An Open Letter By Jim Wittenberg

2/15/2010

The Stark Electric Space, an international anthology of indie writers, was recently collected, published and printed by Subhankar Das of Kolkata, India.

It features work by Malay Roychoudhury, Aleathia Drehmar, Parnab Mukherjee, Bob Rosenthal, Sharmy Pandey, Samir Roychoudhury, Shankarnath Chakraborty, Yannis Livadas, Boel Schenlaer, Sreedhar Mukhopadhyay, Paula Dawn, Arunabh Banerjee, Joseph Goosey, Ateendriya Pathak, Erik Vatne, Yasmeen Najmi, Pradip Choudhury, Sara Moss, Aloke Biswas, Jeff Callico, Federica Nightingle, Michael Aaron Casares, Subhankar Das, Heather Fowler, Subhash Ghosh, Tim Hall, Jim Wittenberg, Maria Grazia Galata, Henry Avignon, Elli Griva, Swadesh Misra and Selim Morshed.

It can be purchased by contacting Subhankar Das.

A more serious issue is that copies of the anthology have been confiscated coming into the United States. My two copies arrived the other day in the mail, but the package did look as if it had been opened by someone along the way. As a contributer to the anthology I can’t see anything in its pages that would make this necessary. It includes poetry, stories, pictures and art. Is it because it’s coming from southern Asia? The last I heard the United States was not at war with India. Has something happened in the news that has slipped by me?

What should be done about this? What can we expect to happen next if US Customs agents are confiscating literature at the airport? Is this no longer a free society?

Does anyone has any suggestions how this should be dealt with? Or is it better for us to bury our heads in the dirt? Email me at: offbeatjim@sbcglobal.net