January News

Dear Friends,

Happy New 2025! We’re delighted you are here with us. We wish you a year of joy and creation, and days full of enchanted reading.

A Public Space

No. 32
Perhaps this is why I feel the need to put all these scenes in order. It’s as if in stacking up these lines, one on top of the other, I align my universe a little. —Anna Ballbona, "Accidents"

Plus Suzanne Buffam, Megan Cummins, Calvin Gimpelevich, CJ Green, Cory Howell Hamada, Ucheoma Onwutuebe, Naz Riahi, Peter Trachtenberg, Yee Heng Yeh, and more. Order your copy here.

APS TOGETHER
Read The Odyssey with Stefania Heim
Tell me about a complicated man, Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost...where he went, and who he met, the pain he suffered on the sea...Now goddess, child of Zeus, tell the old story for our modern times. Find the beginning. —Homer's The Odyssey, translated by Emily Wilson

This season of APS Together begins with Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey, led by translator Stefania Heim! Starting February 5, with a final Zoom discussion March 18. Join us in reading slowly, thoughtfully, and collaboratively each day on Substack. Find the full reading schedule and register here.

GIORGIO DE CHIRICO'S ITALIAN NOVEL
I too have often dreamed and journeyed in my fantasies along these little-traveled roads where intellectual adventure carries you so far that you risk losing yourself. —Mr. Dudron by Giorgio de Chirico, translated by Stefania Heim

Do you take dreams utterly seriously? Do you wonder, wander, fantasize, and feast? Are you a painter, an art student, a poet, a muse? Then may we recommend the unclassifiable Giorgio de Chirico's Mr. Dudron, a novel that loves and critiques art in equal measure. Order the latest title from A Public Space Books here!

MASTER CLASSES
Join us this winter for a remarkable season of Master Classes, taught by Lan Samantha Chang, Amitava Kumar, Samantha Hunt, Stacey D'Erasmo, Han Ong. Treat yourself to one (or two or three) classes or give someone an unexpected gift.

Han Ong | The Story Instinct
Saturday, January 25, 2025
Join Han Ong for a Master Class to sharpen your instincts as a writer, and explore how to find the singular detail that gives a story momentum and brings your characters to life. Register here.

Stacey D’Erasmo | The Long Run: A Creative Inquiry
Saturday, February 8, 2025
How can we rejuvenate our sense of vocation as writers? In this Master Class, we will investigate the beautiful challenge of sustaining one's artistic practice for the long run. Register here.

Samantha Hunt | An Atlas of Everything
Thursday, February 20, 2025
A map is a container, and an atlas even more so. This generative Master Class will zoom through macro and miniature worlds, and help us consider the simultaneity of history, memory, the present, and the future in our writing. Register here.

APPLY! The Editorial Fellowship at A Public Space
January brings another opportunity for aspiring editors to work with A Public Space. Applications for the 2025 Editorial Fellowships open on January 15. In addition to working alongside APS staff on all aspects of the magazine, fellows have the unique opportunity of creating and overseeing an Open Call and serving as the lead editor on their selected piece. Learn more about the Editorial Fellowship, and read work by previous fellows, here.

MARK YOUR CALENDARS! The Writing Fellowship at A Public Space
Applications for the 2025 Writing Fellowships open March 1, so start preparing your manuscript now. 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.

PUBLIC ACCESS
A new month, a new year. An end to the old ones. Everything is always beginning as it ends. This month's Public Access—work from the magazine's archive, made free and open to all—features pieces about starts, finishes, and the cycles that intertwine the two.

Detail From the World
Srikanth Reddy
He would have no objection to the study of nations. / Nations occur. Continue reading.

It Was Your Birthday Again
Jennifer Chang
We never swam in the sea / is the way I now distinguish / the people who've known me long / but not very well. She knit a veil / for herself, walked under it, / and then we never swam in the sea. Continue reading.

Our Experience of Being Alive and Having to Breathe
Lea Carpenter
The sale wouldn't inspire a firing it would jet propel a rise. The CEO would later say, "Even if you beg me to fire you, I can't" Which was true. The auctioneer would return to work. The intern would keep the ribbon.  Continue reading.

ELSEWHERE
On January 15, join the Center for the Art of Translation and Mariangela Gualtieri, Natasha Trethewey, and Olivia Sears for an evening of Italian poetry. Mariangela Gualiteri will read her original poems in the Italian; Oliva Sears—founder of CAT, Two Lines journal, and an APS contributor—will share her translations afterward, with discussion to follow. The event takes place at the Fordham Gabelli Business School, at 140 West 62nd Street, and is part of Multipli Forti: Voices from contemporary Italian literature 2025.

After nearly a year in the world, My Beloved Life, A Time Outside This Time (Random House)—a novel by APS instructor and friend Amitava Kumar—will enjoy its paperback release on January 28. He'll be joined in conversation by Katie Kitamura at the Brooklyn Public Library on February 5 for a reading and discussion of the book. Preorder the paperback here, and sign up for his February Master Class on structure here!