EDWARD GAUVIN

at PS Publishing is the mega-double special issue 20/21 of Postscripts, Edison’s Frankenstein, featuring my translation of Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud’s “The Denham Inheritance,” a meditation on great apes and loss,  my Clarion teacher Paul Park’s story (which he read aloud at Mysterious Galaxy over the summer), and work by host of terrific writers. It comes in regular and special collector’s editions, the latter with pages of contributors’ signatures. Editor Pete Crowther was kind enough to include me as well as the author; signing all two hundred translucent sheets in a single sitting was a lesson in the vagaries of one’s own autograph. It reminded me of a story another teacher of mine once told me about a similar experience. Imagining her signature consistent, if only through so much concentrated practice, she’d held the stack of sheets up to the light, only to see how erratic it was. A small fable of selfhood.

I have a concise if characteristically abstruse appreciation of French fabulist Noël Devaulx up at The Quarterly Conversation, a top-notch site for readers seeking enlightened commentary. It’s an entry in a feature hatched by editors Annie Janusch and Scott Esposito called “Translate This Book!” Which is exactly what it sounds like: fervent recommendations from impassioned professionals in the field, forty-odd reformist theses nailed to publishing’s door. The article has attracted the attention of, among other places, The New Yorker.