Literary themes abound in spring: March was Small Press Month, April was National Poetry Month, and May is (drumroll, please)…National Artisan Gelato Month! (Oh, and Egg Month, Meditation Month, and Zombie Awareness Month). OK, so maybe my theme has unraveled a bit here. In any case, the topics in this column are always literary and the issues always pressing. So grab yourself a bowl of artisan gelato and read on…

About a week ago in San Francisco, a few ambitious writers, editors, and designers (from publications like Dwell and Wired) gathered in the offices of Mother Jones to put together 48 Hour Magazine, an experiment in using crowdsourced tools to erase media’s old limits. The project involved writing, photographing, illustrating, designing, editing, and shipping a glossy magazine in a mere two days, as well as putting forth a transparent funding structure. The theme was, appropriately, hustle, and the inaugural 60-page issue is now available from self-publishing service MagCloud. I love the emphasis on both web-based tools and a printed end product. Hustle over here and get a copy.

Experimentation is alive in other corners of the literary world as well. Erinrose Mager and Ben Segal are assembling a book of blurbs about books that don’t exist, titled The Official Catalog of the Library of Potential Literature. They’re accepting submissions through July 15, so if you’d like to blurb a fake book, now’s your chance. Willows Wept Press will publish the Catalog in a limited edition.

Brooklyn-based indie publisher LoudMouth Press recently released a book based on a project by artists Carla Repice and Geoff Cunningham, titled The Office of Blame Accountability. Beginning in 2007, Repice and Cunningham—acting as Blame Accountants—set up a table, a typewriter, and a red telephone at such places as Ground Zero, Wall Street, and the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. They invited passersby to fill out Blame Forms (I blame:______ for: ______. My role: ______) or voice grievances into the red phone, in hopes that these acts would afford the opportunity for catharsis and reflection—and maybe even inspire action. The book, subtitled A Compendium of American Finger Pointing, collects all kinds of blaming scenarios, from major injustices to everyday minutiae.

Here’s another opportunity for writing something potentially cathartic (or at least fun): the Letters with Character project, in which you compose a letter to your favorite fictional character. The particularly great submissions are published on this here blog. Check out the ones already posted, such as the letter to Gatsby (of The Great Gatsby), to Seymour (A Perfect Day for Bananafish), and to Cathy (Wuthering Heights). They’re clever, hilarious, rambling, succinct, and just generally awesome.

Also in the experimental category (I think I’m just gonna go ahead and declare this National Literary Experiments Month): Independent arts magazine White Fungus recently relocated to Taichung, Taiwan, from Wellington, New Zealand, and released an eye-popping 11th issue. And have you checked out the new(ish) online journal Cerise Press? A collaborative effort between three French and American editors, it features poetry, prose, photos, artwork, reviews, interviews, and translations (with an emphasis on French and Francophone works). C’est magnifique!

Another new journal of poetry and prose, Little Star, was recently born. The first issue gleams with the talents of Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Lydia Davis, Padget Powell, Mary Jo Salter, among others. Edited by Ann Kjellberg, a former editor of the New York Review of Books, Little Star is poised to have no small impact.

Lastly, if you like to hang out in the Twitterverse, you should definitely follow some famous literary characters. I particularly recommend edgar_allan_poe (sample tweet: My most beloved iPhone app is the one that transmogrifies my phone into a bottle of absinthe.) and halfpintingllas, the Twitter account of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Folks really ought to keep their hands off their blackberries while driving. Leave them in the pail! You can eat them when you get home!). I’m not much of a Twitterer, but I love these little tweets from the prairie and from beyond the grave.

Photo by Flickr user su-lin