Next week, you can find us at Table 1832 at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference in Kansas City. We’re hoping this is a good omen; 1832 was the year Louisa May Alcott and Lewis Carroll were born, but it was also the year of the Nullification Crisis in the US and the June Rebellion in France, so who’s to say?

If you drop by our table on Friday, 1:00-3:00 PM, you can meet Lori Jakiela for an author signing. Her memoir, They Write Your Name on a Grain of Rice, is out now from Atticus Books.

Will we have merch? Stickers, bookmarks, obscurities, charcuterie plates? There’s only one way to find out!

What Literature Means to You

I’ll admit, I’m more ambivalent about going to a writing conference this year. There’s an enormous void between the ease with which American writers can celebrate literature and sing its praises for “saying something about the human condition” and the state of the human condition. There are many writers I admire who actually do use their craft to draw attention to, for example, a US-funded military committing an obvious genocide, but those writers often face the ire institutions that supposedly represent the literary community.

One recent example is particularly blunt. Bosnian-Serbian author Lana Bastašić cut ties with her German publisher, for reasons similar to Anne Boyer’s decision to step down as poetry editor at The New York Times Magazine: That the publisher’s silence on the bombardment and ethnic cleansing of Gaza is tantamount to complicity in those war crimes. In response, an Austrian literary institution then rescinded an invitation to Bastašić for a residency. Her full response to the retraction is here, but the line that stuck out to me the most is this:

“I do not know what literature means to you outside of networking and grants. To me it means, first and foremost, an unwavering love for human beings and the sanctity of human life.”

At AWP last year, I noticed an uncomfortable trend in readings and panels. Writers talked at length about the urgency of literature in the world, to address climate change, authoritarianism, economic exploitation, and war. But their solution was uncomfortably evangelical, emphasizing individual “relationships” to literature. As if writing is a savior we all just need to love harder.

Literature is not an individualist project. What is the point of reading and writing if the goal is personal advancement? What is the point of writing a dystopian novel or a memoir about grief? I agree with Bastašić that literature necessarily means centering human life. What else is the point of sharing words with each other?

I don’t want to go to a conference and hear about the power of words to change the world while literary institutions silence words intended to change the world. I want to participate in a literary institution that puts human life first. Like many of us, I’m sure, that’s why I became such an avid reader in the first place.

In the meantime, I hope you keep writing. The world needs it.

Peace,

Keene Short
Editor-in-Chief

THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

NEW ON THE ATTIC

A CONVERSATION WITH FARAH ALI
by Swetha Amit

"I wanted to see how the change in the shape of the river would cause changes in the lives of people or the geography of that place. When I began writing it, the river became a character in itself."
READ ON

BOOK REVIEW

THEY DO THE ARTISTS IN DIFFERENT VOICES
by Zachary Martin

"Art as a machine for making empathy has been a difficult position for me to shake entirely, as I imagine it also is for Benjamin Goluboff and Mark Luebbers, collaborating authors on a new poetry collection, Citizens of Ordinary Time.”
READ ON

ISSUE SIX SPOTLIGHT

A NATURAL HISTORY
by Hannah Weber

READ ON

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