Welcome to the Deli. Come on in.
Hello from Ireland (Zach) and Germany (Christian), where we are diligently planning the launch of Delicatessen in the U.S. later this summer. This journal aims to fill an obvious gap in our literary infrastructure: a dedicated outlet for reviews and short criticism that focuses exclusively on texts from small, independent, nonprofit, and university-affiliated presses. Our goal is to celebrate publishers and writers who aren’t getting attention from more established critical outlets.
Zach and Christian have been tossing around the idea for this project for years. Zach, the former Editor-in-Chief of Cleveland Review of Books, hired Christian to act as one of the review’s first Contributing Writers. Working together in this capacity, we quickly realized we shared similar preoccupations and concerns about the state of publishing, namely that contemporary literature had started to appear stylistically homogenized thanks to critical platforms that largely focus on big presses and commercial authors (with robust contact lists, funds for promotion, agents), and that the byproducts of this arrangement weren’t limited only to the mainstream——the system of values and rewards codified at the topmost outer crust appeared to be permeating the more savory inner layers of our world in increasingly concerning ways. In our view, overly (or misguidedly) professionalized approaches to literary production and its reception have only served to limit possibilities on both sides of publishing’s event horizon, and the aggregate effects of this anxious acculturation have amounted to a narrowing of the field for readers alongside excessive pressure on writers, publishers, and critics all struggling to operate and relate within an already precarious and stratified economy. We wondered if there was something we could do. One answer seemed obvious.
We’ve started Delicatessen to celebrate the true formal and aesthetic diversity of new literature, to support critics at all stages, and to act as a reliable platform for quality book coverage that would not otherwise exist in our hyper-commercialized algo-fied media landscape. As editors, our private taste is not central to this project; our mission is to comprehensively reflect the range of styles, methods, and concerns being vanguarded by noncommercial and small press publishers. We are not interested in buzzwords or trends, who or what is popular at the moment. We care about good writing for attentive readers and want to see a criticism that delights in formal patterns and imaginative particularity, not grievances of personality or scene. Satisfying and well-made, using quality ingredients and care. We wonder how else a book review is a sandwich.
Our first review will be posted in about a month’s time, and from then on we will publish one review per week. In the meantime, submit a pitch or completed review to us through our contact form or at editors@delicatessen.site. We pay $100 per piece. We want to hear from you.
—ZP & CW