Winner Nicole Simonsen, “Lucky, Lucky, Lucky” Nicole Simonsen’s short stories have appeared in Booth, Tin House Online, Washington Square Review, and elsewhere. She teaches at a high school in Sacramento, CA. Second Place Justina Elias, … Read More
Minus One by Doris Iarovici (The University of Wisconsin Press, 2020). Moments of regret permeate the stories in Doris Iarovici’s new book, Minus One, a collection of studies in grief, resilience, and the games we play with ourselves … Read More
Breathing Technique by Marija Knežević (Zephyr Press, 2021). In a selection of excerpts from “The River’s Name,” the standout poem of Breathing Technique (Zephyr Press, 2021), Serbian writer Marija Knežević explores the protean nature of borders, agency and … Read More
Funeral Diva by Pamela Sneed (City Lights Books, 2020). In an interview on the Ezra Klein Show, the two-term American poet laureate Tracy K. Smith describes poetry as “insisting on a different logic…trying to pull out a different … Read More
An Incomplete List of Names by Michael Torres (Beacon Press, 2020). Michael Torres’s powerful debut, An Incomplete List of Names, opens with an act of loyalty—the kind that rides shotgun in an ’87 Mustang and doesn’t ask questions … Read More
“The dead are having a party without us. They’ve left our worries behind . . .” —Kathleen Aguero, from “Send Off” Kerry was using again the last time I saw him. He was sweating anxious with icicles … Read More
I Excursion, corrects my father, who is a hunter. He is standing over a basin in our shack, pressing freshly butchered venison into salt, and the finger he lifts from the salt cake makes it clear not a … Read More
In the official texts that the villagers had permitted me to read, there was never a strict age requirement. What mattered was that the candidates were elders—re-tellers of stories, slow morning walkers, birdhouse watchers, coin-behind-your-ear jokesters, narrators of the … Read More
The Mother House by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin (Wake Forest University Press, 2020). Still Life by Ciaran Carson (Wake Forest University Press, 2020). Since the Covid-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed so many aspects of our lives, it stands to … Read More