You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hi, this is Michael Silverblad, and welcome to Bookworm. Today, my guest is Michael

Anis, the editor of a literary magazine called Stiletto. You know, recently, I was interviewed

by something called the CCLMP newsletter. That stands for the Coordinating Council of Literary Magaz literary magazines and presses. And in the course

of the interview, I mentioned that I personally love seeing literary magazines, that it gives me the

opportunity to find out who the new writers are and what's going on in the most interesting place

in the country for new literature,

the people who are discovering it and publishing it for the first time.

The result was mailbox here full of literary magazines, none, as striking or visually elaborate, as Michael Anis's magazine Stiletto.

Tell me, Michael, when did the magazine start up?

Well, the first issue was published in 1989, the middle of the summer, which was, of course,

a non-ideal time to put out a literary magazine.

What happens is that when it comes out, you hit the summer, kind of the summer doldrums of buying.

So it started receiving a lot of tension, but, and the attention was very excited,

but people during the summertime just weren't into, really into buying the publication, is probably as rapidly as, as I anticipated they would.

And so the second issue came out after three years of gathering and preparing and money-raising.

Now, in most cases you would say, well, three years is an awfully long time for a literary magazine to come together. So let's begin

to describe what Stiletto looks like. For one thing, it has a beautiful foil cover printed

on with an extraordinary picture of Adam and Eve in the garden with a serpent over their

...