Penguin Random House Canada has announced the launch of a new imprint in spring 2019. Strange Light is intended to build on Hazlitt, an online magazine of fiction, interviews and long-form pieces.
“With Hazlitt, we’ve been able to build the sort of magazine we wanted to read and thought was missing—one centred around the stories we tell ourselves and to each other, about how we live and get by together,” Strange Light editorial director Jordan Ginsberg stated in a news release.
Strange Light will focus on work that is “challenging and hard to categorize,” added Ginsberg, who’s looking forward to pushing the boundaries of the print medium in ways Hazlitt’s online platform hasn’t allowed for.
The first Strange Light title is I BECOME A DELIGHT TO MY ENEMIES, which is a work of experimental fiction by Stanford Stegner fellow and prolific poet Sara Peters. Peters uses a variety of voices and forms to tell the stories of a group of women and to explore the way cycles of violence are perpetuated.
“The formatting [of Peters’ book] will make a different impact than if you just saw it in web design,” says Ginsberg. “There will be a tactile experience in how the pages fit together that would be hard to recreate digitally.”
The second work in Strange Light’s first lineup, currently untitled, is two-time National Magazine Award finalist Anshuman Iddamsetty’s non-fiction debut. A mix of cultural criticism and memoir, Iddamsetty’s work will explore society’s responses to and the systemic injustices acted upon fat bodies and will try to answer the question of what comes after acceptance.
The third work will be Lanny, British author Max Porter’s sophomore novel. Ginsberg says Lanny builds on Porter’s first novel, Grief Is The Thing With Feathers.
