Note 58
In this our fifteenth year, we examine what it means to run a literary magazine. My motivation for creating a literary space arose in the relatively arid landscape of 2008. When we went live in 2010, there were still very few other spaces that featured work from and connected to the subcontinent.
In the broadest, the original idea was to build and sustain a place to publish short fiction. It is important to recall that, even then, it was conceived of as a space where the strength of a story and how we as editors responded to it was what would impact selection of a piece. In a world where numbers are sometimes used to measures of success even in artistic and cultural milieus, I think it is important to remind ourselves of this alternate and intangible filter that we remain committed to.
I am proud to say Out of Print became a space where emerging writers were comfortable sending their submissions, often their very first ones. From the beginning, we also appealed to well-known and well-established writers to contribute to the magazine. For readers, as well as writers, this provided a standard for good stories.
None of these things has changed, I am glad to say. But what keeps us continually motivated is that we now have an archive of South Asian literature that spans fifteen years that is free and accessible to all. And while writing in English may be confined to and associated with a certain specific literacy on the subcontinent, Out of Print establishes that it is not irrelevant, and the commentary of writers writing in English adds, in a critical way, to the reflection on how and where we are as a society.
In this edition, we feature nine stories. They are:
‘The Rain’ by Rajalakshmi N Rao, ‘All that We See or Seem’ by Vrinda Varma that takes its title from Edgar Allen Poe’s poem, ‘A Dream Within a Dream’, ‘Remains Of Self: The Story of a Fundamentalist’ by Manju Kak, ‘The Cure’ by Amita Basu, ‘The Portrait‘ by Pravin Vemuri, ‘The Womb‘ by Ashwini Shenoy, Chapter Six of Roohi Choudhry’s recently released novel, Outside Women, ‘Shiuli‘ by Ratul Ghosh, and ‘The Kindness of Strangers‘ by Avishek Parui.
The art on the cover of Out of Print 58 is by Noormah Jamal and is titled ‘Ghabrana Nahe Hai’, acrylic and pencil colours on canvas, 177.8 x 137.2 cm, 2025.