The Double Dealer was created in the image of The Double Dealer, a New Orleans journal of the 1920s, which published the first work of William Faulkner and the early work of such important authors as Ernest Hemingway. When the Pirate’s Alley first began publishing a journal, we named it The Double Dealer Redux to differentiate the new journal from the original. “Redux” is a Latin word that means “brought back” or “recreated.” The old Double Dealer was founded by Albert Goldstein, Julius Weiss Friend, John McClure and Basil Thompson, with the assistance of a dedicated group of Louisiana guarantors, who were tired of hearing the South described as a literary backwater by critics in other regions, such as H. L. Menken, who called the South, “the desert wasteland of the Beaux Arts.” Relatives of founders—including Jane Goldstein, Gretchen Thompson, and Joe Friend, have been members of today’s Faulkner Society. Guarantors of the old Double Dealer included Gideon Stanton, whose son, Gideon, has been a member of the Society’s Advisory Council; and the late Samuel Zemurray, whose daughter, the late Doris Zemurray Stone, was one of the first patrons of The Double Dealer Redux. The journal was published quarterly in hard copy from 1992 through 2005. After Katrina, we published two large, annual editions in hardcover but, then, because losses in the wake of the devastating storm, we were forced to let The Double Dealer fall by the wayside temporarily. In 2011, we dropped the “Redux” from the journal’s name and began publishing again, electronically.
An important facet of The Double Dealer’s content has always been publication of winning manuscript material from he Faulkner Society’s international literary talent search, William Faulkner – William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition, and material about annual awardees of the Society’s ALIHOT (A Legend in His/Her Own Time) medals. The Society commits to the publication of both competition and ALIHOT winners and the issues since Katrina have been huge annual editions including the material of winners from the dormant as well as current years. Our goal, which we hope to reach by 2020, is a return to Quarterly editions, with one issue each year devoted largely to our winners.
The Society’s goals in bringing the old Double Dealer back to life were to provide a forum for showcasing the work of developing writers alongside that of established writers, and to provide a resource for teachers of English, literature, and creative writing. Each issue includes features that can be easily used for teaching students of creative writing. Lesson Plans have been created for many of these features and, along with reprints of the stories themselves, are available to creative writing teachers free of charge. Our goals remain the same today.
The new journal has received excellent reviews from professional writers, book publishers, teachers and readers. Issues are targeted for release before the Society’s annual September 25th annual salute, Happy Birthday, Mr Faulkner!, to our namesake and to all great writers: past, present, and yet to come. Much of the work on The Double Dealer is by literary professionals volunteering their talents and by college interns who earn course credit for their work with the Faulkner Society. For information on the Faulkner Society and all of its projects and events, visit: http://www.faulknersociety.org/
Today’s Double Dealer
The Double Dealer publishes the manuscripts for winning poems, short stories and essays in their entirety and portions of novels and novellas. (With permission of the authors, we have published entire novellas.) When a portion is to be published, we ask the author to make the selection. Manuscripts from the Society’s competition winners are our first priority. Finalists are given special consideration as well.
We are actively soliciting advertising for this year’s journal. For more information, follow this link.