Our Year of Reading at the Irreal Cafe

[posted by Alice]

Yes, I know, The Cafe Irreal Coeditors have been ignoring this blog shamefully of late, but that’s about to change.

First off, a little history: In June of 1998, G.S. Evans and I uploaded what we called Issue 0 of The Cafe Irreal to the internet. That was a long time ago in internet years, and it’s worth noting that next year we will celebrate our twentieth anniversary of tending this small but influential webzine. Though Issue 0 itself no longer exists (it was basically a call for submissions), you can get a very good idea of what The Cafe Irreal looked like back then — built with all those awkward old HTML 4 tags, some animated gifs, and a boundless enthusiasm for the irreal — by going to this Second Issue page.

Now flash forward almost twenty years: We have a responsive HTML 5 site that uses more static graphics, but we still have boundless enthusiasm for the irreal. And that’s why, to celebrate our upcoming twentieth anniversary, we are launching our Year of Reading at the Irreal Cafe. It actually began on February 1 of this year (hey, I had to read something to comment on before I could make this announcement), and it will conclude on February 1 of next year when we present our twentieth anniversary issue. Look for commentary on collections of short fiction — and maybe some plays — by contributors to The Cafe Irreal, beginning on February 9 February 10, 2018.