How does a literary magazine survive? Self at one time had high ambitions: She thought she’d like to edit one. Then she realized how much time she’d have to give up. Time she could spend writing, or traveling, or growing a garden, or writing her friends (or, now, blogging), or cooking, or walking her dog, or cleaning up, or getting organized, or watching movies, or exercising.
Today she’d like to honor the people who put out The Asian American Literary Review.
Have you seen it, dear blog readers? It is so substantial, so hefty, it is easily twice the size of Ploughshares, or the Paris Review. And the editors, Lawrence Minh Bui Davis and Gerald Maa, not satisfied with this vast labor, still organize symposiums in conjunction with other entities, like last April’s tie-in with the National Portrait Gallery. And they are so humble. And open to new ideas. And always coming up with thought-provoking themed issues.
The Winter 2012 issue is on “Portraiture.”
Among the writers featured are: Luisa Igloria, Brian Ascalon Roley, Lillian Howan, and Brian Komei Dempster. There are interviews of Gary Snyder by Shawna Yang Ryan, and of Garrett Hongo by Michael Collier.
There are reviews of books like My Postwar Life: New Writings from Japan and Okinawa, edited by Elizabeth McKenzie, and No Enemies, No Hatred: Selected Essays and Poems, by Liu Xiaobo.
Buy the issue here, or take out a subscription. You won’t regret it, dear blog readers.
Stay tuned.
Kyi May Kaung said,
February 4, 2013 at 7:39 pm
Right you are about the time – my personal opinion is your time would be better spent doing what you already do + publishing/publicizing your own work –
Kyi
anthropologist said,
February 4, 2013 at 10:12 pm
I think I’m no good for anything but writing, really . . .