Saturday greetings!

It hasn't been the easiest of weeks around here, for reasons unrelated to this newsletter, but it has had me thinking about community and connection and dispersed social and cultural networks. Like a literary magazine or a newsletter that brings people together to read and share what they're writing, or a project like the upcoming Soundcamp (via the always inspiring Caught by the River) that creates a globe-circling DIY communal broadcast to celebrate the dawn chorus. I'm grateful to all of you reading this and reading our website, and for being out there making what you're making and enjoying what others make, too. But what have we been up to, you ask?

We began the week with Elizabeth Smith's review of Dearborn, a novel by Ghassan Zeineddine. Elizabeth has been a regular reviewer for us, for which we're grateful, and you can read more of her contributions here.

We also published "A Room Of One's Own And…," a story by Mary Lannon. Mary has also been a regular book reviewer and it's exciting to share some of her fiction now, too.

And we ended the week with Bob Katz' research notes for his novel Waiting For Al Gore. I believe that's Bob's first publication with us.

+

Behind the scenes, there are some openings and closing approaching on our submissions calendar. We'll be open for submissions to our annual summer flash fiction series from March 15 until May 1. The guidelines will be available here when they open. We'll also close to general submissions on March 15, reopening on July 1. Looking further ahead, our October spooky stories series will be open for submissions up to 3,000 words from June 1-30 and this year's theme is "Dangerous Creatures." Then we'll be open to stories with the theme "Hunger" from September 15-30. 

+

I didn't hear any contributor news this week but I do have a few things to point you toward elsewhere:

Our friends at Great Place Books have some upcoming classes that may be of interest, including "Fiction to Film" with Emily Adrian, and "Fiction Workshop" with Alex Higley. They're both terrific writers and terrific people, so I'm sure their classes will be rewarding.

And applications are now open for summer's Barrelhouse Writer Camp, which I've never attended because of an annual schedule conflict but one of these days I would like to. I've heard lots of great things over the years, though, so maybe you'd like to go.

Finally, I learned this week (thanks to contributor Tom McAllister) that the fine folks at Heavy Feather Review took on the work of maintaining a list of presses, magazines, submission calls, and other opportunities for writing. Thanks to them for filling an important gap after previous, similar lists went away.

Thanks for reading,

Steve Himmer

+

P.S. I'm sneaking a bonus recommendation in here at the end, because I recently read Spent Light by Lara Pawson, published by the small and mighty CB Editions, and it might not be on your radar. Its own cover categorizes it as FICTION/MEMOIR/HISTORY and that hybridity is just one of the ways Pawson's book is challenging and thrilling and heartbreaking and uplifting at once. What can I say about Spent Light except that it's trying to look the world right in the eye, to see and express the ways global violence is bound up in our lives wherever we live (right down to the appliances we use in our kitchens and the objects decorating our homes) but to say that sounds pedantic and reductive which the book itself very much isn't. What you should do instead of listening to me try to describe it is read it yourself.