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February News

February 4, 2025

Art Smith


A PUBLIC SPACE NO. 32
I had some of the best and most pleasant senses of my body on those platforms. This had nothing to do with exhibitionism or my appearance, but the knowledge that my actual body, the atoms, follicles, and personality forming myself, constituted the perfection these artists had to get down. —Calvin Gimpelevich, “Eye and Mind”

Plus Peter Trachtenberg on the oral history of Westbeth. Anna Ballbona on memory as a cubist painting. Jack Boucher apportions our sympathies. Yordanka Beleva on what is to remain missing. And more. Order your copy, or better yet subscribe, here.



APS TOGETHER
Read The Odyssey with Stefania Heim
Now listen, lords. You keep on coming to this house every day, to eat and drink, wasting the wealth of someone who has been away too long. Your motives are no secret. You want to marry me. I am the prize. So I will set a contest.
—Homer, The Odyssey, translated by Emily Wilson

APS Together begins this Wednesday, February 5! Join us each day as we read with Stefania Heim. Find the full reading schedule here, and join on Substack for daily questions and comments.



A PUBLIC SPACE BOOKS
Stefania Heim on Mr. Dudron as Odysseus
Mr. Dudron is Odysseus the storyteller (Dudron’s sculptor friend is “enticed by the promise of hearing Mr. Dudron tell stories”). He is Odysseus returning home over and over and over again throughout the novel, having braved each day’s ordinary perils. But he is also Odysseus trying to return home to some past, idealized state of art. For Dudron, as for Odysseus, that home is a kingdom threatened by antagonists—modern art critics falsely declaring their love just like Penelope’s suitors. Each hero fears that home no longer exists.

Order your copy of Mr. Dudron, Giorgio de Chirico's posthumous novel translated by Stefania Heim, here.



THE EDITORIAL FELLOWSHIP
Apply by February 15
"Why are you showing me this? Learning to ask this question, and to ask it insistently, is crucial to good writing and editing" (Louis Harnett O'Meara, 2024 Editorial Fellow). Since 2019, the Editorial Fellowship at A Public Space has provided hands-on support to a new generation of editors. Two Editorial Fellows will be selected for a six-month working fellowship that is designed to give mentorship and training in editing and independent publishing. Learn more about the 2025 Editorial Fellowship, and find the form to apply, here.



PUBLIC ACCESS
This month's Public Access—work from the magazine's archive, made free and open to all—features pieces selected and edited by past Editorial Fellows.

Where Are You and Where Is My Money
Ucheoma Onwutuebe
Edited by Lydia Mathis, 2023 Editorial Fellow
I type this with one hand and with the other I clutch my chest, kneeling naked under the glow of a full moon. You do not want to trifle with the curses of a pained woman. That 700K will bring you to ruin, ruin more devastating than madness. Mark my words. Continue reading.

Return Mail
H. L. Kim
Edited by Ruby Wang, 2022 Editorial Fellow
Memory is a fish out of water. The fish inside the water nibbles on our hooks, the curvatures of silence and questionings. Our fishing rod never lies. To the fish, it nods in agreement and excitement. This is when we reel in the fish. Continue reading.

The Yellow Iris
Huan He
Edited by Miguel Coronado, 2021 Editorial Fellow

He lifts his head skyward,
and rain takes the shape of a boy
. Continue reading.

Our Language
Yohanca Delgado
Edited by Taylor Michael, 2020 Editorial Fellow

Ciguapas are always women. This is true, though no one asks why. I think it has something to do with our powers of escaping. And because we are women, the literature has much to say about the way we look. Continue reading.



THE WRITING FELLOWSHIP
Opens March 1
The APS Writing Fellowship supports early career writers who embrace risk in their work and their own singular vision. Established in 2014, the fellowships have supported over thirty writers, including Mahreen Sohail, Deborah Jackson Taffa, Arinze Ifeakandu, Jai Chakrabarti, Kate Doyle, Bruna Dantas Lobato, Gothataone Moeng, and LaToya Watkins. Learn more about the Writing Fellowship here.




UPCOMING MASTER CLASSES

Stacey D’Erasmo | The Long Run: A Creative Inquiry
Saturday, February 8, 2025
Whether you’ve written four books or are just starting out, you may have grappled with how you’re going to sustain yourself on all levels: creatively, financially, emotionally, metaphysically. In this Master Class, we will investigate the beautiful challenge of the long run as practitioners and artistic citizens. Register here.

Amitava Kumar | Yes, Voice, Of Course, But Damn. It’s Structure That’s Key
Saturday, February 22, 2025
What really makes any piece of writing work effectively is a strong or inventive structure. In this Master Class we will examine different uses of structure in nonfiction (Janet Malcolm, John Berger, Claudia Rankine) and fiction (William Maxwell, Amy Hempel, Sheila Heti). Register here.

Lan Samantha Chang | Ghost Stories
Thursday, February 27, 2025
In this Master Class we will explore ghost stories—and the ways they work to create maps of human trauma, unfinished business, or love that exists outside of convention. Register here.



A PUBLIC SPACE AT THE NEW SCHOOL
On February 27, from 5:30 to 7:00 pm, join us for a reading and conversation with contributors Megan Cummins, Peter Trachtenberg, and APS editor Brigid Hughes to celebrate the publication of A Public Space No. 32. The New School, at Wollman Hall on 65 West 11th Street, is kindly hosting. Join for refreshments, discussion, and festivity. A Public Space No. 32 will be available to purchase and the event is free of charge. RSVP here.



CONTRIBUTOR NEWS

“These dark, devastating stories are love meditations, each offering a secret lesson on how to navigate our new world as woman, daughter, mother, artist.” —Deb Olin Unferth

A heartfelt congratulations to APS contributor Corinna Vallianatos, whose collection Origin Stories comes out with Graywolf Press on February 4. Read her incisive story “A Lot of Good It Does Being in the Underworld” in A Public Space No. 31.

Thanks to Venuti’s keen editorial eye and crisp translation, this stands as a brilliant record of Buzzati’s playful experimentation and lifelong obsessions.
Publishers Weekly

We're delighted to see another Lawrence Venuti translation out in the world. The Bewitched Bourgeois by Dino Buzzati, translated from the Italian by Venuti, is out from NYRB Classics. Read his translation from the Catalan of “Accidents,” by Anna Ballbona, in A Public Space No. 32.


ELSEWHERE
My current muse is the eighteenth-century cabinetmaker Robert Manwaring. In 1765, he published the not-so-humbly titled The Cabinet and Chair-Maker’s Real Friend and Companion, or The Whole System of Chair Making Made Plain and Easy. Oddly, no originals made by his hand or from his workshop seem to exist. But recently two chairs attributed to his designs have been rescued from storage and are on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, including one in the “The Calculated Curve” in Gallery 752, one of the most beautiful rooms in the American Wing. The treasures in the side galleries! —APS contributing editor Annie Coggan

In preparation for this month's APS Together reading of Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey, I've been listening to Ian McKellen read the Robert Fagles translation. “Rosy-fingered dawn” in his voice—in hearing it, it's like an anchor, not a mnemonic device but a satisfying return to an old and known friend. —APS contributing editor John Haskell

Sighted at last week's Lit Mag Mixer at McNally Jackson Seaport: The Literature of Procrastination. A perfect reading list for February (to replace those still unresolved New Year's resolutions): Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys, Fanon by John Edgar Wideman, Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney, The Evenings by Gerard Reve, The Diaries of Franz Kafka, and more.

“There are categories of human enterprise that are not well organized or supported by market forces. Family life, religious life, public service, pure science, and of course much artistic practice: none of these operates very well when framed simply in terms of exchange value.... Any community that values these things will find non-market ways to organize them. It will develop gift-exchange institutions dedicated to their support.” Revisiting “Being Good Ancestors,” Lewis Hyde on arts funding, from the archives of The Kenyon Review.

We're delighted to partner with the Academy for Teachers on Stories Out of School, an annual flash-fiction contest honoring teachers, “the most fascinating, difficult, and important job on the planet.” Read this year's winning piece by Anne P. Beatty, along with work from finalists Mark Mayer and Anjali Sachdeva, selected by this year's judge, Rebecca Makkai, here.


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Stories Out of School is an annual flash-fiction contest created by the Academy for Teachers to honor "the most fascinating, difficult, and important job on the planet."

January 6, 2025


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