Open City presents today's best new writers and artists, energizing the literary-journal format for today's readers by blending daring, edgy voices with classic storytelling. The magazine is also known for presenting writing and artwork by popular alternative rock musicians, such as Stephen Malkmus, David Berman, Thurston Moore, and Dean Wareham. Open City #20 features stories by Chuck Kinder (author of The Honeymooners), Mark Poirier, and Cynthia Weiner; poetry by Eamon Grennan, C.K. Williams, Eileen Myles, and Carolyn Forche; and artwork by Alix Lambert and Lord of the Rings star Viggo Morensen.

Open City #20

Paul Bowles

Scott, Smith

Maxine Swann

Joanna Yas

Reference

Open City Books

Some Hope marks the U.S. debut of Edward St. Aubyn, highly acclaimed in the United Kingdom as one of the most original, intelligent, and acerbically witty voices of our time. From Provence to New York to Gloucestershire, through the savageries of a childhood with a tyrannical father and an alcoholic mother, to a young adulthood fraught with dissolute behavior, we follow Patrick Melrose's search for redemption amid a crowd of glittering social dragonflies whose vapidity is the subject of his most stinging and memorable barbs. At once hilarious and deeply moving, Some Hope — originally published in England as three separate novels — is a stunningly authentic depiction of a man's journey to and from the farthest limits of the human gamut.

Some Hope: A Trilogy

Literature & Fiction

St.Aubyn, Edward

Humor & Satire

A literary magazine of fiction, poetry, and artwork, Open City has a youthful, adventurous spirit and an uncanny knack for finding vibrant and original voices. It’s a rare cultural phenomenon: a literary journal that entices readers and writers from each new generation, and makes people genuinely excited about literature and the thrill of discovering something fresh. Open City #22, a special double-sided fiction/nonfiction issue, features writing by Sam Lipsyte, Edmund White, Stanley Crouch, Priscilla Becker, Matthew Kirby, Ann Hillesland, and a stunning fiction debut by Suhay Rosario.

Open City #22: Fiction/Nonfiction

Jocko Weyland

Sam Lipsyte

Priscilla Becker

Herbert Gold

Jonathan Baumbach

Open City Magazine

Leni Zumas

Vestal McIntyre

Jerry Stahl

Vince Passaro

United States

GOODBYE, GOODNESS is a sad but ultimately (sort of) triumphant story about the weight of personal history and the obligations of the present, about the relationships that construct our lives while simultaneously destroying them. Hayward is the great grandson of an eccentric baron of the gilded age named Finn, a man who built the first roads across the country, famous for their unearthly glow in the moonlight, the inventor of the first Sea World, an attraction that would showcase the cities of the future, and a lover of Annie Oakley, a character who deeply influenced our ideas of the American frontier. His massive legacy has ruled the generations after him and Hay’s family has been alternating between ill-conceived plots to shore up the family fortune and great hemorrhages of waste and abandon, massive purchases quickly forgotten, drunken fishing trips and even drunker prep school reunions. The novel opens with Hay recovering from a concussion in a beach house that he has broken into, having obviously gone through hell but telling the reader nothing of how he’s gotten there. In interconnecting flashbacks we see the story of his life; his early experiences with his father, his meeting at Yale of his friends Will and Kimmel, a post college romance in New York that turns into full time care-taking of an insane woman, and an eventual overtaking by alcoholism with a crash landing on the west coast. Exploring the past and the present of a deeply unconventional family and using episodes taken from Annie Oakley's actual diary, Brumbaugh illuminates the narrative of a life separated from normalcy.

Goodbye, Goodness: A Novel

Brumbaugh, Sam

Contemporary

From a young writer whose stories have graced the pages of today's most exciting literary journals, comes a masterfully elegant, sexy, and surprising debut. The publication of Rachel Sherman's first book heralds the arrival of a singularly fresh and remarkably assured new voice. In this brilliantly original story collection, she evokes the wonders and horrors of a young woman's life, from girl to teenager to adult, through crushes, sex, family, and the agonies and ecstasies of finding one's way. Sherman's beautifully direct and deceptively simple prose produces accessible, shockingly real narratives that combine a disarming sexual edge with great sensitivity and humor. From a high school girl's crush on her female teacher, to a family's serenity threatened by the presence of a sexy Danish au pair, to a pubescent girl's sexually outrageous soldier pen-pal, all the way to a young couple's horrifying yet life-affirming experience of learning to love their brain-injured newborn twins, this collection wends its way around the deepest of struggles with unusual frankness and wisdom. Fans of A. M. Homes, Mary Gaitskill, Mona Simpson, and Rick Moody will be thrilled at this auspicious and noteworthy debut.

The First Hurt: Stories

Sherman, Rachel

Open City continues to present new writing with a daring edge and a youthful glow, appealing to readers who want to know what’s next in contemporary literature. This special issue features fiction, essays, and artworkall by poets. Each piece of prose will be accompanied by a selection of the writer’s poems. Contributors include: Deborah Garrison, Nick Tosches, Honor Moore, Rodney Jack, David Lehman, Jim Harrison, Thurston Moore, David Berman, and Catherine Bowman, Alfred Star Hamilton, and Jerome Badanes.

Open City #23: Prose by Poets

Jim Harrison

Wayne Koestenbaum

NICK FLYNN

Rebecca Wolff

Glyn Maxwell

Jill Bialosky

Deborah Garrison

From the bestselling author of the memoir Permanent Midnight and the novel I, Fatty comes a long-awaited collection of short stories. Jerry’s Stahl’s perverse, yet often touching tales, many of which first appeared in publications ranging from Playboy to the Pushcart Prize to Best Erotic Fiction, plumb the depths of eccentric romance, sex-starved adolescence, mid-life crisis, and family dysfunction. From a teenager’s tryst with a recently widowed middle-aged woman on an airplane, to a dissatisfied dentist’s attempt to find freedom on the road with a much younger woman, all the way to an intensely erotic love affair between an ex-junkie and an ex-circus midget with a sexual obsession with vegetables, this collection never fails to arouse and surprise. With a disarmingly immediate prose style, Stahl finds great eroticism, humor, and humanity in the wildest of encounters.

Love Without: Stories

Stahl, Jerry

Everything Natalie said seemed, to herself, to have been said better by him. He was less fond of speaking, however, than he was of hitting people in the face, which seemed a more likely source of her love to those of us who knew him,” begins Jason Brown’s linked collection of beautifully haunted, violent, and wry stories set in the densely forested lands of northern New England. In these tales of forbidden love, runaway children, patrimony, alcohol, class, inheritance, and survival, Brown’s elegant prose emits both quiet despair and a poignant sense of hope and redemption. These vivid accounts of troubled lives combine the powerful family drama of Andre Dubus and Russell Banks, the dark wit of Denis Johnson, the lost souls of Charles D’Ambrosio, and the New England gothic of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Jason Brown’s exquisitely crafted second collection will establish him as one of the most important voices in American short fiction.

Why the Devil Chose New England for His Work: Stories

BROWN, JASON

Intelligent and accessible . . . A hip, urban aesthetic.” Poets Writers A special issue of Open City featuring writing and artwork by an exciting array of alternative rock stars. A literary magazine of fiction, essays, and poetry, Open City has a youthful, adventurous spirit and an uncanny knack for finding vibrant and original voices. Each issue offers something entirely new by an unexpected mix of talents. Open City is the first literary magazine to foster the tradition of presenting writing and artwork by popular musicians. Contributors include indie greats Stephen Malkmus (Pavement), David Berman (Silver Jews), Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Chan Marshall (Cat Power), Stuart David (Belle &amp; Sebastian), Dean Wareham (Galaxie 500 and Luna), and many others.

Open City #25: The Musicians' Issue

CHARLES BUKOWSKI

ROBERT STONE

Jonathan Ames

Rivka Galchen

Said Shirazi

Essays & Correspondence

Open City’s opening credo, announced in an ad in a 1991 issue of The Village Voice calling for submissions, was Primary sources, nervous voices.” Featuring fiction, poetry, and essays by an exciting array of debut writers and established talents. Open City’s editorial taste is eclectic, though a common thread is an attempt at exposing, elucidating, and getting as close as possible to the human predicament in all its facets, with intimacy, candor, irony, and wit. Contributions to Open City frequently appear in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Poetry, The Best Creative Nonfiction, The Best Nonrequired Reading, and The Pushcart Prize. Open City #26 contains stories by Rachel Sherman, Jonathan Ames, Bryan Charles, and Nick Flynn.

Open City #26

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