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Boing The Going, We're 100! (Gwen Davies)
MTV's recent travesty of post-industrial life, reality bonanza
The Valleys, shows the danger of following the money when it comes to feeling Welsh. So does the BBC’s documentary series broadcast this spring,
Great Welsh Writers, as its obsession is with mass markets. Both illustrate the ‘distorted [outsider] image’ or mirror lamented in my last editorial. Here I also took issue with ‘the mirror’s size, how shiny it is... and why we just keep looking in it.’ New Welsh Review is a mirror. On a meagre budget, we buff a sheen fit to distract readers from free online, mass- and social- media glitter. Malcolm Ballin’s study of our sector,
Welsh Periodicals in English, is published in June. But Alyce von Rothkirch’s review on p122 got me worried in places. In April, recommendations will be made following the review of Welsh Books Council English-language magazines led by Tony Bianchi. WBC’s Publishing Grants Panel will announce their response to those recommendations in July. My nascent paranoia pricked to the fact that von Rothkirch is on that panel. She writes,
The trajectory of Ballin’s book... can... be summed up by the phrase ‘follow the money’. The early magazines were usually independently funded by wealthy individuals who tended to exert a considerable influence on editorial policy as editors and/or owners. Contributors were not usually paid and neither were editors. Magazines were thus often short-lived.... Later, the more significant magazines became increasingly dependent on public funding.... Nowadays, the question of which magazine receives public funding can be contentious and... there is clearly a trade-off between financial security and editorial independence. What all magazines... have in common, though, is the struggle to create an audience and to retain it, something which Ballin points out has never been easy despite the... over-optimistic hopes of enthusiastic editors. The challenge will continue as the more enterprising periodicals reach out into cyberspace.
‘Follow the money’ was the phrase here that grabbed my throat, closely followed by ‘contentious’ and ‘short-lived’. In my own reading of Ballin’s book, he underplayed the design and visual aspects of magazines, indubitably one of New Welsh Review’s strengths over the hundred issues that we are celebrating today...
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• Don't Look Back in Anger Julia Forster discovers absence at the heart of six memoirs
read more...• Brief as Photos Penny Simpson on the photography of Vivian Maier & Diane Arbus
read more...• The Manufactured Coastscape in Wales Photo essay by Roger Tiley
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• New Man, Neuman An Argentinian family memoir by Andrés Neuman translated by Richard Gwyn
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• My Mary Jane Flash fiction & image by Rhian Edwards & Paul Edwards
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• Boa Constrictor Story by Rachel Trezise in reponse to Alun Richards'
Dai Country read more...
• A Perfect Queen Story by Inés Garland translated by Richard Gwyn
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• The Anatomy of a Beating Story by João Morais
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• Lifeboat Flash Fiction by Cynan Jones
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• The Tapas Machine Flash Fiction by Lloyd Robson
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• Tokyo Spaces Memoir by Jayne Joso
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• The Rice Paper Diaries Novel extract by Francesca Rhydderch
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• Dalkey,
Regent's Canal (by Danbury Street) and
Rain at HandJorge Fondebrider, translated by Richard Gwyn
read more...• SoMaria Apichella
read more...• MythBruce Bond
read more...• View of Valleys High Street through a Café WindowJonathan Edwards
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• All the Souls, Stories of the Living & The Dead by Mary-Ann Constantine
Jemma L King
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• Baader-Meinhof and the Novel, Narratives of the Nation/Fantasies of the Revolution, 1970-2010 by Julian Preece
Chris Keil
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• Kith: The Riddle of the Childscape by Jay Griffiths
Jem Poster
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• Snowdon, The Story of a Mountain by Jim Perrin
Jem Poster
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• Bird, Blood, Snow by Cynan Jonesl
Cathryn A Charnell-White
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• A Welsh Witch, A Romance of Rough Places by Allen Raine
Steven Lovatt
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• The Village by Nikita Lalwani
Rachel Stenner
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• The Museum of Disappearing Sounds by Zoë Skoulding
Kym Martindale
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• A Symphony of Horrors by Mark Ryan
Niall Griffiths
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• RS Thomas, Serial Obsessive by M Wynn Thomas
John Barnie
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• Say Goodbye to the Boys by Mari Stead Jones
Crystal Jeans
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• Welsh Periodicals in English, 1882-2012 by Malcolm Ballin
Alyce von Rothkirch
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• My Heart on My Sleeve, 14 Stories of Love from Wales Janet Thomas (ed.) & Cathryn A Charnell-White (trans. & ed.)
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You can now get a taste of some of the excellent pieces in this issue online:
- Blog: Digital Content for Businesses at the National Library
- Blog: Two Events with Rhian Edwards
- Blog: Wales Book of the Year Ceremony
- Blog: Audio file Gwen Davies talks to Prof Julian Preece and Chris Keil, Hay Festival, 2 June 2013
- Blog: Keeping Up with the Joneses, NWR at Hay Festival 28 May 2013
- Blog: Resist the Pie-Chart. Funding for English Periodicals in Wales
- Creative: Tokyo Spaces
- Creative: Borderline
- Creative: Extract from The Rice Paper Diaries
- Creative: The Tapas Machine
- Creative: Lifeboat
- Creative: New Man, Neuman
- Creative: The Anatomy of a Beating
- Creative: My Mary Jane
- Creative: Boa Constrictor
- Creative: A Perfect Queen
- Editorial: Boing The Gong, We\'re 100!
- Essay: The Manufactured Coast-scape in Wales
- Essay: Brief as Photos
- Essay: Don\'t Look Back in Anger
- Interview: Interview with Rhian Edwards
- Interview: Interview with Cynan Jones
- Poem: Dalkey
- Poem: So
- Poem: Myth
- Poem: View of Valleys High Street through a Café Window
- Review: Welsh Periodicals in English, 1882-2012
- Review: The Crawshay Portraits exhibition at the National Museum of Wales
- Review: Other Harbours
- Review: She Inserts the Key
- Review: God Loves You
- Review: The Moss Gatherers
- Review: The Messenger
- Review: Air Histories
- Review: Between Two Rivers
- Review: Speak, Old Parrot
- Review: Gwilym Prichard: A Lifetime’s Gazing
- Review: Muscovy
- Review: This is How You Lose Her
- Review: The Vanity Rooms
- Review: Coleshill
- Review: My Heart on My Sleeve, 14 Stories of Love from Wales
- Review: Say Goodbye to the Boys
- Review: RS Thomas, Serial Obsessive
- Review: Séan Tyrone: A Symphony or Horrors
- Review: The Museum of Disappearing Sounds
- Review: A Welsh Witch, A Romance of Rough Places
- Review: The Village
- Review: Bird, Blood, Snow
- Review: Snowdon, The Story of a Mountain
- Review: Kith: The Riddle of the Childscape
- Review: Baader-Meinhof and the Novel, Narrative of the Nation/Fantasies of the Revolution, 1970-2010
- Review: All the Souls, Stories of the Living and the Dead
- Vintage Gems: Boa Constrictor