On Monday, Mark Sarvas reported on the launch party for Swink magazine’s second issue, which includes stories from Sam Lipsyte, Neil LaBute and Carol Test, whose “Conversational English” won the magazine’s Literary Award in Fiction prize. The issue’s “damaged darling” is a collaboration between Dan Chaon and Stacy Richter. And Michael A. FitzGerald contributes a piece called “I Heart Denis . . .
Sloppy Joe’s (“Hemingway’s favorite bar”) seeks an exemption from Florida’s ban on smoking in restaurants. The owner wants the state legislature to “redefine what it considers a ‘stand-alone bar.’” Related reading: Bar brawls in the Conch Republic (and the outcome) 24-hour Hemingway house news outlet * Look, I adore Hemingway and all, but where in Key West did he not . . .
Elaine Lafferty, the best thing to happen to Ms. magazine in years, has resigned. The Observer reports on Lafferty’s tenure at the magazine: When she started as editor in chief of Ms. in March 2003, “there was no inventory, no staff–it was like a startup, and they needed a summer issue,” said Ms. Lafferty. She assembled a masthead, with a . . .
During a panel discussion at Blue Metropolis, Montreal’s international literary festival, a prominent Canadian radio host will make the case that songwriter, poet and novelist Leonard Cohen should win the Nobel Prize in Literature. (Michael Schaub agrees, and I can think of far less deserving writers whose names have been put forward.) In 2003, Canada awarded Cohen its highest civilian . . .
No, it’s not an outtake from Freaks and Geeks. (Some of us just lived it more than others.) This photo and several more are taken from Patrick Hughes’ 1984 Tarpon Springs High School yearbook.