Dzanc Books

A Little Help for a Literary Journal

Many of you may recall the article in a recent Poets & Writers about how the recent raise in U.S. Postal rates was going to hurt smaller magazines and literary journals - Dzanc Books has stepped in and made a difference for one such journal.

A bit from the article:

"As the Alaska Quarterly Review (AQR) moves into its twenty-sixth year of publication, having celebrated its quarter-century mark with a double issue last fall, founding editor Ronald Spatz should be all smiles. Instead, he is understandably worried that new postal rates, which have increased his mailing costs by around 50 percent, could mean that some small literary publications like AQR might not make it to their next big anniversaries."

At the time, Dzanc's Steven Gillis, wondering what could be done to help, contacted Ronald Spatz and had AQR determine just how much of an effect, monetarily, this Postal increase would have on the journal.  Once Ronald came back with his reply, Dzanc decided to send AQR a donation that would cover that difference for the 2008 mailings of the journal.  The reply?

"The donation will really help AQR!  With gratitude for your extraordinary generosity." - Ronald Spatz

If any Dzanc Books readers would like to help out other literary journals undergoing the same issues as AQR, visit our Support page and make a donation - in the notes section of either a PayPal donation, or a check, list "Lit Journal Postage Issue" and we'll earmark that donation for this ongoing problem literary journals are facing.  And, as a reminder, any such donation is being made to a 501(c)3 non-profit and you'll receive a receipt for tax purposes at the end of the year.

More Authors Sign with Dzanc!

March 18, 2008

(Ann Arbor, MI)  Dzanc Books is very excited to announce the signings of some truly exciting authors and books.  Over the past month or so, we’ve rounded out our 2009 catalogue, and having been overwhelmed by a number of fantastic manuscripts, pushed our projected list through 2010, into 2011.

In order of when they’ll be published:

Peter Selgin’s novel, Life Goes to the Movies, will be published in April 2009.  Peter was recently announced as one of the 2007 winners of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction by the University of Georgia Press, and will see his short story collection, Drowning Lessons, published this fall by them.  Peter also runs an annual workshop each June in Vitorchiano, Italy, and has published By Cunning & Craft: Sound Advice and Practical Wisdom for Fiction Writers.  He is also the fiction editor for Alimentum, and well known for his paintings.  www.peterselgin.com

Henning Koch’s short story collection, Love Doesn’t Work, will be published in June 2010.  Henning, a Swedish writer, who until recently had been living in Italy, was formerly heavily involved in the Swedish film industry as a screenwriter.  After years of seeing his words altered or deleted, he decided to go back to his original writing love – fiction, and to incredible results.  His stories are exciting, and odd, and funny, and one of the stories in this collection will be available soon in the next issue of Absinthe:  New European Writing.

Terese Svoboda’s novel, Pirate Talk, a novel in dialogue will be published in September 2010.  Beckett meets Moby Dick might be the most apt description of this work.  Terese has published widely to date, non-fiction, story and poetry collections, the novel Tin God, which was a University of Nebraska Press Flyover Fiction selected, and most recently with Black Glasses like Clark Kent, winner of the 2007 Graywolf Non-Fiction prize.

Peter Markus will publish his second title with Dzanc, and fourth story collection overall, in February 2011 when We Make Mud hits stores.  This collection will concentrate on his stories of two brothers, the dirty river they live near, mud, fish, stars and everything else that is constant in the world Peter has created and written about so feverishly this past decade.  As it was Peter’s stories that led us to find his novel, Bob, or Man on Boat (June 2008), we are thrilled to be able to publish a collection of the stories.

Dzanc Books is thrilled to be able to publish the fantastic books by these award winning authors and believe they are all excellent additions to the incredible start we have given ourselves with Roy Kesey’s, All Over (Dzanc Books, October 2007), and Yannick Murphy’s In a Bear’s Eye (Dzanc Books, February 2008), not to mention the other titles forthcoming before these new authors reach the shelves.

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All Over a Finalist

All Over by Roy Kesey, our first title, has been named a finalist in the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year short story collection category.  It's been named with some other fine titles and I'm fairly certain that as Roy approaches Ryan Seacrest on the red carpet he plans on stating that while he hopes he wins, it's just an honor to be nominated.