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Today we welcome our new Arts Editor Tara Isabella Burton to LitroNY Online. Tara explains what she’s looking for, in terms of submissions for Arts review pieces and tells us about some new features she has planned for the LitroNY Arts Slot.
Having written for Litro since March of 2013, I’m thrilled to come onboard in an editorial role as arts editor of the Litro USbranch. I’m passionate about covering not only the latest in high-profile books and performances, but also in exploring the incredible work that many mainstream magazines often – and to their detriment (and the detriment of all of us who miss out on some truly great work) – overlook.
On the theatrical side, I want to promote and cover: fringe theatre, experimental and site-specific work, pieces designed for an audience of thirty or ten or one. In addition to Broadway and Off-Broadway shows: I’m excited to be pitched reviews about cabaret, one-man Shakespeare, dance, mixed media, installations, or any other event or performance that you think must be seen. I’m more interested in terrible theatre than I am in mediocre theatre.
I’m also interested in essays from playwrights, directors, actors, and devisers: pieces and reports about the process of creating and making a piece. Struggled with adapting a classic text? Tried to figure out how to do a site-specific show without being shut down by the police? I want to hear your stories of how theatre got made.
I’m also very interested in putting together a series of pieces by theatre reviewers about theatre criticism itself – what is the point of a review, why do we write them, what makes a good review, what makes us qualified to do so, what separates a reviewer from just an ordinary punter? If you’re a reviewer and want to contribute, please email tara@litrony.com
On the books side – I have a great love (and weakness) for republished versions or new translations of undiscovered classics (think the output of Dedalus, NYRB Classics, Pushkin, etc), as well as fantastic contemporary books from smaller presses. Interviews with authors, translators; reflections on the arts of translation; impassioned defenses of books consigned to the literary D-List back in 1823 – that’s what I want to see.
But I’m interested in more than just reviews! Whether you’re re-assessing your childhood favorite book or tracing a relationship through books borrowed and lent, your personal and reflective essays on your relationship to the books you love most are exactly the things I want to read.
Miscellany – I’m interested in travel, in the relationship between people and place, in portraits of fascinating New Yorkers, interviews with the last great taxidermist on the Lower East Side or a Russian Orthodox priest in Brighton Beach. Pitch me essays that are specific – the more you “zoom in” on a subject, the more interested I am – literary, and a little bit strange.
