This is the Substack newsletter home for indie press Lazuli Literary Group (est. 2015) and its associated literary magazine, AZURE: A Journal of Literary Thought, a publication that lives both online on our website (for the purposes of remaining fully free and accessible) and in a painstakingly designed annual print anthology (a labor of love that we consider to be our intended art object). Join us for literary courses, “Virtual Coffeehouse” Reading Rooms (coming soon—stay tuned!), information about forthcoming book titles, underappreciated quotes from underquoted classic novels, and essays on craft & literature by our editors.
Learn more about our founders and staff here.
Lazuli Literary Group is a platform dedicated to fostering the delight of the literary imagination.
We are particularly drawn to writing that broadens the concept of "literary" to one that pulls from a global pedigree of storytelling technique. We seek authors who revel in the rhythmic possibilities of the poetic line, who contemplate the flavor, the shape, and the history of every word they use; who are so committed to the pyrotechnics of the written word that they comprehend the beauty of classical forms and yet feel compelled to constantly re-invent their craft. Our goal is to support underrepresented styles of writing, specifically within a genre that we imagined, which we call otherworld realism. We like work that encompasses an eclectic mix of the literary, the lyrical, the experimental and the witty; as such, we publish works that may not be suited for mass consumption due to their raw yet polished innovations in content and form.
Every piece published in AZURE: A Journal of Literary Thought appears alongside a customized black & white sketch that is devised and executed by our in-house illustrator, Evgenia Barsheva.
Lastly, the "Group" in Lazuli Literary Group is meant to be not us, but you—our fellow readers and writers who participate in our literary journey by engaging with the work we publish.
The genre we devised to describe our literary proclivities
otherworld realism
[uhth -er-wurld] [ree-uh-liz-uh m]
noun
a style of literature devoted to intellectual and imaginative pursuits that point towards a potential, evolved reality.
a genre that represents the known, often mundane world in an elevated or defamiliarising way through the use of linguistic craft, innovative language, or experimental structure; contrast with magical realism, which integrates choice plot elements into a conventionally accepted reality.
art and literature that evokes the space before clarity in which one must navigate the logic of intuition and instinct, alongside the duplicity of fact.
an approach illuminating a psychic space of process; a space of ambiguity, silence, and internal struggle.
the pre-dawn.
Word Origin
2017; coined by Lazuli Literary Group; first appearing in AZURE: A Journal of Literary Thought, Volume One.
Our favorite writers
We love work that is linguistically, intellectually, and emotionally demanding of the reader. We want literary fiction that grows in complexity upon each visitation, nonfiction that challenges the ordinary modes of information conveyance; we enjoy ornate, cerebral, and voluptuous prose executed with thematic intent. Some writers whose work we admire are Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, Jorge Luis Borges, Charles Dickens, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Thomas Mann, Marcel Proust, Robert Musil, T.S. Eliot, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, John Milton, Aphra Behn, Herman Melville, and Italo Calvino.
What we publish
Here are some wise words by Zadie Smith--a delight in themselves--that gesture to the sort of writing that dazzles us:
"What is a cliche except language passed down by Das Mann, used and shop-soiled by so many before you, and in no way the correct jumble of language for the intimate part of your vision you meant to express? With a cliche you have pandered to a shared understanding, you have taken a short-cut, you have re-presented what was pleasing and familiar rather than risked what was true and strange. It is an aesthetic and an ethical failure: to put it very simply, you have not told the truth. When writers admit to failures they like to admit to the smallest ones - for example, in each of my novels somebody "rummages in their purse" for something because I was too lazy and thoughtless and unawake to separate "purse" from its old, persistent friend "rummage". To rummage through a purse is to sleepwalk through a sentence - a small enough betrayal of self, but a betrayal all the same. To speak personally, the very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life. But it is easy to admit that a sentence makes you wince; less easy to confront the fact that for many writers there will be paragraphs, whole characters, whole books through which one sleepwalks and for which "inauthentic" is truly the correct term." - Zadie Smith
Read our submissions guidelines for more information about contributing to AZURE: A Journal of Literary Thought.
Our courses
Public Intellectualism + Artistic Sensibility
Combining the ethos of public intellectualism and the artistic sensibility at the heart of Lazuli Literary Group, each of our sessions "reads" like a poem--with its own narrative and emotional arc--tickling the senses at just the right moments; the experiences are designed to be artistic, unexpected, and meaningful.
We aim to divorce the intense, scholarly study of literature from its hefty price tag; the in-depth study of the craft and the poetics, the empathy and the lyricism, and the lively delight of words penned with deliberation and genius should be more readily available than it is. To that end, we offer learned literarians to lead you through literary landscapes in which they are well-traveled; to exhort you to look under that rock here, behind that tree there--to perhaps see something you might not otherwise have seen.
Resisting the academic tradition of approaching literature via dispassionate observation, we welcome the emotional depths such literature was written to stir (think of Beloved, or Moby Dick): to make us think things, realize things, feel things. We spend our time on laser-sharp close readings of passages and the linguistic complexities therein—the overwhelming flash of understanding that it is ONLY these exact conglomerations of words arranged in only this perfect congruity that could have made us feel precisely this.
Instead of pointing to names and theories with cold rationality, we will employ intellectualism towards the ends of promoting empathy and enriching emotions; we will indulge in the rapture, the tears, the humor, and the joy of literature.
Learn about some of our past courses on Woolf, Shakespeare, and Dickens on our course page.
