21st Century Literature discussion

Do you avidly read or like a local author(s)?
Are there local literary journals you read or admire?
Are there any/many literary events, institutions, or groups active near you?

Over the years Malta's literary scene has improved greatly. Where once we were seen as a cultural desert, dare I say things are becoming exciting.

We have a yearly book fair where foreign authors come over for discussion panels - last year Naomi Klein was one of the guest speakers and she led a stimulating talk about the environment. Also that same week we had Jim Crace

There's a week long literature festival in August, where local and foreign authors come over and discuss their works. Some hold writing workshops in the process.

We have a local book prize.

Our public library is finally undergoing an extensive revamp and we've now got a space where literary events can be held.

As for local authors, the output of books is strong and the quality is of a high standard. The thing is that most are written in Maltese, which is not easy for me but,at least, a literary scene is brewing.

Those sound like some great advancements, Robert. Dare I ask if there are any Maltese English translations worth noting by you personally?

I don't do enough to support the literary scene in Nottingham. We have a very good independent bookshop (Five Leaves) that organises plenty of events, but quite a lot of these are a bit niche. I am not aware of any local journals (at least anything more local than UK).

Marc wrote: "Those sound like some great advancements, Robert. Dare I ask if there are any Maltese English translations worth noting by you personally?"

Thanks! At the moment Pierre Mejlak's book Having Said Goodnight has been translated and it won the EU prize for literature.

Oliver Friggieri's short story collection called stories before dusk (Stejjer Qabel Jidlam) have undergone the translation treatment.

There's also Francis Ebejer who I am not a fan of due to his treatment of social classes but a lot of people like his writings.

I live in Santa Cruz, CA, a somewhat isolated beach town in Northern California. We're separated from Silicon Valley by the infamous Highway 17, a winding mountain road that is actually pretty good after years of improvements but people still remember the good old days when it was just two lanes and people died every weekend so there isn't a huge surge of Google employees trying to live here yet. Yet.

In spite of this relative isolation though we're on the book tour circuit, thanks to a great indie bookstore, plus a University of California campus.

Local authors run the gamut from Jonathan Franzen to Andy Weir.

Our best quirky Santa Cruzian literary event is THE DICKENS UNIVERSE, a huge, week-long, immersive festival/reading/lecture event. You should come. Here's the link:

https://dickens.ucsc.edu/universe/ind...

I haven’t seen much of a literary scene here in Albuquerque, NM. We have local author signings at bookstores and there are lots of book clubs at the library branches. One event I found out about today is at the The Rio Rancho (our neighboring city) library. It’s being advertised as a Speed Date Author event featuring 12 local authors. Each author gets 15 minutes to talk about their book(s). Could be interesting! That’s about as exciting as it gets around here.

Re: local authors, the only one I read is George RR Martin, who lives in Santa Fe, NM. Still waiting for that last book! I recently listened to the award-winning short story Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience on the LeVar Burton Reads podcast. The author Rebecca Roanhorse lives in northern New Mexico. I plan to read some of her books. I also have a not-well known book by an Albuquerque author Howard L. Anderson- Albert of Adelaide. I haven't read it yet but plan to! I bought it because of the intriguing cover .

Lark, I should should have spotted you as a citizen of Santa Cruz! Home of Book Shop Santa Cruz and several excellent used book stores. The city that thought it wanted a mega book store then killed it. I'm a slug mama, Shakespeare Santa Cruz fan and forever feel at home there.

Marc: Funny we never discussed this: good topic! St. Petersburg, FL is not the literary center of the universe, but there are some interesting bits here. We are known for being the place where Jack Kerouac died, I believe while he was living with his mother, and I could tell you some of his old haunts: The Beau Artes and the Flamingo Bar. I kinda imagined Ginsberg and those other beats were visiting occasionally--there's some documentary I saw at our art museum that illustrated one such. The Beau Artes was also a place where supposedly Jim Morrison gave poetry readings back in his teens for the brief time he was here while his dad was a big-wig at MacDill Air Force Base, where they plan all sorts of frightening things. The sad thing is the Beau was burned down by some homophobic rednecks--the Flamingo lives on. I actually used to go see old classic movies in the Beau back in the 80s--it was kinda creepy/cool. The beat-proto-hippie history of this town has always been in sore need of revival, but maybe I'm just keeping myself too isolated these days to find its new center.
We have an old bookstore, Haslam's, that's been around for decades, but I've never seen much interesting literary stuff going on there--it's not my scene. Also our local newspaper the Tampa Bay Times (formerly St. Petersburg Times) has this annual reading festival that has lectures and book signing/ sales tables. It's a mix of locally, state, and nationally known authors: regular participants are Dennis Lehane (Of Mystic River fame), Carl Haaisen, Tim Dorsey, and Jimmy Buffett. I'm not a big fan of that Florida detective genre--I'm more for Thomas Pynchon if I'm going to go that way.Last year the big draw was Joyce Maynard. I've seen some cool lectures there, but now you're going to ask me who, and I'll have to dredge it out of my memory---it's been a few years since I've gone. They're pretty good about promoting local and upcoming authors, but unless you already know something about them, it's difficult to get excited in a whirlwind through the various tables. One I knew was one of my old college profs, Ray Arsenault, who was one of my favorite profs and an expert on civil rights and the history of the South. As you can see, the fest skews towards non-fiction, journalistic work or crime fiction, which is not my thing,, necessarily.

But, I'm sensing S.P. is going to get more literary, with lots of odd little funky shows in the many art venues we now have around town. I went to a Halloween haunted house thing last year with a literary theme--the "docents" had decorated a house with rooms that echoed famous gothic literary scenes with reading that accompanied them--that was pretty cool! And I also saw this crazy one-off show with a poetry/burlesque theme--these women recited famous women poets' work while doing an old fashioned striptease. So we may be moving on! There are open mikes all over town, but more for music than literature. There's this odd old hippie compound called the Blueberry Patch that does a mixture (favoring music), and has regular shows--I've been to a few.

I'm lucky to live in the San Francisco bay area, which has a (relatively) thriving independent bookstore community and lots of local readings. I've recently become a fan of reading series--regular gatherings that feature multiple authors. Three that I like in particular are Why There Are Words (the closest to me is in Sausalito, CA, but they are across the U.S.), Kepler's Bookstore's Story is the Thing, and Peninsula Literary. There are a few more in the city of San Francisco.

There are also great opportunities to hear authors read at open mic events such as those hosted by the SF/Peninsula Branch of the California Writers Club. All in all, an active community!

Pam wrote: "I haven’t seen much of a literary scene here in Albuquerque, NM. We have local author signings at bookstores and there are lots of book clubs at the library branches. One event I found out about to..."

A writer friend of mine makes the trek to Tucson each year for the annual festival of books on the University campus. She learned of it through colleagues in a memoir or poetry writing circle, groups which abound here in New Jersey.

http://tucsonfestivalofbooks.org/

For a small state, NJ has many sections, but among the literary events are the Dodge Poetry Festival, four days in 2018 and held in Newark, and the relatively new Morristown Festival of Books.

http://www.dodgepoetry.org/

http://morristownbooks.org/#/ms-1/1

To date, I have not been particularly a reader of local writers, other than journalists, but this year has offered the pleasure of debut books from two personal acquaintances.

Tracy wrote: "Marc: Funny we never discussed this: good topic! St. Petersburg, FL is not the literary center of the universe, but there are some interesting bits here. We are known for being the place where Jack..."

What a fun posting! Thx, Tracy.

Maggie wrote: "Lark, I should should have spotted you as a citizen of Santa Cruz! Home of Book Shop Santa Cruz and several excellent used book stores. The city that thought it wanted a mega book store then killed..."

Are you on this side of the mountains, Maggie? If not, you may not have heard the utterly tragic news that Logos, my favorite used bookstore in all the world, has closed, and the space is going to be occupied instead by what I believe is our 4th place downtown that serves artisan beers on tap. :-(

But Bookshop Santa Cruz is going strong!

It's great to hear about the various and different literary scenes from across the country.

I think I've managed to miss the National Book Festival and the Baltimore Book Festival just about every year here. I've made a couple of the Small Press Expos, which are a lot of fun. There are plenty of small writing groups and larger institutions like The Writer's Center. Only local lit journal I've read more than one copy of is probably Gargoyle Magazine (they manage to be consistently high-quality and quirky). Politics & Prose is probably the biggest bookstore name in the lit scene here in DC, but it's a pain for me to get to, so I rarely visit. There's an amazing local comics shop chain called Third Eye Comics, as well as a smaller one called Big Planet Comics (they sell and support local comics, too). When I lived closer to Baltimore, I adored going to Normals Bookstore (a collective run store selling used books, publishing an absurdist lit zine called "The Shattered Wig Review", and supporting such local authors as Blaster Al Ackerman). I've read a few of Rafael Alvarez's works (he's probably better known for his writing on several episodes of The Wire and some other TV scripts). I used to subscribe to 32 Poems Magazine (I think it was only one of the editors or founders who was local at the time. It's now based out of PA. I live in MD just outside of DC.)

Everything I've mentioned is active and well-established. I'm not up-to-date on newer groups/efforts, especially the online ones.

Lark, that's tragic. Logos! Spent many hours (and $$) there. A one of a kind institution. My daughter was at UCSC 5 years and we are both readers. Her good friend still works at Book Shop Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz has kept itself under the radar but change comes. My best wishes to the resistance!

Let me give a shout out for tidbits of the "literary scene" in my favorite "second state," Vermont. Bookshops I or my friends will go out of the way to visit include the Northshire Bookstore (!!) in Manchester, Crow Bookshop in Burlington, Bear Pond Books in Stowe (or Montpelier), and the rather overwhelming used bookstore in Plainfield, The Country Bookshop, near Goddard College. Along with a few others dotted across the state. Vermont is one of those places where you can find an author leading a discussion by scanning whatever event sheet has been printed for locals and tourists alike. Or, you can stand on the steps of the town hall in Stowe, waiting for the doors to open for the production of a play, and hear Chris Bohjalian's friends wishing him "Happy Birthday." It is a state stuffed with writers, whether permanent residents or with a retreat to concentrate.

There's quite a dynamic literary scene here in Singapore, where I live. A highly literate multi- language population, strong national library organisation, and many local writers writing in English, Chinese, Malaysia & Tamil the 4 official languages make for an exciting scene. There is also an annual writers festival with many local & international talents contributing.