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Issue number three of Swink — the "bi-coastal, biannual print magazine dedicated to identifying and promoting literary talent in both established and emerging writers," edited by Leelila Strogov — will be out officially on Friday. Here's the table of contents and Strogov's editor note:
If there’s anything I’ve learned from editing Swink, it’s that evaluating manuscripts is much like evaluating friends; you know something special is happening almost right away. From Deirdre Shaw’s Dixon, in which a woman’s marriage is threatened by a menacing dog, to Pete Jensen’smemoir contemplating failure amidst a sea of lingerie, to Lauren Slater’s Tripp Lake, an essay on being human and inadequate—I had already decided from the very first pages that these were storytellers with whom I wanted to travel the distance.
As an editor, it’s been my job (at least in part) to introduce our readers to the kind of work that will awaken a sense of discovery and surprise. A powerful few words can serve as an electric shock, forcing the minds of the most complacent to suddenly resume breathing. So here in our third issue, I hope you’ll find a few pieces that make you forget the bills that are piling up, the laundry that needs to be done, the time.
Along with fiction, poetry and peregrinations, there is an interview with Janet Fitch, author of Paint It Black and White Oleander, by Deborah Vankin. Excerpt:
Swink: You conjure sadness and loss so vividly in Paint It Black, it’s almost painful. Did you lose someone, tragically, that you loved?JF: I was in a relationship that was pretty intense at the time, and when it broke up, that certainly influenced the story, that intensity. But this has been the question with everyone I’ve lost—relatives, the loss of my grandmother who really saw me, believed in me. What do you do when you lose someone who sees something in you? How do you keep that alive in yourself once they’re gone, how do you take on their vision? Or can you?
Swink's issue is usually followed by events in Los Angeles and New York.