LITERARY NEWS | Mosaic Magazine Celebrates 20th Issue

AFRICAN-AMERICAN LITERARY ARTS MAGAZINE CELEBRATES CRUCIAL ACHIEVEMENT OF TWENTIETH ISSUE

Mosaic Literary Magazine

New York, NY (BlackNews.com) – The Literary Freedom Project, a 501(c)3 non-profit arts organization based in the Bronx, NY, is proud to announce a major milestone. Mosaic Literary Magazine will publish its twentieth issue in September 2007. This crucial landmark places the literary quarterly in the unique position of being one of two nationally distributed, continuously published African-American literary magazines to reach such an achievement in the modern era.

Mosaic, founded in 1998, is a unique publication focusing on various aspects of African-American literature. The quarterly publishes articles, essays, book reviews, original poetry and short fiction. It has featured a cadre of some of the most important and talented voices of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Colson Whitehead, bell hooks, E. Lynn Harris, Sonya Sanchez, Chimamanda Adichie, Gwendolyn Brooks, E. Ethelbert Miller, Eric Jerome Dickey, asha bandele, James Baldwin, Walter Mosley, Suheir Hammad, Major Jackson, and Mat Johnson have all been subjects of feature articles.

Mosaic follows the important path that was established by such illustrious publications as Negro Digest, Black World, and the African American Review.

Mosaic’s ability to publish reflects the digital age in which it exists. All the writers and editors connect by email and the internet. Articles are assigned, written, and edited with minimal verbal communication. Once the edited material is received by email it’s then formatted in Adobe Illustrator and sent electronically to the printer who is located in Syracuse. The publisher coordinates all this out of his home office in the Bronx, NY. Expenses are covered by funds generated by our marketing partner MosaicBooks.com.

A leading niche marketer, MosaicBooks.com, which launched in 1996, was the first site dedicated to showcasing African-American literature on the internet. The “ah-hah” moment came in 1995, when the publisher, an avid reader, was at a lost as to what to read next. His indecision led to the creation of MosaicBooks.com, a site to help visitors make informed decisions about African-American literature. It has since become a leader in promoting and marketing for advertisers looking to reach the Black booklover. The site features the largest listing of African-American book clubs and receives over 300,000 individual hits per month. Yahoo! and Google rank MosaicBooks.com as one of the most important site for “readers of Black literature.”

Such success has given the Literary Freedom Project an opportunity to publish a magazine that retains an unswerving dedication to editorial excellence in every issue. In an atmosphere where commercial and urban books are taking a leading role in reshaping the identity of Black literature, Mosaic has consistently looked to those increasingly marginalized voices who are continuing the tradition of Zora Neale Huston, Langston Hughes, Ann Petry and others.

With its growing reputation, and projected annual readership of 48,000, Mosaic’s influence among librarians and educators as a contemporary literary reference is crucial to the reading habits of their constituents. Approximately 25% of our subscribers are libraries and like institutions.

The publisher of Mosaic Literary Magazine and MosaicBooks.com is Ron Kavanaugh. A lifelong reader, he started MosaicBooks.com in 1996 and Mosaic in 1998, with no publishing, editing, or internet background. He designs and, through 2006, edited the magazine. In 2003, to broaden the organization’s ability to effect change in the literary arts he formed the Literary Freedom Project, a non-profit arts organization that seeks to empower communities of color through literature, creative thinking, and new media.

For additional information or to set up an interview contact: Precenda Griffin, Communications Coordinator, 718-941-9468 or Precenda@mosaicmagazine.org

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