Interview with Hannah Tinti - Conducted by Abby Holcomb
Bibliophilia - by Lauren Avirom
Review: E.L. Doctorow's Homer and Langley
- by Shelley Huntington

In a Courtyard - by Ingrid Wenzler
"He thought he remembered how it felt to know and feel and see so fully, and he turned to Nick and said, ‘Ah, she will sit with us; I think she will sit with us.’"

The Other Side of Water - by Dominic Preziosi
"It's not much of an explanation, but she can tell by the way he gazes through the windshield that he's said all he's going to say about it. She tries to imagine him, moving on his skinny legs over those piles of snow, in July."

Birdmen and Teacups Named Florence
- by Steve Duno
"She smiles and nods and stares into her own beautiful eyes, like fractured tunnels back in time. She sees him there now and thinks she should have known better. She nods and decides that it is all her fault, that it could have been avoided."


Thanksgiving - by Mather Schneider
Boo - by Mather Schneider
Igg - by Gary Leising

In a piece titled “The Art of Fiction, ” Henry James wrote: “Art lives upon discussion, upon experiment, upon curiosity, upon variety of attempt, upon the exchange of views and the comparison of standpoints; and there is a presumption that those times when no one has anything particular to say about it, and has no reason to give for practice or preference, though they may be times of honor, are not times of development—are times, possibly even, a little of dullness.” If Henry James lived in the online, plugged-in world of today, he would probably not deny that the conversation is happening, constantly, all around us. Yet with the advent of Twitter and Facebook and the bursting-at-the-seams of the blogosphere, would he find the unceasing dialogue to be meaningful or dull?

Technological advances have certainly expanded our worldviews, yet they have also managed to diminish our attention spans and cheapen our appreciation of art. Much like Marx described the alienation of the worker from the fruits of his labor, James might identify the disconnect that certain technologies have created between an artist and his art and that art and its audience.

This debut issue of Buzzard Picnic will deal thematically with the matter of alienation in all its manifestations. In “Birdmen and Teacups Named Florence,” author Steve Duno explores a fragmented marriage and the effects that dementia have on a husband and wife. Dominic Preziosi, in the short story “The Other Side of Water,” opens up the space that exists between a daughter’s expectations of her father and the reality of their relationship. Additionally, Shelley Huntington reviews E.L. Doctorow’s Homer and Langley, pointing out: “In the digital age, we ceaselessly bump up against one another; texts, cells, IMs, email, Facebook all string us together and sometimes serve as a lifeline. While the Collyer’s insulated themselves from the world with piles of newsprint and obsolete objects, we cocoon ourselves in ever-mounting piles of digital stuff. Are we so different from them?”

Finally, in this and subsequent issues, book dealer and Contributing Editor Lauren Avirom will author a column dealing with the challenges that readers, writers and sellers face in this digital world where Kindles and, yes, online literary journals are increasingly pushing out more traditional forms of publishing.

These are the crossroads at which we stand and where Buzzard Picnic has positioned itself. Welcome. Please, sit, read, and enjoy a quiet moment with quality literature from authors both established and new, united in their efforts to preserve literature in both its long and short form.

-Abby Holcomb, Editor-In-Chief