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Pixie Cut
By Terri Kirby Erickson
for my daughter
Black-eyed, black-haired girl of thirty-two,
I can see you reflected in a mirror
across the room—one of many mirrors and multiple stylists
with tattooed limbs and hennaed heads, clipping
and snipping. And I am thinking that the cloth draped
around your body, catching the sheared locks that tumble
to your shoulders, your lap, the floor, seems as sacred
as white linen on an altar table—your face emerging
like an angel sculpted from the clay
of your long, dark hair. You are smiling
because you see at last, what we all have seen—
how beautiful you are, that the woman you imagined
has arrived—
and she is and always has been, you.
Excerpted from Becoming the Blue Heron (Press 53, 2017)
Finalist, 2015 Ron Rash Award (Broad River Review)
How the Boy Might See It
By Charlie Bondhus. Finding one's identity is just the beginning of the struggle, in this updated and expanded version of an award-winning gay poet's debut collection. With lyricism and an empathetic imagination, Bondhus claims a place for himself within multiple traditions, daring to juxtapose a comic tryst with a resurrected Walt Whitman, a disciple's erotic memories of Jesus, and the lament of a post-Edenic Adam. New work in this edition includes the poem suite "Diane Rehm Hosts Jesus Christ on NPR", narrated by a very human messiah who "would speak about what God shares with humanity...I mean loneliness".
Able to Choose
By Patrick T. Reardon Let me honor your courage to take your life. Oh, David, why could you not find the bravery to break out of your prison before that, the penitentiary Dad and Mom erected to keep them safe from your raw life? They could not live outside the prison they made for themselves and for you. And, in the end, you couldn't. Oh, David, I flew. I protected myself. Why didn't you take to the wing and grow your hair long and really say fuck you to the church and to Mom and Dad and find the raw ripe life that always eluded you. I am walking to Evanston through a cold autumn afternoon, and my nose runs as if I am crying on this trail of tears and it almost seems that I am. But I'm not, of course. You know, David, that we learned early... [continue]
Getting a Top Reviewer to Read Your Book
In this blog post, Amazon Top Reviewer "Bassocantor", a/k/a Chris Lawson, gives advice on how to craft a professional, targeted pitch to solicit book reviews.
The Smoke of Dreams
By Reena Ribalow. This stately, melancholy collection of poems is steeped in sensual memories of bittersweet love, be it for a holy city or a forbidden affair. Her roots are planted in Jerusalem, sacred and war-torn, harsh and captivating. Her more personal poems show the same mix of pleasure and pain in romantic relationships. One way or another, history is inescapable.
Buck Studies
By Douglas Kearney. Read these energetic, challenging poems once quickly for their frantic virtuosity of sound and rhythm, and again slowly to tease out the allusions in each compressed line. "Buck" was a racial slur in post-Civil War America for a black man who was sexually powerful and defiant of white authority. By juxtaposing it with "Studies", Kearney mocks the pseudoscientific white gaze, and also demands a place for black subjectivity in the canon of high culture. This second theme emerges most strongly in the two poem cycles that bracket the collection. The first reworks the Labors of Hercules through the legend of 19th-century African-American pimp Stagger Lee (the subject of numerous murder ballads by artists as varied as Woody Guthrie, Duke Ellington, and The Clash). The second cycle replaces Jesus with Br'er Rabbit in the Stations of the Cross. As great satires do, these mash-ups make us ask serious questions: Who gets to go down in history as... [continue]
Thief in the Interior
By Phillip B. Williams. This debut collection from Alice James Books is a formally innovative, visceral and intense collection of poems through which the American tradition of violence against gay and black male bodies runs like a blood-red thread. From concrete poetry collages to experimental sonnets, Williams makes us contemplate murder as a twisted outburst of intimacy across caste lines, and love as a battle cry. Winner of the 2017 Kate Tufts Discovery Award.
Clumping
By Carol Smallwood
Stars form when cosmic dust clumps together
making solar systems now as billions of years ago.
The common dust bunny gathers altogether
like particles joining in space make stars grow.
Making solar systems now as billions of years ago,
mysterious dark energy pushes galaxies apart
like particles joining in space make stars grow—
our solar system has over 300 moons a la carte.
Mysterious dark energy pushes galaxies apart:
there's a galaxy sixty times bigger than our own—
our solar system has over 300 moons a la carte
in a universe only beginning to be less unknown.
There's a galaxy sixty times bigger than our own:
the common dust bunny gathers altogether
in a universe only beginning to be less unknown;
stars form when cosmic dust clumps together.
Representation Matters: A Literary Call to Arms
In this 2017 essay in LitReactor, K. Tempest Bradford shares tips for creating a diverse cast of characters and avoiding stereotypes in fiction. Bradford teaches classes on "Writing the Other" with Nisi Shaw, co-author of the foundational book on the subject. This article includes links to related anthologies and essays.
Director’s Notes: Holocaust Memorial Day, Tel Aviv
By Ricky Rapoport Friesem Pan across the bustling plaza bursting with the energy of busy people on the go. Zoom out to a long shot as the siren's piercing howl brings them to an abrupt halt. Hold on the shot of the plaza, still now, and silent. Zoom in on a pair of sandals glistening with wet sand. Cut to a series of tight close ups of dusty shoes, trendy shoes, soldiers' boots, high heels, low heels, new shoes, old shoes, bridled feet twitching with life. Tilt up to motionless legs and torsos, faces settling into solemnity. Pan the plaza until the siren's howl is sucked into the void again and the crowd lets out a collective sigh, like swimmers coming up for air. Zoom out to a long shot of the crowd, stirring. Zoom in to their shoes, in motion once again, then cut to tight close ups... [continue]
Advice from Judy Juanita, Judge of the Tom Howard/John H. Reid Fiction & Essay Contest
My favorite bedtime reading is the great Irish writer Frank O'Connor. I never tire of his short stories or insights. Rather than pretending to have great advice, I defer to him because I have an affinity for what he terms "might-have-beens" or "outlawed figures wandering at the fringes of society." O'Connor said, "There is in the short story at its most characteristic something we do not often find in the novel—an intense awareness of human loneliness." (The Best of Frank O'Connor, Knopf, 2009). He also wrote extensively about childhood though he was an only child. He's said, "Children...see only one side of any question and because of their powerlessness see this with hysterical clarity." So that's a small essential for writing—look at marginalia, the smallest, youngest, the never-was, the never-will-be. Tim O'Brien talks of the consoling power of stories: "If I'm lying in bed at night I'm... [continue]
TCK Publishing’s List of Top Kindle Book Promotion Sites
This list ranks the top sites that advertise discounted Kindle e-books to consumers, based on how much traffic they get. The article also includes a link to TCK's companion piece about sites that list free e-books.
TCK Publishing’s List of 100+ Author Tools
TCK Publishing is an independent publishing company specializing in digital marketing. Founder Tom Corson-Knowles teaches online training courses in self-publishing and book promotion. This list compiles over 100 basic tools to write, design, and market your book.
Solace at the P.O.
By Sandy Longley So, it's my turn and I place an envelope on the counter. The clerk asks: "Does this package contain any hazardous liquid?" Only a thousand tears, I reply. "Is there anything flammable or breakable?" Just my heart, I say. "Would you like this sent express mail for an additional $7.50?" Actually, I'd prefer a slow delivery, maybe in a canvas saddlebag, on a dappled mare, rambling through mountains, through valleys lush and deep, pausing for long drinks in stony creeks. "How about insurance?" We both know there's no insurance, no deductible, for matters like this; I know what I have given, what I have received. He glances at the customer line lengthening— impatience spreading like a virus. I want him to close his window and ask me to meet him out back. He'll be wearing cowboy boots and smell like fresh cut locust burl. He'll drape... [continue]
Reviews of Trans and/or Non-Binary Lit by Trans and/or Non-Binary Reviewers
Erotica writer and social issues blogger Xan West maintains this list of contemporary books on transgender and non-binary themes, with links to reviews by transgender and non-binary readers. West created the list because cisgender reviewers are not always in a position to recognize whether a book's portrayal of trans and non-binary experience is misinformed or offensive. Authors creating gender-variant characters would do well to educate themselves by browsing the relevant reviews.
The hitchhiking robot has been found dead
By Vernita Hall beheaded and dismembered in Philadelphia, where the lifeless life form was discovered in Olde City. The robot's followers were shocked and deeply saddened by the news. A group calling itself "Nobots" has claimed responsibility. Their spokesperson, Dell E. Terious, issued this statement: It's about jobs. It's about humanity. We call on all Americans to oppose the raw evil of automation. We've struck a blow for human independence. No bots! No bots! No bots! They've released a video of the execution, where hooded members, holding raised machetes, chant: Raw evil demands war demands evil Human rights activists have decried the killing. They've called the fringe crusaders savages, expressing outrage that the grinning guest—benign, child-sized, and helpless—was martyred in the cradle of liberty. Still, the bot's creators have committed to continue their novel social experiment. But Ms. Terious has cautioned more to come. Up next, a warning on... [continue]
Certain Doorways
By Jessica Goody Doorways are a metaphor for transience, transformation, opportunity. The two-faced god Janus controlled the doorway between past and future, a cosmic stage scrim. Behind each wooden portal, between brass digits and flowerpots, lives occur. Auras of lamplight illuminate domestic scenes like something in a play. Curtains billow like sails against the windowpane. Coats are heaped on pegs and kicked-off shoes are scattered. Umbrellas stand dripping, upended along the wall. A cat stares from a window, an all-knowing glow in its green eyes. A door is a blind eye, glassless and impenetrable. A closed door is a haven, a cave guarding the privacy of its occupant, a friendly fortress, a retreat, a cocoon of calming silence, encouraging contemplation. Every house is a box filled with heartbeats, footsteps, history, a potpourri of voices. The old trees lining the street bear witness to their gossip, their comings and goings.... [continue]
Half Mystic
Half Mystic is a semi-annual print and online literary arts journal dedicated to the celebration of music in all its forms. They publish poetry, fiction, interviews, artwork, essays on music and the arts, and original songs. Diverse voices welcomed.
Four Things to Decide Before You Write Your Memoir
In this article from the blog of self-publishing company BookBaby, writing coach and scientist Dr. Dawn Field describes how to structure your memoir so it reads like a compelling story. Some pointers: Focus on a span of time with a defined narrative arc, not your whole life; feel free to move back and forth in time to foreground the most important events; and have a clear take-away message that makes your personal story relevant to others. "The best memoirs are like parables. They are not only intriguing—they help others improve their lives."
Website Setup: 10 Best Website Builders
Website Setup is web designer Robert Mening's tech support site for artists and small business owners seeking to set up their own website or blog. Authors who are weighing the pros and cons of a custom design versus website-building software will benefit from this list, updated annually, of the most user-friendly and cost-effective site builders.
Submission Strategies: Advice from The Masters Review
In this blog post from the literary journal The Masters Review, editor Kim Winternheimer discusses the submission strategies that work best for different writers. Topics include whether to re-submit original or edited stories, targeting the right mix of top-tier and more accessible magazines, and how many pieces to send out at a time.
Living Right
By Laila Ibrahim. In this timely, heartwarming novel, a conservative Christian mother is forced to question her beliefs about homosexuality when her son attempts suicide. Their journey to acceptance includes a realistic depiction of so-called conversion therapy and how it can tear apart a loving family with a witch-hunt for nonexistent trauma. Sympathetic to faith, this book shows the diversity of views even within evangelical families, as well as the social pressure to keep silent about one's doubts.
Speak Up: Responding to Everyday Bigotry
The Southern Poverty Law Center has published this free online guide with suggested scripts for compassionate, appropriate conversations to interrupt prejudice and bullying in everyday social settings. Topics include becoming aware of our own biases, responding to prejudiced comments in the workplace or family gatherings, and ways to fight structural inequalities like racial profiling and discriminatory corporate policies. For writers, this guide will also be useful for correcting stereotypes in our own work, and writing dialogue for characters who are dealing with these issues.
Family: 5 Variations
By Annie Dawid 1. At table, silence, rum-blossomed cheeks puffing with goose, adult children smile slyly, sipping their drinks. 2. Squatty-bodied, dark and loud, they gallop their words over lox and chopped herring, opinions fly like scrapping gulls. "You're wrong!" "You don't know what you're talking about!" The child wishes for worlds where only one person speaks at a time. 3. Parents and grandparents, three friends, four visitors representing Jews, Hispanic lapsed Catholics, more lapsed Wasps and various agnostics argue testosterone and range-and-basin geology, baby spitting peas and pasta, two husbands check their balls (still there) and mourn their manhood while tacos keep flipping from grills, beer keeps emerging, warm, and later the men clean up, grumbling. 4. Three lesbian couples, two babies, adopted, of another race, urban vegetarian uniting with rancher's daughter over potato salad, public radio from Fargo humming in the background, Lucy Blue coming to town... [continue]
Lodestar Quarterly
Lodestar Quarterly was an online journal of gay, lesbian, and queer literature, published 2002-06. Contributors included S. Bear Bergman, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Jane Rule, Susan Stinson, Michelle Tea, and Emanuel Xavier. Complete archives are available on the website.
Love Justice
By Bracha Nechama Bomze. This debut poetry book from 3Ring Press is simultaneously a book-length love poem, a family memoir, and an epic of social change. The title's multiple meanings encompass generations of Jewish labor activism, winning the right to marry her lesbian partner, and the heartbreak of a closed adoption system that stigmatized her birthmother. Through all these personal and political traumas, the poet continues to praise the natural world that feeds her soul, and the life partnership that comes as a fairy-tale happy ending to a lonely childhood. The book is an inspiration and a delight.
Top 100 Book Review Blogs for Readers and Authors
Feedspot, a site that aggregates content across the Web, compiled this list of book review blogs that have the highest visibility in terms of Google search ranking, social media presence, and consistent quality of posts. The list includes both general-interest and genre-specific sites such as romance, children's books, and fantasy.
A Small Hotel
By Robert Olen Butler. Through brilliant use of flashbacks and alternating perspectives, this intimate novel tells the story of Michael and Kelly Hays, a Southern professional couple who are divorcing after two decades of marriage, though it becomes apparent that they are both still painfully in love with each other. As soon as the reader starts to side with one character, a new twist reveals the other character's vulnerability and the dysfunctional family pattern that he or she is struggling to break. The novel winds toward a suspenseful climax as we wait to discover whether they will tell each other the truth before it's too late.
Fire Shut Up in My Bones
By Charles M. Blow. The New York Times op-ed columnist's gorgeously written and introspective memoir is a case study in overcoming patriarchy and healing from abuse. Brought up in rural Louisiana by a devoted but stern and overworked single mother and their extended family, young Charles yearned for more tenderness and attention than a boy was supposed to need. An older male cousin preyed on his isolation, giving him a new secret to add to his fears of being not-quite-straight in a culture where this was taboo. Channeling his need for connection into school achievement and community leadership, Blow found himself on both the giving and the receiving end of violent hyper-masculinity as a fraternity brother. In the end, he recognized that self-acceptance, not repression, was the best way to become an honorable man. Blow writes like a poet, in witty, image-rich, sensitive lines that flow like a mighty river.
We Love You, Charlie Freeman
By Kaitlyn Greenidge. This ambitious, unsettling debut novel delves into the secret history of primate research and race relations in America. The Freemans, a high-achieving middle-class black family, accept a live-in position at the (fictitious) Toneybee Institute in rural Massachusetts to teach sign language to a chimpanzee. Their narrative is braided with that of Nymphadora, a maverick black schoolteacher in the 1920s who was seduced into taking part in the Toneybee's questionable experiments. In both timelines, the black protagonists' lives unravel because they underestimated how the white scientists saw them, too, as animal test subjects.
Geraniums
By Carmine Dandrea
No geraniums, please.
I want no geraniums—
those funereal flowers found
with their greeny smell
casually erect in pink clay pots
dotting cemetery lots.
I'll have none, please.
Those blown petals parted
by each vagrant breeze.
No geraniums, please.
Next only, in proximity
with deadly death,
to gardenias' anemia—
old faded odor
sifting silently
from ancient ladies' breasts.
So, no geraniums, please. I'll have none, please.
If to avoid a family feud,
I'm pressed to choose,
a few chrysanthemums
would freshly do.
But, for God's sake,
no geraniums, PLEASE.
Empty Red Chair
This striking poetry video, by an Australian author who goes by the pen name "Initially NO", draws a provocative analogy between political prisoners and people involuntarily confined to psychiatric hospitals.
Domestic Enchantment
By Reena Ribalow
Some spells turn a prince into a frog,
some tame wild girl to wife,
conjure mother out of woman,
tranced by cooking, tending, laundry.
Swaying from their pegs the colored clothes
are dazzling as the wings of
subjugated butterflies.
Sun scents the air with opiate of soap;
captivity subdues the blood like sleep,
with cleanly, sweet,
obliterating peace.
The kitchen table is set
with the artifacts of enchantment:
a jug of flowers upon a blue-checked cloth,
white mugs, a fresh-baked cake.
She herself prepared the potion,
self-bewitched,
the recipe her mother's song,
sung before memory.
A cup of flour, two eggs,
a handful of the magic
that fetters sense and soul:
that gilds the room the gold
of an imagined sun:
that heats her veins
like the tea which steams
from teapots,
with the smoke of dreams.
Peacock Journal
Launched in 2016 by poet W.F. Lantry and musician Kathleen Fitzpatrick, this online literary journal seeks to publish beautiful creative work, taking advantage of the graphic possibilities of modern web technology. They also put out an annual print anthology of poetry and flash fiction. Send previously unpublished poetry, fiction, personal essays, artwork, or short audio files. See website for lengths and formats. Michael Linnard, the editor of the literary press Little Red Tree, is the journal's publication liaison.
Literary Agent Links at Ardor Magazine
The online literary magazine Ardor maintains this annually updated list of over 100 literary agents and their preferred genres, with links to their websites.
Poetry Contest Links at Ardor Magazine
The online literary magazine Ardor maintains this annually updated page of links to 60+ poetry contests that the editors recommend. The contests are arranged in date order, with prizes and fees listed.
Prism Comics
Prism Comics is the leading nonprofit, all-volunteer organization supporting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, intersex, asexual and LGBTQIA-friendly comic books, comics professionals, readers and educators. Prism awards an annual Queer Press Grant to help an independent comics creator publish their work of interest to an LGBTQIA audience. Prism also publishes anthologies and hosts panel discussions at comics conventions around the United States.
Just Publishing Advice
Derek Haines, a speculative fiction and thriller writer, maintains this useful blog with advice for self-published authors, with detailed and timely articles about such topics as using social media to sell books.
How to Be a Good Beta Reader
In this article from the self-publishing and marketing service BookBaby, science writer Dawn Field shares eight tips for giving useful feedback on a manuscript.
The Tipping Point for Best Selling Authors
In this 2016 post from his blog Dying Words, a resource for mystery and thriller authors, crime novelist Garry Rodgers interviews nine best-selling indie and self-published writers about the strategies that took their book sales to the next level. Some common themes: build a mailing list, focus on your niche, and keep putting out new titles that are well-written and professionally edited.
Beauty
By Hubert & Kerascoët. This memorable graphic novel is a tragicomic feminist fairy tale for adults, sketched in an effortless retro style with an earthy color palette suggestive of old storybooks. A troublemaking fairy grants a homely peasant girl's wish for supreme beauty, but the maiden soon finds that being a maddening object of desire is no safer than her old life of humiliation. Her reversals of fortune add up to a profound fable about power, illusion, and sexism.
the Shade Journal
In July 2016, queer black poet Luther X. Hughes transformed his blog into an online literary journal, with this mission statement: "the Shade Journal is an online poetry journal focused on the empowerment of queer people of color (QPOC); publishing poems that inspires, devastates, and howls–work that challenges form and upsets the canon, but understands its rigorous and traditional roots. the Shade Journal believes there is something divine about being a queer person of color in a world designed to destroy these bodies." Follow on Twitter @ShadePoetry.
Tincture
Lethe Press is a well-regarded small press with an interest in queer literature. Their imprint Tincture is dedicated to publishing LGBT authors of color. Books in their catalog include the anthologies From Macho to Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction and Walking the Tightrope: Poetry and Prose by LGBTQ Writers from Africa, as well as individual titles by Nathan Goh, Rigoberto Gonzalez, Timothy Wang, and others.
The Opposite of People
By Patrick Ryan Frank. Blank verse and loosely structured sonnets eloquently explore the yearnings we express through TV and movie archetypes. Sincerity and contrivance are not opposites here. The comedian, the stunt man, the late-night movie monster, and the bad-news blonde take their turns revealing the existential paradox of film: how it underscores the passage of time by freezing it on the screen, a fixed point against which we measure our real lives racing past like "a car with its brake lines cut". Frank's blend of wry conversational tone and formal meter harks back to W.H. Auden, but his aesthetic lineage is more Disney than Brueghel: "About violence they were never wrong,/the old cartoons."
Poetry by Soma Mei Sheng Frazier
"No Results for That Place" was chosen by Billy Collins for an Honorable Mention in the 2019 Fish Poetry Prize, and was published in Fish Anthology 2019. **** The Deepest Hours Sometimes my infant daughter wakes in the middle of the night irrepressibly happy. My husband and I lull her back to sleep with our various Shaolin techniques: His trick is to stroke her ears and mine, to put the radio on static and dance slowly. These things work like hypnosis, like narcotics, like prayer: hit or miss. Sometimes our desperate trying reminds me of all the stops my mother pulled out, years ago to try and cheer herself up about life: liquor, crystals, seminars, triathlons and legal drugs that made her hair fall out. I remember driving home late a senior in high school and seeing her dart across the road in front of our... [continue]
Marc J. Frazier Poetry
Marc Frazier is the author of the poetry collections Each Thing Touches (Glass Lyre Press, 2015) and The Way Here (Aldrich Press), and the chapbooks After and The Gods of the Grand Resort, both from Finishing Line Press. Cyrus Cassells calls Each Thing Touches "rich with striking and dynamic questions...refreshingly human, urgent, and disarming." Frazier has had several residencies at the Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, Illinois and received an Illinois Arts Council award in poetry. Visit his website to find out about his workshops.
Disability in Kidlit
Disability in Kidlit is a multi-author website dedicated to discussing and improving the portrayal of disability in middle grade and young adult literature. They publish critical essays, reviews, and interviews. Their goals are to help readers, editors, and libraries find books with accurate and respectful treatment of disability, and to educate writers and editors about problematic portrayals. All contributors and editors identify as disabled.
Autistic Representation and Real-Life Consequences
Disability in Kidlit is a multi-author blog that reviews portrayals of disability in books for children and young adults. In this 2015 essay, speculative fiction author Elizabeth Bartmess surveys common stereotypes and limiting depictions of autistic children in fiction, and how they contribute to mistreatment in the real world. This piece is a must-read for fiction writers in all genres who are developing a neurodiverse cast of characters.
Lesbian Poetry Archive
Julie R. Enszer, editor of the long-running lesbian-feminist literary journal Sinister Wisdom, maintains this free digital archive of poetry chapbooks, pamphlets, anthologies, and out-of-print journals of lesbian writing.
Scribe Guide to Getting on Bestselling Book Lists
Tucker Max is the co-founder of Scribe Media (formerly Book in a Box), a writing coach and ghostwriting service for business professionals. In this article from their website, he explains the metrics behind newspapers' and online retailers' bestseller lists, and the reasons why getting on the list is not a cost-effective goal for most authors.
