Tag: Fiction

Guest Post: A Conversation with Lynne Sharon Schwartz and Ruth Mukwana

Denton Loving1 Comment

Last month, EastOver Press published the novel A Stranger Comes to Town by Lynne Sharon Schwartz. This project was very dear to me not only because I think the novel is superb in every way but also because Lynne Sharon Schwartz has been an incredible mentor and friend to me since I studied with her at the Bennington Writing Seminars. It was an honor and joy to help usher this book into publication. In today’s guest post, my friend and fellow Bennington graduate Ruth Mukwana speaks to Lynne about her new novel.

Ruth Mukwana: I met Lynne when I was an MFA student at Bennington College. She was my mentor and advisor in my last year at Bennington. Before working with her, I had read her book, Disturbances in the Field, an ambitious book about family which I’ve gone back to several times when searching for craft ideas. Lynne and I have remained in touch, and she has always been very kind and generous to me. Her words of encouragement and belief in me have spurred me on in moments of doubt. So, I was thrilled and honored to talk with her about her new book, A Stranger Comes to Town.

Set in the Upper West Side, a neighborhood that Lynne knows very well, A Stranger Comes to Town is a masterful novel of self-discovery, revealing the multitude of histories and lives we each inhabit, as well as the many ways we seek to reinvent ourselves and reshape our pasts. The novel’s protagonist, Joe, searches to discover his true identity, exposing how even the most ordinary aspects of our lives are often extraordinarily felt.

~

RM: You’ve written a lot. How were you able to write thirty books?

LSS: It was over a long period of time, and many of them are essay collections by other writers and translations. For W.G. Sebald’s anthology – The Emergency of Memory: Conversations with W.G. Sebald – I researched and curated interviews with W.G. Sebald. I worked hard at writing and treated it like a regular job. I taught at Bennington, and I used to get these manuscripts every month and wrote letters to my students, but it didn’t take the whole month. On the days I didn’t teach, I’d get up, do what I had to do and then sit down and write. But I was also free. One day if I wanted to have lunch with a friend, I could do that. I didn’t have a set schedule.

RM: Where did you get inspiration for all your work?

LSS: They’re all different. Some were based on events that happened, but I altered them a lot. Two-Part Inventions is based on a pianist, Joyce Hatto, whom I read about in the newspaper. She was a good pianist, not great. Her husband, a recording engineer, wanted her recordings to be better known and put her name on recordings by more distinguished and famous pianists. All of this was written about in the newspapers, and there was a court case. The central question in the novel is whether the character was aware of the deception. In Balancing Acts, which was my second novel, I wanted to write about older people. Disturbances in the Field was a big undertaking; it was about family. And then this one, A Stranger Comes to Town, I started writing at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. I had just finished something, and I didn’t know what I was going to do next, and I wanted to do something that’d get me through the pandemic. And it did.

RM: It’s a short book and easy to read. What was the process of writing it like for you?

LSS: Indeed, it’s not a long book, about two hundred pages, but it wasn’t quick to write. It took me more than three years for a short book. The pandemic was going on, and I was teaching. So, there were other things happening. But it was very hard to write, and there were times when I didn’t know where to go with it. What would happen to the main character, Joe? I let it go where it wanted to go, but I’ve always been interested in amnesia, in forgetting, in what makes the self, and I set it in a neighborhood that I know very well. I researched amnesia and found several books, but they’re mostly mistaken about amnesia. Your memory often comes back, and in A Stranger Comes to Town, Joe’s memory starts to come back.

RM: At some point the narrator says amnesia isn’t a disease, and it isn’t, but given how debilitating it is, I’ve always thought of it as a disease. Trying to remember or reconstruct your life when everyone else around you knows it.

LSS: He’s searching for who he is. He no longer knows whom he is or what kind of person he is. And every time he discovers a lot of negative things about himself (that’s what happens when you start looking) or finds another negative thing or something that he did to somebody close to him, he has to go back and reflect about it. And it’s a very hard process for him. When you reflect about your life, when you remember it, often you wonder, why did I do that? How did I do that? What was it in me that made me do that kind of thing?

RM: And one of those negative incidents is that he let his sister take the blame for an accident. He wrestles with himself as he can’t comprehend how he could have done something like that to his sister.

LSS: When we meet Joe, he’s blank and you think, what a nice guy who seems nice to everybody. But then you learn these terrible things he has done. He’s wondering how he could have done such horrible things that he has forgotten and that he now has to integrate into his conception of whom he is. I wish there are more good things that he has done, but he has done more bad things than good, and he doesn’t remember all the good. He does have a good marriage. His wife got pregnant, and he didn’t quite know what to do, and they got married. Their marriage has turned out good, and their children are great. But all these terrible things he’s being told he has done, not only can’t he remember doing them, he also can’t fathom how they’d have happened because he’s not the sort of person who’d have done such things! And he’ll never know unless the people he wronged decide to tell him everything or if his memory comes back.

RM: And it’s incomprehensible to him that the things he has forgotten are things that are unforgivable like the death of his baby brother.

LSS: There are memories from his childhood that barely registered with him. But on the other hand, his mother didn’t want to make her children dwell on that tragedy, the death of their brother. It slipped to the back of his mind, and he forgot, but it’s lodged somewhere in his brain, and it’s hard that it happened. I think there are things that happen when we’re very young that we forget. But if his mother hadn’t tried so hard to keep it from the children, he might have had an easier time remembering it. She was pained by her son’s death, and she didn’t want her children to also suffer.  He’s carrying a lot that we don’t know and he doesn’t know. Does he have more? Is he carrying around more sad stuff? He asks himself, What else might I have done? What else have I forgotten? This is a book that makes you think about your own life.

RM: The other reason the book was easy for me to read is because it also has a great plot. I was expecting to discover that the family that took him in wasn’t his real family, something Joe wonders about!

LSS: He’s thinking any woman could have come to the hospital, somebody looking for a husband, and claimed to be his wife. And when he meets the children, the awkwardness of meeting them is overwhelming for him. They know him, of course, and he doesn’t know them, and they don’t know that he has lost his memory!

RM: Amnesia is a horrible thing to happen to anyone. But for Joe, it has given him an opportunity to examine his life and confront who he really is. Every time he finds out he did a hurtful thing, it’s an opportunity for him to repent and repair which wouldn’t have happened otherwise. He’s rebuilding his relationship with his sister and has the opportunity to acknowledge how he has wronged her and apologize, which he wouldn’t have otherwise done.

LSS: That’s a nice point. I hadn’t thought of that. If he hadn’t had an accident and lost his memory, he’d have just gone on doing what he was doing. He’d remember all these things, but he probably would never think about them. You know he did those things, some of them when he was about eighteen years old and moved on, but this time he’s a grown man, and as a grown man, he must confront that. If you look back on your life, you might find there are things that you wonder how you did them. How did I do that? Did I really do that? Not all our lives are so dramatic, but his life is, and there are many things that he must reconsider and go over and integrate into his conception of who he is and who he is going to be from now on.

~

Lynne Sharon Schwartz is the author of thirty books of fiction, essays, and poetry, including her novels Leaving Brooklyn, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and Rough Strife, a finalist for the National Book Award. She has also published two memoirs, Ruined by Reading and Not Now, Voyager, and has translated from the Italian. Schwartz has been the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts in Fiction and, separately, for Translation, and the New York State Foundation for the Arts. She has taught widely, most recently at the Bennington College Writing Seminars and the Columbia University School of Arts.

Ruth Mukwana is an Adjunct Lecturer at Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. She has formerly worked with the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO), and the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS). Ruth is also a fiction writer and a 2020 Center for Fiction/Susan Kamil NYC Emerging Fellow. Her work has appeared in several magazines including Bomb, Solstice, Consequence and the Black Warriors Review.  She is the Creator and Host of the Stories and Humanitarian Action Podcast and a Fiction Co-Editor for Solstice magazine. Ruth is a Ugandan national with a Law degree from Makerere University, a Masters in International and Comparative Law from the Free University of Brussels, and a Masters in Fine Arts from Bennington College. She is currently working on a novel and a collection of short stories.

Thanks to Lynne Sharon Schwartz and Ruth Mukwana for sharing their conversation. I hope you’ll read and enjoy A Stranger Comes to Town, available wherever books are sold.

In case you missed it… I have three new poems published online at Porchlight: A Journal of Southern Literature, and I recently read some poems from Feller with Kendra Winchester on episode 50 of Read Appalachia, and I had a fun time hanging out with Ben Tanzer on episode 371 of This Podcast Will Save Your Life.

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Where the Story Demands to Go: A Conversation with Melanie K. Hutsell

Denton Loving2 Comments

I’ve lost track of how long I’ve known Melanie K. Hutsell, but it’s been a few years. She’s a native of East Tennessee, and we share a mentor and many writer friends from this region. In the time we’ve known each other, she has published two novels, The Dead Shall Rise: A Tale of the Mountains, and The Book of Susan, which received the Award of Merit in the fiction category of the 2023 Christianity Today Book Awards. About a year ago, I ran into Melanie at a writers conference, and she told me about her new collection of short stories, The Art of Lost Souls, which she was in the process of sending out to publishers.

The Art of Lost Souls and Other Stories quickly found a home with Main Street Rag (MSR), and is currently available for pre-order. MSR and Editor Scott Douglass have a long history of publishing beautiful books. MSR is the press that published my first poetry collection, Crimes Against Birds. I’m forever grateful to MSR and Scott for taking a chance with my book, and I’m always excited to see MSR continue to publish good work like Melanie’s collection of short fiction.

In The Art of Lost Souls Melanie has created a cast of characters that are both achingly strange and sad. They are misunderstood dreamers, people on the verge of big transitions, wonderers asking what life would look like if all the pieces fit together. But as Hutsell’s characters face loss and uncertain futures, they reveal themselves to be creative souls with imaginations that help them survive. Melanie agreed to answer a few questions about writing, publishing, and not giving up on old projects.

DL: The title of this collection sets up how so many of your characters are some kind of artists, and usually, it’s their creativity that provides a sense of salvation to their stories. You’ve written in the past about having bipolar disorder. How does your background and your own experience of being a creative inform the characters you want to write about?

MH: This is interesting for me to consider. I’ve been aware that I do tend to write characters who are creatives—but until you asked this, I’d never really considered how seldom I write about writers. Because I do tend to think of my background as being fairly focused on words and pages, from an early age. And my fictional creatives tend toward other pursuits, like music or cooking or visual art. Maybe I tend to think, fictionally, of creativity as a way of expressing a character’s superpower, and of course, not everybody writes. I guess I tend to subscribe to the notion that all humans are here to create. I’m drawn towards the philosophy/theology in books like Divine Beauty by John O’Donohue or Art + Faith by Makoto Fujimura, which suggest humans are here to do and experience beauty and that creativity can be expressed in doing anything with love, and by love I mean with intention and giving, in the direction of God and humans.

DL: Some of the stories in The Art of Lost Souls are set in towns and locations that are real places, meaning you didn’t create them out of thin air. The first story is even titled Still Life in Townsend, referencing the town of Townsend, Tennessee. When you’re writing a story, how much do you draw on what you know about the place where it’s set?

MH: For someone who grew up reading a lot of fantasy, my adult work is pretty grounded in the Appalachia of East Tennessee. And I grew up in upper East Tennessee, and that is where most of my work is set, and Appalachian identity almost always is an important facet of my characters. Most of my settings are fictional, with strong underpinnings of reality to them. My two novels, The Dead Shall Rise and The Book of Susan, share some fictional towns with the short stories. Creating a fictional geography allows me to create needed settings or maybe to transport real-life places and set them down in new locations. But, yes, I do sometimes use real settings. In The Art of Lost Souls and Other Stories, both “Celestial Images” and “Still Life in Townsend” are set in real places, and the settings there really define the kind of stories they are. “Celestial Images” is about a homesick Appalachian living in Bloomington, Indiana, and “Still Life in Townsend” is about a motel family who specifically runs a business in the quiet—as opposed to the more tourist-deluged—side of the Smokies, and that’s pretty central to the story. The title story in the collection is set in Knoxville, though it’s a rather magical Knoxville. I was going there for a sense of urban history in that setting, something about time and distance. And sometimes I will invoke real places to make my fictional ones seem more real.

DL: One of the things I admire with the stories in The Art of Lost Souls is that you’re not afraid to go into some pretty dark spaces. But you usually bring some relief to the reader, too. Do good stories require pushing into that darkness?

MH: I do think the best writing is that which costs the author something to make and also requires great honesty. Often when something’s false in what I’m working on, it’s because I haven’t pushed myself enough in that spot, really faced what’s trying to be said there. I haven’t gone to where the story is demanding to go. And I think all of this is true whether one is writing realistic fiction or not, literary fiction or not. Because art is about being human. And there is a lot of darkness there. I consider myself to be generally wired up as someone who believes, but it’s dishonest not to acknowledge the dark.

DL: The Art of Lost Souls is your third book publication. But you’ve also been working for a long time on a magical realism novel. How do you balance multiple projects at the same time? And what keeps you returning to this unfinished novel?

MH: Well, the short answer is, I really don’t balance multiple projects at once. I actually become very absorbed in my writing projects, which is one reason—among many—that the unfinished novel remains unfinished. It’s a work that I’ve been wrestling with in many different variations since college. It began life as a fantasy novel and is a magic realism novel now. The Dead Shall Rise actually started, when I was in graduate school twenty-five or so years ago, as a manuscript written around a misbehaving character carved from the other work. After many years plagued by mental illness (though I didn’t know at the time that was what ailed me) and then devoted to recovery, the unfinished novel came back to me. But I set it aside to focus on writing and publishing short fiction to hone my craft and get a publication history. And then I opted to revise The Dead Shall Rise and seek publication with it, being a more complete manuscript, than to finish the messy, half-done one. And then The Book of Susan got written because of an agent’s interest engendered by reading one of my published short stories. (The agent ultimately passed on Susan.)  And I’ve long wanted to have a collection of my short work appear all in one place, and Main Street Rag publishing The Art of Lost Souls is a realization of that dream. Meanwhile, in between these projects, I’m writing along on the poor, longsuffering, untitled novel, because I can only do one thing at once. I suppose I find the protagonist compelling. Possibly he is my alter ego, more so than any other character I’ve written.

DL: I think you know that I have so much respect for small and independent publishers. Now that you’ve published three books with different small presses, do you have advice for writers about how to get published?

MH: You don’t need an MFA, and you don’t need an agent. Not that those are not good, helpful, and desirable things. But I have neither. I say: write and be a student of writing. I was fortunate to have a mentor when I was in high school, poet Jane Hicks, who was my guidance counselor and who taught me to approach writing professionally. Back then, it was the Writer’s Market and SASEs. Now it’s Submittable and Substack and unknown frontiers. Stay abreast of the ever-evolving business. Always read the guidelines. Don’t be afraid to submit. Don’t let rejection define you – learn from it. And definitely consider small presses as options for submitting your work. I’ve loved working with each press I’ve worked with. Each has devoted such care to seeing my manuscript through the process, helped me better realize the vision I’ve had for that particular work. I’ll pass along advice once given to me—you’re looking for the press that loves your manuscript as much as you do. There’s a lot to be said for sending your work to an indie press.

Many thanks to Melanie K. Hutsell for answering these questions. Find out more about Melanie here, and be sure to pre-order The Art of Lost Souls from Main Street Rag Publishers.

In case you missed it… I recently read with Georgann Eubanks for the Spoken & Heard series. And I’m so grateful that Feller has had some great reviews from Jake Lawson in MicroLit: a Tiny Journal of Prose & Poetry, Noah Soltau in Red Branch Review, and from Meredith Sue Willis in Books for Readers. I hope you’ll take a look.

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Permission To Be Ourselves: Conversation with Zackary Vernon

Denton Loving2 Comments

I was in Asheville back in April for the North Carolina Writers Network Spring Conference. Zackary Vernon was there teaching a workshop on writing young adult literature. I had met Zack only once before in person, about a month earlier in the Los Angeles International Airport following AWP. But the world is small, especially the world of writers, and I used to work with Zack’s wife, Jessica Martell, when she taught about a decade ago at Lincoln Memorial University. It was fun to spend some time with both of them between conference sessions, and just before I headed home, Zack slipped me with a copy of his novel, Our Bodies Electric.

Our Bodies Electric is a coming-of-age story set on Pawley’s Island, South Carolina. We meet the main character, Josh, when he’s in the sixth grade and follow him into high school and his sexual awakening. Despite the very conservative and religious shadows cast by his parents and community, Josh finds surprising refuge in the words of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself, which gives him the strength to love his body and his desires in all their forms.

Zachary is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at Appalachian State University. He is a co-editor of Summoning the Dead: Essays on Ron Rash, and he is the editor of Ecocriticism and the Future of Southern Studies. His scholarly research and creative nonfiction and short fiction have been published widely. Zack agreed to answer a few questions about his writing, the need to accept differences in people, and his relationship with Walt Whitman.

DL: I think you and I are not too far apart in age, which is based partly on the fact that there was a lot I recognized from my own youth in Our Bodies Electric. How much of your own life and experience factored into setting the time and place for this novel?

ZV: Our Bodies Electric is set in my hometown of Pawleys Island, South Carolina, during the early to mid 1990s. It’s a southern coming-of-age story about a teenager named Josh who struggles against the pressure to conform to social conventions placed on him by his religious family and community, particularly as he enters his teenage years and tries to understand his body and sexuality. Josh hangs out with a bunch of outcast teenagers who get up to all kinds of hijinks, but more importantly they help each other through this period of rapid change and development. They need each other because they don’t get much help from their families or school or church. Those institutions fail them, because they constantly tell young adults that the things they think and do are evil. Some teens end up conforming to conservative conventions, and some decide to break the mold.

I am Josh, or at least Josh is some version of me. All of those details come from my own life and the lives of my friends between the sixth and nineth grades. I think that period might be the one in which we change the most rapidly; there is a fluidity during these years. We go from being kids to being hormonal teenagers who all the sudden possess very adult ideas and desires.

Throughout the novel, Josh sets off on an adventure of experimentation and self-discovery, which is of course natural and healthy. But the puritans surrounding him want nothing more than to police his behavior and stamp out any curiosity they believe is abnormal and thus dangerous. His journey is strange and uncomfortable at times, but hopefully he’s a better and more authentic person at the end of it.

DL: Walt Whitman and Song of Myself play a fairly pivotal role in this novel, and your students report that you really enjoy teaching Whitman. Did you know from the beginning of Our Bodies Electric that Whitman and Song would be part of Josh’s narrative? Or did that come later in the writing process?

ZV: Walt Whitman was a huge inspiration both for the form and the content of the novel. Regarding content, I’ve been a massive fan of Whitman since I first read him in high school. So his ideas have been rattling around in my head for decades. The year that I started earnestly working on Our Bodies Electric was the year I turned 37. And Whitman in “Song of Myself”—or the Whitman-esque persona that narrates the poem—is also 37. The first section contains these lines:

I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

So I decided that during my 37th year of life, I would read Whitman every single day. And I didn’t miss a single one. I read various portions of Leaves of Grass for 365 consecutive days. Some days I’d only read a few lines, and some days I’d really dig in. So this year steeped me in Whitman’s language and ideas more than ever, and that happened to also be the time that I was seriously writing the novel.

For the protagonist Josh, Whitman becomes a sort of life coach and an inspiration. Josh reads Whitman and his ideas help him understand and accept himself.

In terms of form, I divided the novel into 52 sections, which are in dialogue with the 52 sections of “Song of Myself.” That’s not to say that there is a one-to-one mirroring going one—i.e. Section 1 of “Song of Myself” is in dialogue with Chapter 1 of my novel. It’s not that similar. But I did borrow the 52-section structure, and I tried to add a Whitman easter egg into every chapter. These are mostly subtle. There are only a handful of passages that actually allude to Whitman directly. But I’d say in a more general sense, Whitman pervades the entire novel.

DL: Besides the fact that the scenes throughout your novel sing all the way through, the thing I love best is how empathetic this book is. Josh is a compassionate character—to others and usually to himself—but you as the author give so much compassion to characters who aren’t compassionate to others. I’m thinking in particular about Josh’s fire and brimstone minister. Is there a person or situation that instilled so much empathy in you as a person and a writer?

ZV: My hope is that the novel has a message about the necessity of accepting difference. I think one could read it as being a harsh critique of Pawleys Island. But it’s not. It’s a critique of the stultifying impulse to conform that is often thrust onto kids and teenagers in conservative, religious communities. This exists everywhere. It’s not unique to Pawleys or even to the South. I taught for a year at a catholic college just north of Boston. The students there felt conflicted about themselves just as much as anyone I’ve ever seen in the South.

My novel is set in Pawleys simply because I happened to be from there; I lived there during those formative years that seem to make us who we are for life.

So I want to be clear too that I’m not making fun of Pawleys Island in any way. The novel is not mean-spirited or tragic. It’s humorous, and if anything it makes a plea to celebrate life. Also, the heroes of the novel come from Pawleys. Yes, the protagonist feels tortured by the conservative community here. But it is also locals who show him that there are different ways of being in the world. In other words, that place, like all places, contains good and bad. Josh doesn’t have to flee to find himself. He does that there, with the help of the many small-town eccentrics he meets along the way.

I was always fascinated by the black sheep I encountered in Pawleys Island. Some of them you could spot easily, but others didn’t look like punks or drifters. Take, for example, my high school English teacher Mary Ginny DuBose.

Miss DuBose was the most transformational teacher I’ve ever had. I’m talking about ever—more than any teacher I had through college or grad school.

She taught us to be independent thinkers. She cued us in to the fact that there was a great big world out there. And in it people thought in ways that were very different from our parents and our church leaders and members of our communities. That’s not to say that local folks were wrong all or even some of the time. But our world was limited in certain ways, and then Miss DuBose came along and started opening doors.

It’s cliché perhaps—very Dead Poets Society—but Miss DuBose expanded our minds. She was a tough teacher, but also very kind. I don’t know how she pulled that off. I’ve been teaching now for nearly two decades, and I’ve never been able to get that balance right—tough enough to prompt and prod even those most reluctant of souls, but kind enough to empathize and inspire.

And crucially it was Miss DuBose who first introduced me to Walt Whitman. Along with Miss DuBose, Whitman gave us permission to be ourselves; or perhaps both of them made us realize that we didn’t need permission in the first place.

DL: I understand you wrote a lot of nonfiction before you turned to fiction. Can you talk about your path to publication, both in general and specifically this novel? How did you come to work with Regal House/Fitzroy Books?

ZV: I’ve wanted to be a writer since high school. I don’t know why exactly. It’s not like I knew any writers personally. Maybe I’d seen writers romanticized in films, or maybe it was my Whitman obsession. But somehow I viewed writers as being subversive, and that’s what I wanted to be.

I was really into music in high school. And I think I was a decent musician, but that never felt like a good fit. Plus I could never write songs. I tried and tried, but it just never came, so at best if I had continued in music, I’d be in some kind of cover band, or playing backup in someone else’s band.

Writing stories and novels, though, was a different matter. When I got to college, I had no problem writing. In fact, I couldn’t stop. I wrote obsessively. That’s not to say the stories I was writing were good. They weren’t. They were terrible. But they flowed out of me. Something was there, some inclination. But I had to read a lot and study for a long time before the stories became halfway decent.

Samuel Johnson said, “The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.”

I read voraciously and wrote about a million stories and two novels in college. Again, these were terrible and will never see the light of day. But I was very disciplined, and I produced a lot.

Then after undergrad I desperately wanted to get an MFA, but instead I got a PhD. I foolishly thought that this was the practical way of going about things. I had no idea at that point how bad the academic job market was.

What ended up happening was that for my MA and PhD and then when I got my first two teaching positions, I only wrote scholarship and nothing creative. It was a creative dry spell that lasted for close to a decade and a half. I wrote and published a lot of scholarship during that period, and I love that kind of writing, but it wasn’t what I was most passionate about.

When I got tenure, I decided that I was going to write fiction again. I dropped all my scholarly projects and dove into what would become Our Bodies Electric. The writing came as effortlessly as it did in college, except this time I think it was decent, or at least it was genuinely me. I was no longer trying to be someone I’m not—to write like Faulkner or Flannery O’Connor. I was no longer trying to be pretentious, writing serious historical southern gothic tales. Instead, I wrote humorous stories, and most of them were true in some way—things I’d experienced, things I’d heard about during my childhood and adolescence in Pawleys.

I wrote the novel is a strange roundabout way. I drafted the chapters more like short stories than chapters in a novel. And then I tried to weave together the best ones. And since they were mostly autobiographical, it wasn’t hard to create a coherent overarching narrative.

I got involved with Fitzroy Books, the YA imprint of Regal House Publishing, through my friend and colleague Mark Powell. Mark had read my book and helped me revise it, and he also had a book accepted at Regal House around this time. He recommended the press, saying it was the up-and-coming new indie in the South. So I sent them the book, and they seemed to like it right away.

DL: When we saw each other last, you were teaching a workshop on writing young adult fiction. What’s one of the most important lessons or advice you try to pass on to writers interested in YA fiction?

ZV: I came to YA accidentally. I didn’t write Our Bodies Electric as a YA novel. The main characters were adolescents, but I was imagining it being akin to books like Truman Capote’s Other Voices, Other Rooms, Carson McCullers’s The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, or Lewis Nordan’s Music of the Swamp. In other words, I thought of the book in this lineage of coming-of-age adult literary fiction. And I hope my novel is that. But I also don’t want it to be merely read by adults.

It was my editor Jaynie Royal who had the idea of marketing the novel as YA. I was resistant at first, but Jaynie ultimately convinced me when she asked who I thought needed to read this book: other middle-aged liberals like me or young adults who might be struggling in the same ways that I struggled. I found and still find that idea very compelling.

In terms of advice for YA writers, I would just say that it’s important to be authentic. Teenagers can smell a phony from a mile away. You can tell about your own experiences or you dream up stories, but make sure they have an emotional or ideological truth to them. We desperately need to be reminded right now of the better angels of our nature—to be understanding and kind, even when people in power aren’t doing so.

I hope that’s what comes across in my book. In it, a small group of teenagers try like hell to discover who they are, even if their real identities go against the established community they live in. They rebel nonetheless, and as a result they learn to live more authentically, to celebrate and sing themselves.

I’m so grateful to Zackary Vernon for answering these questions. If you haven’t already read Our Bodies Electric, be sure to order your copy, available at bookshop.org or wherever books are sold.

In case you missed it… I have a new book of poems called Feller that will be published on August 5th. I’ve been making the rounds to talk about the book and the general state of poetry. See my recent conversations with Emily Mohn-Slate in her “Beginner’s Mind” Series and with Greg Lehman in Episode 4 of Moon Beams. And for a limited time, pre-order Feller and get a 25% discount through Tertulia. Just enter the code FELLER at checkout.

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Submission Calls for Writers 1/11/2025

Denton Loving4 Comments

It’s been a while, friends.

Last year, submission posts like this one fell by the wayside, and I’m sorry. When I looked back at 2024, I saw that I did not submit enough of my own work, and I realized how building and sharing these lists and my own submissions go hand in hand. So I’m trying to start 2025 off the right way by sending some of my own work out into the world.

As we move forward, I want to give some extra energy to finding new journals and magazines to recommend to you. There are so many great outlets, and there are new journals emerging all the time. I often feel overwhelmed by all these magazines I’ve never heard of. So you’ll see on this list of ten submission opportunities a few names that are new to me. I hope they are new for you also.

How do we rank these new journals or compare them to some of the ones we’re more familiar with? I don’t know that yet. Please take a look at each one to determine if it feels like a good match for your work and your publication goals.

Today was a great day for me to think about all this, as I was somewhat snowed in. I’m guessing some of the rest of you in the South and East might stuck inside, too, if not by snow then probably by these Arctic temperatures. I hope the timing is right for you to receive this list.

For those of you in Southern California, especially those directly affected by the wildfires, please know that there are so many of us heartbroken by the extreme loss that you’re experiencing. I’m praying for your safety. To anyone and everyone reading this, I wish you all the best for the new year. Happy submitting.

The 2025 Yeats Poetry Prize is a public program since 1997 of the all-volunteer WB Yeats Society of NY. Our 2025 Judge is January O’Neil who also served as last year’s judge. Poets of any age from anywhere in the world may enter through February 1, 2025. There is no limit on entries, and they can be on any topic. They must also be in English, unpublished, and no more than 60 lines in length. First prize is $1,000, second prize is $500, and two or three honorable mentions are usually awarded at the judge’s discretion. The entry fees, which help to underwrite the competition, are $15 for the first poem and $12 for each additional poem. Winners are announced in early March, and awards are presented in New York City in April. https://yeats.submittable.com/submit

Deep South Magazine accepts original fiction, short stories and shorts, nonfiction and poetry during open reading periods. For fiction and nonfiction, we will do special themed calls. We will announce a new theme sometime in 2024. For poetry, our reading period will be open through February 14, 2025. We will mainly publish poetry in April during National Poetry Month, so around 30 selections will be chosen. All submissions must have a Southern connection, whether the author lives in the South, used to live in the South, has family in the South or was inspired by a visit to the region. Poetry submissions can be up to five poems of any length. Fiction, short stories and nonfiction are limited to one work at a time and may not be longer than 3,500 words. https://deepsouthmag.com/submission-guidelines/

Beaver Magazine publishes poetry, flash fiction and nonfiction, hybrid works, art and anything else you have to offer during our open reading periods. For poetry, send 3-5 poems of any format, each beginning on a new page. We love work that plays with traditional forms and modes. We want the lyric, the narrative, and everything in between. For prose, send up to 3 flash pieces of no more than 1,000 words each (though we do prefer brevity). Creative nonfiction can include personal, research, or lyric essays as well as memoirs. Fiction can be of any genre or style. Hybrid work can be whatever you want it to be! We celebrate and yearn for work from LGBTQIA2S+ and BIPOC. Submit through February 15, 2025, for the Spring Issue. https://beavermag.org/submit/

The Santa Clara Review is a student-edited literary magazine that publishes poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and visual art. The magazine is published biannually in February and May, drawing on submissions from Santa Clara University students, faculty, and staff, as well as from writers around the nation and globe. Please submit works of fiction or nonfiction prose under 6,000 words. Please submit no more than five poems or pieces of artwork at a time. Submissions for Volume 112.2 are currently open through February 15, 2025. https://santaclarareview.com/submit

Canary is published four times a year to welcome each new season on the solstices and equinoxes. We will be open from February 1- 28 for Spring-themed work for the Spring Equinox issue due out March 21, 2025. Please submit no more than 5 poems, or essays/short stories of not more than 1500 words. We look forward to reading your work on your experience of the losses to the natural world in your home environment and the joys of that natural world that we stand to lose. https://canarylitmag.org/submissions.php

Brevity publishes well-known and emerging writers working in the extremely brief (750 words or fewer) essay form. We have featured work from Pulitzer prize winners, NEA fellows, Pushcart winners, Best American authors, and writers from India, Egypt, The Netherlands, Ireland, Spain, Malaysia, Qatar, and Japan. We have also featured many previously-unpublished authors, and take a special joy in helping to launch a new literary career. While Brevity (the magazine) publishes the finest examples of flash nonfiction, the Brevity Blog offers a place to discuss issues related to the writing of creative nonfiction. https://brevitymag.com/submissions/

Pine Hills Review seeks submissions of previously unpublished fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and visual art. We are interested in quality work, no matter the genre, form, or style. Hybrid and experimental works are especially encouraged. Poetry submissions should include no more than six poems total. Nonfiction, fiction submissions, and hybrid or cross-genre work should be no more than 3,000 words total. Our regular reading period ends April 30, 2025. https://pinehillsreview.com/submit/

The Baffler is America’s leading voice of incisive and unconventional left-wing political criticism, cultural analysis, short stories, poems, and art. Founded in 1988 by Thomas Frank and Keith White as “the journal that blunts the cutting edge,” the magazine is currently edited by Matthew Shen Goodman. Nonfiction should be submitted in pitch form (no complete manuscripts, please), consisting of two paragraphs that describe your project. Poetry and fiction are welcome; our preferred length for prose is between 2,200 and 5,000 words. https://thebaffler.com/about/submissions

Forge Literary Magazine publishes one prose piece per week selected by a rotating cast of editors. Free submissions open on the 1st of each month. If there is no free link, we’ve hit our quota. We will reopen at the top of each month, except for September and December. We prefer stories under 3,000 words but will consider up to 5,000 words. We love flash and micro! We consider previously unpublished pieces only. We are open to all genres and voices, and stories with any background, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual or personal identity from all over the world. Literary excellence is our only criteria. https://forgelitmag.submittable.com/submit

Streetlight Magazine reads year-round and typically responds to submissions within three months. Send us 3-5 unpublished poems in a single document. Please send one story at a time, 2,000 words max. We currently seek creative essays/memoirs with an emphasis on the interaction of place and one’s personal relationship to it. We also welcome guest bloggers. We’re interested in topics about the literary and visual arts as well as personal perspectives on much more. Blogs should be between 300-700 words and may be edited to fit SL format. https://streetlightmag.com/submissions/

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Thanks for reading. Please feel free to share these opportunities with other writers. If you’re not already receiving these posts directly to your inbox, please subscribe.

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Honesty is Bravery Enough: Conversation with David Wesley Williams

Denton Loving4 Comments

Last October, as I was preparing to drive to Nashville for the Southern Festival of Books, my friend Patti Meredith told me to keep an eye out for David Wesley Williams. I found him quickly enough, signing books after his panel with George Singleton. We only had a brief time to chat, but I picked up his new novel, Everybody Knows, and asked him to sign it, not guessing that I would not have time to read it until the new year rolled around. But what a way to say goodbye to 2023 and hello to 2024.

Everybody Knows is a post-apocalyptic satire, but it’s also incredibly beautiful and smart, and a real pleasure to read. As far as apocalypses go, floating across Tennessee on a river boat is not a bad way to go. And it’s always a joy to read the work of an author who clearly enjoys language and is a master at putting words through their paces.

In addition to Everybody Knows, David Wesley Williams is the author of the novel Long Gone Daddies. His short fiction has been featured in Oxford American, Akashic Books’ Memphis Noir, Harper Perennial’s Forty Stories, and journals such as The Pinch and The Common. He spent thirty-five years as a reporter and editor, most of them in Memphis, where he still lives. David agreed to answer a few questions about his writing, his love of music, and the great state of Tennessee.

DL: As a fellow Tennessean, I have to tell you that I thoroughly enjoyed watching you destroy our state. Was that destruction as fun for you to write? And will you talk about how this narrative started for you? Would you say the tone of this book, especially the satirical nature, is similar or different from your first novel and your other writings?

DWW: I didn’t wish destruction upon Tennessee—really!—but I did relish the idea of Memphis, City on the Bluff, being the last hope and refuge for the state. Because as a long-time Memphian I know the ill will—in some cases, the outright hatred—a lot of Tennesseans hold toward Memphis. I suspect some Tennesseans would rather take their chances with a flood than come here.

The novel was written over several years and revised many times, but it always began with the couple on their porch, watching the rain and the coming flood, and one saying, “It’s not the end of the world,” and the other saying, “I think the end of the world’s been called on account of rain.” Later, it actually became a book about the end of the world.

I’d never written satire—or intended to. My first novel, Long Gone Daddies (2013), was about three generations of musicians and the family guitar they handed down. But with Everybody Knows, I was writing at a time when it was impossible to ignore what was going on with the country, the world, the planet: climate change, issues of race, religion, public health, gun violence, crime and punishment, the political divide. Everything was (and still is) so fraught. I felt like I had to write about those things, but in a way that made sense for me. In a way that helped me cope. Writing angry doesn’t work for me. Humor does. So I wrote a self-described “Southern Gothic, mock-apocalyptic, shrunken-epic satire.”

DL: Music is a driving engine in Everybody Knows. Even the title comes from an O.V. Wright song, which I’m so very glad to know now because of your book. It’s clear that you have a passion for all kinds of music, as well as an academic and historical understanding of music. How did you come to see music and particularly the state of country music and Music City as a way to talk about culture and politics?

DWW: I love music, particularly Southern music, which shows up in pretty much everything I write. Music gives Memphis so much of its cultural identity, and also some of its finest moments as a city—white and Black Memphians, working together, to create sublime art.

Also, I think Memphis musicians have always sought success, but on their terms. You can’t easily bend them to the will of the commercial gods. It’s about the song, not a gold record. Sure, we had a band that called itself Big Star, but it didn’t actually sell many records.

Nashville is a whole other place. It’s about business there. How can I say this? I hate modern country music. And when I say modern, I think they’ve been ruining country music in Nashville—turning it to pop—since at least Patsy Cline.

All that said, there’s a lot of Nashville music I love, past and present. One of the characters in Everybody Knows names his boat after Emmylou Harris. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings are on a short list of my favorite performers, alongside the likes of Bob Dylan, Neil Young and—another Nashville favorite—John Prine. Classic country is matchless music. And the Ryman is a national treasure. So there. I don’t hate Nashville. I don’t.

DL: In addition to using humor, irony, and exaggeration to make your readers laugh, you touch on some important topics, especially about race. I took note of how Emmett Till and George Floyd’s deaths were both touchstones within your narrative. Do you have advice for other writers about how to address big cultural moments in fiction?

DWW: I think it really comes down to one thing: Be honest. Say what you believe, say what you feel, say what needs to be said, by you, in the moment. Don’t pander, don’t hedge, don’t calculate. I guess I could add “be brave,” but honesty is bravery enough.

Now, all this may be easy for me to say, because not many people are reading what I write. Everybody Knows was published by a small press and not widely reviewed—but trust me, dear reader, there’s some wild stuff in there, hiding in plain sight!

DL: I’m always interested in the way we identify ourselves with location. You live in Western Tennessee, but you’re originally from Kentucky, as are several important characters in your novel. How does place inform your identity, and impact your writing?

DWW: I think place is everything in fiction. I tend to think of place as a character. Certainly Memphis is a character in most of my stories and novels. And what a character it is—“the old Delta synonym for pleasure, trouble, and shame,” as Eudora Welty called it in one of her books.

Kentucky keeps showing up in my books, in small ways. I think I’m working up to a full Kentucky novel, inspired by my hometown, Maysville—another character worthy of fiction. Daniel Boone lived there. Casey Stengel played ball there. It was Rosemary Clooney’s hometown.

DL: I often ask writers about the process of submitting their manuscripts for publication. Can you describe the time between writing and publishing Everybody Knows? How did you connect with Jackleg Press?

DWW: I queried some 60 agents with the first version of the book, in 2019. The majority didn’t respond. It was already a book about the country unraveling, so it felt natural to revise in 2020 amid the pandemic and the George Floyd murder and the country on fire. I started submitting again, this time with a query letter that began, “What would Kurt Vonnegut write about these times and those ahead for America, if he were alive today — and if he were Southern?”

I sent to a combination of agents and publishers—another 60 or so. The response was the same. They didn’t reject it as much as ignore it. They weren’t even reading it. Which was fine—I just needed one person to give it a chance. Then in early August 2021, I came across a small publisher called JackLeg Press. They asked to read the full manuscript, loved it, and within a couple of weeks I had a signed contract. They’ve been great partners, and we’re looking forward to another novel together. More news on that soon, hopefully.

I’m so grateful to David Wesley Williams for answering these questions. If you haven’t already read Everybody Knows, be sure to order your copy, available at bookshop.org or wherever books are sold.

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In case you missed it… check out my conversation with Georgann Eubanks, where we discussed her travels across North Carolina celebrating some of the state’s most unique foodways in The Month of Their Ripening.

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Ekphrastic Writing at the Knoxville Writers Guild

Denton Loving1 Comment

If you’re in the greater Knoxville area on Thursday, September 7th, I hope you’ll join me at the monthly meeting of the Knoxville Writers Guild at Addison’s Bookstore, located at 126 S. Gay St., in Knoxville. The meeting begins at 7:00 p.m.

I’ll be talking about ekphrastic writing or ekphrasis. The word “ekphrasis” comes to us from the Greek where it means “description.” If you still aren’t sure what ekphrastic writing is, then I’ll briefly define it as writing that vividly describes a pre-existing work of art. I’ll share some of my favorite examples of ekphrasis, and we’ll even generate new work using some of the fantastic art on display at Addison’s.

Here are some of the images I’ll be talking about in this session.

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If you live too far away to be in Knoxville on Thursday, I hope you’ll use one of these images or an image of your own in your writing practice this week. If you come up with something you especially like, please send it to me. If you need more guidance, check out my conversation with Julia Wendell about her ekphrastic poem “Horse in the Landscape.”

Submission Calls for Writers 7/19/2023

Denton Loving4 Comments

Perhaps it’s the heat, but I can’t quite fathom how we are already steaming in the July sun. July. How did it get here so soon? Not only is summer at least half over, so too is the whole year. That makes it a good time to re-evaluate your goals for your writing and submitting? Do you have any ongoing projects? Are you moving them forward or feeling stuck? Are you submitting your work to journals and magazines?

When I first began to send my stories and poems out to literary journals, my friend Darnell Arnoult encouraged me and my writing group to give ourselves a goal, not for acceptances, but for rejections. That first year, my goal was to receive 50 rejections. Making a kind of game out of it took the sting away every time an editor rejected my work. But the surprise was that I agonized less over trying bigger, higher-tiered journals. I was only aiming for a rejection, but I got some surprise acceptances along the way.

Even though the year is half over, it’s not too late to set some goals for your writing. To that end, here are ten submission opportunities for writers plus a bonus if you will go back and see my recent conversation with Andy Fogle who shared that Salvation South is also open for your submissions. Good luck!

Granum Foundation Prize & Granum Foundation Translation Prize The Granum Foundation Prize will be awarded annually to help U.S.-based writers complete substantive literary works—such as poetry books, essay or short story collections, novels, and memoirs—or to help launch newly published works. One winner will be awarded $5,000. Up to three finalists will be awarded $500 or more. Additionally, the Granum Foundation Translation Prize will be awarded to support the completion of a work translated into English by a U.S.-based writer. One winner will receive $1,500 or more. Funding from both prizes can be used to provide a writer with the tools, time, and freedom to help ensure their success. For example, resources may be used to cover basic needs, equipment purchases, mentorship, or editing services. Competitive applicants will be able to present a compelling project with a reasonable timeline for completion. They also should be able to demonstrate a record of commitment to the literary arts. There is no fee to apply. Applications close on August 1, 2024. https://www.granumfoundation.org/granum-prize

Fried Chicken & Coffee FCAC is an ezine/blog edited by Rusty Barnes, mostly interested in crime fiction, rural, working-class and Appalachian concerns. FCAC accepts short stories, poems and essays. Rusty says: “Send me rural, funky, dirty stories about churchgoing women who never sin. I would love to see more stories about women. Get to the grit, get to the love, show me the scars, and take Harry Crews to heart: ‘Blood, bone, and nerve, that’s fiction. Show me the stuff that cuts to the quick.’” There are no word limits. To submit, send an email to rusty (dot) barnes (at) gmail (dot) com with the words FCAC and SUBMISSION in the subject line. https://friedchickenandcoffee.com/manifesto/submissions/

Lanternfish Press We are seeking novella-length manuscripts between 20K and 40K words that fall in the mist-wreathed borderlands between literary and speculative fiction. In particular, we are interested in climate fiction; regional American Gothic fiction—Midwestern, in the vein of These Bones by Kayla Chenault; Southern, like The Salt Fields by Stacy D. Flood; or Alaskan Gothic, or Rust Belt Gothic—whatever kind of luxuriant and atmospheric decay floats your boat; well-researched historical fiction that breathes life into its material and cultural milieu; queer monsters for readers who enjoyed Carmilla or Elegy for the Undead; fiction that can claim as a comp title the novel Wednesday Addams was typing on her typewriter in the attic. Deadline to submit is July 31, 2023. https://lanternfishpress.com/submissions

Orion We’re excited to read your pitches for our upcoming Summer 2024 issue. This time we will specifically be looking to read pitches for essays and reporting about animals and floods. How is marine life impacted by water reaching the shore? What are the interesting ways you’ve observed land animals responding to water? We’re looking for pitches for stories that would be 3,000 to 4,000 words in length for an issue of Orion looking with fresh eyes at the floods around us. Please try to keep pitches to 500 words or so. https://orion.submittable.com/submit/267484/pitches-for-summer-2024-issue-on-floods

Necessary Fiction This October, we want to be scared. We want to feel unsettled. We want to go to sleep with dread knotted in our stomachs. Send us your spooky tales, your uncanny narratives, your haunted places, your tortured monsters, and your Gothic twists. We accept unpublished fiction up to 3,000 words only. Deadline to submit: July 31, 2023. https://necessaryfiction.submittable.com/submit/200451/special-call-october-stories

Galileo Press  Galileo Press is open for submissions of full-length collections of poems, essays, stories, as well as novellas, novels, memoirs, or hybrids (with exception to 4-colour art / text hybrids).  Please indicate in the title of your submission which genre you feel best describes it. Galileo hopes to publish 2-4 selections while also reserving a few manuscripts for development. A small stipend of $200-$500 is provided, along with copies and standard royalties. A few elements we consider are a confident, appealing voice; the thematic cohesiveness and the emotional range and maturity; vivid imagery and the balance of abstract to concrete imagery; deft handling of highly charged emotion; the capacity to surprise; use of wit, humor, and self-implication; the elastic syntax, pace, and music; and the choice and use of extended metaphor, skillfully juxtaposing the micro and the macro. There is an $18 submission fee. Submissions are open through August 1, 2023. https://freegalileo.com/submissions/

Short Story, Long We are accepting short stories, 2k-8k words long (with the 3,000-5,500 range being our real sweet spot). What are we looking for? Honestly, best indicator is to read a story or two we’ve already published. Second best indicator is to generally be familiar with Editor Aaron Burch’s taste and what he’s published on HAD, and Hobart before that. Every published story will be paired with original art, with both the writer and artist receiving $100. Submissions are open until August 1, 2023. https://ashortstorylong.submittable.com/submit

Kitchen Table Quarterly Kitchen Table Quarterly is a journal preoccupied with history- cultural, political, geographical, personal, and how each interacts with the other to mold our experience. Adolescent blunders, dental records, the archaic origins of long-held or long-lost traditions— we want to know all of it. We are looking for work that spills secrets and wipes the dust off of old memories. Submit no more than five poems (with a maximum of 10 pages). For creative nonfiction, submit a stand-alone piece of up to 3000 words. While we accept all forms of creative nonfiction, we typically prefer essays. Submissions are open until August 1, 2023. https://www.kitchentablequarterly.org/submit

Salt Hill Salt Hill publishes poetry, prose, translations, essays, interviews, and artwork. Please submit no more than five poems at a time. For prose, please do not submit works of more than 30 pages, double-spaced.  We accept multiple flash pieces, so long as their combined length does not exceed 30 pages. We accept nonfiction and art submissions year-round. Deadline for all other submissions is September 13, 2023. https://salthill.submittable.com/submit

Potomac Review Rooted in the nation’s capital’s suburbs, Potomac Review is the antidote to the scripted republic that surrounds it. We seek literature from emerging as well as established writers around the globe to facilitate literary conversation. We accept submissions through October 15, 2023. We’ll read stories and essays of any size, though typically we find it difficult to make room for works that run longer than 7,500 words. Please submit up to five poems. http://mcblogs.montgomerycollege.edu/potomacreview/submission-guidelines/

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Thanks for reading. Please feel free to share these opportunities with other writers. 

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In case you missed it… I had the opportunity earlier this month to celebrate place poems alongside P. Scott Cunningham and J.D. Isip, as part of Emerge Journal’s Be Well Reading Series. And earlier this summer, I had a wonderful conversation with Patricia Hudson about her novel Traces, which gives voice to Rebecca Boone and her daughters.

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Submission Calls for Writers 6/15/2023

Denton Loving2 Comments

While I was putting together today’s list of submission opportunities, I discovered that Catamaran Literary Reader is charging $8 for general submissions. That’s insane. My personal philosophy is to never pay this much to submit my work. I’ve been involved with numerous literary journals and organizations over the years, and I understand all of the reasons to charge reading fees and generate income. I’m not opposed to the idea. But $8 is obscene even in a time plagued with inflation. Back to my own philosophy on the matter: There are too many good journals who don’t charge at all or who only charge a nominal fee. Submitting work can be expensive, and I try to take that into account when I compile submission lists. You’ll notice that some of today’s opportunities do come along with application or submission fees. Again, I’m not opposed to the concept. The key, I believe, is to make sure the benefit is proportionate to the risk and/or reward. In that spirit, here are 10 opportunities I recommend. Good luck!

Cimarron Review We accept submissions year-round in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and art. Please include a cover letter with your submission. Please send 3-6 poems, one piece of fiction, or one piece of nonfiction. Please only submit to one genre at a time. Address all work to the appropriate editor. https://cimarronreview.com/submit/

Southeast Review The Southeast Review publishes poetry, literary fiction, creative nonfiction, and art in each biannual issue as well as on SER Online, in addition to online book reviews and interviews. We pride ourselves on presenting emerging writers alongside well-established ones. Please submit one double-spaced short story of up to 7500 words. Please submit no more than 5 single-spaced poems at a time, with a maximum of 15  pages per total submission. Place all poems in one document. https://www.southeastreview.org/general-submissions

32 Poems We welcome unsolicited poetry year round and accept simultaneous submissions.  As a rule we publish shorter poems that fit on a single page (about 32 lines), though we sometimes make exceptions to accommodate remarkable work that runs a little longer.  $3 submission fee. http://www.32poems.com/submission-guidelines

Berkeley Fiction Review Berkeley Fiction Review accepts short fiction, sudden fiction, comics, and art submissions. We look for innovative and reflective short fiction from new and emerging writers across all genres that play with form and content, as well as traditionally constructed stories with fresh voices and original ideas that say something new or bring nuance and perspective to an ongoing cultural conversation. https://berkeleyfictionreview.org/submit/

Juked There are no limits on word count for online fiction or nonfiction—we like narratives and essays of all sizes, so long as the colors fit. For our print issue, we accept prose submissions of at least 2,500 words. For poetry, we are looking for long poems (four pages or longer) or sequences of two or more linked poems. Submit a maximum of five poems. We read year-round. http://www.juked.com/info/submit.asp

Key West Literary Seminar Emerging Writer Awards The Cecelia Joyce Johnson Award, Scotti Merrill Award, and Marianne Russo Award recognize and support writers who possess exceptional talent and demonstrate potential for lasting literary careers. Each award is tailored to a particular literary form. The Merrill Award recognizes a poet, while fiction writers may apply for either the Johnson Award (for a short story) or the Russo Award (for a novel-in-progress). Winners of the 2024 Emerging Writer Awards will receive full tuition support for our January 2024 Seminar and Writers’ Workshop Program, round-trip airfare, lodging, a $500 honorarium, and the opportunity to appear on stage during the Seminar. There is a $12 application fee. Deadline is June 30, 2023. https://www.kwls.org/awards/emerging-writer-awards/

Rhino Poetry Rhino looks for the best-unpublished poems, translations, and flash fiction/nonfiction by local, national, and international writers. We welcome all styles of writing, particularly that which is well-crafted, uses language lovingly and surprisingly, and feels daring or quietly powerful. General submissions are open through June 30, 2023. https://rhinopoetry.org/general-submissions

Muzzle Magazine Muzzle publishes poetry, interviews, and book reviews. We are actively seeking submissions in poetry and are also open to queries about reviews and interviews. Please send 3-5 poems at a time. Include all poems in one DOC or PDF file. Make sure that your name does not appear anywhere in the document or submission title; our editors like to view submissions blindly. We are open from June 15 through July 15, 2023. http://www.muzzlemagazine.com/submissions.html

Sundress Publications Call for Full-Length Poetry Manuscripts Sundress Publications is open for submissions of full-length poetry manuscripts. All authors are welcome to submit qualifying manuscripts through August 31, 2023, but we especially welcome authors from marginalized and underrepresented communities. We’re looking for manuscripts of forty-eight to eighty (48-80) single-spaced pages; front matter is excluded from page count. Individual pieces or selections may have been previously published in anthologies, chapbooks, print journals, online journals, etc., but cannot have appeared in any full-length collection, including self-published collections. Single-author and collaborative author manuscripts will be considered. There is a $15 reading fee per manuscript, but the fee will be waived for entrants who purchase or pre-order any Sundress title or broadside. http://www.sundresspublications.com/fulllength/2023/06/sundress-opens-for-full-length-poetry-manuscripts/

Ploughshares We accept fiction and nonfiction that is less than 7,500 words. Excerpts of longer works are welcome if self-contained. Submit 1-5 pages of poetry at a time with each poem beginning on a new page. We accept submissions to the journal from June 1, 2023, to January 15, 2024. There is a $3 submission fee. https://www.pshares.org/submit/journal/guidelines

Thanks for reading. Please feel free to share these opportunities with other writers. 

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In case you missed it… I had a wonderful conversation with Patricia Hudson about her novel Traces, which gives voice to Rebecca Boone and her daughters.

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Conversation with Patricia Hudson

Denton Loving3 Comments

I live in the shadows of the Cumberland Gap. The idea of westward expansion and the mythology of Daniel Boone are very present in my mind and in my daily life. This weekend, I found myself engrossed in the lives of the Boone women as I read Patricia Hudson’s novel, Traces, written from the perspectives of Daniel’s wife Rebecca and their two daughters Susannah and Jemima. Hudson has combined years of meticulous research along with the tools of fiction to give voice to women who were often forgotten or purposely omitted from the historic record. Before publishing Traces, Hudson worked as a journalist, writing for publications such as Americana, Country Living, and Southern Living. She also co-edited Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia, and coauthored The Carolinas and the Appalachian States, a volume in the Smithsonian Guide to Historic America series. Patricia agreed to answer some questions about Traces, the Boone women, and her writing process.

DL: In your acknowledgments in Traces, you mention that it took you nearly 25 years to write this book. As a freelance journalist, you were working during those 25 years, and you were also focusing on various other projects. But you must have been continually living with the Boone women in the back of your mind. Can you talk about what motivated you to never give up on this project?

PH: I suspect my husband would say it’s because of my innate stubbornness. It’s hard for me to abandon something I feel strongly about, and for whatever reason, these three women never let me forget about them, even though pieces of this manuscript spent decades in my desk drawer. Like so many other women, Rebecca, Susannah and Jemima had been neglected within the historical record, and I didn’t want to be guilty of yet another “forgetting.” However, at one point, when folks asked me how the novel was progressing, my response was: “Rebecca has climbed out of my desk drawer, given me a disgusted look, and told me she was walking back to Kentucky because I was no count.” Thankfully, she eventually came back.

DL: Of all genres of writing, historical fiction feels perhaps the most daunting to me. I know you employed countless years of research, and you also learned from visiting living history sites. What advice do you have for others interested in in this genre?

PH: Historical fiction authors are sometimes accused of having “research rapture” — that is, researching endlessly rather than actually writing. My first piece of advice for anyone who wants to write historical fiction is that from the beginning you should accept that you’ll never know everything about a historical period. Author L.P. Huntley said, “The past is a foreign country — they do things differently there.” As hard as you try, you won’t get every detail right.

You’ll also be faced with situations where — for reasons of clarity, or to corral a sprawling manuscript — you have to depart from a strict reconstruction of the historical record. For example, I didn’t want to depict more than one of the Boone family’s journeys through Cumberland Gap, so I combined several actual events from several years into a single trip. The rule of thumb is that a writer of historical fiction is allowed to bend history, but not break it.

DL: You have a wonderful map on www.patricia-hudson.com that illustrates the journeys made by the Boones throughout their lives. You also continue to post a “Boone Blog.” Does this mean that you aren’t finished with the Boones? Will you continue to write about them? Are the voices of these women still speaking to you?

PH: I think I’m “done” with the Boones in the fictional sense, but the Boone Blog will likely continue for a while. I’ve always loved getting to see “behind the scenes” of creative endeavors. During college I worked on the stage crew of various theatre productions because I loved watching a play come together, observing all the ways a director would tweak various elements of the show between performances. The Boone Blog pulls back the curtain on how Traces was created. I wanted to highlight the many folks I encountered during the research and acknowledge them — historians, living history reenactors, librarians, and so forth. It’s one small way of saying “thank you” to them for their help.

DL: Reclaiming the stories of historic women in itself makes Traces a political novel in some ways. Another way is in how you address the complications of race, both with whites and Blacks and even more so with whites and indigenous people such as the Cherokee and Shawnee. Can you talk about how you balanced narrative and historical accurateness with cultural sensitivities and modern perspectives?

PH: One of the main reasons I wanted to depict the lives of three of the Boone women, rather than just Rebecca, was because each of the women had unique experiences that allowed me to show a variety of responses to the cultural norms of the time.

As a young wife and mother, Rebecca had tragic interactions with the tribes who called Kentucky home, which I felt sure colored her view of the Indians and their culture. Yet somehow, towards the end of her life, she welcomed Daniel’s Shawnee friends as guests in her home. As a novelist, it was my job to imagine how that change of heart might have come about.

The historical record tells us that Jemima Boone harbored friendly feelings towards Native-Americans, even though she’d had the harrowing experience of being kidnapped by them. She reportedly said that the Indians “treated her as kindly as they could” under the circumstances. Her attitude, which was much like her father’s, allowed me to offer readers a more nuanced portrayal of the Indians than would have been possible otherwise.

My third protagonist, Susannah, accompanied her father and several dozen axmen into the wilderness as they cut the initial trace through Cumberland Gap, and then on to the site along the Kentucky River that would become Boonesborough. The only other woman in that party was an enslaved woman, whose name may have been Dolly. One reviewer doubted my depiction of these two women — one black, one white — developing a friendship. Under normal circumstances, they probably wouldn’t have, but when you consider that Susannah was not quite fifteen years old, that she’d had very little experience with slavery up to that point, and that Richard Callaway’s slave was the only other woman in a party of several dozen men, I believe the two women would have supported one another during that very arduous journey. Their relationship allowed me to portray an enslaved person as a fully formed human being.

DL: Through reading Robert Morgan’s Boone: A Biography, I learned that Richard Callaway, not the most admirable characters, was my 7x-great uncle. (Another of my grandmothers was a Bryan, related to Rebecca Bryan Boone.) I later shared this with Mr. Morgan, and he replied, “One reward of writing the Boone biography has been hearing from many people who are connected with Boone or others in his story. It’s like Boone’s life unites us in a unique way.” Have you found a similar response in regard to the lives of the Boone women?

PH: Definitely. At nearly every place I’ve spoken, someone has come up to me and said they were related to the Boones, or had ancestors in the Yadkin Valley, or at Boonesborough, or some other place mentioned in the book. During my research, I discovered that I had ancestors that went through the Gap not long after the Boones did. They tried to establish a homestead near present-day Danville, Kentucky, but when the Indians burned  them out, the family retreated back through the Gap and settled in Powell Valley. My father’s side of the family sank deep roots along the Powell River until TVA flooded their land. If things had worked out differently, I might have been a Kentuckian instead of a Tennessean.

As for Richard Callaway — I depicted him as seen through the eyes of the Boone family. Of course, the Calloway family’s version of the story would have been told very differently. Callaway sought to have Boone court martialed, so there was no love lost there. However, everyone, including the Boones, recognized that Calloway was a brave man who worked hard to protect the inhabitants of Boonesborough during the settlement’s early years. Richard Callaway was fiery, while Boone was more low-key, so from the very beginning, it was a clash of personalities. Maybe you need to write your great uncle’s side of the story? In historical fiction, as in life, truth is multi-faceted. There’s always more than one way to tell a story.

I’m so grateful to Patricia Hudson for answering these questions. If you haven’t already read Traces, be sure to order your copy, available at https://bookshop.org/p/books/traces-patricia-l-hudson/18102062 or wherever books are sold.

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In case you missed it… check out my conversation with Davin Malasarn, where we discussed my poetry collection Tamp on The Artist’s Statement.

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Martin Amis’s “Oktober”

Denton LovingLeave a comment

You may have seen that the writer Martin Amis died last week. I’ve never read any of Amis’s novels, but on hearing the news, I immediately recalled Amis’s short story ”Oktober,” a story that has lingered in my memory because of how much I have admired it ever since the first time I read it 7 or 8 years ago.

I’ve seen this story criticized as “non-fiction-ish” and “lightly fictionalized.” It doesn’t matter to me how much Amis heavily drew from his own experience and observations, as if there’s only a certain amount that’s okay. Rather, this story should be held up as an example of how we can fictionalize our own experiences to find deeper, emotional meaning on the page. Perhaps one reason this story speaks to me is because it’s archetypal in that it portrays a character on a journey, and, as Amis said:

“Even the dullest journey resembles a short story: beginning, middle, end, with the traveler displaced and, we hope, alerted.”

I admire this story for many reasons, most notably because it’s such a well-executed political story. It addresses world events on both the largest and smallest scales. In this case, the story centers on an Englishman in Munich during Oktoberfest, and more importantly, during an influx of Middle Eastern refugee movement. What the narrator witnesses is framed both by literature (Vladimir Nabokov & Thomas Wolfe) and history (Russian refugees in 1917 & German refugees following World War II).

The story’s refugee thread holds continued relevance in light of the migrations being politicized in the United States, centered around the expiration of Title 42.

One of the characters in “Oktober,” Bernhardt, is Iranian-German. He says about the migrants: “You know, they won’t stop coming. They pay large sums of money to risk their lives crossing the sea and then they walk across Europe. They walk across Europe. A few policemen and a stretch of barbed wire can’t keep them out. And there are millions more where they came from. This is going to go on for years. And they won’t stop coming.”

There are also mothers of various types appearing on virtually every page of “Oktober.” And in regard to the mothers that Amis portrays here, I would mention that one thing I admire about this story is how tightly he weaves all the threads of the story. It may not always seem so because the language is conversational, but everything seems to serve a purpose. Everything is connected. Meanwhile, the story is not so economical that it feels austere or lacking. It feels rather sprawling instead.

Amis received criticism during the last several years for some sloppy comments he made about terrorism and extremism. Some of these comments are not so far from those of Geoffrey, a British businessman in “Oktober” who has a less than welcoming attitude towards migrants. Geoffrey is also the character who brings the most shock value to the story. So while he is not a likeable character, he’s incredibly dramatic to follow.

I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to reading any of Amis’s better known works, but it was a pleasure to revisit this story and to remember all of the reasons I admired it in the first place. You can read Martin Amis’s short story, “Oktober,” online at The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/07/oktober. And I hope you will.

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In case you missed it… check out this month’s list of Submission Calls for Writers, and my conversation with Erika Nichols-Frazer, where we discussed my poetry collection Tamp and her memoir Feed Me, hosted by Birch Bark Editing.