Street lit, ghetto lit, urban fiction, gangsta lit—these are the various names given to the genre that exploded onto the literary scene starting with rapper Sister Souljah’s 1999 debut, The Coldest Winter Ever. Since then street lit has become one of the fastest growing book genres in the U.S., according to the urban fiction website streetfiction.org. Almah LaVon Rice reports for Colorlines that street lit’s meteoric ascendance over the past decade has cultural critics debating its merits and mainstream publishers salivating over its sales potential.

Urban fiction consistently appears on Essence magazine’s bestseller list, which tracks black bookstores, although Rice reports that even more street lit is sold via barber shops, beauty salons, sidewalk kiosks, and online. Characterized by “unapologetic materialism and luxury brand fetishes, explicit sex and violence, and profanities that flow as freely as Cristal on VIP nights,” street lit has been credited with drawing formerly new communities into reading. It’s become so popular that even rapper 50 Cent has his own imprint, G-Unit Books.

But critics contend that the line between representation and exploitation is blurry, and that street lit could be feeding stereotypes and promoting a destructive way of life. Still others point out that, as with hip-hop, many consumers of street lit have no direct experience with the urban lifestyle it chronicles.

It’s not surprising that publishing bigwigs like Kensington Books, Simon & Schuster, and St. Martin’s now have their own urban fiction divisions, which begs the question that Paul Chaat Smith raises in his essay “Why Indians Love the Movies So Much”: What happens when mainstream media controls and defines the images of marginalized groups? 

Source: Colorlines

Here’s a video of wildly popular street lit author Teri Woods, talking about how she hustled her books into bestsellers:

Difficult economic times have caused universities across the country to turn their budget pruning knives on some of the most prestigious journals and presses in history, all in the name of preserving “core” academics. But as Ted Genoways asks for Virginia Quarterly Review, “What—or where—exactly is a university’s academic core?”

His manifesto on the future of university presses and journals laments the short-sightedness of administrators like Michael Martin, Louisiana State University’s (LSU) new chancellor, who recently announced that he may shut down both LSU Press and Southern Review. Together these two venerable institutions boast an impressive dossier of published writers, including historians Stephen E. Ambrose and C. Vann Woodward, poets T.S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens, and authors Eudora Welty and Katherine Anne Porter. Yet, Martin has placed the press and journal on his chopping block, stating the need to “protect the academic core of LSU first and foremost.”

So, what defines a university’s academic core? Enrollment and marketability? The New York Times recently reported that enrollment in the humanities—that blanket term for history, religion, philosophy, and English—is down, and that humanities departments need to justify their existence. In a society increasingly focused on business, science, and technology, an English degree may feel more like a luxury than a necessity. Yet these days an MBA isn’t necessarily going to land you a job, either. In light of the recent economic instability, it’s a wonder that universities would let the market determine anything.

When it comes to determining a university’s academic core, cultural and historical relevance should play a factor. The work produced by LSU Press and Southern Review has undoubtedly shaped America’s cultural landscape and identity. Genoways praises the foresight of former LSU President James Monroe Smith, who first proposed both the press and the journal back in 1935:

“Today, James Monroe Smith looks like a genius for recognizing that great universities extend well beyond the edges of their campuses. They reach out to the larger world, they challenge and engage the public, and the most effective and enduring way of doing so remains the written word. How will history judge today’s university presidents if they fail to protect these legacies of publishing excellence their forebears have entrusted to their care?”

Sources: Virginia Quarterly Review, The New York Times, Business Week

Image by jeffpearce, licensed under Creative Commons

Poet Todd Boss is on a roll.  His debut book Yellowrocket has garnered the kind of attention most poets only dream about, including rave reviews in the Christian Science Monitor and Charleston Post Courier and praise from writers like Sherman Alexie and Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Jack Miles.  Boss also recently won the Emily Clark Balch Prize in the Virginia Quarterly Review, which named Yellowrocket one of the ten best poetry books of the year.  But, just as impressive is his vision for poetry, which extends beyond the printed page to include innovative collaborations with artists from a variety of mediums, including photographers, musicians, and even animators.  Through this work Boss is challenging the boundaries of contemporary verse and welcoming a range of voices into his artistic dialogue.  It just might be the future of poetry. 

Read the Utne Reader profile of the poet: A Generous New Voice in American Poetry.

You can also listen to these sample tracks of poetry by Todd Boss:

How it Must Have Been for Him

The World Does Not Belong to You, Though You Belong to the World,

The Deeper the Dictionary

Is poetry still relevant?  You be the judge.  For a sampling of thoughts on the current state of poetry by poets, check out this month’s Poetry, which contains eight manifestos to commemorate the centennial of Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto.  The following are quotes from D.A. Powell’s manifesto “Annie Get Your Gun”:

“I don’t know that artists and poets join schools for quite the same reason that sardines do. Sometimes there’s a true innovator in the bunch, sometimes they really do share some common misunderstandings about aesthetics, sometimes it just so happens that a bunch of really interesting people all shop at the same hat shop and they start to hang out and resemble one another and make little sandwiches. It can seem quite seductive to be associated with a school.”

“I think sometimes that artists, like other lower forms of intelligence, want to “belong.” Or rather, that they want to not belong in some similar ways. They want to belong to the outside, and yet to be recognized by the inside.”

“Maybe it’s peculiar to our time, in which actual schools (academies) proliferate and spawn, that we’re seeing so much centrism. What we need is more eccentrism. Who isn’t tired of the contemporary qua contemporary? Who isn’t bored by innovation for innovation’s sake? It has, sadly, become the mode du jour. Not even a school.”

Source: Poetry

The annual conference of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) blew through Chicago this past weekend.  It’s impossible to sum up this four-day gathering, which includes hundreds of panels, readings, and parties, not to mention the sprawling bookfair of publishers, literary journals, and writing programs.  By conference end, you can spot an attendee by the dark circles under her eyes, which speak of too little sleep, too much caffeine, an overly stimulated intellect, and if she’s lucky, an event or two that blew her mind. 

Some highlights:

1) A literary rock & roll concert that re-imagined what a reading could be, sponsored by Columbia College Chicago and featuring authors ZZ Packer, Dorothy Allison, and Joe Meno, as well as the “circus punk” marching band, Mucca Puzza.  

2) A moving tribute to poet Jane Cooper by friends and colleagues, featuring Kazim Ali, Marie Howe, and Tony Hoagland.  Cooper was the State Poet of New York in 1995 and taught at Sarah Lawrence College, where she inspired future poets for decades.  The panelists converted me to this under-appreciated writer whose work is defined by a fierce attention and lyric grace.

3) A reading from the new anthology American Hybrid, which erases delineations between traditional lyric and experimental poetry.  What emerge are exciting new hybrids that invite readers in while attending to the possibilities of language.  Poets Rae Armantrout, Mary Jo Bang, and Ralph Angel were among those who lit up the crowd and helped American Hybrid sell out at the bookfair on the first day. 

But one person can only witness so much.  Thus, here's what other attendees thought of AWP:

Simply put, there’s an outstanding interview with Thomas Lynch in the new issue of Willow Springs. Lynch is a poet and an essayist—with half a dozen books of poetry and nonfiction writing to his credit. He’s also a funeral director in Milford, Michigan. “I write sonnets and I embalm,” he told Willow Springs, “and I’m happy to take questions on any subject in between those two.”

As it turns out, the space in between poetry and embalming is expansive, studded with crackling-fresh observations and gloriously shrewd remarks. I urge you to take a spin through the entire interview. Here’s a little taste of what’s to come:

On everyday life: I think most people drive around all day being vexed by images of mortality and vitality. All they’re wondering about is how they’re going to die and who they’re going to sleep with, or variations on that theme. . . .

On Roe v. Wade: Twenty-five years after Roe v. Wade we’re still carping about it—thirty years now. You have to say it’s not a great law if we’re still carping about it. Settle law when it’s settled, you know. Whatever the outcome, the way they got there was not right. Didn’t work. Hasn’t worked.

On faith: I was on a panel a couple of weeks ago at a synagogue, called, “The Same but Different.” . . . There were hospice people and social workers and clergy, and I was to give the keynote speech about funeral customs and bereavement and how we respond to death—that type of thing. The lunchtime panel was a rabbi, a priest, a pastor, and an imam. And one of the questions from the audience was, “Does religion ever get in the way of people?”

They all gave predictable answers until the imam said, “There is no trouble with Islam. Muslims, however, are troublesome.”

And I thought, Isn’t it just so? I haven’t any trouble with Catholicism or Christianity, but Catholics, myself included—and particularly the reverend clergy—can really put me through spasms of doubt and wonder. And here’s the difference: I have come to think of them as articles of faith, as something that the life of faith requires us to doubt and wonder and ask and mistrust and think it over and ask again.

On what makes us human: When anthropologists are trying to figure out the place at which that walking anthropoid crossed the human barrier, it is when the anthropoid began to notice its mortality. I mean, that is the signature event—that we do something about mortality. Other living, breathing, sexy things don’t. Cocker spaniels, rhododendrons—they don’t bother with that stuff. They don’t seem to care about others of their kind dying. We do.

Source: Willow Springs

There are many ways to divide and limit creative possibilities, but precious few opportunities for artists to collaborate.  Cinematheque Press, an independent literary imprint out of Chicago, is providing welcome space for cross-disciplinary exploration.  Each project features some combination of text and visual, audio, or cinematic art.  Their growing catalog is impressive and includes work by Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Peter Markus, Philip Jenks, and Simone Muench.  Cinematheque has also recently introduced a gorgeous online magazine, Dear Camera, whose second issue features text and film by Zachary Schomburg.  Schomburg’s “1977-2050” is both haunting and whimsical, and it’s all available with the click of a mouse. 

Sources: Cinematheque Press ; Dear Camera

Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was one of 25 “geniuses” to net one of this year’s prestigious MacArthur fellowships. We knew we had a special talent in our pages when we reprinted this lovely, touching piece of hers back in our March-April issue. Enjoy the read. And enjoy her reaction to news of the award, as quoted in the New York Times:

Ms. Adichie was celebrating her birthday and taking a bath when the phone call came. “I was thrilled and grateful,” she wrote in an e-mail message from Lagos. “I like to say that America is like my distant uncle who doesn’t remember my name but occasionally gives me pocket money. That phone call filled me with an enormous affection for my uncle!”

Villains almost always make better characters than heroes. It’s easy to understand why a person would want to be the knight in shining armor, but exploring the psyche of a “bloody, bawdy villain” like Claudius from Hamlet or O'Brien from Nineteen Eighty-Four is always more interesting and fun. The British newspaper Telegraph has compiled a nefariously enjoyable list of the 50 greatest villains in literature. It’s a list so evil, the devil himself would enjoy it.

(Thanks, Coudal.)

Image by J.J. McCullough, licensed under GNU.