literary journals Archive

#TravelBan: The Literary World Pushes Back

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Within the international literary community, the group most aggressively working toward refuting the underlying inhumanity of the Trump administration’s travel ban is an international journal of translation, Asymptote.

Nooks and Tributaries: Literary Journals in the Real World

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In graduate school, I worked on the staff of two different literary journals. I was new to the writing world and the idea of working behinds the scenes on a journal—the very kind of journal that I hoped to be published in—was thrilling.

The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Ghost Jeep” by Micah Dean Hicks

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When one deals with loss they also, inevitably, also end up exploring the nature of justice in the world: whether matters of life and death are indeed fair, or something else entirely. In “Ghost Jeep,” (Sycamore Review) Micah Dean Hicks navigates these questions through three ghosts who meet a

The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Once You Learn, You Never Forget” by Anthony Varallo

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Few images are more boilerplate in capturing the parental role of ushering a child towards independence than that of parent teaching a child how to ride a bike—the pushing, the holding, the letting go, the tears. In “Once You Learn, You Never Forget” (Cimarron Review), Anthony Varallo resurrects this

The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Away” by Karin Lin-Greenberg

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Yuval Noah Harari argues in his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind that much of humankind’s success as a species is owed to its ability to create fictions. Harari focuses primarily on large-scale, societal fictions, say the nation or the corporation. In “Away” (Green Mountains Review), Karin Lin-Greenberg

The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Stamp Fever” by Colette Inez

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What constitutes the difference between delusion and imagination? Where does one end and the other begin, or are they related at all? Colette Inez explores these intersections in her story “Stamp Fever” (The Georgia Review), from the perspective of a young boy struggling to overcome family difficulties. Our introduction to

The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Volcano Climber” by Courtney Craggett

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Augustine of Hippo wrote “Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.” In her short story “Volcano Climber” (Juked), Courtney Craggett explores the nature of the first of

The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Love” by Clarice Lispector

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There have been many craft essays written over the last few decades arguing the merits of the classic Joyce-ian epiphany. In “Love,” (The Offing), Clarice Lispector (translated by Katrina Dodson) explores the nature of epiphanies, and perhaps more importantly, what we do with them once they happen. We meet

The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Oil Dog” by Kelly Dulaney

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It can be difficult to write short stories about large global issues—take, for instance, our worldwide dependency on fossil fuels—and not have it come off as preachy, in need of novel-length expansion, or as a coy thematic stand-in for our characters’ interior lives. Kelly Dulaney’s short story “Oil Dog”

The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Keller in Effects” by Todd James Pierce

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There’s a rich body of art that could be described by that famous quote by Thoreau from Walden, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”—art in particular focusing on the upper class of the 50s and 60s. Think of Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road, or more recently the