PEN America 8: Making Histories

We won't have the print edition before the end of the month, but in the meantime, excerpts are available at PEN.org. This issue focuses on the ways that contemporary writers are re-imagining the past. From the editor's note by M Mark:

At the start of the twenty-first century, borders in the literary landscape continue to shift and blur: novelists mine historical archives and use imagination to fill in the gaps, essayists play with fiction’s tone and texture, memoirists turn to poetry, poets turn to reportage. And writers in all of these modes turn to the past to get a hold on the present, inventing histories for themselves and others. In the narratives and conversations collected here, they consider the countless stories, told and retold, which make up the fiction we’ve agreed to call History.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be highlighting some of the contributors. In the meantime, read some more...

(The photos above, like the new cover photograph affixed to the right, are by Jeff Brouws.)