Bringing It All Back Home

Major press coverage of the litblog co-op (in which this site is taking part) begins with front-page placement in the LA Times arts section today. Scott Martelle focuses much of his attention on the co-op's excellent West Coast contingent, including Edward Champion, Laila Lalami, and our main orchestrator, Mark Sarvas, who notes:

"We want to shine a light on literary fiction likely to get overlooked and lost in the shuffle...The mission is to see what happens when 10 to 20 lit bloggers get behind a title and push hard. Does it make a difference?"

Ed also gets in a good summation: ""This represents the opportunity to champion the kinds of authors and titles that are often overlooked by conventional establishments." But this isn't just a blogger story; the article also offers insights from Little, Brown's Reagan Arthur, author Steve Erickson, and LA bookstore owner Doug Dutton--to whom I owe my entry into the literary community, as he gave me a job at his Brentwood store eleven years ago when I was just a struggling grad student. The fact that I was at Dutton's when the World Wide Web first hit it big was the direct impetus for launching Beatrice, as most of my early interviews were with writers who were coming to the store on their reading tours.

(Mind you, the phrase "lit bloggers" does induce a bit of a giggle; I can assure you we're not that drunk when we make our critical assessments!)