Which Way AI?

News

The question remains, several months into the introduction of ChatGPT: What will be the impact of the new technology upon today’s literary scene?

Botbooks have already begun to flood onto Amazon and other book and literature outlets. Quality of the offerings to date has been lacking, to say the least. Those who believe they can create something adequate or excellent with their prompts will likely be lost amid the mass mob of bot-generated trash.

New Pop Lit has been at the forefront of those engaging in pushback against the plutocrat-funded, piracy-fueled change.

FIRST, our “Save the Writer!” petition has hit 1,000 names– not bad for an effort backed by no institutions, ideologues, or prominent personalities. Only by everyday artists and writers. Please sign, if you haven’t already.

SECOND, we’ve begun a new blog, in some ways a new site– Fast Pop Lit— with which we can post ideas and arguments, creativity and satire, faster, to keep up with the speed of change but also to offer an actual difference, not just from bot work but also from other literary alternatives. Think Substack, refuge of established writers, whose writings are too long for an online environment– especially phones– and most (not all) of whose offerings are absolutely boring.

We seek to present with Fast Pop an underground sanctuary from the mass-packed jammed-together gray bleak city of choices– like a cool dark underground coffeeshop: small, artsy, and strikingly different from aboveground insanity. Which, let’s face it, is swiftly being taken over by bot people, like an influx of zombies.

Latest post: a poetic Sneak Preview of our next NPL feature.

Then after that will be satire. Remember, it’ll come fast. Blink and you’ll miss it.

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.

House Pets of Literature

News

“House pets” may be too strong a term to refer to the twenty-one American novelists featured in Granta magazine’s new issue. BUT, with one potential exception, none of the twenty-one is out to shock the literary establishment with contrary viewpoints– or with new ways of looking at the literary art. That’s left for upstart outfits like ourselves.

The London/New York literary establishments have marshaled their resources to stress the importance of this Granta issue. In the U.S., Slate, The Millions, The Center for Fiction, Library Journal, L.A. Times, Lit Hug; Lucas Wittmann, Laura Miller, Nick Moran, Barbara Hoffert, Michael Schaub, Carolyn Kellogg, Emily Temple; all the usual critical advocates– to the prestigious Guardian newspaper in the U.K. WE alone present the other side of things.

The key in this world is seeing issues and subjects three-dimensionally. One should never accept without question a flat presentation. What the mandarins of culture wish you to see. You might miss what’s really happening.

And so, at our News blog, our perspective on the Granta issue. Worth a look.

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Also, please consider your candidates for the All-Time American Writers Tournament. Who’s your choice? If you have one, or several, email us with a name or names, reasons, or rationalizations. We’re at newpoplit AT gmail.com.

Thanks!

(Cat photo c/o Jamie Lockhart.)

New Pop Lit Speaks

Announcement, Events, News

Attention All Writers!

Especially if you live in the Detroit area. New Pop Lit editors Karl Wenclas and Kathleen Crane will be doing a presentation for NaNoWriMo at the Troy Public Library on 11/17. Details at our News page here.

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ALSO, we’re still promoting our Fun Pop Poetry feature. We have several cat poems coming up and we’re shy at least one good cat photo. Send your candidates in .jpg format to funpoppoetry@gmail.com. Thanks!

(Cat photo c/o Scott Cannon– same cat to be featured in a new poem.)

 

Help a Poet!

News

Merry Christmas! As this is a season for giving, and thinking of others, we have news that one of the best spoken word poets in the country needs help. Read about it here.

What can be said about poet Michael D. Grover is that he’s an authentic undergrounder who lives his art. In the tradition of William Blake and so many others. He’s also evidence of the fact that at the grass roots level, poetry lives, propelled with energy, emotion, and power in a way it never could in the stultifying atmosphere of the ivory tower.

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After Christmas we’ll present our end-of-year wrap-up. Then, for 2016, we are lining up much strikingly original work from some of the nation’s– and world’s– most exciting writers.

Happy holidays!

Surviving the Dally

News

Quite an event!

Detroit’s “Dally in The Alley” street festival has more authenticity than any music festival you’ll ever attend. A neighborhood block party gone out of control. Total DIY. No corporate sponsors. No Budweiser banners. No beer logos.

It’s also quite a bit less genteel than your garden variety New Yorker book festival with its bland Jonathan Franzen-style authors. The Dally takes place in Detroit after all. Not Manhattan or Brooklyn. We were one of the few literary outfits represented at the event. Our goal is to make pop lit as much a part of people’s everyday life as music– of which at the Dally there was a lot of.

Read our report on the Dally, and how we did at it, at our News blog here.

Sabrina’s Chilling Adventures

News

Happy Monday, readers. I hope a little bit of the Halloween spirit is still with you…

New Pop Lit News’ Lloyd Poast updates us on an interesting reincarnation of the much-loved comic series, Sabrina: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina takes the teen down a zombie-strewn path and issue #2 comes out Wednesday. Enjoy!