Mainstay Press is a new partisan fiction journal, Liberation Lit: http://liblit.org

We are publishing online first, and in paper form secondarily. Our first progressive partisan stories, often fact-rich, are by authors from Canada, Nigeria, US, Indonesia…soon Fiji and elsewhere. Currently all of these authors happen to be reporters or essayists too, publishing on topical events and in progressive journals.

If you have the interest, these sorts of stories could work as ZNet commentaries, possibly especially “The Militants” by Adetokunbo Abiola, in which:

“Guerrillas, soldiers and civilians struggle for justice and survival in the Niger Delta amid suffering and death fueled by the oil industry and the state.” – http://liblit.wordpress.com/2007/10/07/the-militants-by-adetokunbo-abiola/

Such stories could run alone as dramatic, fact-based commentary or be “piggybacked” on the traditional essay commentaries.

Using such stories as or with commentaries might also be a good way to test whether or not partisan fiction could be a valuable addition to left magazines like Z, as was the case in progressive magazines in earlier eras. My view of course is that such contributions are crucial to progressive partisan culture and struggle, and that historically we’ve taken a step backward in omitting such work (which, frankly, seems to have hurt the left’s understanding of what really is progressive partisan art and what is not, let alone its potential. For, example, again frankly, the recent essay largely on Nobel Prize winner Dorris Lessing at Counterpunch by a good progressive historian was pathetic. Has Doris Lessing drawn a breath in the last several decades? One wouldn’t know it from reading the article. I mean, it was hardly serious). Some left art is strong – many Z cartoons for example. But a great void remains too.

Tony Christini

For a quick overview of all the current stories at Liberation Lit – Lib Lit All Story: http://liblit.wordpress.com/all-story