Issue Seven is three issues in one—a poetry issue, a prose issue, and an art issue. This is our largest issue to date, filled with art, poetry, and prose from domestic and sexual violence survivors, child abuse survivors, and harassment victims. Work by Taylor Drake, Sky Dai, Emma Jokinen, Elena Fite, Siri Espy, Isabella Neblett, Charlotte Kane, Carly Hall, Melanie Ward, Rachael Gay, Mae Herring, Miriam Leibowitz, Mars Rightwildish, Ranjeet Singh, and many more. We were also fortunate to be able to interview Lori Greene for the issue, who created the artwork for the United States’s first permanent memorial to sexual violence survivors. Find this issue at the Mag Stand.
Fiction
Event :: Shooter Literary Magazine 2021 Short Story Courses Open for Enrollment
Event Dates: January 8-February 26, March 5-April 23, April 30-June 18
Event Location: Virtual
Registration Deadline: Year-round
Shooter’s editor, Melanie White, leads eight-week short story courses throughout the academic year. They are designed to help writers develop their craft and complete a polished short story. The courses are best suited to aspiring fiction writers keen to hone their skills and publish their work. Courses comprise a weekly class via email, including readings and exercises; a private Facebook group where participants can discuss class topics and work; one-to-one guidance with the course leader via email; optional feedback on completed stories; and consideration for inclusion in Shooter. Further information at our website.
News from The Louisville Review
The Louisville Review has some announcements! In addition to the release of Issue 88 featuring poetry, short fiction and (K-12) poetry, the editors have also announced their Pushcart nominees:
Poetry
from The Louisville Review, No. 87, Spring 2020
“If a Fox” by Luke Wallin
“Institutional Lies” by Frank X Walker
Fiction
from The Louisville Review, No. 88, Fall 2020
“Mama, I Need Some Money” by Jim Bellar
“Let No One Fear Me” by Lori Ann Stephens
Poetry
from The Louisville Review, No. 88, Fall 2020
“Rebuilding the Temple: Higashi Honganji, Kyoto” by Greg Pape
“Human Head, Dream” by Milica Mijatović
Congrats and good luck to the nominees!
NewPages Mag Stand: Superstition Review
The Fall 2020 issue features art by Mary Hope Whitehead Lee, fiction by Khanh Ha, nonfiction by Eric Tran, and poetry by Quintin Collins. Plus, Interview Editor Kendall Dawson speaks to Danielle Evans about the meaningfulness of writing, the process of self-questioning, and Zora Neale Hurston. Find it at this week’s Magazine Stand.
NewPages Mag Stand: Shenandoah
The Fall 2020 issue features fiction by Rachel Heng, Nathan Poole, Xhenet Aliu, and more; poetry by Samyak Shertok, Stephanie Rogers, Diane Seuss, Ashley M. Jones, John Kinsella, Jen Schalliol Huang, and others; and nonfiction by Leslie Jernegan, J.D. Ho, Lynette Benton, Mason Andrew Hamberlin, and Sarah Beth Childers. See what else this issue promises at the Mag Stand.
NewPages Mag Stand: Walloon Writers Review
Walloon Writers Review edition 6, at this week’s Mag Stand is a collection of poetry, short stories and nature photography inspired by Northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula. This independent regionally focused literary magazine publishes annually. “edition 6” edited by Associate Editor Glen Young, is so titled as this is our first digital edition. Walloon Writers Review edition 6 is available on issuu and the link can be found on our website. No charge for the digital edition this year. Cover photography by Elizabeth J. Bates.
NewPages Mag Stand: The Greensboro Review
Featuring the Amon Liner Poetry Prize winner, “An Imperfect Figure” by Tegan Daly, plus the first selection in our new flash fiction category, Stephen Hundley’s “Tiger Drill in Butterfly Class.” Issue 108 includes an Editor’s Note from Terry L. Kennedy as well as new fiction and poetry from Bridget Apfeld, Kathleen Balma, Andrew Bode-Lang, Rick Bursky, Christopher Citro, and more. See more contributors at the Mag Stand.
NewPages Mag Stand: The Malahat Review
The Autumn 2020 issue, now at the Mag Stand, features the winner of the 2020 Far Horizons Award for Poetry: A.R. Kung with “Flight.” Also in the issue, find poetry by Karen Lee, Shane Rhodes, Patrick Phoebe Wang, and more; fiction by Shoilee Khan, Francine Cunningham, and John Elizabeth Stintzi; and creative nonfiction by Michelle Poirier Brown, Kathy Mak, and Erin Soros. Plus, a hearty selection of book reviews.
‘The Inland Sea’ Covers A Lot of Territory
Guest Post by Judith Chalmer.
The Inland Sea by Sam Clark is wonderful, full of interesting people left to live out their own mysteries, with rich and beautiful descriptions of the lake and communities on both sides. Evidence of intelligence and emotional complexity is everywhere in the characters Clark has created for his unusually constructed and sophisticated mystery.
An assortment of re-built boats skim across a lake bordered by forest and farm, carrying readers between islands, slamming waves, treacherous rocks, and the unpredictable currents of human capability. Designed with a craftsperson’s care and a philosopher’s depth, The Inland Sea covers a lot of territory.
I finished the book in two sittings, and had to make myself stop in the middle. I can’t wait to recommend it to friends.
The Inland Sea: A Mystery by Sam Clark. Rootstock Publishing, December 2020.
Reviewer bio: Judith Chalmer is the author of two books of poetry, Out of History’s Junk Jar, and most recently, Minnow. She lives and writes in Vermont.
Buy this book from our affiliate Bookshop.org.
Selling Out with Paul Beatty
Guest Post by Jack Graham.
Paul Beatty presents a roguishly sharp addressing of current race relations within the United States within his Booker Prize-winning novel, The Sellout. In his plight to put his home town of Dickens back on the map, our protagonist (whose first name we never discover) explores notions of modern-day slavery under an Obama presidency, the revival of segregation in schools whilst also acknowledging the blatant racism of Hollywood, hiring black actors simply for their sense of ‘blackness’.
Our protagonist guides us through the chapters with a lexicon that can only be appreciated by sociology graduates, documenting in the earliest pages of the narrative as to how he was a guinea pig for his father’s experiments and torture in an attempt to mimic and alter notorious psychological experiments within the parameters of an African-American lifestyle adjacent to the struggles of a black community in small-town California.
Beatty presents his audience with the complete absurdity of segregation and slave-holding. The author is willing to excite and shock his audience as a means to illustrate the everyday strains of a black community, whether that be the ejection of black communities from city maps, the use of racial slurs, or the tremendous difficulties for black children to attend mostly white schools.
I wholeheartedly recommend that people read The Sellout as means to further understand and appreciate the tribulations of a much-subjugated class to acknowledge the role of often ignored small ghetto-like communities in the path of large-scale gentrification.
The Sellout by Paul Beatty. Picador, March 2016.
Reviewer bio: I’m Jack Graham, currently studying my Masters in English Literary Studies at Durham University.
Buy this book from our affiliate Bookshop.org.
For All Those Whom Have Ever Had To Eat Their Own Or Another’s Grief
Guest Post by John Cullen.
The title for this review comes from the dedication which opens Deirdre Fagan’s collection of short stories, The Grief Eater. This collection follows up on the author’s excellent poetry collection, Have Love, but turns its attention to beautifully written explorations of characters overcome with and attempting to live with grief.
In the story “The Grief Eater,” a young woman can’t stop reading the local obituaries and attending the funerals of people she does not know, initially believing she is doing it for the good of the grieving families and eventually coming to a larger realization about herself and the nature of life. “Dressing The Part” chronicles the events of a woman attempting to deal with having lost her husband. At various points she wears her wedding dress to work and discovers a strange yet movingly fitting way of spreading her husband’s ashes. In “Rotary Dial,” a grief-stricken man begins calling people at random and asking for his wife.
The characters in these stories struggle with that most human pain of how to move on from grief and possibly find a livable space. These psychological portraits of characters at extreme crossroads will strike a deep chord in anyone who has thought about mortality or confronted loss. This is an excellent first collection of stories.
The Grief Eater by Deirdre Fagan. Adelaide Books, 2020.
Reviewer bio: John Cullen’s poetry has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, American Journal of Poetry, The MacGuffin, and The Cincinnati Review.