&Now & Whenever It's Needed
Welcome to the special &NOW issue of the Notre Dame Review. Now in its fifteenth year, &NOW is a festival that brings together poets and novelists, fiction authors, artists, critics, musicians, programmers, performers and creators of visual, found, electronic, multimedia and other hybrid forms in a celebration of readings, panels, and other performances of innovative writing. &NOW asks: what happens when writing that crosses boundaries, when new artistic forms, when text, when visual art, when music, when filmmaking, when performance, when critical theory, when tongues, when graphics, when a poem, when a play, when experiments, when literary collage, when performance scores, when sound and visual poetry, when theater, when hyper-opera, when conceptual writing, when theory-fiction, when philosophy, when electronic and multimedia scripts, when live film narration, when ghost catching, when cutting and scratching, when installation, when bilingual, when invented languages, when super-titling, when a notepad, when spirit-writing, when a soundbite, when a computer code, when a ritual, when a bio, when re-verb, when a tag, when trance, when a confession, when a rant, when a protest, when today…. Some of the notes taken at &NOW by Brent Cox, and presented in this issue, offer insight.
The Guardian describes the biennial &NOW Festival as the Anglosphere’s most important celebration of the literary avant-garde. Last year’s edition was held at the University of Notre Dame, and this special issue of the Notre Dame Review offers a sampling of some of the work that was presented at it, including poetry by and an interview with Douglas Kearney, who with Renee Gladman and Johanna Drucker joined a long list of featured readers. The issue contains a suite of works performed online or off-site as well as a suite of critical works presented at one of the many panels held over the course of the two-day festival.
Together they explore the role of language in the formation of identities and social norms; they share a belief that contemporary pressures, especially at watershed moments or moments of political or existential crisis such as the one we are in, require equally outré responses. Perhaps at no time has this been more true than now: a time when the forces of racism, sexism, class warfare, and even planet-wide extinction have absorbed the formerly liberating forms of postmodernism to substitute fictions for reality, and ‘fake news’ for facts, all in defense of the status quo. The subtitle for this edition of &NOW is And Whenever It’s Necessary. Perhaps there has never been a time when the exploration of language, that traditional battleground for social norms, has seemed more necessary. To be a part of future &NOWs, look for us via social media.
Contributors
Frank Rogaczewski
Story
Vi Khi Nao
Story
Lawrence Coates
Story
Jennifer Karmin & Bernadette Mayer
Poetry
Analeah Rosen
Poetry
Douglas Kearney & Patricia Hartland
Interview
Scott Rettberg & Roderick Coover
Poetry and Photography
Christine Hume
nonfiction
Michael Workman
Performance art
Jean Dibble & John Matthias
Poetry and art
Emily Carr
Story
Paul Cunningham
Story
Noy Holland
Story
Daniel Uncapher
Story
Kanika Agrawal
Poetry
Brooks Sterritt
Story
Aimee Parkison
Flash fiction
Mary-Kim Arnold
Essay
Sarah Roth
Essay
Anthony Enns
Essay
Joel Katelnikoff
Essay
Mark Tardi
[Hashtag]Art
Mike Barrett
Review
Shira Dentz
Hybrid prose
Amanda Goldblatt
Story
Ian Hatcher
Poetry
S. Yarberry & Analeah Rosen
Poetry
Larkin Higgins
Art
Douglas Kearney
Poetry
Becca Klaver
Poetry
Jessica Anne
Story
Rebecca Goodman
Story
Lauren Russell
Essay
Lance Olsen
Story
Brent Cox
Art
Steve Owen
Story
Nick Montfort
Poetry
Daniel Magers
Story
Aimee Parkison & Carol Guess
Flash fiction
J. I. Daniels
Story
Mez Breeze
Story
Martin Nakell
Prose
Suzanne Scanlon
Prose
Richard Holeton
Slide show
Jennifer Natalya Fink & Julie Laffin
Performance
Wojciech Dr?g
Suite of Critical and Nonfiction Presentations given at &NOW
Gretchen Henderson
Essay
Becca Klaver
Essay
Eckhard Gerdes
Essay
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