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Swaddled in a simple red cover, the first issue of Frank was born some 20 years ago in a cubicle-cluttered backroom of the graduate English Department of Northeastern University in Boston. Founding-editor and then teaching fellow David Applefield thought it strange that a university with 60000 students didn't have a literary journal, and so he marched around campus pasting together bits of budget from different departments to finance the first issue of Frank in the spring of 1983. Why Frank ?
Everyone asks. Well, the word looked like what it meant, direct, sincere, to the point, and the etymology of the first name Frank implies freedom.
The journal was conceived from the start to be open to diverse genre, voices, persuasions, language groups... That first issue was confined to local writers, but the vision for international expansion was already in place, so when David headed to France and posted signs in Shakespeare and Co. bookstore that Frank was accepting manuscripts, the floodgates opened wide. Today, Frank receives over 1000 unsolicited manuscripts per issue from over 35 countries.
On a balmy evening in June 1984, the first European issue of Frank was launched with a diverse melange of international writers and artists from around the globe. Including a ground-breaking unpublished poem by Jack Kerouac, unearthed by Beat poet Marty Matz who knocked on the door of David's 6th floor rue Monge flat out of breath holding a 1959 tape of Jack reading his new poem to a group of cognac-induced friends.
Frank 3 was the first American literary magazine to be presented at the Pompidou Center. By issue #4 Frank had published original work from such literary giants as Italo Calvino, Henri Michaux, John Berger, Charles Bukowski, Milan Kundera, Allen Ginsberg, Edouard Roditi, Paul Bowles, William Burroughs, Breyton Breytenbach, Michel Butor, Andrei Codrescu, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and several hundred lesser known but accomplished writers and artists.
In 1986, to combat anglophone ethnocentric tendencies Frank 5 introduced the first "Foreign Dossier" with the format that would structure all subsequent numbers and fuel Frank's growing international reputation.
Surprised by a wave of submissions from Turkish writers and translators of contemporary Turkish writing, and influenced by the highly-eclectic Paris-based American writer and scholar, Edoaurd Roditi, Frank published a lively collection of Turkish writers today and included the work of famed Yashar Kemal and controversial Kurdish filmmaker Yilmaz Gunay. In addition, as the start of a new commercial offensive, Frank sold for the first time its back cover to Delta Air Lines, which had just inaugurated its Paris-Atlanta service. David coined the slogan 'Poetry in Flight", and Frank designer Scott Minick, who had been teaching graphic design at Parsons Paris campus layed out a winning maquette. The sale marked the first time an international airline had collaborated with a literary journal and Frank 's printing bill was assured. Press was abundant and highly favorable.
And so the journal grew in scope and depth, building an international readership and attracting innovative submissions from around the world, using Paris, of course, each time as its literary, spiritual and artistic backdrop.
The next issue, Frank 6/7 focused on Nordic culture, following David's participation at the Nordic Poetry Festival in Iceland. The back cover was gobbled up by IKEA. The "Fiction and America" interview featured metafiction writer Robert Coover.
Frank 8/9 explored the regional writing of Los Angeles, compiled by Garret White, a "Foreign Dossier" from the Philippines, highlighting 40 poets censured or in exile in the Marcos period, and an important interview with American fiction writer Raymond Carver.
Frank 10 presented a satirical piece called The Interview with Stephen Dixon, an overview of new New York writing piloted by Leonard Schwartz, and a stunning survey of literary Pakistan, compiled by University of Peshawar professor Tahriq Rahman.
Frank 11/12 with a new design created by Cory McCloud showcased a lively mix of international writing from woman around the world and led off with an interview with Pulitzer Prize poet Rita Dove. The first exerpts from Derek Walcott's Omeros were published, as well as a collection of contemporary Chinese poetry, and a key interview with Duo Duo, four days after Tienamen Square!
Frank 13 offered readers a real treat in that editor David Applefield obtained an exclusive cultural interview with Czech president and playwright Vaclav Havel and the rights to publish a recent play. Interviews with W.S. Merwin and James Salter, a Paris speech by William Styron, an unpublished poem/drawing of Max Ernst's and a letter from Maurice Girodias to Samuel Beckett all graced the pages of Frank 13.
The Frederick Barthelme interview and short story appeared in Frank 14, along with freshly discovered Beckett poems and a colorful "Foreign Dossier" of contemporary writing from the Congo, following David's literary sojourn to Brazzaville. The Sony Labou Tansi interview and text isexceptional.
Frank resurrected Jim Morrison in issue 15 with a live radio interview from 1970 and two unpublished poems. The lead interview was with the king of literary interviews himself, George Plimpton of the Paris Review. The regional dossier featured writers from North Carolina, compiled by Jody Jenkins, and the Foreign Dossier illustsrated the vast talent from Wallonia, French-speaking Belgium. The issue also offered a new essay from Octavio Paz and fiction from Annie Ernaux.
To celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of Frank, the journal reexamined the Parisian literary myth through its contemporary artistic scene in a collection called Anglophone Writing in Paris Today. The regional writing took on the title "Sense of Place" and featured literary New Mexico. The journal scared up rare postcards from D.H. Lawrence and Aldous Huxley, four unpublished letters from Henry Miller, Jacques Cousteau's posthumous polemic on human survival for the next four billion years, and an interview on cross-cultural literary life with American gay expatriate writer Edmund White.
With Frank 18, of course, we introduce our first Literary Conference Call, bringing writers and readers into closer dialogue via ReadFrank.com, orchestrated by Frank's multi-talented writer/web developer Sondra Russell! Thomas E. Kennedy in Copenhagen and Duff Brenna in San Diego joined the writers' party line on this maiden voyage. Our Foreign Dossier is Switzerland, a land in which the writing of four distinct languages converge. Our interview with Ruth Dreifuss, the Swiss Minister of Culture, introduces the country's unique talent.
And Frank 19 and 20 are in the works. More Frank interviews. Detailed investigations into the cultural landscape of places as richly diverse as Qatar, Hong Kong, Korea, and Poland.
And in late 2001, Frank introduces its Mini-Frank, a weekly four-page, foldable edition delivered to you as a PDF attachment. Your printer becomes a Frank print-site!
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