Recent Columns

Over the past few years, our energies largely have been focused on our print journal--Issue 6 comes out this May--but our newly revamped site has been in the works for a long time, and we're excited to finally unveil it and claim a piece of the digital landscape.

As writers ourselves, we dislocate staffers have faith in the tangible written word--the physical object of the book, the journal, the magazine. None of us is willing to ditch our lovingly, carefully accumulated book collections, though some of us may own Kindles. And we aren't clinging to any neo-luddite, anti-tech philosophies that try to pretend the Internet isn't such a powerful force in all our lives. Instead, we're embracing the innovations that bridge the print and digital worlds, innovations that provide access to both literature and the resources to learn about, write, and publish it: everything from the experimental and hilarious poetics of the Flarf movement to Duotrope's one-stop publications clearinghouse. For instance, google Jim Shepard (featured in the upcoming Issue 6) and you'll get an excerpt from one of his novels, links to where you can buy his books, videos of him reading his work, author photos and book jackets, and other goodies. Satisfy your book lust with a few clicks--it's that simple.

But what is it that people--lit folks and everyone else--are really looking for our digitized, networked world? In a recent New York Times article, John Tierney reports that UPenn researchers studying the most frequently emailed Times articles concluded that people are sharing articles that are (a) generally upbeat and (b) brain-stimulating, cerebral--smarty-pants, if you will. Specifically, people are interested in articles that are awe-inspiring; such an article produces in the reader an "emotion of self-transcendence, a feeling of admiration and elevation in the face of something greater than the self" and it "involves the opening and broadening of the mind." According to Tierney, most of these articles are scientific, about natural phenomena or technological innovations, and people share them to both appear smart and forge an emotional connection with the recipient.

You probably won't find much about transformative portable solar power or neuroscientific forays into canine brains, but the new dislocate online aims to satisfy you, our fellow readers, writers and editors, and lovers of all things literary. We'll give you a behind-the-scenes look at our journal, feature interviews with hot new writers (and readers--what is that cute guy/gal at the coffee shop reading these days?), re-discover some fine short stories that haven't gotten their due, review some impending apocalypses (literary and otherwise), keep you apprised of events around the Twin Cities and beyond, dissect the latest lit news and gossip, and much more. We believe that good writing has the power to entertain and make you laugh, make you think--and also has the potential to awe, to inspire, to transcend, and to open and broaden the mind.

From the start, dislocate has been a venue for interesting and surprising work by talented writers, and in the past few years we've been moving toward challenging traditional ideas of genre and form, still honoring skill and craft but eschewing work that lacks edge and energy--which sometimes leads us into unfamiliar and unexpected territory. Taking it a step further, the new dislocate online is about breaking down the boundaries between print and online media--bringing those two worlds together without privileging one over the other, and without fear of what might im/explode in the process. So stop by often, join the conversation, and take part in yet another experiment in dislocation!