Subscriber News: October 2025
Recent Honors
Congratulations to Remi Recchia. An anthology that he edited, Transmasculine Poetics: Filling the Gap in Literature and the Silences Around Us (Sundress Publications, 2024), was a finalist for the 2025 Lambda Literary Awards in the LGBTQ+ Anthology category. Download this e-book for free from the Sundress website.
Congratulations to Koss. Her poetry chapbook Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect (Diode Editions, 2024) was a 2025 Lambda Literary Awards finalist in Lesbian Poetry. In other news, her piece "How to Avoid or Survive a Crocodile Attack" won third prize in Midway Journal's ~1000 Below Flash Prose and Poetry Contest.
Congratulations to Rob Rogers. His essay "Mardi Gras '95" won First Place for Nonfiction in the San Luis Obispo NightWriters Golden Quill Writing Contest. "Mardi Gras '95" will be published in the next issue of The NightWriter Review, scheduled for publication in January 2026. His essay "Cognitive Distortion", which explores Rob's struggles to overcome self-doubt and warped perceptions of the world caused by his past struggles with depression, was published in Thorn & Bloom in September. Visit his website for his travel blog and his memoir Finding My Way Home: Fighting Depression Backpacking in Central Florida.
Recent Publications
Shanna McNair's solo art show "You Know This by Heart: New and Selected Works by Shanna McNair" is on exhibit through October 30 at the Emery Community Arts Center, located at the University of Maine at Farmington, 111 South Street, Farmington, ME. The show celebrates the launch of her debut novel, Soul Retrieval, from her hybrid-publishing imprint High Frequency Press. Shanna says of her process: "There is nothing more beautiful to me than that searing sensation of focus—maybe where focus meets play meets question. Making art is purely this—a direct access of play-in-motion. Wonder lives in questions." Visit her website to learn more about her work as a writer and editor. Read her essay about her artistic process, illustrated with images from her Et Tu, Lily? series of Monet-inspired paintings, in the Maine Arts Journal (Fall 2025).
Rob Mermin, author of Circle of Sawdust, will give a book reading and discussion at the Vermont Circus Festival in Brattleboro, VT on November 5, 6:00-7:30 pm, at the Brooks Memorial Library. Rob was the Creative Nonfiction & Memoir winner in our 2024 North Street Book Prize.
Judy Juanita will speak at Laney College T450 in Oakland, CA, and on Zoom, at noon-1pm Pacific time on October 16. The topic is "Abortion: Rarely an Easy Decision". Judy says, "My book, Abortion (or Woman as Threefold Murderess), forthcoming in December, begins with a lengthy personal essay about my abortion when I was a college student and recipient of the California Therapeutic Abortion Act in June 1967. The book examines the sensitive and historically long-standing expectations and pressures on women facing unwanted pregnancy."
Julia LaFond's poem "An Incomplete List of What Is and Is Not Political" was featured in IHRAM Press's anthology America's Slide Towards Authoritarianism.
Dr. Bob Rich's 20th book, The Hole in Your Life: Grief and Bereavement, is now available from his website. A retired psychologist, he wrote the book in response to his daughter's death from liver cancer. Visit his blog for more of his writing.
Yvonne Fein's story "Weintraub's Disorder" was published in Doric Literary, an online journal of classically inspired short stories. Visit her website for her other published stories and books.
Stephanie Stockmeister's poem "Mausoleum of Cheetos: An Autistic Child's Guide to Surviving Spontaneous Closet Volcano Birth" was published in the Autistic Women's Group newsletter, Issue #5 (September 2025). This poem was a finalist in our 2025 Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest.
Terri Kirby Erickson's poem "When My Father Died in Hospice" was published in the Irish webzine Poem Alone.
Published: October 6, 2025
