The Gorge
David Armand’s third novel The Gorge follows the publication of his 2013 novel Harlow, and his first novel The Pugilist’s Wife, which won the George Garrett Fiction Prize from Texas Review Press. Continue reading “The Gorge”
NewPages Blog
At the NewPages Blog readers and writers can catch up with their favorite literary and alternative magazines, independent and university presses, creative writing programs, and writing and literary events. Find new books, new issue announcements, contest winners, and so much more!
Blackass
Furo Wariboko is a Nigerian man living in his parents’ home in Lagos. Like many young Nigerians, he is looking for work. He wakes up one morning to find that overnight, he has transformed into a white man. Barrett’s premise—to explore how Furo’s aesthetic metamorphosis does or does not affect personal change—could produce serious explorations of race’s role in contemporary Nigerian society, as it does. But Barrett’s literary skills are many, and he has produced a first novel that is both contemplative and comic. Continue reading “Blackass”
Four-Legged Girl
In Four-Legged Girl, Diane Seuss’s latest book of poems, we move from the rural country of Wolf Lake and into the city, where the speaker shows us her younger self lounging on red velvet sofas, parading in pink leopard print pants, and generally swapping naivety—this is, after all, a book that opens with a jump rope song—for misdeeds, true love or, in a pinch, ecstatic moments. And in the interstices, there is wisdom to be found here as well, the kind of wisdom that one misfit passes along to another. Continue reading “Four-Legged Girl”
Who’s Afraid of Helen of Troy
Check out your favorite bookstore in May. That’s when Who’s Afraid of Helen of Troy: An Essay on Love by David Lazar will be available, and it’s one fun book. Though it’s subtitled an essay, his ninth book is written in a series of short prose poems that mesh bits of autobiography with strong portions of mythology and dreams, accented with songs and movies. Continue reading “Who’s Afraid of Helen of Troy”
Cat is Art Spelled Wrong
The January 16, 2016 episode of Saturday Night Live included the skit “America’s Funniest Cats.” The week’s guest host Adam Driver played the emcee of a TV program spoofing the long-running America’s Funniest Home Videos, only here the felines’ dignity prevailed whatever their selfie-obsessed humans did to them. Driver’s two guests (SNL regulars Cecily Strong and Kate McKinnon) played hosts of an artsy French, existential spin-off. While the blond-wigged Driver and the two series regulars were silly, the audience audibly cooed and giggled over the cats’ antics. Continue reading “Cat is Art Spelled Wrong”
People Like You
Margaret Malone’s debut short story collection visits places we all recognize but don’t always think about or allow a second thought. Most likely you will find kindred spirits in these pages and acknowledge situations you may have forgotten or tried to repress. A case in point, the title story, People Like You, finds a young couple (Cheryl and Bert) invited to a friend’s surprise party. “Friend” is a loose term as the narrator explains, “we have no friends,” she confesses, “we have acquaintances from work, or old friends who live in other cities, or people who used to be our friends who we either borrowed money from and never repaid or who we just never bother to call anymore because we decided we either don’t like them or we’re too good for their company. We are not perfect.” Continue reading “People Like You”
Gruel
At the beginning of his life, Bunkong Tuon was caught in the takeover of Cambodia by the Communist Party of Kampuchea under Pol Pot. At three, his mother died from starvation, his father remarried and remained in Cambodia. His grandmother carried him out of Cambodia to a UN refugee camp in Thailand when he was six or seven (he cannot remember precisely). From there, a Christian sponsor brought him to Massachusetts. He has no specific memories of his parents. Continue reading “Gruel”
2015 Guy Owen Poetry Award Winner
Southern Poetry Review 53:2 features the winner of the 2015 Guy Own Poetry Award. Philip Dacey was the final judge, selecting Ron Watson’s “View from Where the Grass Is Always Greener.” In addition to publication, the Guy Owen Award winner receives $1000. Other poets featured in the issue include Charles Atkinson, Anna Lena Phillips Bell, Jody Bolz, Beverly Burch, John Crutchfield, Caroline DuBois, Heather Hamilton, Gordon Johnston, Lynne Knight, Nick McRae, James Najarian, Daniel Joseph Polikoff, J. Stephen Rhodes, Maura Stanton, Ed Taylor, Will Walker, and Charles Harper Web.
Books :: Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry
The winner of Milkweed Editions’s 2015 Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry, Beautiful Zero by Jennifer Willoughby, is now available. Chosen by Dana Levin, this debut collection is filled with wit and humor and promises relief from the seriousness of real life. Levin likens the collection to “a buoy in the sea at bottom, a life preserver, a raft.”
Those needing a pick-me-up in the middle of these dark winter months can find copies of Beautiful Zero at the Milkweed Editions website.
Books :: Whiting Award for Poetry
In April 2016, Aracelis Girmay’s The Black Maria will start hitting bookshelves. Winner of a 2015 Whiting Award for Poetry, The Black Maria “investigates African diasporic histories, the consequences of racism within American culture, and the question of human identity.”
The Whiting Award Selection Committee says the collection is “always in service of a moral vision, a deep concern for who we are, who we have been.”
Copies of The Black Maria can be pre-ordered from BOA Editions LTD website.
[quotes from BOA Editions LTD website]
IR Undergrad Lit Mag Online
Issue 1 of Indiana Review Online: An Undergraduate Project is now available. The editors write that IRO was started “to give voice to writers we don’t often see in literary journals. In the hyper-competitive world of literary publishing, emerging, undergraduate writers do not always have the opportunity to gain their first footholds. We wanted to help change that.” And indeed they have, receiving hundreds of submission from around the world, the first issue was whittled down to top picks in poetry and fiction. Featured writers include Amzie Augusta Dunekacke, Ellen Goff, Katie Harrs, Robert Julius, Tiwaladeoluwa Adekunle, W. S. Brewbaker, John M. Brown, Isabella Escalante, Kacey Fang, Shyanne Marquette, Carly Jo Olszewski, Meritt Rey Salathe, and Sage Yockelson.
Glimmer Train Short Story for New Writers Winners
Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their November Short Story Award for New Writers. This competition is held three times a year and is open to all writers whose fiction has not appeared in a print publication with a circulation greater than 5000. The next Short Story Award competition is open now: Short Story Award for New Writers. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.
1st place goes to Gabe Herron [pictured] of Scappoose, OR, who wins $1500 for “Suzette.” His story will be published in Issue 99 of Glimmer Train Stories.
2nd place goes to Sam Miller Khaikin of Brooklyn, NY. She wins $500 for “A Working Theory of Stellar Collapse.”
3rd place goes to Cady Vishniac of Columbus, OH. She wins $300 for “Move.”
A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found here.
Books :: Elixir Press Award in Fiction
Due out at the beginning of February is the winner of the Elixir Press Award in Fiction, The Loss of All Lost Things by Amina Gautier.
The collection explores moments of loss and yearning in its fifteen short stories that, according to contest judge Phong Nguyen, “have you by the throat [ . . . ].”
Readers can have a small peek inside The Loss of All Lost Things and order a copy at the SPD website.
Kenyon Review Short Fiction Winners
The newest issue of Kenyon Review features the winners of their eighth annual Short Fiction Contest:
First Prize: Shasta Grant [pictured], “Most Likely To”
Runner-up: Rob Howell, “Mars or Elsewhere”
Runner-up: Courtney Sender, “Black Harness”
Judge Ann Patchett writes:
In “Most Likely To,” Shasta Grant delivers a full narrative arc in four pages. Her characters experienced loss and were changed by it, a pretty remarkable feat to pull off in such a small space. Perfectly chosen details made both the characters and the setting memorable. This was the story that stayed with me.
Robert Howell gives us a completely delightful flight of imagination in “Mars or Elsewhere”. In dealing with a lover’s fantasy of what could happen were the couple to run off together, he creates a wild and atmospheric riff on possibility that read like jazz.
Courtney Sender matches the light topic of youthful lost love with the extreme heft of the Holocaust in “Black Harness” and comes up with a miraculous balance between the personal and the universal. I never could have imagined where this story was going and I was pleased by the surprise.
The winner and runners-up can also be read online here.
Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week
I’m only selecting one cover this week because it is so profound. This cover image for The Georgia Review Winter 2015 is Mavis in the Back Seat by Cynthia Henebry, one of the photographers featured in The Do Good Fund: Southern Poverty Initiative. The Do Good Fund, a public charity based in Columbus, Georgia, is focused on building a museum-quality collection of contemporary Southern photography. Do Good’s mission is to make its collection broadly accessible through regional museums, nonprofit galleries and nontraditional venues, and to encourage complimentary, community-based programming to accompany each exhibition. (Text excerpted from Do Good’s website.)
Baltimore Review Winter 2016 Contest Winners
Baltimore Review announces the winners of the Baltimore Review Winter 2016 Contest. The theme for this contest was “Health,” and the final judge was Joanna Pearson, MD.
First Place
Heidi Czerwiec, “Nervous Systems”
Second Place
Christine Stewart-Nuñez, “Art of the Body”
Third Place
Raquel Fontanilla, “Souvenir from Where You’ve Been”
Work by the winners is included in the Winter 2016 issue, available at the Baltimore Review website, and submissions for the journal re-open February 1.
Wallace Stevens and Cognitive Poetics
The Fall 2015 (v39 n2) of The Wallace Stevens Journal is a special issue: “Stevens and the Cognitive Turn in Literary Studies” edited, with an introduction, by Natalie Gerber and Nicholas Myklebust. In addition to original poetry and reviews by contributors, the journal provides excerpts of each of the following essays on its website:
- “Bergamo on a Postcard”; or, A Critical History of Cognitive Poetics by Nicholas Myklebust
- Aesthetics and Impossible Embodiment: Stevens, Imagery, and Disorientation by G. Gabrielle Starr
- A Mirror on the Mind: Stevens, Chiasmus, and Autism Spectrum Disorder by Mark J. Bruhn
- “The Eye’s Plain Version”: Visual Anatomy and Theories of Perception in Stevens by Deric Corlew
- Acoustic Confusion and Medleyed Sound: Stevens’ Recurrent Pairings by Roi Tartakovsky
Publishing since 1977, The Wallace Stevens Journal is devoted to all aspects of the poetry and life of American modernist poet Wallace Stevens through scholarly articles, poems, book reviews, news, and bibliographies.
Four Poets on Teaching Writing
In every issue, The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review includes “4×4” – four of the issue’s contributors answering the same four questions. The winter 2015 issue (#41) features Lesley Wheeler, Linwood Rumney, Chris Dombrowski, and Marianne Boruch. The questions all focus on teaching poetry:
1) Can poetry be taught?
2) Is there any value to students having a foundation in traditional prosody (meter, rhyme, fixed form, what have you)? Or should free-verse be the starting place? Or something else?
3) What poets have been the most useful to you in your teaching endeavors and why?
4) [After a “summary of a boilerplate class”] Can you imagine a radical revision of the way we teach poetry in the creative writing classroom? What would it look like? No workshop? No teacher? What more, or better, could we do?
Great questions with thoughtful and thought-provoking answers – which you have to get the issue to read – but also some great conversation starters for the teachers among us. How would you answer these?
Happy 5th Anniversary Gold Man
“We can’t believe it has already been five years since Gold Man Review was born,” writes founding editor Heather Cuthbertson and her colleagues, Managing Editor Darren Howard, Project Editor Nicklas Roetto, Executive Editor Marilyn Ebbs, and Associate Editor Michelle Modesto. “When we started Issue 1, we weren’t thinking about where we’d be in the future – only that we wanted to be an outlet for work that hadn’t an outlet and put authors and poets into print who hadn’t had the chance before. Since then, we’ve had the opportunity to publish award-winning authors, seasoned writers, and even the poet laureate of Oregon, but we’ve also had the pleasure to publish brand new voices and then watch those authors grow and develop their writing careers.”
NewPages can certainly believe you have done all that in five years. Like your readers, we appreciate every page, and we look forward to seeing many more years and pages! Happy Anniversary Gold Man Review!
St. Petersburg Review – 2014
In 1981, I spent two weeks in the former Soviet Union. Every city was a highlight, but the most breathtaking destination was Peter the Great’s summer palace in St. Petersburg, Russia. The garden fountains were fun, yet I found the dazzlingly golden statues most extraordinary. Those recollections piqued my interest in reading an issue of St. Petersburg Review. Continue reading “St. Petersburg Review – 2014”
The Common – October 2015
The Common magazine aims to present “bold, engaging literature and art.” Two informative essays accompanied by art definitely meet that criteria. The first, “Millennium Camera” by Jonathon Keats, is a fascinating look at a pinhole camera he created “with a one-thousand-year exposure time that will remain inside Amherst College’s Stearns Steeple until 3015” when an image over time will be captured for a future generation to see. With that in mind, there’s a wonderful surprise for current readers. On the last page of this magazine is a diagram for a Century Camera that can be cut out, assembled, and exposed for 100 years. Continue reading “The Common – October 2015”
Studio One – 2015
A lot of originality is packed into a smart little anthology called Studio One. Take a look at the bright cover art, “Old Lady with the Black Eye” by multi-talented Ernest Williamson, greeting readers. Williamson has an additional painting within the volume, “Artist Delving into Her Craft,” which on the one hand I can’t quite figure out, and on the other hand I find impossible to stop looking at. Also outstanding is a portfolio of five luminous scenes by Colorado photographer Rita Thomas. “Pixie Forest,” which appears to be frost-covered trees by moonlight, is most stunning. Continue reading “Studio One – 2015”
Alligator Juniper – 2016
Alligator Juniper is named for a tree in the juniper family with bark like alligator skin, and the editors of the magazine say the name “invites both the regional and the exotic.” The magazine does so successfully by including pieces from their National Writing Contests in Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, and Poetry along with the winning pieces from Prescott College’s annual James & Judith Walsh Undergraduate Creative Writing Awards. I admire how undergraduate students receive the opportunity for publication alongside outstanding pieces by professional writers. In addition to the award-winning pieces and nominees, the magazine includes an interview and a curated gallery of creative works. Continue reading “Alligator Juniper – 2016”
Tampa Review – 2015
A beautiful hardcover issue, the 50th Anniversary Issue of Tampa Review is rich with colorful images and powerful contemporary writing. Though there is no set theme, each piece contains strong yearning from the characters or figures, bringing the reader close to intimate thoughts. Continue reading “Tampa Review – 2015”
BULL – 2015
BULL Number 5 is covered in colorful, urban-styled art, created by the late Patrick Haley, whose work is profiled at length in this issue. Inside, his black and white drawings of surreal settings, strange creatures, and highly-detailed settings take influences from a variety of interesting visual sources such as Salvador Dali, R. Crumb, Heavy Metal magazine, and street graffiti. Each of the thirteen pages of drawings and sketches plucked from the artist’s notebooks tells a story, even the most basic “practice” sketches, with a couple in particular that could make one feel as though they could fall right into the page. Continue reading “BULL – 2015”
Crab Fat Magazine – January 2016
Crab Fat Magazine—already a publication seeking more diversity in literature—presents their January 2016 “QPOC Issue,” featuring work by 14 queer poets of color. This issue is a strong one, filled with a variety of poetic styles that will leave readers entranced, their eyes opened. Continue reading “Crab Fat Magazine – January 2016”
Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week
If I had my druthers, Still Point Arts Quarterly would be featured here for every issue, along with just about every page of their publication. Each issue is a true meditation of art an literature. The Winter 2015 issue #20 features Square (XIII) by Susan Breen.
Lalitamba “is a journal of international writings for liberation.” This 2015 cover gets my pick because, in the dead of winter, this says SUMMER to me and definitely liberates my mind from the cold and ice. [No credit given for the photo/model.]
“Equal,” acrylic on canvas by Amy Guidry, graces the cover of Fourteen Hills (22.1: 2016), keeping with the publication’s tradition for catchy, sometimes bordering on (good) bizarre images.
Monstrous Kickstarter
What do you get when you mashup the mythos of Frankenstein with steampunk robotics? Toss in “True Grit” meets “Three Men and a Baby” anti-heroes and some strong, clever, resourceful, female characters “just as likely to jump into bar fights as their male counterparts,” and you’ve got Monstrous. No doubt about it.
Comic scriptwriter Greg Wright and artist Ken Lamug are the creators of Monstrous, a four-comic series that “tells the tales of everyday monsters, robots, and townspeople caught up in the changes sweeping Europe in the wake of Dr. Frankenstein’s mad science. But even in this twisted landscape, our unconventional heroes—giant rabbit monsters, steam-powered cyborgs, and babysitting bank robbers—all try to live by their own code of honor.”
Source Point Press has optioned the series and will be releasing them as a book in addition to readers being able to get the series delivered one issue per month starting in February. Source Point Press says they are using Kickstarter as a way to better interact with their readers and offer up some great incentives – like SIGNED COPIES! My favorite!
ZYZZYVA – Fall 2015
ZYZZYVA’s Fall 2015 issue took me a very long time to review. Not because it was long or dense or difficult, but because I did not want to finish reading. Every time I started to write, I, like a vortex, would be sucked back into reading and my critical abilities would evaporate. I would become that teenie-bopper hiding under the sheets with a flashlight late into the early morning savoring each page, each character, each line. Continue reading “ZYZZYVA – Fall 2015”
Barrow Street – Winter 2014/15
If focus is the key to success, Barrow Street is throwing straight bullseyes. Forget author interviews, genre-jumping, and flashy art, and delve into the text, straight into the words on the page. The Winter 2014/15 issue has a simple no-nonsense design. Authors are listed alphabetically. Bios are found at the back in fine print jammed together to save precious real estate. No editor’s letter. No ads. Just a tight masthead and a New York address and 96 outstanding poems, running the gamut from short and sweet to epic and tragic. Sixty-two poets are published, ranging from first-timers to big names from big institutions with supporting bibliography. Whatever process the Barrow Street editors and readers are using to sift through their slush, which I imagine to be a mountainous snow bank, doesn’t change a thing: because it is working. Since 2000, they have had 18 poems selected to be anthologized in Best American Poetry. Continue reading “Barrow Street – Winter 2014/15”
Rattle – Fall 2015
If I were shipwrecked on a deserted island, I would take a machete and a subscription to Rattle. Perhaps a seagull could deliver quarterly. I’d open a coconut and start reading the conversation with the working poet that is included with each issue, then work my way randomly through the alphabetical compilation, memorizing and reciting to all my friends: the geckos, turtles, butterflies and rocks. If I lost my sanity, at least I would be happy. Continue reading “Rattle – Fall 2015”
Indiana Review 2015 Prize Winners
Winners and select finalists and runner-up of the Indiana Review Poetry and (inaugural) Nonfiction Prizes are published in the most recent issue (Vol 37 No 2):
Poetry Judge Eduardo Corral
Winner
Caitlin Scarano, “Between the Bloodhounds and My Shrinking Mouth”
Runner Up
Jennifer Givhan, “Town of Foolish Things”
Finalists
LA Johnson, “Split-Level”
Caitlin Scarano, “To the City With Her Skull Wind”
A complete list of finalists can be found here.
Nonfiction Judge Kiese Laymon
Winner
John Murillo III, “Black (in) Time”
A complete list of finalists can be found here.
[Cover art: “Desire Is the Root of All Suffering” by Deedee Cheriel]
Books :: Hemingway Trio
Three new titles for Hemingway lovers from The Kent State University Press:
Hemingway’s Spain: Imagining the Spanish World – a collection of thirteen essays edited by Carl P. Eby and Mark Cirino. The collection explores “Hemingway’s writing about Spain and his relationship to Spanish culture and ask us in a myriad of ways to rethink how Hemingway imagined Spain—whether through a modernist mythologization of the Spanish soil, his fascination with the bullfight, his interrogation of the relationship between travel and tourism, his involvement with Spanish politics, his dialog with Spanish writers, or his appreciation of the subtleties of Spanish values. . . a particular strength of Hemingway’s Spain is its consideration of neglected works, such as Hemingway’s Spanish Civil War stories and The Dangerous Summer.”
Teaching Hemingway and War edited by Alex Vernon – fifteen original essays on such topics as:
The Violence of Story: Teaching In Our Time and Narrative Rhetoric
Hemingway’s Maturing View of the Spanish Civil War
Robert Jordan’s Philosophy of War in For Whom the Bell Tolls
Hemingway, PTSD, and Clinical Depression
Perceptions of Pain in The Sun Also Rises
Across the River and into the Trees as Trauma Literature
The final section provides three undergraduate essays examples.
Teaching Hemingway and Modernism edited by Joseph Fruscione presents “concrete, intertextual models for using Hemingway’s work effectively in various classroom settings, so students can understand the pertinent works, definitions, and types of avant-gardism that inflected his art. The fifteen teacher-scholars whose essays are included in the volume offer approaches that combine a focused individual treatment of Hemingway’s writing with clear links to the modernist era and offer meaningful assignments, prompts, and teaching tools.”
Books :: Katherine Anne Porter Prize & Noemi Press Book Award for Fiction
In November 2015, the winners of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction and the 2014 Noemi Press Book Award for Fiction were published.
Last Words of the Holy Ghost by Matt Cashion placed first in the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction through the University of North Texas Press. Chosen by Lee K. Abbott, the collection of 12 Southern Gothic short stories was released November 15. This is Cashion’s first short story collection.
Nate Liederbach’s short story collection Beasts You’ll Never See, winner of the 2014 Noemi Press Book Award for Fiction, “seeks to unearth the inevitable paradoxes of comedy and tragedy lurking under the skin of every human relationship, and it does so while also challenging its reader to question the emotional mechanisms that underpin conventional narratives.”
[Quote from SPD website.]
MQR Tribute to Charles Baxter
Fall 2015 Michigan Quarterly Review includes a special Tribute to Charles Baxter with an introduction by Jonathan Freedman and features:
“Charles Baxter and MQR” by Laurence Goldstein
“What We Owe Each Other: An Interview with Charles Baxter” by Jeremiah Chamberlin
“A Tribute to Charles Baxter” by Matt Burgess
“Notes Toward a Baxterian Taxonomy” by Michael Byers
“Charles Baxter’s Tuneful Bewilderment” by Matthew Pitt
“Darkness Outside the Door: Charles Baxter and the Meaning of Melodrama” by Joan Silber
“Minnesota Nice: The Depths and Limits of Charles Baxter’s Good Behavior” by Valerie Laken
This issue of Michigan Quarterly Review is available to purchase by subscription as well as single copy print or PDF here.
[Cover art note: “Fog uner the High Bridge; photography by Sue Vruno. Our over, with its bridge over the Mississippi at St. Paul, celebrates the many bridges, both actual and metaphorical, that appear in the novels and short stories of Minnesota native Charles Baxter…” MQR]
Able Muse 2015 Write Prize Winners
The winter 2015 issue of Able Muse A Review of Poetry, Prose & Art features the winners of their annual Write Prize for Fiction and Poetry. The Fiction Winner as selected by Final Judge Eugenia Kim is Andrea Witzke Slot’s “After Reading the News Story of a Woman Who Attempted to Carry Her Dead Baby onto an Airplane.” The Poetry Winner as selected by H.L. Hix is Elise Hempel’s “Cathedral Peppersauce.” Two Poetry Honorable Mentions were also included in the publication, “Jockey” by Elise Hempel and “On Watching a Cascade Commercial” by Jeanne Wagner.
A full list of honorable mentions and finalists as well as information about this annual prize can be found here.
[And that gorgeous cover image is “Audience” by Patrick McDonald.]
Ninth Letter 2015 Literary Award Winners
The Ninth Letter 2015 Literary Award Winners are available for reading in the newest issue (Vol 12 No 2).
Poetry Winner
Judge: Kathy Fagan
Corey Van Landingham, “In the Year of No Sleep”
Fiction Winner
Judge: Jac Jemc
Kristen N. Arnett, “See also: A history of glassmaking”
Creative Nonfiction Winner
Judge: Matthew Gavin Frank
Michael Gracey, “My Own Good Daemon”
A full list of runners up and information about this annual contest can be found here.
Latina Authors and Their Muses
Editor of Latina Authors and Their Muses Mayra Calvani was inspired to create an anthology showcasing Latina authors writing in English in the United States. She writes in her Editor’s Preface that she envisioned “An inspirational, entertaining, and informative tome focusing on the craft of writing and the practical business of publishing, one that would provide aspiring authors with the nuts and bolts of the business. A book that would not only showcase prominent figures but emerging voices as well, writers working on a wide range of genres from the literary to the commercial.”
After submitting the book proposal to numerous agents, Calvani signed with one who spent a year pitching the book to top editors before the agent gave up. Publishers, Calvani was told, thought the audience was “too niche, too narrow” (How could the publisher possible market such a book?).
Latina Authors and Their Muses found a home with Lida Quillen of Twilight Times Books in Kingsport, Tennessee. The book, Calvani writes, “has been a labor of love in every aspect. It has also been a completely selfish project. I wanted to hear what these authors had to say, hoping I wasn’t alone. I wanted to relate to them and learn from them – and learn I have, so very much! In a way, they’ve all become my mentors.”
The book features interviews with 40 Latina authors, including Marta Acosta, Julia Amante, Jennifer Cervantes, Zoraida Córdova, Sarah Cortez, Liz DeJesus, Teresa Dovalpage, Iris Gomez, Rose Guilbault, Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa, Josefina López, Sandra Ramos O’Briant, Caridad Piñeiro, Toni Margarita Plummer, Lupe Ruiz-Flores, Esmeralda Santiago and Diana Rodriguez Wallach.
Calvani notes, “In spite of their different backgrounds, education levels, and jobs, two factors more than any others bind these writers together: their passion and commitment to their craft and to sharing their stories with the world in spite of the odds.”
My Father is an Angry Storm Cloud
What initially drew me to Melissa Reddish’s recent book was the title: My Father is an Angry Storm Cloud. It resonated with me, and I was happy to learn that this title is also the title of one of the short stories in the book. I will admit that I initially rushed past the first couple pieces to get to it. I was not disappointed. “My Father is an Angry Storm Cloud” is poignant, and thankfully not in the “oh woe is me” way. This story was clearly delicately crafted to avoid hitting the reader over the head with “daddy issues.” In this snapshot of her life, I got a well-rounded sense that this character existed before the scene she appears in. It is clear that this character has scars from her past, that they re-open all the time, and that she struggles to stitch them up even as an adult. To get that grand a sense of a life already lived within six pages is pretty remarkable. Continue reading “My Father is an Angry Storm Cloud”
I Mean
Innovative forms written by literary warriors like Kate Colby illustrate the breadth of structural opportunities in contemporary nonfiction. In the case of Colby’s I Mean, the writer approaches poetry with dynamics and patterns perhaps otherwise expected of prose, and even repeats those techniques in prose. Continue reading “I Mean”
Hardly War
Race and Identity are two separate functions of description, but in our times, hardly. There is a war between nations, inside of nations, and ultimately inside of each individual. In the forthcoming Hardly War, Don Mee Choi details the interior of the life of a young girl in the middle of war. This is no mere reduction or retelling. The metaphor stands that we are all hardly adults. Perhaps hardly human. The complex war machine has turned us into THE BIG PICTURE and reduced us: “It was hardly war, the hardliest of wars. Hardly, hardly.” Continue reading “Hardly War”
sad boy / detective
The only thing certain to drive somebody insane (or to at least let them think they are crazy) is to make them forget they are doing something different than what somebody else has done a hundred times before. Continue reading “sad boy / detective”
Salamander 2015 Fiction Prize Winner
Salamander #41 features the winner of their 2015 Fiction Prize, “Floating Garden” by Mary LaChapelle, as well as the 2015 Honorable Mention, “The Hooligan Present” by John Mauk. Judge Andre Dubus III offered these comments on his selections:
With spare yet deeply evocative prose, “Floating Garden” sweeps us up into the span of a singular life, one that is as sacred as any other, one for whom “the words for things take us from what matters.” This story is a profound meditation on the nature of brutality – of man against man, of man against nature – yet it is also an unsentimental song of how we can be redeemed, “like dust into soil, so dark, so primordial.” This is a lovely gem of a tale.
Told in a rollicking, expressionistic voice, “The Hooligan Present” delivers that rarest of reading experiences; it actually makes you laugh, and then it makes you cry, and then it leaves you grateful for such artistry, for such a generous and humane vision of this dirty old world.
For a full list of finalists and more information about this annual contest, click here.
Application for Release from the Dream
Tony Hoagland has been high on the list of established poets for years. The great thing about his poetry is the way he takes simple vocabulary and channels it into something amazing or disquieting or droll. He frequently writes what the rest of us might be thinking. In his latest book, Application for Release from the Dream, he demonstrates this in the poem “His Majesty.” Continue reading “Application for Release from the Dream”
King of the Gypsies
There are linked wounded wonderers wallowing in the unsympathetic world inside the pages of this illustrious collection of short stories. In King of the Gypsies, Lenore Myka writes each story with passion and an abundance of knowledge for the Romanian culture. Her haunting tales depict the realities of abandonment and the continuous search for something better. Continue reading “King of the Gypsies”
American Life in Poetry :: Judy Ray
American Life in Poetry: Column 561
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
Here’s a New Year’s poem by Judy Ray, who lives and writes in Tucson. I like the way that common phrase, “the turning of a year,” has suggested to her the turns in a race track. Her most recent book is To Fly Without Wings (Helicon Nine Editions, 2009).
Turning of the Year
We never know if the turn
is into the home stretch.
We call it that—a stretch
of place and time—
with vision of straining,
racing. We acknowledge
each turn with cheers
though we don’t know
how many laps remain.
But we can hope the course
leads on far and clear
while the horses have strength
and balance on their lean legs,
fine-tuned muscles, desire
for the length of the run.
Some may find the year smooth,
others stumble at obstacles
along the way. We never know
if the finish line will be reached
after faltering, slowing,
or in mid-stride, leaping forward.
We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2012 by Judy Ray, “Turning of the Year,” from The Whirlybird Anthology of Kansas City Writers, (Whirlybird Press, 2012). Poem reprinted by permission of Judy Ray and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2015 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.
Books :: Minerva Rising Poetry Chapbook Contest
Winner of Minerva Rising’s second annual Poetry Chapbook Contest with the theme “Dare to be the Woman I Am,” Maria Garcia Teutsch’s The Revolution Will Have Its Sky is now available for purchase.
Judge Heather McHugh says of her selection:
This poetry isn’t out to convert, but to advert. It doesn’t pledge allegiance or invest in transcendent causes, but rather observes signs of war, wars of sex, hexes of communication. [ . . . ] The Revolution Will Have Its Sky reminds us enlistees (whether in grays or blues, whether in wishes or words, whether in war or love) how down-and-dirty signing up can be.
Both Teutsch’s The Revolution Will Have Its Sky and runner-up Who Was I to Say I Was Alive by Kelly Nelson are both available from the Minerva Rising website.
New Lit on the Block :: Persephone’s Daughters
In Greek mythology, Persephone is the daughter of Zeus and the harvest goddess Demeter. As a young girl, while alone picking flowers in a field, Persephone is abducted by Hades, ruler of the underworld and brother of Zeus. As this version of the story goes, Hades makes Persephone queen of the underworld where she spends half the year; the other half, she returns to be with her mother above ground. Among her many symbols, Persephone is considered the protector of young girls.
Persephone’s Daughters is a quarterly print and digital publication of poetry, prose, and art that embraces and creates a space for this next generation of powerful protectors of women. Founder and Editor in Chief Meggie Royer says, “Our mission for creating this magazine is to empower female survivors of abuse who often do not get to see themselves, or other women who have endured similar experiences, represented in literary magazines. Having already been stripped of their voices through assault and abuse, we cannot and will not allow these women’s voices to be stripped away a second time within the literary community.”
As such, Royer says readers coming to the publication can expect to find “poetry, prose, and art about survival, about the aftermath of all kinds of abuse and degradation, including (especially) the healing. Each issue of Persephone’s Daughters is centered around survivors of abuse and the various ways they cope through their art.”
The first issue packs in over 80 contributors’ works, including art by Haele Wolfe, Kathie Rogers, and Emily Iannarilli, prose by Mitzi Luna, Olivia Sanders, Milly Hill, and Shirin Choudhary, and poetry by Hannah Hamilton, Schuyler Peck, and Jane Werntz. Interviews with Amanda Oaks, Yasmin Belkhyr, and Clementine von Radics are also featured.
Persephone’s Daughters has an incredible staff, including dozens of readers and art evaluators, tech and social media assistants, managing editors and submissions managers. Among them are Senior Editor of Prose Jessica Therese, Senior Editor of Poetry Ashe Vernon, and Senior Manager of Art Lora Mathis.
Writers and artists can expect that their works will be given much attention. According to Royer, all written submissions are read through and voted on by the publication’s large body of readers. Artworks are evaluated and voted on by the art evaluators. Writing submissions that pass the reading stage are next given suggested edits and revisions by the poetry and prose editors, who work closely with their authors “to ensure that the final product is something that makes everyone happy.”
Moving forward, Royer hopes that Persephone’s Daughters will expand its reach, “continuing to collect remarkable works of art from people all around the world with stories of their survival.”
Glimmer Train Very Short Fiction Winners :: December 2015
Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their Very Short Fiction Award. This competition is held twice a year and is open to all writers for stories with a word count under 3000. The next Very Short Fiction competition will take place in March. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.
First place: Anthony DeCasper [pictured], of Chico, CA, wins $1500 for “Redshift.” His story will be published in Issue 99 of Glimmer Train Stories. This is his first story accepted for publication!
Second place: Stefanie Freele, of Geyserville, FL, wins $500 for “Everything But What We Need.” Her story will also appear in an upcoming issue, increasing her prize to $700.
Third place: Parker Young, of Chicago, IL, wins $300 for “Lighter Fluid.”
A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found here.
Deadline coming up! Fiction Open: January 2
Glimmer Train hosts this competition twice a year, and first place is $2500 plus publication in the journal. This category has been won by both beginning and veteran writers – all are welcome! There are no theme restrictions. Word count generally ranges from 2000 – 6000, though up to 20,000 is fine. Click here for complete guidelines.
American Life in Poetry :: David R. Godine
American Life in Poetry: Column 560
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
The only times I feel truly homicidal are when I see somebody abusing a pet, and I was glad to find this poem so I could get that off my chest. But don’t ever even think about taking a kick at my old dog, Howard. Wesley McNair lives in Maine and is that state’s poet laureate. This is from his book Lovers of the Lost, from David R. Godine. His most recent book is The Lost Child: Ozark Poems, (Godine, 2014).
The Puppy
From down the road, starting up
and stopping once more, the sound
of a puppy on a chain who has not yet
discovered he will spend his life there.
Foolish dog, to forget where he is
and wander until he feels the collar
close fast around his throat, then cry
all over again about the little space
in which he finds himself. Soon,
when there is no grass left in it
and he understands it is all he has,
he will snarl and bark whenever
he senses a threat to it.
Who would believe this small
sorrow could lead to such fury
no one would ever come near him?
We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by Wesley McNair, “The Puppy,” from Lovers of the Lost: New & Selected Poems, (David R. Godine, 2010). Poem reprinted by permission of Wesley McNair and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2015 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.