Dear Reader,

I was thinking about the amazing artists in this issue and what it says about the culture we live in right at this moment. This year we have letters written from Sudan by Brandi Walker. She has devoted her life to creating programs to eliminate gender-based violence as a tool of war in conflict areas by empowering the female victims to create their own frameworks for rebuilding their lives and their countries. In order to eliminate violence against women we also have to recreate the gender norms that perpetuate it in every country. This summer she heads to Panzi Hospital to work with Dr. Mukwege in the Congo. Read More >

Ping-Pong Magazine, Henry Miller Library, Big Sur, California
Dear Reader,

I am writing at the end of an amazing year. What you are holding in your hands is the culmination of an idea which began in a little cabin next to the Pacific where Henry Miller’s best friend, Emil White, decided Henry’s work was worth a memorial.

Henry Miller wrote volumes and volumes of letters, some of which are archived at the library. He was, if nothing else, prolific. This got me thinking about writers and writing. Why do we do it? Who will see it? Does it matter? Anais Nin’s unexpurgated diaries were published posthumously, as well as most of Emily Dickinson’s poems. A writer, it seems to me, is an artist who will write whether anyone ever sees it or not: this is secondary to the form. Some writers are published in spite of themselves, by people who believe that what they have to say needs to be heard. Others struggle for years to get their work into the public eye, only to be shut out by mainstream publishers who are becoming more and more homogeneous. Read More >

Skyscrapers in Full Bloom

An interview with Thurston Moore

By: Maria Garcia Teutsch
Henry Miller Memorial Library

I met Thurston Moore at the Henry Miller Memorial library the day of his concert. My friend, the poet Eleni Sikelianos had worked with him at Naropa and suggested I talk to him about poetry. His knowledge of 20^th Century poetry is vast. He also publishes up and coming poets and is a collector of rare books. Like most people, I only really knew about him through his group, Sonic Youth. When I began to do research on him I became more and more interested in talking to him. As an interviewer, I make a great poet. So when we sat down in the redwood grove that is the Henry Miller library, he helped me figure out how to use the tape recorder on my Ipad, and then we sat back and began to talk about poetry, art, and the creative urge. Read More >