Gone Lawn 8

 The All-Seeing Eye vs. The Invisible Hand (Martha McCollough, 2012)

I had the pleasure and privilege of guest-editing the Summer 2012 issue of Gone Lawn, a webjournal of innovative fiction. That issue is now live.

The contributors include writers I reached out to because I admire their work and those who sent pieces through the regular submission process and whom I now number among writers I admire. They are:

Kristina Marie Darling, Angela Genusa, Jacob Wren, Frances Madeson, Valerie Witte, Jake Syersak, Neila Mezynski, Malcolm Sutton, Frances Kruk, j/j hastain, Derek Owens, David Hadbawnik, Stephen Hastings-King, and Dale Smith.

The issue also features cover art and a haunting video by Martha McCollough.

One thing of significance that I note among the contributors is how many of them produce work in other fields -- poetry, performance, music, digital and conceptual polyart, and criticism -- and indeed in some ways how little the generic boundaries really matter. I know I take a dim view of mainstream fiction and its insular, complacent "alt-lit" mirror-image, but the experience of reading these works (as well as others that did not make it into the issue but which I am grateful to have seen) has gone some ways towards restoring my faith that genuine literary art is still being produced, against the odds, in the Anglo-US axis. Thank you to everyone involved, with a special thanks going out to Gone Lawn's editor, Owen Kaelin, for giving me this opportunity.

(And be sure to check out Frances Madeson's own gone lawn, here.)