Column
Every year I have the honor of choosing the finalists for the Marguerite McGlinn Prize for Fiction.
Fiction
Uncle (First Place Winner of the Marguerite McGlinn Prize for Fiction)
Uncle always lived in the other house. By himself. When he was younger, before I was born, he was a truck driver.
Fiction
Ameena Goes to America (Second Place Winner of the Marguerite McGlinn Prize for Fiction)
A young white officer asks her in heavily accented Bengali, “What’s the purpose of your visit?”
Fiction
Experimental Trials (Third Place Winner of the Marguerite McGlinn Prize for Fiction)
After the first, which was of course televised, a silence swept over the land.
Non-Fiction
Reflections on Hedwig and the Truths We Learn
“What is that?” “It’s what I’ve got to work with.”
Poetry
I watch her watch her mother wave goodbye through the window of her room in assisted living,
Column
Writing for Social Justice: Core Strength
“She ain’t nothing but a $5 hoe,” our booknerd, stripper friend chides while she two-step shimmies towards the pole in the center of her new home’s private library.
Fiction
ONLINE BONUS: UPs & DOWNs (Marguerite McGlinn Prize for Fiction Finalist)
I move into Metropolitan Towers during the heat and hollow of an empty summer, when all of New York City is racked by disease, and the sidewalks stink of anxiety.
Poetry
ONLINE BONUS: Looking for Spoonbills
This morning I see robins are back, the first birds I learned by name.
Poetry
The bull thistle, yes, with fierce spines. Bright blooms on every stem aren’t sufficient to make it a flower.
Poetry
ONLINE BONUS: Hard-hitting Bob
If I want to recall my father’s snow-blue eyes and his father’s before him, and that old man’s high, cracked, Rhenish accent
Poetry
ONLINE BONUS: When I Try to Let You Speak through Me
I get myself in trouble again Conjuring you
Poetry
ONLINE BONUS: The Hunger of Tides
DaVinci was convinced that the tide was the breath of a beast he could not see.
Review
If it is true that a humble upbringing can inspire lasting impressions in the soul of a poet, Ellen Stone’s What Is in the Blood bears this out.
Review
With the return of in-person learning in American classrooms, teachers will confront a challenge they haven’t faced since the COVID-19 pandemic began: galvanizing students in a live classroom.
Review
Deborah Burnham’s collection of poetry, Tart Honey, carefully examines the intricacies of love and marriage that span decades, one of which was spent almost entirely long-distance.
Review
REVIEW: All These Things Were Real: Poems of Delirium Tremens
All These Things Were Real: Poems of Delirium Tremens by Michelle Reale is an intricate window into the life of a mother struggling through and with her son’s alcoholism, spending an unclear amount of time in hospitals, treatment centers, and pain.
Review
Liz Chang’s chapbook Animal Nocturne (2017) explores the complexities of race, love, and motherhood through a style of poetry unique to the contemporary moment.