Hi Reader,
We welcome you to this maiden
edition with an incisive and thought-provoking
Interview
with Caryl Phillips, a writer with prodigious talent and achievements, and the
2004 Commonwealth Writers Prize winner.
* * *
We open our short fiction with four interesting pieces:
Simon Kay elevates the game of pool to an art. His short story is told in
a distinctively aesthetic manner, and the story revolves around a simple moral
standpoint: one good turn deserves another. However, like every good story told with high creative
imagination, True American Artform is
bound to generate other meanings and interpretations--just take a look.
Our second story
Goodbye, Felix Pepperdine by John Dorsey will hit the reader by its
artistic beauty. We have chosen to leave the story open to the reader's own interpretation, but we hope
that from it the reader may draw some moral lessons.
Our next story explores the pains and pangs of the people living in the
developing country of Africa. Full of humour, pathos and sympathetic laughter,
Naked Branches is set against
the backdrop of a man's fruitless search for a cure to his mother's terminal illness. However,
by clever twists and turns in the plot, Peter Anny-Nzekwue establishes that sometimes
failure in human endeavours may not arise from lack of enough trying, but by the
booby traps inherent in a decadent society. A sensitive reader will obviously find this story somewhat disturbing...
Our fourth story by Nathan Graziano
appears simply as a boy's sexual encounter that goes wrong. But a discerning reader will find
that the major impulse behind Fire in the Hole
is existential.
It examines human condition and experience and shows how fate can play a major part in human
affairs: "Some men always got dealt the good hands, and others like myself had to rely on
bluffing, holding out for that one hand which may or may not ever come."
* * *
Our Poetry section is an aesthetic delight. You'll
find nine interesting poems written in different mode and mood by poets who have been
around for quite sometime. J. J. Campbell
lives in Ohio, USA and is widely published.
Ulrike Gerbig writes from Germany, and we are sure
that her "Blue Moon" will blow your mind. It is not often that you find such talent
as Lyn Lifshin, the subject of an
award-winning documentary film, Lyn Lifshin: Not Made of Glass, willing to venture
into the deep without first "testing the water." But she gracefully accepted our invitation to
contribute to this maiden edition.
All the poems in this section are carefully chosen to meet every artistic need. So no
matter your taste and preference, you're sure to find some of these poems aesthetically nourishing.
* * *
What more can I say? In this age of Mars
exploration the sky is de-limit--you catch the pun?--so we are aiming far
beyond. Today, we've made an irrevocable pledge to serve you with the best of literary
fiction every three months. So our next edition will be in December,
yes, December 2004, by the grace of God. And it'd be specially packaged to lighten
your Christmas mood. It's a promise.
Enjoy yourself!
