Subscriber News: January 2021
Recent Honors
Congratulations to William Huhn. His narrative essay "The Pagadder", first published in Pembroke Magazine #51 (2019), was named as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2020, edited by André Aciman. This marks the seventh time that Huhn's work has been honored by this prestigious anthology series. In other news, his poem "Bye Love You" was published in the Minnesota literary journal Whistling Shade (Spring/Summer 2020).
Congratulations to Dana Brantley-Sieders. She signed a book deal with Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group for Talking To My Tatas: A Breast Cancer Researcher's Adventure With the Disease and What You Can Learn From It. The book will combine memoir with science-based guidance for patients and their families.
Congratulations to Pamela Sumners. Her poetry collection Ragpicking Ezekiel's Bones is forthcoming from UnCollected Press, the publishing arm of The Raw Art Review. She kindly shares a sample poem here.
Congratulations to Rainie Zenith. Her story "Ernie" won first prize in the 2020 Monash WordFest Short Story Competition. This timely story is the lament of a woman whose lover is dying in hospital and she is unable to see him. Sponsored by the Monash Public Library in Victoria, Australia, this annual contest is open to local residents aged 12+. Visit Rainie's Facebook page for more links to her prizewinning writing.
Congratulations to Lesléa Newman. Her poetry collection I Wish My Father was published this month by Headmistress Press. She kindly shares a sample poem here. A companion volume to her collection I Carry My Mother, this book chronicles the joys and sorrows of caring for her widower father in the last few years of his life. Baron Wormser says: "Lesléa Newman deftly enumerates situations that in their beautifully observed wrinkles and folds give forth the feeling of an aged man's life and his relationship with his daughter, who, in dealing with his crotchets and quibbles, to saying nothing of pure stubbornness, is 'on the edge / of a nervous breakdown.' Droll and sad, these poems possess an abundance of insight, a precious empathy that rises out of the depths of exasperation into the bemused heights of love."
Congratulations to Ellaraine Lockie. Her poem "An Act of Kindness" won third prize in the 2020 "Matter" Anthology Poetry Contest from Oprelle Publications. Subscriber G. Greene's poem "Logic of the Non Sequitur" was a Bronze finalist. Both will be published in the anthology. Visit Greene's website Poems in a Time of Grief for his book by the same name.
Congratulations to Thelma T. Reyna. An anthology she published as editor of Golden Foothills Press, When the Virus Came Calling: COVID-19 Strikes America, was a finalist in the Nonfiction Anthology category of the 2020 American Book Fest Best Book Awards. The book features work written in 2020 by 46 distinguished American contemporary poets and prose writers.
Recent Publications
Alan Perry's poetry chapbook Clerk of the Dead (Main Street Rag, 2020) was favorably reviewed by Benjamin Schmitt in At the Inkwell. His poem "COVID Wing—Day 97" was published in Global Poemic. "Altar Calls" was published in Right Hand Pointing. "Aurora" and "The Sum of Her Numbers" were published in Open: Journal of Arts & Letters.
Cyrée Jarelle Johnson's essay "A Paradoxical History of Black Disease" was published at the Disability Visibility Project and featured in the digital archive of the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Johnson writes, "The system that frames us as engaging in 'drug-seeking' behavior when we ask for pain medication is one that admits its belief that black illness is a given and the current systems of the United States bears no responsibility to treat us. It's a disgusting, self-serving binary that views black people as unharmable when it wants to hurt us and as naturally 'defective' when we cry out that we are hurt."
Helen Bar-Lev's poetry and paintings of Ghana were featured in ESRA Magazine's December 2020 article "Sisters of the Same Tree".
R.T. Castleberry's poem "Stopping to Leave" was published in November in As It Ought To Be Magazine. "As She Talks Me Out of Falling in Love" appeared in The Dillydoun Review in December. "How do you want this to end?" appeared in Dissident Voice. "How to dream your religion" was published this month in 1870 Poetry. We asked our prolific contributor how he chooses the best outlets for his work. R.T. says: "I find magazines at Poets and Writers, New Pages and Submittable. Also, when I'm reading a magazine, I'll check the writers to see where they publish. What I look for is: no fee and either a monthly or quarterly publishing schedule. I don't do annual or semi-annual. I don't like having my poems tied up that long. And of course, my material has to match theirs in some way. I keep a listing of where I've published and I'll go back to that and try them again. I've built relationships with several mags that way."
Joshua Corwin's poetry will be included in the anthology Sparring Omnibus from Mystic Boxing Commission. His poem "This Is Why I Need You" was published December 9 in Lyrical Somerville, poet Doug Holder's column in the Somerville Times. His word-centos (poetic rearrangements of words from other authors' poems) appear in his regular column, Incentovise, at Oddball Magazine. Incentovise #14, published December 1, includes a remix of Winning Writers Editor Jendi Reiter's poem "Year of the Rat", first published in SUNY Oswego's online lit mag Subnivean.
Yvonne had two poems published in Monday Night Lit, Issue #22 (Fall 2020), "Before Emmett Till" and "Transfiguration Revisited".
Dave Bob Anderson's essay collection A Life of Unleashed Mania, chronicling his experience with bipolar disorder, is available on Amazon.
Freida Wesson Bosh's memoir Episodes in the Life of a NBA Mother is available on Amazon. When her 19-year-old son Chris Bosh was drafted as the fourth NBA pick for the Toronto Raptors, their family quickly had to adjust to life in the public eye and the high-pressure world of professional sports.
Published: January 9, 2021
