Xmas Gift Idea: JAAM 28

The latest issue of JAAM has been out for a few weeks. JAAM is a literary journal containing poetry and prose and varying amounts of non-fiction essays, photos, illustration, interviews… This time it also contains something by me. So naturally, a blog post telling you to buy it. That’s how these things work.

JAAM has been published out of Wellington since ’95, when it launched at the same time as a Victoria University Writing Club – the product of Mark Pirie’s enthusiasm and drive. The club lasted a few years before dissolving into a loose network of friends, but JAAM has published regularly since ’95. Currently an annual publication, edited by Helen Rickerby and Clare Needham (who were both in that original Class of ’95), this issue has the theme of “dance”.

I’m pleased to have a story in there because I really have a lot of love for JAAM, and its relaxed and unaffected sense of style. Also because, as mentioned in my author bio in the issue, I was there in ’95 when the club began and the journal was announced. It took me a very long time to submit something.

The story printed is one of the dozen short pieces I wrote last year in my short story binge. I sort of dread reading it in printed form because nothing makes you see all the limitations in your own craft like being published. But people have been very kind and it did get accepted in the first place, so. (In the JAAM-linked writing group there was a running joke that was also partly serious, where you’d always preface sharing your new work with a comment about why it sucked and you hated it.)

Anyway, even though I talk about me in this post, I’m only a few pages of a wide-ranging and nimble collection. The Xmas gift idea suggestion is a genuine one. This is good stuff, to be enjoyed.

JAAM is (or soon will be?) available at Unity Books in Wgtn and other places like that.

5 thoughts on “Xmas Gift Idea: JAAM 28”

  1. Thanks guys! Tim, it’s ‘Perfectly Right’ that turns up in this issue – don’t know who got to read that one beforehand, maybe you did…

  2. And a damn good story it is too! Thanks for the plug. JAAM is indeed available at Unity Books in Welly, and also in Auckland, and various other awesome independent bookshops.

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