Month: July 2021

New Pop Lit’s Summer Reading Festival!

Announcement, Pop Lit Fiction

The summer people choked the road, filled up the taverns, trashed the beachfront, and parked everywhere and anywhere, even in places they shouldn’t.

So begins the feature story kicking off our impromptu Summer Reading Festival 2021, “People Ruin Everything,” by Anne Leigh Parrish, one of the best short story writers going. I don’t know if a story could better capture how everyone feels right now after eighteen months of pandemic, of interruption in our lives we naively thought would be over after three weeks or at most three months, but goes on. The story captures the mood: frustration that may seem illogical, but it’s there, in all of us, as undercurrent to the resumption of our lives.

Anyway, it’s a short story which should be in The New Yorker, but we’re fortunate and grateful to have it at New Pop Lit, and trust you’ll agree with our opinion of it.

She thought about the note they left. She didn’t like being lied to. Some people lived on lies, made a career of them, in some cases. Just look at any politician. She hated people who thought they were smarter than everyone else, who made getting over a full-time job. They’d laughed as they walked up to the car, and they were probably still laughing wherever they were now and wherever they were going.

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What about the rest of our Festival? In coming weeks we’ll be featuring more great new fiction, as well as re-announcing selected readings– fiction and poetry– previously featured at this site. Is that all? NO!

OUR OPEN MIC RETURNS

We’re also restarting our Open Mic feature with a reading of a terrific poem by the UK’s Alisha J. Prince, “Heaven Bound.” Click the link and take a listen.

NEW YORK MEDIA NEWS

We ALSO have at our NPL News Blog a short article about curious doings at iconic Newsweek magazine. Is this the direction in which other New York publications will be headed? What do you think?

POP LIT PRINT READING

FINALLY, check out the print publications we now offer at our POP SHOP— where we’re free to be somewhat more experimental, in attitude, words, and design, than what we present here, as we attempt to cut new paths toward the literary future.

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Anyway, we hope everyone has a glorious summer– and does a lot of reading!

(Featured art: “Two Girls Reading” by Pablo Picasso.)

What Are Zeens?

News

INVENTING THE NEW

Zeens are a book-zine hybrid, with roots in the print-zine scene of the 1990s, taken to a whole other level of quality and design.

Zeens are a totally new product unlike anything before seen.

Zeens are a way to rejuvenate the literary game– a path toward connecting intelligent people from all spheres to the joys of literary reading.

Zeens are instantly attractive, accessible, and appealing, modestly packaged yet wonderfully colorful. They shout, “Take me, read me, collect me!”

They’re like finding a glowing treasure, the unexpected gift.

Purchase your zeen here, today.

New Summer Fiction

Pop Lit Fiction

TODAY we present a slice-of-life story by Alex Law, “West Columbus,” about a young woman working as a stripper in a dive bar in a bleak neighborhood of that name. Life in America today? Is the story social commentary? Or merely a great short read?

Maybe it’s just literature— writing of rounded reality and depth which can encompass a number of meanings and viewpoints. Read it for yourself and see.

She ignores him. She isn’t afraid. His casual, daylight misogyny couldn’t be more boring. She lets the silence eat him alive. Bite by bite. Eventually his testosterone fades under the uncomfortable sideways glances from other passengers. He and his stink go away. Every bus Cadie has ever been on has men like this.

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(Featured art: “Nude Woman Reading” by Robert Delaunay.)

New Pop Lit Reinvents the Literary Journal

Announcement

CREATING THE NEW

We’re reinventing literary publications with innovations in writing and design, as seen in our latest print publication–

–the first genuine step toward a fully cubist/three-dimensional literary presentation combining words and art into a kaleidoscope of creation of a kind never before seen. Neo-modernism? Or: Neo-Pop?

Available at our POP SHOP.

Bold and readable, the future is upon us, NOW.

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Fiction for the Fourth

Pop Lit Fiction

HELLO! Another long holiday weekend is upon us, so we’ve taken the opportunity to present a slice of July 4th fiction, coordinating with the currently-unpopular theme of patriotism. The story: “The Deserters” by New Pop Lit regular Nick Gallup, whose work never disappoints. Gallup’s story is a reminder that America, yes, has occasionally done a few things right– one of them taking on head-on that embodiment of villainy, the Nazi war machine. This tale gives us a glimpse of the all-crucial Battle of the Bulge– putting you right there. Worth a read.

His depleted company followed him as they merged with hundreds of others from their division as they headed towards St. Vith, Belgium. The dirt road was hard and icy, and guys kept slipping and falling. It was bitter cold, and they wrapped their green scarfs around their faces and pulled their wool overcoats tight against their bodies to ward off the furious winds whipping them with snow and sleet. Many of the men they met up with had either lost or abandoned their weapons, and they just slumped forward into the wind, walking as fast as they could to escape. Lappy couldn’t see their faces, but he could read the defeat and despair in their owl-sized eyes.

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Art: “Breakfast in the Snow (Belgium)” by Robert N. Blair.