Black Clock

‘Literary’ might not be the first adjective that comes to mind when describing the city of Los Angeles. But it should be. Sure, there’s Hollywood, the ‘industry’ (both film and porn), the celebrities, the hopeful Midwestern waiters and waitresses working various restaurants throughout the city. You know the L.A. Myth: Being discovered at LAX or the Chevron on Melrose. Becoming an overnight success. From all over the world, people flock to Los Angeles, hoping to benefit from its limitless possibilities. They cash their savings, stuff it into a white legal envelope and head to L.A. Five days later and a …

In this experiment, Diana Arterian attempts to define the undefinable. …

It’s undeniable that music influences our sensory experience of the world–especially when we are in the position of the receiver of information. This is to say, it doesn’t take a professional film critic to know that the score or soundtrack is just about as important as what is being visually presented on the screen. What is thought about less often, perhaps, is music’s tie to the reading experience. To be sure, there is a great contingent of readers who prefer not to allow music to mingle with their experience of a text. However, a well-picked (or coincidentally synced) music selection can enhance our …

i’ve got too many girlfriends
who’d be cool chicks if they weren’t such cunts
Ah, bowl of dicks,
they mean nothin, baby.
It was Halloween on the blue Nile, you know how it gets.
i’ll deposit the pictures i took in my spank bank.
the female form looks best behind a shower curtain. …

when- May 15, 2010, 11:00am-6:00pm
where Los Angeles

Free and open to the public, “Vis-À-Vis” is a day-long literary festival featuring readings, debates and conversations with ten prominent contemporary French / Francophone and American writers, including Black Clock editor Steve Erickson with Philippe …

As readers, writers, and literature lovers, we have all had our lit-geek moments, whether it’s naming our dog after the protagonist in our favorite book or laughing at an obscure authorial reference in a movie. Some of the most rewarding moments, however, occur when we stumble across literature in decidedly non-literary places. The following is a random, by no means definitive, list of examples.

1) As I Lay Dying …

John Haskell is the author of the novels American Purgatorio and Out of My Skin, as well as a collection of short stories entitled I Am Not Jackson Pollock.  His writing has appeared in magazines such as Bomb and The Believer, and he is a currently teaching writing and literature at Columbia University.

BLACK CLOCK: So you’re quite the rambling man – living in San Diego, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City.  Has travel or living in such …

when _ _ May 16, 2010 @ 5:00pm
where _- the wulf
_______ 1026 South Santa Fe Ave
_______ Los Angeles, CA 90021
_______ tel. +212 431 5270

Admission is free. …

If Black Clock had a foreign older uncle, it would be Landfall of Otago University Press. Founded in 1947, it is New Zealand’s oldest literary magazine. Landfall publishes two, often theme-driven, magazines a year featuring New Zealand’s best contemporary writers – their poetry, prose, and essays – as well as artwork in full color.

Also like Black Clock, Landfall works beyond the stories and poems it publishes – it provides an art-object readers can hold and experience in their hands. The art and …

www.bornmagazine.org

Born Magazine would make any Marxist proud. Its meshing of media and text — the collaborative volunteer outcomes of artists, writers, musicians, and other creative types — is rendered and wrought at times with tenderness, at times with brashness, and is never boring. …

Spartan in design and mysterious in origin as only a web-based poetry magazine can be, mid)rib has published five issues of interesting, enigmatic, and occasionally indecipherable poetry with nothing more than two names and a Gmail address on the masthead. The apparently DIY character of the site is balanced, however, by the consistent high quality of the material presented, and by a careful, clean design. One gets the feeling that mid)rib is created not by mad geniuses, but by academics in exile—gone, indeed, a bit mad. If Dr. Moreau had created magazines rather than monsters, this one …

We could talk about how the “Aughts” brought us, largely, fake nonfiction and Roberto Bolaño. We could talk about the explosion in popularity enjoyed by Haruki Murakami and Thomas L. Friedman. We could talk about Jonathan Franzen, Zadie Smith, and other luminaries who defined the decade in literature.

But we could also talk about the decade in books⎯defined by publications such as McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, which changed its physical form for each issue, …

Birkensnake is precisely what you want in your lifeboat: good to read, fun to touch. This strange little fiction collection, edited by Brian Conn and Joanna Ruocco, operates somewhere between a literary adventure and art object. Although each issue is offered as a free download on-line, nothing compares to the physical object. Custom designed by artist Sarah McDermott aka Chemlawn, Birkensnake is one of the swankest journals out there. …