Book Markers: 07.18.13

“The Art of Steampunk”

    “What is Steampunk? In three short words, Steampunk is Victorian science fiction.” So writes G.D. Falksen in his introduction to “The Art of Steampunk” by Art Donovan, just out in a revised second edition from Fox Chapel Publishing. Victorian is here meant as an evocation, referring to a heavily decorative look, an aesthetic, wholeheartedly and enthusiastically influenced by early industrialization.

    Mr. Donovan, who lives in Southampton, curated the movement’s defining moment, a famous 2009-10 show of ornate devices, contraptions, inventions, garments, breathing apparatuses, and field glasses at the Museum of the History of Science at Oxford University in England. He’ll speak about the book, the artists and craftsmen of the Oxford exhibition, and the increasingly popular movement in general at the East Hampton Library on Saturday at 1 p.m.

On the Fate of the Lit Mag

    So how are those book groups and workshops going? Vital to your creativity? And what about that small literary journal you came across at the coffee shop? Crucial among the diminishing outlets for fiction?

    Yes and yes. Such topics and a lot more will be chewed over next Thursday at a gathering led by Carol Muske-Dukes at BookHampton in East Hampton. At 8 p.m., Ms. Muske-Dukes, a poet, novelist, professor at the University of Southern California, and summertime resident of Springs, will be joined by Eliot Weinberger, a critic and translator, Cynthia Zarin, a poet, and Jean McGarry, a novelist, in reading from their work and getting down to brass tacks about “the little magazine and literary community in writing life today.” A flier calls the event “Little Star by the Sea,” referring to a new literary magazine, Little Star, edited by Ann Kjellberg, who will also be on hand.