Culture 11, for whom I have been doing a lot of writing over the last five months or so, very suddenly went out of business yesterday.

This really makes me sad for a number of reasons. First and most selfishly, the site had quickly become my favorite place to write for. My editor, Peter Suderman, was a joy to work for, and I got to write about a whole crazy range of things, from C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy, to gospel music, to bluegrass, to the Indian Cinderella. I was looking forward to publishing an essay on the Friday the 13th series (which should appear somewhere else, I hope) and an essay on the just-released Bob Wills boxset (which will probably never get written) and one on Barack Obama slash fiction (which really, really will probably never get written.)

Second reason this sucks is that the editors at Culture 11 are all out of jobs. They were a smart, thoughtful bunch of people, and I enjoyed working with them and (occasionally) debating them. I wish them all luck.

Finally, I think Culture 11 was just a great site. It was basically a center-right conservative website, but one which was willing to print and engage in conversation with a socialist-pomo-whacko like myself. I really appreciated that. Conservatism in general seems to have been hijacked in this country by a lot of insular hacks (to an even greater extent than is usual in politics.) Having a place dedicated to using conservative ideas to challenge and interact rather than to hunker down and fulminate was, to me, extremely heartening. I was honored to be a part of it.