This afternoon at Lulu’s, the children’s hair salon and toy store on Fifth Avenue near Flatbush, where Daughter was getting a haircut, Sister was having her bangs trimmed, and Ducky was playing with a stroller and stuffed animals, I ran into Marybeth Batcha, publisher of One Story, which is a very ambitious, small-sized literary magazine with one story in it, published in Brooklyn 18 times a year.
I am a subscriber and it’s such a treat to get my copy of One Story every three weeks or so in the mail. Mary Beth and I decided that next winter there’s going to be a One Story reading at Brooklyn Reading Works. So stay tuned.
Take a look at the One Story site and think about subscribing to this Brooklyn-grown venture that is garnering quite a national reputation.
Speaking of stories, my good friend Nancy Graham has a piece of short fiction in this month’s Culture Star Reader. Nancy Graham’s poems have been published in Aught, Chronogram and Poetry Superhighway. Her fiction appears in the latest issue of Prima Materia, a literary annual of Hudson Valley writing. Her chapbook, SOMNILOQUIES, is forthcoming from Pudding House Publications. She lives with her husband and two children in Kingston, New York. The story is called Warm-Chair Attrition. Here’s an excerpt:
The young woman watches the man with the newspaper and wills him to say something shocking about himself. This is the last day before she will pack the last of her things and fly to California, and find a job with help from her sister. Her flight leaves two days from now. The memos she will spend the day writing relate to her work. Other people will pull them from a file and follow the directions in them, parceling her job into a dozen bits for others in her department-that way her leaving won’t cause turmoil in the company, and they won’t have to pay anyone to do her work after she’s gone. The company has been getting smaller in this way, and the staff’s jobs incrementally larger, for five years. At the same time, the employees have worked more slowly and less efficiently, writing their memoirs on the sly, idly fingering their tickler files, or making sculptures of binder clips. They have left their jobs in spirit but remain at their desks in body. There are so many companies where this is happening that the companies have coined a name for it; they call the phenomenon ‘warm chair attrition.’ Read More in Culture Star Reader
In the same issue, there is also an interview with one of Nancy’s mentors, Lydia Davis:
Q: How should a writer develop a unique voice?
Lydia Davis: I would say there are a few things to think about. One is what I said earlier, about being in absolute control of the mechanics of grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, so that you can do anything you like with your language. (Look at Beckett’s later writings to see what odd things he does, which he couldn’t have done without that mastery.) Then observe the world and yourself with a very careful, accurate eye. Don’t say the water is blue if it’s actually a pinkish muddy color. Bring those accurate observations into your fiction. Don’t sentimentalize: be honest and accurate about your feelings and thoughts. And be open to different ways of writing. Don’t be too cautious. If you can aim towards all of that, you’ll probably develop your own distinctive voice and style.