I was looking for a copy of the new Poets&Writers on the newstand today. I know, I could likely check their website and find out the date it’s issued, but I prefer the old-fashioned scouting method. Partly because disappointment on that score can lead to happy discoveries, like happening upon an issue of World Literature Today with Sherman Alexie on its cover.

Limited content from this July/August issue is available online but, if you are a fan of Alexie’s work, you will want to seek out the complete issue. The Editor’s Note opens with a quote from Alexie and the issue oozes with all-things-Alexie, including a terrific interview with Joshue B. Nelson, titled “‘Humor Is My Green Card’ A Conversation with Sherman Alexie”, from March 2010, and a series of essays.

(I think it’s particularly amusing that the issue opens with an epigraph, since another tasty tidbit that the magazine offers is Bernard Quiriny’s “Fear of the First Line”, in which the merits of writers avoiding this fear by employing an epigraph is discussed. This piece is translated from the French by Edward Gauvin and, were the Alexie works not enough, this wee bit makes the cover price seem a bargain.)

Alexie is the 2010 Puterbaugh Fellow (you can see a list of the past fellows here) and this year’s Festival in Oklahoma included authors representing eleven tribal affiliations and a celebration of native cinema sponsored by the Sundance Institute, including Alexie’s 2002 film “The Business of Fancydancing”.

With my recent reading of David Treur’s Native American Literature in mind, I found this snippet from Alexie`s interview particularly interesting: “There are more rules to being Indian than inside an Edith Wharton novel about which fork to use at dinner.” But that’s just a single quote: there’s lot more between the covers.

Come on, you know you want this magazine. And you want some of Sherman Alexie‘s work too. Yes?