 Prose: journalism, non-fiction, essays, political manifestos, criticism, literary theory. "Non-fiction" is such a reductive term for something that has, and will stand on its own since well before Hazlitt's mastery of the form. Projected Letters publishes some of the best examples of the encompassing genre, from Conrado's monumental essay on Portuguese poetry after the 1970's revolution in that once-turbulent country; to Barbara and Michael Foster's historicist defense of their sexuality; to M.G. Stephens's exploration of shit in "The Poetry Project;" to Nola Gaye Schiff's extraordinary Haiti Brief, a first-person account of the Aristide ouster and reinstauration in Haiti — still topical today.
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Andy Bailey
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 Andy Bailey discusses the impact of pillory 2.0: web based criminal reports, accessible by all. Have these new web sites crossed the line between public reportage and permananent public prosecution without trial? The stumpedonline.com is reviewed along with Bailey's own funny and downright terrifying anecdotes. |
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Mark Spitzer
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A Gartymology
 Garfish: Like "pike," the word "gar" comes from a long, skinny weapon; it's the Old English word for spear. Hence, "garfysshe" (Middle English) is an Anglo-Saxon spearfish, and the garfish is its direct descendant, hailing straight from the Cretaceous Period a hundred million years ago—the actual still-existing fish having evolved a whole lot less than its brief etymology. |
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Phillipe Martial
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 Phillipe Martial's extensive apologia for his formal technique. Absent from the literary scene for some forty years, Martial has made a stunning entry into French poetry. A unique take on art and the artist, Martial has found his stride.
Translated by J. Pailler |
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M.G. Stephens
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No one who lived in the East Village during the 1960s can forget the foetid smell in the tenement hallways and the reek of garbage on the street. Parallel with the journey which young poets made down Avenue B to clubs like Slugs was another kind of ordure a world away where the Vietnam War was being fought. |
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Barbara Foster
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For years I sawed myself in half emotionally. This condition resulted from my double life: daytime a married academic, nighttime a Greenwich Village free spirit. I was happily wed to Michael — a former Brooklyn street gang leader who had gone to Harvard — yet I was free to see other men. |
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Júlio Conrado
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The events on April 25, 1974 found most Portuguese writers politically united in a large antifascist front, well-versed in the art of evading the censorship of Salazar and Caetano with all kinds of tricks, in order to convey their message of protest to a socially conscious audience, able to read the calls for change between the lines. Then it became necessary to learn how to write in freedom. |
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Gregor Milne
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We need a clear topography, as flawed in its own way as the more esoteric manifestations of literary theory, but nevertheless one which we will find useful as we approach the subject. I will employ a little hocus-pocus in my approach to the metathetical work, by taking it as a complete: an organ, a living being, a city—a total nation. The work is before us, thought-out, written, sworn over, torn up, taped back together, edited and given up for publication. |
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Erich Roby Sysak
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I've always wanted to be successful as a writer, to find the rhythms of my own stories and a voice others wanted to hear. I've studied for eleven years, and never lived the moment I have so often imagined: holding a freshly-published story or reading a congratulatory letter from a first-rate editor. You might say writing is its own reward, but that's bullshit. |
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Nola Gaye Schiff
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Almost 10 years have passed and Jean-Bertrand Aristide has failed to improve the lot of the Haitian people who trusted him so completely in 1994. A political crisis stemming from the flawed elections of 2000 has spurred bloody rebellion and Aristide finds himself in the Central African Republic, deposed for the second time. Aristide claims that the US forced him out, violating Haiti's fragile constitution. The circumstances of his exile are indeed murky and demand independent investigation. |
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Prose