“Souciant is a magazine of politics and culture. Or culture and politics. It all depends on your starting point.” So reads the mandate, as I managed to pen it, of the new periodical I co-founded. Launched yesterday, after six months of preparation, Souciant is now three quarters of the way through its second day of existence, at least according to Greenwich Mean Time. Charlie Bertsch, Souciant‘s US-based co-editor, started off his day just a couple of hours ago, firing off the magazine’s first Twitter posts.

Designed by my wife, Jennifer Crakow, and media designer Courtney Utt, Souciant is published by my old pal Rich Jensen, in Seattle. Rich and I go back fourteen years, having first met at Elliot Bay Books during the reading tour in support of the NYU Press Bad Subjects anthology. Not long thereafter, we started working together on distributing music when the Christal Methodists hooked up with his former firm, Sub Pop records, through the late, great Candy Ass label. We released two records together.

It’s a dream team if I ever saw one. Everyone brings complementary skills to the table. Though I’ve worked with great  publishing crews before, I’ve never had the opportunity to work with such a clear-minded, experienced group of people. Looking at a regular Monday-Friday schedule, combining a single daily feature with regular micro blogging,  I’m hoping to strike a reasonable editorial balance. With the right content, published on a consistent schedule, we should be able to build a decent, loyal readership.

This week got off to a late start. Our web host had a server meltdown on Monday, so we couldn’t start publishing until Tuesday. There’s a continuous stream of technical problems to attend to, constant copy crises, the works. A classic first week, by any stretch of the imagination. Though I’m frequently frustrated by the errors I encounter, there is no avoiding them. If there’s any value in launching a new online periodical, it’s learning the patience required to manage anything of value properly. I can live with that.

This was a nice surprise to wake up to today. I’m equally thrilled to be sandwiched between both books. Listing courtesy of Bookforum.

Elliot Bay Book Co, 6;45 PM on Saturday. Twenty minutes before the first reading of my US tour gets underway.

Check out the review of the event posted this morning by Seattle’s Unlikely Outsider. Its a really thoughtful piece.

National Public Radio affiliate KUOW recorded the gig. I’ll post the date when I hear its scheduled for broadcast.

I’m proud to announce that Israel vs. Utopia is now available in the US. After six years of work, its remarkably gratifying to witness the book’s release. It was an absolute bear of a project to undertake. Only now does it feel like its really over.

Well, sort of. I’ll be supporting the book with a two week reading tour of the United States, starting in Seattle, on November 6th. See the Events section of this website for venue locations, as well as updates to the current reading schedule.

According to Amazon UK, the British release date is scheduled for November 5th. Speaking of said online retailer, although IvU is also available in Kindle format in the US, it is not available for download sales abroad quite as yet.

This week, the final proofs of my book were approved and sent to the printer. The culmination of six years of research and hundreds of pages of draft writing, Israel vs. Utopia is finally done. Forthcoming this October in the US, (and November in the UK), my publisher, Akashic Books, is now in the process of piecing together an American tour to support the book’s publication.

I can’t even begin to explain how gratified I am by all of this. From proofing the final draft to reviewing the book’s packaging, the entire process has been immensely rewarding. My second full-length book (not including the three collections I’ve both edited and co-edited), it comes the closest to approximating what I always wanted to write in book-length form. And it also, despite how exhausted I am, allows me to think about moving on to related subjects I’ve been increasingly interested in exploring as of late.

Being in Europe this past year has been immensely rewarding in this regard. It allowed me to conclude the writing I did about Israel’s relationship with Britain and France in IvU, as well as consider possibilities for future research. Living in immigrant neighborhoods such as Brixton, in south London, and the Piazza Loreto/Via Padova area in Milan has only served to clarify such interests. I’m not quite ready to talk about where I intend to go from here, except to say that it will be a natural consequence of what I’ve been witnessing.

In the interim, if you’re interested in learning more about Israel vs. Utopia, Akashic has put up a promo page announcing its October release. Amazon UK and Powells (for US readers) are already offering preorders, too.

Photograph by Vance Galloway