Jewish Mexican Literary Review, The
Entry updated 19 February 2024. Tagged: Publication.
Canadian-based Online Magazine published between 2016-2018. Three issues were released. As created and edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Lavie Tidhar, the concept for the magazine began as a joke, based on an attempt to find the most literary – and thus most respectable – name for a publication. During its short but distinguished run it published several notable names, including original and reprint fiction by Naomi Alderman, Kuzhali Manickavel, Shim'on Adaf, Ernest Hogan, Etgar Keret, Mary Shelley and Charles Fort.
The magazine also featured Poetry by writers long associated with genre, including Ng Yi-Sheng and Christina Sng, and long Interviews with authors and artists including Carmen Maria Machado and Karen Lord.
The magazine came complete with a short fictional history, worth quoting for its brevity. By that account, the magazine was "first established in 1935 by the artist Rosa Alvarez-Pinot and the exiled poet Nahum (Eduard) Landmann, in Mexico City, the turbulent history of the Jewish Mexican Literary Review has never been adequately told. An exasperated reviewer once described it as 'a rag, published at random intervals, funded with prayers and with pay so poor it could barely afford its contributors a single shot of badly-made espresso' – words its founders took on as their manifesto".
Taking their inspiration from such works as Roberto Bolaño's playful Nazi Literature in the Americas (1996) and Tim Powers's and James P Blaylock's creation of the fictional poet, William Ashbless, the magazine's murky history was later expanded upon with a cameo appearance by Nahum (Eduard) Landmann in Moreno-Garcia's novella Prime Meridian (2017).
As the co-editors' careers grew more demanding, the magazine unofficially ended with its Winter 2018 issue. That it may still return in some form is, as its long if made-up history suggests, far from impossible. [LTi]
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