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The Florida Review 2019 Editors’ Awards Winners & Finalists

The latest issue of The Florida Review includes the writers who placed in the 2019 Editors’ Awards. There are plenty to sink your teeth into.

Nonfiction
“Skin the Bunny” by Kirk Wilson
“To Trace the Sky” by Cherie Nelson

Poetry
“Father-Son & Holy” by Aurielle Marie
“Bridal Suite” by Joanne Dominique Dwyer
“Culture Shock” & “The Cycle” by Lani Yu

Fiction
“In Loco Parentis” by Eleanor Bluestein
“Americana” by Jennifer Buentello
“All the Guessing Gets Us” by George Looney

Chapbook
“Bedweather” by Angelo R. Lacuesta & Roy Allen Martinez
from “My father is housed inside a whale” by My Tran

There’s even more to check out within this issue, so be sure to grab a copy for yourself.

The Florida Review :: Latinx Feature

nicole oquendoCo-edited by Nicole Oquendo [pictured], Editor Lisa Roney introduces the newest issue of The Florida Review  (42.2) in the “Editor’s Note: Heritage, Family, Respect: Who Controls the Narrative?”

“It’s with great pride and humility that we bring this array of poems, stories, memoirs, and both filmic and visual art to our readers – we believe that it represents a new generation of self-aware and multi-faceted creators who sometimes seek shelter under the umbrella of ‘Latinx,’ but who refuse to be defined by any label. [. . . ] They are, in fact, quintessentially American, representing the hybridity that makes our literature so strong on this continent, filled with varieties of experience and exhibiting styles that have been learned from an array of cultural sources and then innovated upon.”

Selections highlight heritage, family, parent-child relationships, disability, divorce, and grieving. In several contributions, language and representations in history are examined, with all the works asking, “Who controls the narrative? What do words mean? If we know that they are subject to twisting, then how do we trust any story, any poem, any sentence?” Roney comments, “All of use, it seems, are grappling with these questions.”

Contributors to this issue include Juan Carlos Reyes, Brooke Champagne, Steve Castro, Chris Campanioni, M. Soledad Caballero, Sara Lupita Olivares, Ariel Francisco, Leslie Sainz, Valorie K. Ruiz, Naomi A. Shuyama Gomez, Alana de Hinojosa, Maria Esquinca, Michael J. Pagán, Lupita Eyde-Tucker, Trinity Tibe, Karl Michael Iglesias, George Choundas, Pedro Ponce, Paul Alfonso Soto, Cindy Pollack, Pascha Sotolongo, Cassandra Martinez, Julia María Schiavone Camacho, Ivonne Lamazares, and Michael Betancourt.

The Florida Review – Fall 2017

Before I get into discussion of interesting pieces, I want to stop for a moment and draw attention to The Florida Review’s commitment to the education of budding artists. In the Fall 2017 issue, The Florida Review gives a generous note about editorial interns, both graduate and undergraduate, who are “involved in reviewing and discussing submissions in a way that helps the senior editorial staff stay sharp and articulate [their] own reasons for [their] choices.” In addition, on the journal’s website, they outline their educational mission which helps interns to “thrive as writers and to appreciate the intense and collaborative nature of publications.” As a recent graduate, I greatly appreciate and support The Florida Review’s commitment to education which contributes to the literary world.

Continue reading “The Florida Review – Fall 2017”

The Florida Review Prison Focus

lisa roney

The Florida Review Editor and Director Lisa Roney in the 41.2/2017 issue Editor’s Note writes in a recurring thread about the U.S. prison culture, her early experiences knowing young people who went in and out of jail, and – of all things – changing the publication’s submission policy to accept traditional postal submissions from those without Internet access, “whatever the circumstances might be.” This, of course, would open submissions to our nation’s incarcerated population who are not allowed access to the Internet.

About the Special Section on Prison, Roney writes, “we include writing by prisoners, as well as their family members and friends. It is the presence of this Triumvirate (victims, prisoners, family and loved ones) that testifies to the widespread tragedy that violence, addiction, and poverty and their results have become in this country – and our constant sense that there must be some better way. Writing, of course, is one of those better ways.”

Florida Review 2016 Editor’s Award Winners

The newest issue of The Florida Review (40.1, 2017) features winners of the 2016 Editor’s Awards. This annual award accepts submissions in fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. Winners receive $1000 upon publication in TFR  with finalists also being considered for publication.

florida reviewNonfiction
Winner: Rebekah Taussig, “I Called Mine Beautiful”
Finalist: Robert Stothart, “Nighthawks”

Poetry
Winner: Paige Lewis, “Angel, Overworked”
Finalist: Donna Coffey, “Sunset Cruise at Key West”
Finalist: Christina Hammerton, “Old Pricks”

Fiction
Winner: Derek Palacio, “Kisses”
Finalist: Nicholas Lepre, “Pretend You’re Really Here”
Finalist: Terrance Manning, Jr., “Vision House”

Aquifer :: The Florida Review Online

acquiferThe Florida Review has launched a new online component Aquifer, with free weekly literary features (poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and graphic narrative), as well as interviews, book reviews, and digital stories. Later this year, Aquifer will open up submissions for this online content. Editors also hope that Aquifer: The Florida Review Online will open up the possibility for even more features, becoming a fully multi-media arts and letter site. We look forward to this great new innovation for TFR!

The Florida Review – Fall 2016

This issue of The Florida Review begins with a Pulse tribute featuring five Orlando authors—queer authors, Latinx authors, authors from the Orlando community. Lisa Roney in her editorial describes “feelings of being both inside and outside of the events of that day [the Pulse shooting].” The published pieces reflect similar contradictions. The fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and graphic narrative draw tension from contradictions and juxtapositions, striking a balance.

Continue reading “The Florida Review – Fall 2016”

Florida Review 2015 Editors’ Awards

Issue 40.1 of The Florida Review features the winners and finalists of the publication’s 2015 Editors’ Awards. This is an annual contest which awards $1000 to each winner and publication to winners and finalists.

florida reviewPoetry
Winner Christine Poreba for “Negative Miracle”
Finalist Rachel Flynn for “America, February”

Fiction
Winner Matthew Lansburgh for “The Lure”
Finalist Jacob Appel for “The Dragon Declension”
Finalist Miriam Cohen for “Recess Brides”

Creative Nonfiction
Winner Melanie Thorne for “What We Keep”
Finalist Carol Smith for “Tearing Down the House”

The Florida Review Editors’ Awards Issue

The Florida Review 2014 Editors’ Awards winners and finalists appear in the newest double issue of TFR (39.1 & 2) Winners receive $1,000 in addition to publication.

Fiction
Winner: Scott Winokur, “Bristol, Boy”
Finalist: Mary Hutchings, “When Walls Weep”
Finalist: Lones Seiber for “Death in the Aegean”

Essay
Winner: Allie Rowbottom, “Resonance,” “Burnt,” and “Albino Dolphins”
Finalist: Thomas Gibbs, “Beseme Mucho”
Finalist: Stacey Parker Le Melle, “Tonight We Are the Americans”

Poetry
Winner: Mary Obropta, “Resonance,” “Burnt,” and “Albino Dolphins”
Finalist: Benjamin Busch, “Sound Wave”
Finalist: Emma Hine, “Big Game”
Finalist: Michael Collins, “Nightmare of Intercourse with Lightning”
Finalist: Angela Belcaster, “Calving in the Ice Storm” and “Lying Low so the Gods Won’t Notice”

Changes at Florida Review

jocelyn bartkeviciusThe Florida Review writes: “After seven years of distinguished leadership, Jocelyn Bartkevicius [pictured] is stepping down from the editorship to pursue her own writing projects.” Jocelyn will see issue 39.2 to press and has made selections to be included in 40.1, making a smooth transition to the new editor, Lisa Roney, writer, teacher, and author of the recently published Serious Darling: Creative Writing in Four Genres.

The Florida Review – 2014

This double issue of The Florida Review packs in a dazzling array of thought-provoking reading. It invites with accessible forms and quotidian subjects, and rewards with more challenging and experimental material. It covers a vast range of the human experience: what is it like, and what does it mean, to be a woman, a Mormon, a Jew, a person aware of the nearness of death, a person pondering her relationship to her vocation? Continue reading “The Florida Review – 2014”

Florida Review 2013 Editors’ Awards

florida-review-v38-n1-2-2014The current issue of Florida Review features the winners of the 2013 Editors’ Awards, which were awarded in essay, fiction, and poetry categories. As a new feature to this section, the editors invited the winners to contribute about “the creative genesis and evolution of their winning work.” Editor Jocelyn Bartkevicius writes, “Dan Reiter, whose story of Holocaust survivors, ‘All Your First Born,’ won the fiction award, tells of viewing a videotaped interview with his grandparents, who, unlike other family members of their generation did survive the Holocaust, and how their testimony inspired his writing. Lisa Lanser-Rose, whose braided essay, ‘Turnpike Psycho,’ revolves around a friend’s murder and her own harrowing encounter with a stalker, writes about transitioning from a simple retelling of a particular situation to an exploration of its deeper ramifications as a ‘story.’ John Blair, winner of the poetry award, writes of the links between his poems and history, autobiography, and memory, an eclectic continuum with such varied topics as atrocities in Somalia and Chechnya, the Roman Inquisition, leukemia, and hands-on labor in the garden.

Essay Winner

Lisa Lanser-Rose: “Turnpike Psycho”

Essay Finalist

Tanya Bomsta: “Traditions”

Fiction Winner

Dan Reiter: “All Your Firstborn”

Fiction Finalist

Rachel Borup: “Crash”

Poetry Winner

John Blair: “The Lesser Poet,” “And Yet It Moves,” & “Dirt”

Poetry Finalist

Tanya Grae: “Like Darwin’s Finches,” “Verbal Abuse,” & “Cage Sonnet”

The Florida Review – Summer 2010

The journal’s first-ever special issue is a “Native Issue,” with contributions by writers “from many different places—tribal, geographic, aesthetic,” including writers who grew up in the Laguna Pueblo, and members of the Diné, Mi’kmaq Métis, Cherokee, Kanien ‘kehaka, Onodowaga, Yappituka Comanche/Southern Araphaho, Turtle Mountain Chippewa, Arkansas Quapaw, Poarch Creek/Muscogee, Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, Oglala Lakota, Seneca, Sioux, Acoma Pueblo, Apache, and Chicasaw tribes and nations. These writers’ work is as distinct and diverse as the communities and nations into which they were born and/or have lived. Continue reading “The Florida Review – Summer 2010”

The Florida Review Native Issue

The newest issue of The Florida Review (35.1) is a special issue – the first “special issue” published by the Review – “Native Issue.” Dedicated to memory of the award-winning novelist and critic Louis Owens. Editor Toni Jensen comments on the theme: “The writers whose work is featured in this issue come from any different places – tribal, geographic, aesthetic. These differences are to be celebrated, embraced, because they help eradicate the idea that there is one Native literature or one idea of what it means to be Native.”

A full table of contents for this issue is available on The Florida Review website.

The Florida Review – Winter 2009

Photographed in sepia tones, a man holds a globe while facing the camera. John Bohannon’s cover plays with expectations of scale. It seems to evoke mastery, to suggest that man is large enough to contain the world in his hands, that the immense has suddenly become bearable. The latest volume of The Florida Review, however, often confirms that we are still very much of the world rather than standing somewhere beyond its concerns. Continue reading “The Florida Review – Winter 2009”

Florida Review Award Winners

The Florida Review has announced the winners and finalists in their 2009 Editors’ Awards Competition. Their work will appear in the Winter 2009 issue of The Florida Review.

Fiction Prize
Pictured: Fred Setterberg, “Catechism”

Fiction Finalist
Steven Gehrke, “The Terraformation of Mars”

Nonfiction Prize
Deborah Thompson, “Buying Time”

Nonfiction Finalist
Christine Gelineau, “Cops”

Poetry Prize
Emily Van Kley, “Before Ghosts,” “Vital Signs,” and “Last of the Month”

Poetry Finalist
Susan Rich, “Facing 50 with a Line by Robert Hayden” and “For My Student, Who Would Prefer to Remain Anonymous”

The Florida Review – Winter 2008

In her entertaining and highly original Editors’ Note, Jocelyn Bartkevicius says at The Florida Review they’ve been “arguing over what counts as truth.” If names in the Table of Contents don’t make you eager to read the journal (Maureen P. Stanton, Baron Wormser, Tony Hoagland, Denise Duhamel, Michel Burkard, an interview with Terese Svoboda), the editor’s creative consideration of what constitutes fact checking, whether or not authors get to define the genres of their work, and the meaning of “truth” in these post James Frey Debacle times (as the Review’s staff refers to them) surely will. Continue reading “The Florida Review – Winter 2008”

Florida Review :: Bits and Pieces

Flipping through the Spring 2008 issue of Florida Review, I came across a few items of note. I see Billy Collins has two poems in this issue. He’d previously sent his work to FR and been published, and it raised a question about how lit mags deal with “really famous writers” sending in their work. Do they get picked because they’re famous and will help to promote/sell the magazine? Or do they get picked on the merit of their work? In which case, they’d be as likely to not get picked, right? I’ve had a lot of conversations with a lot of editors about this situation, and even though I hear them say it’s about the merit of the work, there’s always a footnote of commentary about how it helps the magazine. That is the business end of the literature, though. There is also a different level of scrutiny on the authors – to be well known and published raises this question, sort of like doping in sports – to achieve is to be suspect. Even famous poets get rejected. Sounds like a good title for something. I’m not saying anything about the quality of Collins’ work in this publication, just commenting on the situation.

I’m also pleased to see FR include a couple comics, one by Jeffery Brown and one by Rachel and Beverly Luria. It’s a lot to dedicate as many pages to a comic as they need to tell their story, but a trend I hope to see more of in other lit mags.

And lastly, just a nod to Lisa K. Buchanan, a once-upon-a-time reviewer for NewPages. She’s got a nonfiction piece in here, “Tips for the Busy Conversationalist.” It’s an intense exploration that plays well with the self-help style. Nod.