in the dialogues that interest us with people whose work we respect, without being in the same city or state or country. Plus, because they are curated by editors who know something about what’s going on in their field, the quality of work tends to be higher.

CL: Literary publications are a testament to the power of the imagination and the power of language, both of which are undervalued, yet necessary parts of our lives–in order to innovate, to make sense of the nonsensical, to connect with others, to provide wonder or surprise or consolation or astonishment. Literary journals have the potential to find this expression and to share it.

SS: Journals are significant, because they make us keep asking this question. Seriously, what other line of work and craft is there where the participants keep asking themselves, “Is anything that we’re doing relevant?” The fact that we (journals) are so concerned with what it is that moves and thrums in the world is part of what makes us relevant.

Continue reading »

When I was seventeen, I read Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake and finally felt understood.  Like many children of immigrant parents, I was never sure what to make of my identity.  Indians my age called me out when I tried to ignore it, claiming that I didn’t care about the country that nurtured my parents.  When I gave it my full attention, I felt close-minded and not myself.  After reading The Namesake, I thought through and wrote about these issues in ways I hadn’t before.  I kept a response to the book tucked inside the pages.

At this age, a life without Jhumpa Lahiri would be a completely different life.  Two days ago, I drove up from Bloomington to Indianapolis to see her talk, feeling reluctant the entire drive.  Her writing has affected me in such intimate ways and I consider her my favorite author, yet, I didn’t want to see her.  Over the past year, I’ve began to take writing more seriously and as a developing writer trying to find stories to tell, I’ve distanced myself from her.  Whenever I reference a story of hers and try to write my own, I know that she snatches my pen from me and writes with her own voice.  

Continue reading »

Image: inc.com

Is that thing you wrote a prose poem, or is it a short short? We don’t care what you call it; as long as it’s 500 words or fewer,  we want to read it!

The winning entry of IR’s annual 1/2 K Prize will receive $1000 and publication in Indiana Review. All submissions are considered for publication, and all submissions are read anonymously. This year’s prize judge is the wonderful Michael Martone.

Find full submission guidelines here.

Indiana Review is sponsoring another reading: this time featuring the work of our lovely editors! Join us Monday, April 23rd from 7-8:30 P.M. in the Great Room at the Honors College (when you enter the building, take a right and then another right immediately and you’re there). Deborah Kim, Jennifer Luebbers, Rachel Lyon, Cate Lycurgus, and Sarah Suksiri will read selected works featuring a mix of fiction and poetry.

Deborah Kim is the Editor of Indiana Review, and she writes about magical creatures, food, and home. She would like a DeLorean one day.

Jennifer Luebbers serves as Associate Editor, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2011, Cream City Review, The Journal, Massachusetts Review, and Washington Square Review, among others. Most recently, Marie Howe selected her poem, “Barn Elegy,” as the recipient of Washington Square’s 2012 Poetry Award.

Rachel Lyon is the Fiction Editor. Her fiction and creative nonfiction has appeared in Toad, Hobart, The Saint Ann’s Review, and Arts & Letters. She was this year’s recipient of the Ledig House International Writers’ Colony Fellowship. She also volunteers with the Bloomington Writing Project, a free community resource for help with writing, and does art features for the NPR station WFIU.

Cate Lycurgus is the Poetry Editor. Outside of her IR duties, she remains busy spreading her love for literature. Like Rachel, she is also currently working with the Bloomington Writing Project. In addition, she teaches creative writing to second and third graders in The Project School in Bloomington.

Sarah Suksiri, the Nonfiction Editor, gets excited about creative and journalistic nonfiction, but spends her time writing poetry. She has also published several restaurant, art, and book reviews.

Following their readings, we’ll have a Q&A session to discuss publishing and the future of creative work. If you have questions about the publishing industry or the writer’s world (ranging from print vs. digital literature, making it in a world saturated with voices, how to handle rejection), we’re happy to answer them. We hope to have an honest conversation about both the joys and the difficulties of thriving in these communities. Above all, we’d like to celebrate the value of creative work to society and to the individual.

We are also excited that two of IU’s undergraduate literary journals are co-sponsoring the event with us: Crimson Umbrella Review and Labyrinth.

The Crimson Umbrella Review is a self-run and self-directed online literary journal that is published monthly during the academic school year. The review’s goal is to provide every writer or artist with an umbrella to protect and shelter them as they develop their work and writing skills. The Crimson Umbrella Review believes that each writer or artist should have a safe-haven that allows him or her to publish his or her works freely, in a supportive, stress-free zone.

Labyrinth is a literary magazine sponsored through IU’s Hutton Honors College. Labyrinth’s goal is to publish outstanding undergraduate work in poetry, prose, and visual arts. They accept submissions in photography, painting, poetry, and prose (up to 1000 words). They hope that by having a magazine that displays the best of students’ artistic achievements, they encourage others to share what they have to say with the rest of the student body.

IU’s graduating MFA class of 2012 concluded their time here with several wonderful nights of thesis readings. Congrats to the readers for all of their achievements!

Pictured: readings by Pablo and Bethany; the cast of the IU MFA Reality Show accepts their awards for Bests and Mosts

This week, we finally hear from our marvelous Nonfiction Editor, Sarah Suksiri, who shares with us her delight for innovative nonfiction.

Where is home?

A little suburb in the Silicon Valley where there is plenty of good Vietnamese food and rush hour traffic.

Favorite issue of IR?

Our Winter 2011 issue. It has a good haul of nonfiction writers — possibly the most IR has ever published!

Tell us about what you’re reading right now.

I’m reading Scott Russell Sanders’ latest collection of essays, Earth Works, which I have to put down between every other essay because it makes me want to go for long walks.

What are you excited to see in nonfiction?

I get excited about creative and journalistic nonfiction exhibited in elegant, accessible online forms that do the work justice, like Wave Composition, The Junket, and The New Inquiry, or even blogs as a form of creative nonfiction, fused beautifully with other multimedia, like Ian Coyle’s Edits. I’m excited that there seems to be a very hungry audience for nonfiction, and that there are so many people who want to participate in other people’s experiences by reading about them. I’m also excited  for our new Nonfiction Editor, Mal Hellman, to take the reins and make IR nonfiction even better.

Image: typeconnection.com

Last September, our super design-savvy Editor, Deborah Kim, blogged about why the font you choose to use matters  in the submission process. Last week, however, I stumbled upon typeconnection, a website that is home to “A Typographic Dating Game.” The concept is basically the same as online dating—you select the font you’re most “attracted” to, and then you’re given several new fonts that you might like based on your previous selection. You check out pics of those fonts, read their bios, and then, if you fancy, you send the new font and the original font on a “date.” You’ll be told whether or not these fonts are compatible together.

While I’m a Garamond gal myself, I can’t pretend I wasn’t intrigued by the concept. Was I missing an opportunity? Was there a font out there for me?

Well, after exercising extreme care in a decision-making process that took the better part of my workday (sorry, Deb!), it turns out the two fonts I sent on a date weren’t compatible. Maybe Garamond and I are doing just fine on our own.

What about you, dear readers? Do you think a font has the power to alter the way you perceive a piece of writing? How so? We’d love to know your thoughts!