Added

The following publishers have been added to my links section, after having conducted interviews with them. (I began interviewing francophones earlier this summer; I hope to branch out to Korean publishers as well.) Given the cultural divide that exists between English and French literatures in Canada, their sites are well worth checking out:

Marcel Broquet, La Nouvelle Edition

Guy Saint-Jean, Editeur

Kerry Clare -- critic, lit-blogger

Kerry Clare of Pickle Me This

1. When I started this interview series it was already clear that publishing -- especially of literary fiction -- was in dire straits. At that time, one explanation that was fashionable was 9/11 was the reason people weren't reading as much literature (or as much anything) as they used to. Now we are living in a time when the long-term repercussions of 9/11 are still with us. But using 9/11 as a primary explanation for what ails literary publishing simply doesn't work. For one thing, we are now in the midst of a particularly serious recession, and for another, it is clear the general decline in reading is a widespread -- and possibly unstoppable -- phenomenon that has roots which go back decades.