Today's the day!

Interfictions is officially released today! Zip right on over to our publishing partner, Small Beer Press, to find out how you might be one of five lucky people to get a free copy.

Interfictions and the comic-book world

Interfictions author Rachel Pollack will be appearing on Mon., April 30 at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art in New York City. She's moderating a very cool event titled "Interstitiality and the Comic Book Indsutry," featuring Publishers Weekly comics chief Calvin Reid, New York art curator Jason Little, Del Rey manga director Dallas Middaugh, and indie bookstore buyer Jessica Stockton. 6:30 p.m. (Doors open at 6:15.) Free admission!

(Also note: There's a related event the prior week -- that's this coming Monday, April 23. "Interstitiality and the Creative Artist" features comics artist Megan Kelso of the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Colleen AF Venable of Fluff in Brooklyn, DC Comics writer Doselle Young, and feminist science-fiction critic and award-winning young-adult novelist Justine Larbalestier. Also 6:30, also free.)

More musings on Interfictions

Brian Bieniowski on the cover art and what it might mean. Matthew Cheney on conceptualizing his own contribution to the book. Tempest Bradford doing the same. Michael DeLuca skeptically trying to grasp all this damn interstitial nonsense, and finally embracing it.

What's it all mean, then?

We see a conversation between Interfictions contributor Christopher Barzak and U.K. SF critic Niall Harrison has grown into an interesting debate about the usefulness of the "interstitial" descriptor for fiction.

Our two cents: "Interstitial" was never really meant to be a label as such -- and certainly not a marketing label. Rather, it's a deliberately vague adjective that acknowledges the frustrating in-betweenness of certain works of art that are therefore difficult to explain (and, thus, sell). The Interstitial Arts Foundation -- still a very young group -- seeks to find ways of supporting and nurturing those who create such works.

Because the founders of the IAF are speculative fiction authors, there's an understandable but mistaken impression that "interstitial" is somehow a competing literary movement with "slipstream." Not at all. There are interstitial works of performance art. There are interstitial works of visual art. There are interstitial works of music and film. There are interstitial works of art which fall in between the aforementioned mediums themselves. And there are interstitial works of literature -- some of which fall under Bruce Sterling's designation of "slipstream." We hope Interfictions will serve as an illustrative snapshot of what the editors consider, in 2007 at least, interstitial writing.