The 4th issue of New Ohio Review, or /nor, is out now, their site is also facelifted for it and looks really nice. The new issue includes a new story and interview with Frederick Barthelme, as well as a lot of new work by new and familiar names. My copy of /nor 3 is one of the ones I continually go back to read, the work is top notch and the design on the book and quality of the paper makes one of those kinds of book objects you feel good just touching.

In addition to free pdf previews of certain work on the site by Stephen Dunn, Claire Bateman, William Todd Seabrook, and others, /nor is currently running an incredible deal where if you subscribe for a year, they will throw in another free year. A one year subscription is $16 including shipping. The $4 per-issue price on that is sick, and for the quality I know is in the journal, mixed with the great design, you almost can’t turn that away. I love that they are doing this, it almost seems to say: we just really want you to read this. If more journals made it more financially lucrative to get in the door, as recently Hobart and Fence have, I think we’d see a lot more journal activity. The /nor deal is good through October.

I’m particularly interested to see how the aesthetic of the work in the journal shifted after the editor for the first 3 issues was hoisted for seemingly printing too much ‘experimental’ work. I don’t know how anyone could look at those first 3 issues and want to end it, but hopefully the experimentation level hasn’t been squashed too hard. From the previews on the site, it seems things are still on.