Editors: Review copies of the journal are available by contacting Steven Wingate at (303) 735-4669 or Steven.Wingate@Colorado.EDU.
Joanne Greenberg, author of "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden," is among a stellar lineup of writers, artists and poets contributing to the University of Colorado at Boulder's new Western-focused literary journal, "divide."
The journal, titled divide with a lower-case 'd,' also features works by Ai, winner of the National Book Award for Poetry; Laura Pritchett, winner of the 2002 PEN USA Award for Fiction; and interviews with nationally prominent author and commentator Richard Rodriguez of San Francisco and CU-Boulder historian Patricia Nelson Limerick.
The 96-page journal features stories, poems, photographs, interviews, essays and artworks on the theme "Death of the New West?" The cover features a painting by CU-Boulder fine arts Professor Chuck Forsman, whose work is part of the collection of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.
"I wanted to create a magazine that's more about questions than it is about answers," said editor and publisher Steven Wingate, CU-Boulder writing instructor. "My hope is that we'll have people debating topics with each other within the pages and taking unique stands on contemporary social issues. Hence the name 'divide.' "
Among the other 20 contributors to the inaugural issue are award-winning authors Dorianne Laux, David Mason, James Tipton and CU-Boulder professor emeritus Reg Saner. The contents focus on the relationships among Western myths and the ways we currently inhabit the Western landscape.
Readings from the journal will be held Oct. 7 at 7:30 p.m. at the Boulder Book Store, 1107 Pearl St., in Boulder, and on Nov. 1 at 2 p.m. at the LoDo Tattered Cover Book Store at 16th and Wynkoop streets in downtown Denver. The latter event is a joint reading also featuring "Sites of Insight: Colorado Sacred Places," edited by divide's fiction editor, James Lough.
The first theme of divide explores some of the contradictions that make up cultural life in the West, Wingate said. The next issue, titled "Pax Americana," will deal with the complex cultural relationships between the United States and the rest of the world following Sept. 11. It will be released in September 2004.
The journal is published by the CU-Boulder Program for Writing and Rhetoric with support from the Sewall Residential Academic Program, the Center for Humanities and the Arts and the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
Single copies of divide may be purchased for $8 at independent bookstores throughout the Rocky Mountain region, by calling (303) 735-4669 or by e-mailing divide@colorado.edu. Group discounts and subscriptions are available.
For more information visit .