Poets and Writers
August 2005
If you were listening, you probably heard it coming—a new trend in literary magazines. Late last year the Audio Publishers Association reported a 14 percent increase in sales of audio books from 2001 to 2003, and estimated the size of the audio-book market at more than eight hundred million dollars. Hoping to ride this sound wave of success are several new audio literary magazines, including Verb (www.verb.org), the Relay Project (www.therelayproject.com), and From the Fishouse (www.fishousepoems.org). With the exception of From the Fishouse, which is available only on the Web, the contents of the magazines are recorded on compact discs. Daren Wang, the publisher of Verb, which is distributed by the University of Georgia Press, says the format broadens the traditional definition of a literary journal. “We can do things that no one else does,” says Wang, who also produces book-related programs for public radio. “Twenty-five years ago, Stuart Dybek, who writes both great poetry and fiction, wrote a song that was a response to a Thomas Lux poem. But he could never find a way to release it. We have the poem and the song back-to-back in the first issue. Where else could you do that?” The first issue of Verb, published this month, also includes a poem by the late James Dickey and an excerpt from an unpublished novel by Robert Olen Butler, each read by its author.
