On writing, life, and art Thoughts from the front and back pages of Gargoyle.  "Each act of attention sustains one’s writing life and the making of work: how the essential ground of silence frames each phrase; in what sense the space of the page may illuminate an infinite shifting of syntax or measure."— Kathleen Fraser"When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it."— Henry Ford"The book to read is not the one that thinks for you but the one which makes you think."— Harper Lee"There are many ways to be free. One of them is to transcend reality by imagination, as I try to do."— Anais Nin"I write every day for at least two hours, and I spend the rest of my time largely in the society of ducks."— Flannery O’Connor"Write what you know, my first teachers suggested. But I have never been a big fan of reality. Reality feels like sandpaper on my skin. Sometimes I think I would love to escape the everyday world, and just move into the imagination forever."— Nin Andrews"To be hybrid anticipates the future."— Isamu Noguchi"Happy the man, and happy he alone,/He who can call today his own."— Horace, translated by Dryden"You fail…

Melissa Scholes Young has taken over the G&G series.She will run it out of her office at American University.Look for "Grace In Darkness" in May of 2018!Index of DC Area Women Writers included in the Grace & Gravity series;All 7 Volumes: Almost 300 women, at close to 3,000pp!7. Ab G Abundant Grace6. DG Defying Gravity5. AG Amazing Graces4. GD Gravity Dancers3. El G Electric Grace2. En G Enhanced Gravity1. GG Grace & GravityAJulie Vosburgh Agnone (AG); Stephanie Allen (En G); Gigi Amateau (Ab G).BDoreen Baingana (GG); Jonetta Rose Barras (AG); Abby Bardi (GG); Patricia Bartlett (AG); Christina Bartolomeo (En G); Catherine Bell (AG); Arielle Bernstein (AG); Teresa Bevin (El G); Janna Bialek (Ab G); Kate Blackwell (En G); Summer Blais (GD); Emily Bliss (AG); Hildie S. Block (En G); Jodi Bloom (GG); Caroline Bock (Ab G); Laura Bogart (AG); Lisa Boylan (En G); Jody Lannen Brady (El G); Michelle Brafman (El G); Elizabeth Bruce (GD); Rae Bryant (AG); Laura Brylawski-Miller (El G); Susan Burgess-Lent (GG); Sophy Burnham (GG); Carole Burns En (G); Malve S. Burns (DG).CEllen Campbell (AG); Frances Carden (Ab G); Bobbi Carducci (Ab G); Maud Casey (GD); Maxine Clair (El G); Brenda W. Clough (El G); Shirley Graves…

Introduction On Wednesday morning, Borders announced that it would be filing for bankruptcy. As one of the first steps in bankruptcy proceedings, the nation’s second largest bookstore chain will be closing 200 of its stores and firing 6,000 of its 19,500 employees in the next few weeks. It’s also worth pointing out that Borders has stiffed publishers for hundreds of millions of dollars. A recent Publishers Weekly breakdown reveals that Penguin Group (USA) is owed $41.1 million, Hachette is owed $36.9 million, Simon & Schuster is owed $33.8 million, Random House is owed $33.5 million, and HarperCollins is owed $25.8 million. With thousands of jobs disappearing, hundreds of millions of dollars lost in bankruptcy limbo, and vital physical space possibly being taken up by other hands or converted into new retail areas that will have little to do with books, it would be a severe mistake to suggest that this won’t have a sizable impact on the book industry. On the other hand, now that the inevitable has occurred, the time has come to examine whether losing a Borders near you means losing the physical bookstore experience. Laura Kuechenmeister, who handles events and marketing for the Albuquerque indie Bookworks, suggested in a recent blog…

In the 1970s I published stories and poems in over 120 litmags–back then the now-quaint term “little magazine” was used somewhat more than “literary magazine.” At least 110 of those publications no longer exist, including Tom Whalen’s Lowlands Review, Dennis Cooper’s Little Caesar, Peter Cherches’ Zone and Miriam Sagan’s Aspect. Nearly all of those still publishing are at universities: Shenandoah at Washington & Lee, Epoch at Cornell, Bellingham Review at Western Washington, Cimarron Review at Oklahoma State, Oyez Review at Roosevelt. The only non-academic literary magazines on my 1970s bibliography currently active are Hanging Loose, ACM: Another Chicago Magazine, Apalachee Review (then Apalachee Quarterly) – and the 31-year-old publication that the Washington Post Book World has called “Washington’s preeminent literary magazine”: Richard Peabody’s Gargoyle. Gargoyle was founded in 1976 by Rick and two others, but a year later he was the only member of the original triumvirate left. He ran the mag until 1990 with several different co-editors but he’s been pretty much on his own since then. Dedicated to printing work by unknown poets and fiction writers, as well as seeking out the overlooked or neglected, the magazine also published “name” writers — sometimes before they were “names” — like Kathy Acker, Rita Dove, Jennifer Egan, Naomi Shihab Nye, T.C. Boyle, Russell Edson, Allen Ginsberg, Ben Marcus, and Rick Moody. (Check…