The Plan

Many of you will by now have heard that Calque is ceasing publication. This is both true and not strictly accurate. What we're doing is ceasing publication of our journal. We're doing this for the following reasons.

1.It's too expensive.
2.It's a hell of a lot of work. We've been in production every day for more than two years.
3.We've begun to feel somewhat constricted by the journal format.
4.We feel like it.
5.We think we can do what we do better, faster and cheaper in another way.

Which brings us to the question of what we plan to do. We've gotten fond of these lists, so here's another one:

1.All of the critical functions of our journal, the book reviews, essays, interviews, and whatever else, will be moved to our website, which will continue to host stories and poems, etc. The website will therefore function more or less as a blog. This development is sure to please Adam Sorkin, who's always called it a blog. Hi, Adam!
2.Starting this summer, we will commence publication of chapbooks, with trade paperbacks to follow not long after. We figure on doing one of each the first year, then ramping that up to the point where we'll be doing five or six chapbooks and one or two trade books every year.

So much for what. Now for the why. ANOTHER LIST!!!

1.A blog is, by it's very nature, much faster than a journal. Moving our criticism onto the web will make it much more responsive to events as they happen. This will eliminate such unfortunate events as our having to pass on a book review because, by the time our next issue's ready, the book will have been out for months. It will also enable us to do smaller projects that might not have made it into a print issue for whatever reason.
2.As for the chapbooks and trade editions, they'll enable us to go into greater depth with each thing we publish. Rather than one story, four or five. Rather than ten poems, thirty. Longer introductions.
3.The hope is that this will allow us to apportion our resources where they're actually needed. Rather than spending money printing excerpts of books that are already being published by other houses, we can spend that same money finding new writers and translators. Hopefully, some of these will go on to work with the larger houses, who first heard about them through us. Call this the Farm System Theory.

So that's the plan. Eminently sensible, don't you think? We certainly do, though it's going to fail dismally if we're the only people writing for the blog, so we'd like to take this opportunity to issue a formal call for submissions: SEND US WORK!!!! Seriously: reviews, essays, interviews, criticism of any kind, translations, etc. etc. The crazier the better. We'll put it up, people will read it, you'll get famous, we'll all die happy. It's win-win, really.

We'd also like to take this opportunity to thank every single person who worked with us over the life of our journal. Seriously. All the translators, the poets and writers, the people we interviewed and who wrote reviews for us, the publishers and publicity reps, our subscribers and the people who gave us money and encouragement, and the people who put up with us day-to-day throughout the last few years. To all of you: thank you. We'd have been bussing tables and feeling like shit this whole time if it wasn't for you.

Alright, enough sentiment. Back to work.

—Steve Dolph and Brandon Holmquest