A Lit Mag Evening -- July 7 in Bangalore

Attention Bangaloreans:

 

Note: Some organizers voiced concerns that it might appear tacky to mention on the invite itself the fact that there will be 

 

FREE BOOZE AND SNACKS!!!! 

 

at the event. Good thing we have no such qualms here at the Blaft blog.

 

Call for Submissions: The Obliterary Journal Vol. 2

In February we released The Obliterary Journal Vol. 1, a book of comics and street art and alien robots and illustrated nonsense by around 30 contributors.

Some very nice words about the book have appeared in print, written by people we think are really smart like Achal Prabhala and Deepa D. and Aishwarya Subramanian and Jai Arjun Singh, which makes us feel happy and proud. And so: we want to make another book.

Call for submissions. The Obliterary Journal Vol. 2 is going to be a themed issue, and the theme is:

MEAT

We are looking for short works of graphic fiction / graphic non-fiction / photo-essays / infographics, ranging in length from 1 to 20 pages, dealing primarily with various aspects of meat-eating and meat-production. We're looking for authors/artists who will explore the morality and ethics of non-vegetarianism, examine the business of raising animals and killing them and selling their body parts, delve into the history and politics of religious food taboos, take up the PETA $1 million cultured meat challenge, begin eating bugs as a way to combat global warming... you get the picture.  Please mail us at blaft [at) blaft (dot] com with your concepts or partial work.  Page size is 7 in. by 9 in.  We're looking at finalizing a table of contents by October.

Despite all those cool reviews we linked to above, we are still a struggling independent publishing house, and we can't pay much. Upon acceptance we will negotiate a payment based on length, how much work our editorial and design team put in, and other considerations.

We are especially interested in

• working with artists trained in traditional/folk arts who may have limited access to English-language publishing markets 
• any meat-related comics or graphics which have already been published in regional languages, for translation.

We can pay a bit more for projects like these, and would appreciate any leads or introductions.

We look forward to seeing your submissions and ideas!

Independent Bookstores!

Over the last few years, anyone interested in reading, writing, and/or publishing will have heard people making statements like "the book industry is in the middle of major changes."  It's true.  One of the major changes has been the advent of the eBook. And while some people really hate eBooks or are sad about them or frightened of them, Kuzhali Manickavel thinks you should stop whining yougaiz.

If you have accepted the eBook into your life, you may be interested to know that Blaft has some for sale, with more slated for release soon. On the other hand, if you are still one of those people who gets high on newbooksmell, we would like to encourage you to buy books from an independent bookstore.  Indie bookstores need and deserve your support because they are usually stocked by good, kind people who actually care about good writing and good books and good art, instead of by retail software customized for the optimization of B2B verticals via dynamical supply chain modeling based on the resynergization of the robustness of maximally profitable logistical fuckery.

We have made a little map of independent bookstores (and some indie variety stores which have a few bookshelves) around the country. All of these stores, as per the latest information at the time of posting, have Blaft's full catalog in stock, in addition to books by other great indie publishers and many other things you probably want to own.  So go forth and spend your money.

View Support Independent Bookstores! in a larger map

Note: if you have an indie bookshop and you would like to be on this map -- what are you waiting for? Place an order from us already!