The Summer 2020 Issue of SRPR is now on the Mag Stand. In this issue, you’ll find cover art by Brittany Schloderback; the SRPR Illinois Poet Feature with new poetry by Simone Muench and Jackie K. White, with an interview of the poets by Carlo Matos and Amy Sayre Batista; and new poetry by Jose-Luis Moctezuma, Paul Martinez-Pompa, Julia Wong Kcomt translated by Jennifer Shyue, Michael Leong, Emily Carr, and more.
Interview
NewPages Mag Stand: Plume
This month’s featured selection: “The Chronicler of a Blue Planet: An audio interview with Ranjit Hoskote by Leeya Mehta” with work by the poet. Christopher Buckley pens the essay, “Out of Fresno—Poetry & ‘Career,’” and Susan Blackwell Ramsey reviews Hailey Leithauser’s Saint Worm. See more poetry contributors at the Mag Stand.
The Malahat Review Novella Prize – 2020 Winner
The Malahat Review hosts a Novella Prize biennially. The 2020 winner opens the Summer 2020 issue. Judges Samantha Jade Macpherson and Naben Ruthnum selected “Yentas” by Rebecca Păpucaru.
Of “Yentas,” the judges said: “‘Yentas’ is a nostalgia-free portrait of girlhood lived among the Jewish communities of 1980s Montreal. The novella’s evocation of the cruelties and kindnesses of teenage friendship, territorialism, and enmity is built in prose as funny as it is precise. Rebecca Păpucaru’s treatment of culture, ethnicity, and religion as complex structures informing protagonist Karen’s family and social life achieves impressive depth and nuance. Through Karen’s eyes we are totally immersed in a rich and bubbling teenaged world. Visceral and enchanting, a truly fantastic read!”
At The Malahat Review‘s website, readers can check out an interview with the winning author.
NewPages Mag Stand: Plume
Visit this month’s featured selection: “From Lewisburg to Syracuse: An interview with Bruce Smith by Chard deNiord.” Sydney Lea, in nonfiction, writes “Inviting the Reader: Narrative Values, Lyric Poems” and Donovan McAbee reviews Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry by John Murillo. See poetry contributors at the Mag Stand.
David Chorlton Interviewed in The Bitter Oleander
The Spring 2020 Issue of The Bitter Oleander includes a special feature. Editor Paul B. Roth interviews poet David Chorlton. Readers can also find a selection from Chorlton’s Speech Scroll. Below, check out an excerpt from the interview and visit The Bitter Oleander website to get a taste of Speech Scroll.
PBR: In your Speech Scroll, a sampling of which follows this interview, you’ve put the urban and the desert world together so expertly over some 158 poems. Did this particular project start off with that in mind or was it just your current ongoing consciousness of where you were in that environment and who you are that brought it forth?
DC: . . . While there are the times I sit down to commit words to paper, the actual writing of poetry is never turned off. Without placing a title or thinking of a poem’s shape, I had an ongoing path to follow and that helped me shift a little in the way I see images come together. Thinking about the political happenings of our tumultuous time might become too consuming, and for some people it is. Others seem to remain oblivious to anything that goes on in that realm. Writing poetry, being the most natural form of communication for me, has been a good place in which to scatter comments and observations that, I hope, provoke more thought than argument. Life encompasses a wide range of pleasures and frustrations, comfort for the fortunate and responsibility toward those who are not, and so with the help of various bird and animal species, plus a view of the sunrise from our front door when I’m up early to see it I take, as I mentioned earlier, what is given, and transform it the best way I can.
NewPages Mag Stand: The Bitter Oleander
The Spring 2020 issue features the contemporary Arizona poet David Chorlton, interviewed by our editor and including a generous selection of poems from his forthcoming book, Speech Scrolls. The issue also presents translations from the fiction of Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen (Portugal); and poetry in translation by Paula Abramo (Mexico), Alberto Blanco (Mexico), Maritza Cino (Ecuador), Andre du Bouchet (France), and Elaine Vilar Madruga (Cuba). See other contributors at the Mag Stand.
NewPages Mag Stand: Boulevard
In this issue: the winning essay from the 2019 Nonfiction Contest by Emi Nietfeld. An interview featuring Téa Obreht. A new fiction piece by Joyce Carol Oates, and a story by Mary Troy. The winning poems from the 2019 Poetry Contest by A.D. Lauren-Abunassar. A collection translated by Yifei Wu of the initial days of the Wuhan quarantine. Plus even more contributors which you can learn about at our Mag Stand.
Lise de Nikolits Interviews Nora Gold
Find a newly posted interview with Nora Gold at Lise de Nikolits’s blog. The two discuss Gold’s 2016 novel The Dead Man, her writing process, and her favorite ways to relax and unwind.
Gold is the editor of Jewish Fiction .net which just produced its 24th issue this past March. Visit their social media for curated lists of work relating to a similar theme that the journal has published in previous issues if you’re looking for even more good reads.
De-stigmatize Uncomfortable Realities: Interview with Aby Kaupang & Matthew Cooperman
Elizabeth Jacobson sat down with Aby Kaupang and Matthew Cooperman to discuss their 2018 release of NOS (disorder, not otherwise specified). The book, published by Futurepoem Books, documents the odyssey into a foreign environment of hospitals, doctors, and diagnoses. Terrain.org published an excerpt from the book along with this interview.
Interviewer Elizabeth Jacobson starts the interview with the question about choosing to make the decision to let your child live or die and explains that she grew up in a family where a different choice was made.
Aby responds, “thank you for sharing your story a bit. I hope to hear more. I say that because I care, but also because I wish more people would write/speak about the difficult choices. De-stigmatize uncomfortable realities.”
She and Matthew Cooperman go on to explain how the book started as a private journal of Aby’s and transformed into something completely different. They also talk about how their lives have changed since its publication and what new challenges they face with their daughter who is now thirteen. Check out the full interview here…and maybe prepare a tissue or two.
Literacy Teaching Informed by & Mindful of Stress & Trauma
The National Writers Project Radio recently posted a podcast version of their interview and discussion with Richard Koch and Elizabeth Dutro who have both recently authored books in regards to teaching in an age of stress and trauma. The interview was conducted on February 18, 2020.
Richard Koch, now retired, is a former English professor from the University of Iowa and Adrian College (my alma mater), and is the author of The Mindful Writing Workshop: Teaching in the Age of Stress and Trauma. Elizabeth Dutro is a professor and chair of Literacy Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of The Vulnerable Heart of Literacy: Centering Trauma as Powerful Pedagogy.
” . . . the space we’re in with all these proliferated programs around trauma and that they can be one more way that certain children are marginalized in school, seen as damaged rather than full of knowledge that should count in schools . . .”
NWP Radio is also offering a free download of The Mindful Writing Workshop on their site. Do check out the full discussion. It’s an interesting conversation on education, children, and teaching and definitely worth a listen to in these stressful times.
Interview with Native American Writer CMarie Fuhrman
Did you know online literary magazine High Desert Journal features an exclusive podcast interview with Native American writer CMarie Fuhrman? If not, definitely go check it out. You may need to really crank the volume so you can hear her responses to the interviewer’s questions.
And I think that says something, too, about our culture not wanting to face death.
Listen to the the full interview here: www.highdesertjournal.com/podcast.