2023 was a wonder, beautifully and sometimes bewilderingly so. It was a year in which, among other things, I went from seeming bliss to whelming grief to vivifying acceptance and profound awakening. While there have been and continue to be many things about 2023 to be angry and sad about, to rebel against, etc., there are also many things for me to celebrate, praise, express gratitude for:
Kimberly Ann Lyons’s “Coffee with Lavender,” which I published in Big Other, was subsequently published in The Best American Poetry 2023.
Tina May Hall’s “The Extinction Museum #506: Home Pregnancy Test, c. early 2000s,” which I published in Big Other, was subsequently published in Best Microfiction 2023.
In 2023, I launched Subversity, Big Other‘s online para-academy, a “community of dissensus,” where we collectively examined vital experimental, innovative texts written by engagingly unruly authors. Through Subversity, I facilitated two ten-month seminars: “Innovative Fiction” and “Experimental Poetry,” which met monthly for ten months to deeply study the most recent books of some of the world’s finest authors. Stay tuned for announcements of course offerings for 2024, each course led by a stellar literary artist!
2023 saw the publication of the following 2023 books, all of which feature writing previously published in Big Other:
Jaswinder Bolina’s English as a Second Language and Other Poems (Copper Canyon Press)
Robert Coover’s Open House (O/R Books)
Rikki Ducornet’s The Plotinus (Coffee House Press)
Rigoberto González’s To the Boy Who Was Night: Poems: Selected and New (Four Way Books)
Lance Olsen’s Always Crashing in the Same Car (FC2)
Aimee Parkison and Meg Pokrass’s Disappearing Debutantes (Outpost19)
Dawn Raffel’s Boundless as the Sky (Sagging Meniscus Press)
Hao Guag Tse’s The International Left-Hand Calligraphy Association (Tinfish Press)
John Yau’s Tell it Slant (Omnidawn)
On Sep 15, 2023, I hosted the 2022 Big Other Book Awards Ceremony. Recognizing excellence in literature published in 2022 and supporting the vital work of innovative writers and adventurous presses, I announced the winners of the 2022 Big Other Awards in each of the following categories: fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and translation. A Readers’ Choice Award and awards for lifetime achievement and outstanding service to the literary community was also presented.
On October 13, 2023, I celebrated Big Other’s 14th birthday.
I published the following artists, literary and otherwise, in Big Other in 2023:
Alistair Ian Blyth, Kim Chinquee, Leisha Douglas, Elaine Equi, Melanie Hyo-In Han, Andrew Joron, Tom La Farge, Michael Leong, David Ohle, Joe Milazzo, Joe Sacksteder, Jerome Sala, Cole Swensen, Michael Templeton, William Walsh, Andrew C. Wenaus, Richard Wertime, John Yau, and Jess Yuan. See the anthology of all this exemplary work below!
In other words, I’m very fortunate to have experienced so much love, joy, and wonder this year. And I take none of this for granted.
So let’s dream together in 2024, that is, let’s think, imagine, discern, wonder, play, make, create, build, laugh, dance, create, enact, reap, realize, and sustain together, in other words, love together!
Big Other Anthology 2023
Two Poems
Cole Swensen
Four Poems
Elaine Equi
Li Shangyin Enters Manhattan
John Yau
Three Poems
Leisha Douglas
Crusoe’s Islands
Jess Yuan
Two Poems
Joe Milazzo
Two Poems
Tom La Farge
More from “Disorientations”
Michael Leong
Lunch with a Dead Beat
David Ohle
Five Fictions
Kim Chinquee
A Vital, Empathetic Act of Witness: On Emily Jungmin Yoon’s Ordinary Misfortunes
Melanie Hyo-In Han
Misdirection as Mapping the Periphery: On Tobias Carroll’s Ex-Members
Joe Sacksteder
The Mysterious Afterlife of Revolutionary Events: Jim Feast’s Karl Marx, Private Eye
Jerome Sala
A Novel Deliverance from Evil: A Review of Elle Nash’s Deliver Me
William Walsh
Nietzsche as Old and New Myth: A Review of D. Harlan Wilson’s Nietzsche: The Unmanned Autohagiography
Michael Templeton
Literature as Time-Space Travel: On DeWitt Henry’s Foundlings: Found Poems from Prose
Richard Wertime
Polyphony, Intercalation, and “Re-Remembrance” in Shushan Avagyan’s A Book, Untitled
Alistair Ian Blyth
An Aerobatic Alogue: Andrew ± Joron ± Wenaus on the Novum
Andrew Joron and Andrew Wenaus
