Bloomington literary magazine relocates to Pennslyvania

Town staples earn their notoriety by staying in town. That's how Bathtub Gin became synonymous with Bloomington for many local poets. The nationally distributed biannual literary and art magazine will continue to be synonymous with Bloomington until it moves printing locations to Erie, Penn., in August.\nArtists will say goodbye to the magazine at the "Farwell to Bloomington" poetry and prose reading at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Runcible Spoon, 412 E. 6th St.\nChristopher Harter started Bathtub Gin in 1997, a brain child he nursed among friends as far back as his college days at Ball State University. After finishing his master's at IU in 1996, he began work at the Ruth Lilly Library when he thought the time was right to act on this festering idea.\n"At the time I started Gin," he said, "it seemed to me that lit mags tended to separate into two camps: the academic reviews and those that published a lot of neo-Bukowski writers. I felt there were a number of contemporary writers that I liked that didn't write in either vein and weren't finding an outlet for their writing. So, I started Gin to help them find an audience."\nAround that time, other people apparently wanted to help such writers find their audience too, Harter said.\n"Little did I know there were a number of lit mags looking to do the same thing that started around the same time as Gin," he said. "So I must have been right. Unfortunately, I think Gin is the only one of that group that is still publishing."\nAfter years of publishing at the Bloomington location, Harter's wife is going to Erie to finish her Ph.D. and teach. Harter plans to go with her, so Bathtub Gin must move as well.\nLocal poet and resident Tony Brewer said the magazine might be the only other nationally recognized literary magazine in south central Indiana besides the Indiana Review, so he sees it as a loss for Bloomington.\n"The Gin will continue to flow from Erie," said Brewer, who has had his work printed in issue No. 10. "But I'll miss Chris's involvement in the scene in Bloomington, particularly the exhibitions he's curated at the Lilly Library and the poetry and spoken word artists he's brought to town and the chapbooks he's produced and the poets he's published. He did a beat generation exhibit at the Lilly in 2002 that was phenomenal. He's a wealth of knowledge of that era."\nHarter leaves behind some fond memories of the literary community in Bloomington, as well as memories of printing Bathtub Gin.\n"(My favorite memory is) probably printing the very last copy of that first issue and seeing that the magazine had become an actual publication," he said. "I've also enjoyed getting to know a number of writers in the Bloomington area and watching the literary scene change over the past 10 years and watch it grow."\nHarter has also garnered respect and friendship from local poets. Graduate student Christopher Essex has been published in one previous issue of Bathtub Gin.\n"(Harter) has a fine eye for literary quality and very easy to work with," Essex said. He has been published in one previous issue of the literary magazine and is a Ph.D. candidate in Instructional Systems Technology.\nHarter said literary magazines are the only print outlet left for new writers to reach audiences. Though he only printed 400 copies, that is a lot for a literary magazine, Harter said.\n"Historically, literary magazines (and small presses) have been the place where new writers first found their audiences and have been allowed to develop their work," Harter said. "They are even more important today because with the conglomerization of the publishing industry, the major publishers have completely abandoned serious literary publishing. It is complete win of style of substance with them, nothing but fluff. And when I say 'serious literary publishing,' I don't mean writing that only MFAs read. I'm talking about good, honest poetry and fiction that goes beyond typical formulas."\n-- Contact Arts Editor Joelle Petrus at jpetrus@indiana.edu.