I’m a month late in mentioning the 8th annual Imaginales “Festival of Imaginary Worlds†in Épinal (best known for a printmaker that’s sort of the Currier & Ives of France), but luckily enough this year has seen an explosion of a English language blog coverage: Hal Duncan, Cheryl Morgan, and David Anthony Durham especially provide detailed accounts and fun photos. (The con site itself has an English version that, where tourism sites are concerned, only slightly smacks of wonky Anglicization. Monsieur gets to say that ‘coz he’s a snobby translator très littéraire.)
Among the stories nominated for the Prix Imaginales in the Best Short Fiction category were Kelly Link’s “Stone Animals†and two nouvelles by Lionel Davoust. One of these, “L’Île close,†a meta-Arthurian fantasia, took home the prize–CONGRATULATIONS–and will be appearing (translated by yours truly, with wonderful advice from editor Delia Sherman and all this despite the author’s fluency in English) in the Interstitial Arts Foundation’s fall anthology Interfictions 2. Ah yes, this post had you fooled at first, but it is in fact a shill. By hook or by crook, I always end up pushing a book. Which leads us to this shout-out from the IAF:
Support Interfictions 2!
We live in a world of niche marketing. The Interstitial Arts Foundation brings artists together to tear those barriers down.
We are asking you now to join us in our next adventure in storming the barricades: Interfictions 2: a New Anthology of Interstitial Writing, edited by Delia Sherman & Christopher Barzak. Interfictions 2 will be published in November 2009 in collaboration with Small Beer Press.
The first volume of Interfictions, published in 2007, was hailed as “A phenomenal collection…engrossing and provocative†(Hipster Bookclub) that “belongs on the nightstand of anyone interested in the development of contemporary short fiction†(Atlanta Journal-Constitution).
This second volume features original work by a whole new set of writers who joyfully explore the big imaginative spaces between conventional genres. And this time, we’ll be reaching out to even more readers by publishing a series of free stories on the new Interfictions 2 Annex online!
What can you do to help? This extraordinary collection of interstital fiction needs your financial support. We’re asking you to sponsor not just a book, but an idea – the idea that artists need to be able to express themselves freely and directly to their audiences, without the restraints of conventional genre limitations.
Here are some ways you can help us publish Interfictions 2: » Read the rest of this entry «