Volume 16 Issue 12
The Mystery Of B. Traven
B. Traven is the most shadowy figure in the history of literature. Though there are hordes of Traven theorists and stacks of books written about him, there is still no consensus on his real name, his birthplace, or his exact history.
Olly Todd: Some Poems
The thing about Olly Todd is that I’ve known him for years as this rad skateboarder and drinker and dancer, but it was only fairly recently that I found out that he is also an excellent poet.
William H. Gass
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, William H. Gass played one part in a wide-ranging debate with the novelist John Gardner. It was an examination into the nature of art, theirs and everybody else’s.
“The Hunter and His Dogs”
Saah Millimono is the chief fiction writer at the Daily Observer, Liberia’s most popular newspaper. Each week, the Observer publishes one of Saah’s stories. They primarily deal with sorcery, witchcraft, deception, and the hardship of life.
“little Red Riding Hood And Blind Boy Willy The Pirate”
When Eric Dando’s first novel, Snail, came out in Australia in 1996, he was the youngest author to ever have been published by Penguin.
“3 Stories”
Robert Walser was underappreciated in his time and is still sort of a loosely kept secret today, passed around by writers and literature nerds like a test of how good one’s taste really is.
“Sits the Queen”
Damion Searls is an author and award-winning translator, most recently of Rilke’s The Inner Sky: Poems, Notes, Dreams, Proust’s On Reading, and the Robert Walser stories in this issue.
“Fathers and Snakes”
Clancy Martin used to make a living as a jewelry salesman. Now he is a translator of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard and an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Missouri.
Pete Dexter
Besides writing hard-edged, blackly funny, and beautifully observed novels, Pete Dexter has spent a lot of time boxing, and he once got beaten so badly by an angry mob in Philadelphia that his back was broken.
Annie Proulx
I have to admit that when they first hit the store shelves of the world, I skipped over Annie Proulx’s books. Maybe it was the titles—Heartsongs and Other Stories, Postcards. I just figured it for melancholic sepia-toned lady lit.