KENSINGTON, MD — As of about 8:00 this morning, May 17, 2011, independent press Atticus Books is busting-its-buttons proud to announce the launch of its first literary journal, Atticus Review. AR is a weekly online journal that publishes stories, poems, and electric literature, and shepherds other genre-busting words of wisdom and interactive whimsy. The non-commercial publication’s tagline: Six Degrees Left of Literature.

“We take pride in not taking ourselves too seriously, while taking seriously the responsibility of producing a literary journal worth celebrating,” says Dan Cafaro, founder of the trade publishing company Atticus Books. “You may not be able to physically cuddle with our journal, but the intimacy and immediacy of the writing will provide comfort and be a clarion call for substantive meaning … with some occasional banal humor thrown in to keep it real.”

Starting today, the AR staff is dedicated to bringing to readers every Tuesday a wide array of literary endeavors, from haunting short stories to smile-inducing poems to inventive videos and soundscapes. And Atticus, as always, is bent on elevating the stature of writers and artists whose work eschews the mainstream for the inventive and bypasses the ordinary for the extraordinary.

Conceived at the annual AWP conference, mostly during a series of whiskey-fueled conversations (as admitted by the publisher), Atticus Review intends to “change the public’s perception of reading as a static activity” and “turn the platform of digital publishing into an interactive trampoline.” As further covered in the mission statement, AR aims to “slay apathy. Slay illiteracy. Slay ignorance. Slay censorship. Slay formulaic drivel, preened and packaged to sell. Slay the tendency to settle for second-rate writing.”

“If Atticus means the bringer of death in Latin, let this journal propagate and celebrate the refreshing rebirth of arts and the evolution of language,” Cafaro says. “We’re arriving at a critical juncture for the publishing industry, so the idea of offering a multimedia, digital harvest of creative writing, connected to all things literary, is new Renaissance fruit ripe for bearing.”

Writer and fearless Editor-in-Chief Katrina Gray leads the journal into the media fray, selecting the most exciting and challenging short and flash fiction that she can get her hands on. And should you get lost in the website’s contents, her weekly Letter from the Editor (“Inside the Nest” column) will clue you in to “where our minds are at, what questions we can’t shake, and what images and issues are fascinating us to no end.”

“Whatever your coordinates are when you begin reading, we hope you have to reassess your latitude by the time you click away,” Gray says in her kickoff column.

The Atticus Review team is rounded out by Poetry Editor Michael Meyerhofer, Mixed Media Editor Matt Mullins and Managing Editor Libby Kuzma who, with their combined efforts, plan to make sure there’s never a dull moment. As AR continues to build its foundation and flesh out its unique personality and left-of-center body of work, the publisher warmly invites and encourages submissions from writers, poets, digital lit aficionados, cultural pulse-takers and anyone else with something to say and a unique way to say it.

To submit work for consideration, go to the Atticus submishmash site or e-mail submissions@atticusreview.org.