WE HAVE a lot of ideas to pursue in 2026, chiefly on the drawing board, but a few we hope to implement on our site. 2025 was challenging for us for a variety of reasons, but we survived, are still in the game. The present and future look to be challenging for everybody, but as they say, in crisis comes opportunity.

AN INDY FILMMAKER NEEDS OUR HELP! PROJECT TO MAKE A MOVIE BASED ON A NEW POP LIT STORY HERE’S the story: “What Does It Cost to Be Civil” by Tom Ray, which ran as a feature at our …

COUNTERREVOLT OF PROFESSORS AND CIGARS (images c/o storablesdotcom) TO EVERY CHANGE there ‘s an inevitable reaction. We’ve been seeing this in American culture– higher levels of t…

A Complete Unknown (2024) - This page focuses on one review for A Complete Unknown from KarlWenclas

ON CHRISTMAS DAY 2025, we're presenting words to one version of the popular Christmas song "I Heard the Bells"-- recorded famously by Johnny Cash and many others-- because they express the way many of us may be feeling. (The words were originally written by Henry Longfellow in 1864, at the time of the Civil War, a crisis worse than anything we're experiencing.)

IS POLAR EXPRESS THE WORST CHRISTMAS MOVIE? COMBINE really bad digital animation, a thudding soundtrack, Grade B imitation John Williams score, Grade C imitation Spielberg direction, Tom Hanks, and…

LAST-MINUTE CHRISTMAS GIFT IDEAS CREATIVITY IS EVERYWHERE! Including in small communities downriver from Detroit. A resident of one of them, Martin Bertera, has penned an atmospheric Christmas tale-- Mistletoe -- set in the mid-19th Century, in the tradition of Charles Dickens and Fyodor Dostoevsky. We don't want to give away too much of the plot, but it's about a general store, an urchin child, the homeless, train-and-boat journeys from New York City to the Great Lakes, a farm, Christmas Eve, and-- well, you have to read it.

WHY do we have "Pop Lit" in our name? What's that about? Isn't anything pop scorned right now? (In truth, isn't it because most well-hyped pop music at the moment is corporate-produced generically-imagined garbage?) The great thing about the word "pop" is it has several meanings depending upon context. Popular. Populist (with a political edge). Pop Art in the Andy Warhol sense.

by John Haymaker I. The Great Echo A vibrant sound had reached Globiliad, a planet 10 billion trillion light years from Earth and inhabited by a highly evolved alien species known as Globules. Their commander, General Nimble, organized a quest to locate the sounds’ source. His assembled forces, a brigade of multicolored Globules the exact size of tennis balls, streaked across space fleet as a comet’s tail.

NEW POP FICTION! The Globules pinpointed the sound’s source as a jumble of radio signals emanating from planet Earth, and they thereupon commenced to traverse the broad expanse of space-time in microseconds toward the sound. On the way, they binge-watched Netflix, Prime, YouTube and learned our languages, even dead ones, consuming all knowledge thus far attained on earth. They grew keen on pop culture and acculturated to Earth’s vibe well before landing.

LESSONS FOR WRITERS? RECENTLY, my co-editor Kathleen and I watched a DVD recording of the Verdi opera Aida. A performance at New York City's Metropolitan Opera from 1988, starring Aprile Millo and Placido Domingo. We were reminded how great opera, especially grand opera, can be at its best. We'd seen the opera before, live, twelve or so years ago when we both worked at the Detroit Opera House.

Hi! My name is Delia Tramontina and I am a longtime friend of our beloved poet, s… Delia Tramontina needs your support for Support Chris's Journey to Healing

Is the Cost to Be Civil is a gripping sci-fi thriller that delves into the world of AI and identity. Based on a short story by Tom Ray, the film follows an elder named Albert as he navigates a mysteri...

NEW POETRY we wore our best hunter-green waited patiently as men took a different kind of field we craved sustenance a resurrection a flight a waiting by window in the purple light under wrong tin roof what we tossed into sky we threw away our wing-missiles pigskins of self talons landing burrowing deep out of view what craft drunk disturbance in the flapping…

AN ANALYSIS (engraving by Willy Stower) THE MOST TELLING aspect of today's literary scene is even the most loyal servants to the status quo system are barely making it. Having to edit, and struggle to promote, their generic Substacks while paying outrageous rents in the Imperial City of New York. Yet they refuse to leave the ship's bridge! Rigidly adhering to their obsolete "high modern" standards though the ship of Literature lists at an ever sharper angle, waiting to slide beneath the waves, into the depths.

"The past is never dead. It's not even past."-William Faulkner Meaning: Life consists of ongoing narrative threads, like musical motifs in a vast symphony. ONE of our themes as a literary project is the relationship of American writing to American history. That nothing exists in a vacuum. That art is an expression of time and place, that it springs from the roots of a culture and represents the authentic voice of a people.

by J.B. Stevens Robert Forsyth’s heart longed for Scotland. The American Colonials spoke with an odd accent, their manners were disgusting, and the food was ghastly. Despite the challenges, they’d become his people. Their love of freedom and indomitable spirit was overwhelming. The United States was his true home. This new nation gave him everything. He was proud to serve her.

NEW FICTION (c/o hiltondotcom) My career as a Seattle restaurateur has really taken off. A food magazine recently referred to me as “the grande dame of the Northwest dining scene.” On a dark gray day, in the pouring rain, you pull up outside my flagship restaurant in a brand-new black Corvette. When you roll down the window, my employees recognize your distinguished profile and say, “It’s him!

BIG LITERARY NEWS IN THE BIG PUSH back to humanity and reality, Wred Fright's new zine Frighty is at the forefront. IN THE AFTERMATH of the Halloween season, with smashed pumpkins and out-of-control squirrels everyplace, it's appropriate that another issue of Frighty-- #3-- appears on the scene. Does the pumpkin on the cover foretell the fate of the established literary realm?