another season, another Descant launch / by Katherine Hajer

Some people get hooked on sitcoms; I get hooked on literary magazines. I love short fiction, so I hit the bottom shelf of the magazine section pretty regularly. I also have three subscriptions to different magazines.

One of these is Descant, and as I write this paragraph I'm sitting in the upstairs lounge of Bar Italia on College Street, waiting for the launch of the latest issue to start.

I don't know if they've done this for the entire forty-year history of the magazine, but for as long as I've been following them, every launch has been in a different venue — always one appropriate to the theme of the issue. Last issue's theme was "dance," and the venue provided space both for some live performances and videos. It's always something different, yet it's always exactly right.

The launch is over, another lovely night out, and I try to tap out more of this blog into my phone.

This issue's theme is "summer and smoke." The readings included tales of travelling through Viet Nam, rules for conduct created by a used bookshop owner, funeral barbecues, poetry about going postal. The first two readings were hilarious (I'm making up my used-book list now), the last two thoughtful and imagistic.

And, as usual, I think it all just makes me love the written word a little bit more.