Stet! Four Small Magazine Editors Speak Up

If you’re in Sydney today – ie. Tuesday, May 27 – come along to Gleebooks (49 Glebe Point Road, Glebe) to see and hear Contrappasso co-editor Theodore Ell  on a panel with Alice Grundy (editor of Seizure), Amy Middleton (editor of Archer) and Sam Cooney (editor of The Lifted Brow).

What will be under discussion? “The state of the industry they find themselves in.” Gleebooks continues:

They have been called ‘nimble innovators’ but who exactly are these people and more importantly, what do they think they are doing? Let’s give them one hour and some wine and try to find out.

These brave people edit four rather different journals, which also have some interesting points of similarity and overlap. Each of their journals seems to have found its own niche and style and perhaps arose to fill a different perceived need in the first place. It is pretty hard to know what will happen when we put the four of them in a room together but some of the things we might get to the bottom of (or at least to the point where we can say the glass is half full) are: what the role of a journal editor is in the contemporary sense – does it involve proof reading text and commissioning articles or is it something a lot larger and more complex than that?; what they love about magazine editing, what frustrates them and why they do it; how they decide what format their journal should take and if this something they are flexible about; how important they think community is in the literary world; where they get the dosh – how have they utilised traditional and more innovative forms of funding?; how they straddle print and digital realms; and what they see as the importance of live events and launches to their work (yes, that bit will be a bit meta).

We’ll talk a bit about poetry and a bit about sex, a bit about fonts and a bit about perfect binding, we will be a bit serious and a bit tongue-in-cheek, we will look back at history of magazine editing but also look into the future. We will use a lot of analogies and metaphors and maybe hint towards something that suggests something else, which will in turn perhaps maybe make you feel like you are about to have an ephiphanic moment or witness someone else’s. We will make you so excited about small magazines that you will want to run out and buy one or contribute to one or edit one. If you don’t think that is worth the $10 ticket then I think there is something wrong with you. No, really, you are weird and lacking in a pretty fundamental way. But come along to Gleebooks and we will be nice to you and make you feel alright and maybe stimulate your intellect a bit as well.

You can also buy copies of our back issues on the night….

Event: Tuesday May 27, 6 for 6:30pm $10/$7 concession/gleeclub free. Book HERE or phone 02 9660 2333