Paul Constant is back on the books beat!
Paul Constantâs departure from The Stranger earlier this year left a gaping hole in Seattle literary coverage â not because nobody wrote about books anymore, but because Paul wasnât writing about books anymore. Whether heâs on the job or not, Paul is omnipresent at Seattle literary events. Heâs so inextricable from Seattleâs literary world that at one point he wrote a 900-word review for a novel just for fun without even having a place for it to go. (We broke our No Dudes rule for him, because heâs great.)
Itâs a great day for Seattle literature, because Paul, along with novelist and UX designer Martin McClellan, have launched what is so far an extraordinary thoughtful and specialized literary review: appropriately, The Seattle Review of Books. While theyâll both â along with others â review books, according to their About, âPaul is responsible for the front-of-the-house, and Martin is running the kitchen (and occasionally delivering food).â
BUT SEATTLISH, you might be thinking, THEY ARE TWO WHITE DUDES AGAIN. WHY IS EVERYTHING RUN BY WHITE DUDES??? and hey, youâre right. But we would like to call out this accountability paragraph from their About page specifically:
How can you claim to celebrate the diversity of Seattleâs literary scene? Arenât you a couple of white dudes?
Yes, but we are actively dedicated to diversity in the books that we cover, and in the reviewers who cover them. Diversity is a cornerstone belief of The Seattle Review of Books. We hope to encourage a new generation of book reviewers with a wide variety of perspectives to share their reading lives with the world. We also intend to hire an ombudsman to publish yearly âdiversity reportsâ examining the race, gender, sexuality, and cultural perspectives of authors we feature, so that we donât perpetuate the publishing industryâs ongoing institutional preference for books by straight white dudes. We encourage ongoing transparency and conversation on this topic.
Bottom line: Nobody can inhale books, then surface with the same level of emotional insight, quite like Paul. And if this other dude is half as cool, we look forward to his work.
Why not get started with this spot-on reflection on the career of true-crime writer Ann Rule, who died yesterday?
I wrote a snarky overview of Ruleâs writing back when I was the new kid at The Stranger, and while I regret the tone of the piece â I was so much younger then! â I do not regret my opinion of Ruleâs work. Her writing was often a little florid, but she was an impeccable journalist, an expert interviewer, and a terrific researcher. [âŚ] Rule demonstrated exactly how reporters should cover crime: with facts, with hundreds of pages of research backing you up, and with a ton of compassion for the victims and survivors of the crime.
Other pieces less than 24 hours old: Nicola Griffith on womenâs stories and a review of Gawker: An Oral History, plus a literary calendar. Go check âem out.
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