Subscriber News: December 2019
Recent Honors
Congratulations to Laurel Blossom. Her new poetry collection Un- will be published in March 2020 and is now available for pre-order from Finishing Line Press. Centered on the understudy to swimming movie star Esther Williams, this feminist mystery story in verse explores the pros and cons of anonymity and the fluidity of truth. She kindly shares a sample poem here.
Congratulations to Margarita Meklina. Her flash fiction "Cure" won second prize in the 100 Word Short Story Contest from Negative Capability Press. Her essay "The Spirit Can't Be Confined" placed second in the 2019 Perito Prize, a contest for creative writing about accessibility and inclusive design. The most recent deadline was October 1 for this award of 250 pounds.
Congratulations to Louise Ells. Her debut story collection, Notes Towards Recovery, was published this spring by Latitude46. Read a profile of her on author Cynthia Newberry Martin's website. "Erratics", a story from the collection, is online at Academia.
Congratulations to David Kherdian. His poetry collection Black Mountain Home was published this fall by Cascade Press. From the book blurb: "Drawing inspiration from the lush mountainscapes of North Carolina, he takes the reader on an unforgettable backwoods sojourn as he describes nature's raw pureness with elegant simplicity." He kindly shares a sample poem here.
Congratulations to Gary Beck. His poetry collection Earth Links was recently released by Cyberwit.net. His poetry collection Mortal Coil and his collection of one-act plays The Big Match were published by Wordcatcher. His novel Still Defiant, the sequel to Acts of Defiance, is also now available from Wordcatcher. From the cover blurb: "Randy protested the Vietnam War. Steve joined the Marine Corps. Can friendship transcend ideology?"
Congratulations to Darrell Lindsey. His haiku and tanka chapbook A Master of Stick Figures was released in October by Velvet Dusk Publishing. His poems "Forrest", "Old Mule", and "Storm Painter" were published in Scarlet Leaf Review. His tanka "honeysuckle vines" appared in Tanka Origins.
Congratulations to Jude Nutter. Her poem "Dead Drift" won the 2018 Moth Poetry Prize. The 2019 contest, with a top prize of 10,000 euros, is open through December 31.
Congratulations to Ellaraine Lockie. Her poem "About the Birds and the Bees" won the August 2019 Monthly Musepaper contest from New Millennium Writings. The theme was "Vacations". Check the home page for this month's theme.
Congratulations to Joel Arthur Moore. He received a George Washington Honor Medal from Freedoms Foundation of Valley Forge for his Civil War novel Journey Into Darkness. Read an interview with him at the Independent Book Publishers Association website.
Recent Publications
Winning Writers contest judge Ellen LaFlèche's poem "We visit the cemetery where you might be buried" was featured on the Mass Poetry website in November. Originally published in the bilingual French-English journal Résonance, the poem appears in her new collection Walking into Lightning (Saddle Road Press, 2019).
Garret Keizer's sonnets "Yosodhara", "The Altar of Art", and "What If God's Decided" were published in the Winter 2019 issue of Rat's Ass Review. Scroll down the page to read this issue's poets in alphabetical order.
Annie Dawid's poem "Thanksgiving Death: for Michael Rubin, 1935-1989" was the poem of the day for November 7 at HIV Here and Now, a nonprofit that uses poetry and the arts to advocate for a world without HIV/AIDS. See all the poems for World AIDS Day 2019 here. In other news, Annie's flash essay "Les Invisibles at the Dinner Table" was published in Spelk.
Sandra Hunter's story "Air Drop" was published in ANMLY, Issue 29, as part of "Outside Roe", a special feature on reproductive justice.
Cyrée Jarelle Johnson's debut poetry collection Slingshot (Nightboat Books, 2019) was favorably reviewed in Lambda Literary Review by Cat Fitzpatrick, who wrote, "Many readers will pick it up because of its contributions to crucial contemporary conversations ranging from blackness, transness, sex work, police violence, protest and neurodiversity to the new Star Wars movies. Slingshot is also worth getting, however, for its strange, precise, sumptuous and formal poetic technique."
R.T. Castleberry's poems "I Tell You There Is a Fire", "Talking in an Empty Room", "Clarifying Salvation", "The Least Morning", and "Tropics" were published at Mammouth Poetry.
Richard Raymond III's linked story collection Tales of the Fox: The Mysteries and Adventures of Sheriff Renard of Botetourt County, Virginia is now available on Amazon.
Antoinette Carone will read from her latest story collection, Siren Shore: The Enchantment of Naples, at 6:30 pm on Wednesday, March 18, 2020, at Shakespeare & Co. Bookstore, 939 Lexington Avenue, New York City. Visit her website to learn more about her work.
Dean Kostos's poems "Feng Shui" and "Paranoid X-Ray" were published at Plume Poetry in November.
Published: December 8, 2019
