BEST OF THE NET 2023; Essay in THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 2018;
(cited in BAE 2015, 2016, 2020, 2022); PUSHCART poetry finalist
By Rob Arnold
It is said the spirit awakens, that a wonderment takes hold. It is said that the sun appears to invert, and in the gray-blue moments before totality, objects cast shadows in the form of the crescent moon. This is the common perception, the reported reality.
By Erica Charis-Molling
Solstice contributing editor Dzvinia Orlowsky and Ali Kinsella’s co-translations from the Ukrainian of “Eccentric Days of Hope and Sorrow: Selected Poems by Natalka Bilotserkivets” has been shortlisted for the 2022 Derek Walcott Prize in Poetry. Carolyn Forché, this year’s judge, will announce the winner on October 13th, 2022. Our hearty congratulations also to Poetry Editor… Read more »
By Richard Hoffman
Nonfiction Editor Richard Hoffman Takes a Deep Dive Into the Poisons of Racism, Hatred, and Mass Violence.
By Ilan Mochari
Solstice contributing editor Marjan Kamali was awarded a 2022 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship in Prose. She is the author of The Stationery Shop, a national bestseller, and Together Tea, a Massachusetts Book Award finalist. The Stationery Shop is being adapted into a TV series at HBO and Together Tea was adapted for the stage. Marjan’s… Read more »
By Ilan Mochari
Solstice contributing editor DeWitt Henry’s book, Endings & Beginnings: Family Essays, was longlisted for the 2022 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. Endings & Beginnings: Family Essays completes a trilogy-in-memoir with Sweet Dreams and Safe Suicide. DeWitt was the founding editor of Ploughshares. He has also published a novel, a story collection, and… Read more »
By Ilan Mochari
merican Essays 2020. “Exit Wound” originally appeared in the Fall 2019 Issue of Solstice, which was a print-only edition.
By Lee Hope
Director and writer Prentice Penny’s A Penny For Your Thoughts Entertainment has teamed up with writer and actor Mozhan Marnò and Marjan for the project.
By Lee Hope
Lynne’s new novel, The Dangers of an Ordinary Night, was chosen as One of the Best Books to Give This Season by the Sunday New York Times Book Review.
By Elizabeth Searle
At silent 6AM, by the dawn’s early laptop light, I find them again: our stars. Onscreen, online—two fellow Thespians; two former Fantasticks. Blasts from my past.
By Rob Arnold
In this poem, Rob Arnold explores his complicated relationship with his birth mother, and his Chamoru heritage.
By Lance F Mullins
I am a Christian minister who once spent the night with a sex worker named Adam.
By Brenda Salinas Baker
The morning of the funeral, I circled my childhood bedroom in a terry cloth robe. Pacing between the closet and the bedspread, I added and subtracted touches on two perfect outfits.
By Susan Rich
Our final blog in our Women’s History Month series features poet Susan Rich and her poignant look at the COVID-19 pandemic. Please enjoy this incredible work, and don’t forget to share!
By Khanh Ha
Today’s blog post recognizes Khanh Ha with an excerpt from his novel Diary of a Mute Girl. Ha was recently selected as the winner of the 2020-21 James Knudsen Prize for Fiction, awarded by Bayou Magazine and the University of New Orleans. We are proud to count him as part of the Solstice family! Please enjoy this piece, and don’t forget to share!
By Rani Neutill
For Women’s History Month, Solstice is highlighting several of our authors from the Winter 2020 issue who are women and/or who celebrate women in their writing. Today’s post is a piece of nonfiction from Rani Neutill. Enjoy, and please share!
By Marcus Jackson
The final poet featured in our Black History Month blog is Marcus Jackson with his poem “A Type of Crying” from the Spring 2019 issue.
By Valerie Smith
Another poet from our Spring 2020 issue, Valerie Smith is the next featured Black author in our Black History Month blog with her poem “Expert of the Apricot Groves.”
By Ruth Mukwana
The next featured Black author in honor of Black History Month is fiction author Ruth Mukwana and her short story “Cracked.” Please also visit the links to listen to her latest podcast episode.
By Quintin Collins
Today’s Black History Month blog highlights Quintin Collins and his poem “Crushed.”
By Artress Bethany White
The next blog in our Black History Month series highlights Artress Bethany White and her poem “Severed: A Statement on the Ludicrous Nature of African Repatriation.”
By Bonita Lee Penn
Our next Black History Month blog honoring Solstice’s Black authors features Bonita Lee Penn’s poem “Nina’s Fire: Frantic’s Go-Go” from the Winter 2020 issue.
By Matthew E. Henry (MEH)
The next poet featured in our Black History Month blog is Matthew E. Henry (MEH) with his poem from the Spring 2020 issue “an open letter to my mixed little ‘Sisters Who Kept Their Naturals’.”
By Vernita Hall
Next in our Black History Month blog is Vernita Hall and her poem from the Summer 2020 issue “The World According to Alpheaus.”
By Tatiana Johnson-Boria
As part of our ongoing celebration of Black History Month at Solstice, we will be highlighting Black authors who have been published in both our print and online magazines over the past several years. The first blog features Tatiana Johnson-Boria and her nonfiction/poetry hybrid piece “The Uprooting.”
By Grace Desmarais
Graphic Lit contributor Grace Desmarais brings us a very personal comic about mental health.
By Nance Van Winckel
This Graphic Lit piece is a mashup of a public domain children’s book, The Adventures of the Three Bold Babes, by S. Rosamond Praeger, published in 1897 and blog advice on dealing with toddlers’ tantrums—and includes erasure and collage.
By Anne McGrath and Casey Taylor
The Color of Fear, tackles some of the emotions many in our community felt in recent weeks. The author, Anne McGrath collaborated with artist Casey Taylor on this raw piece of flash fiction which arcs from despair to hope.
By Kyle Harabedian
The first post in a new Graphic Lit blog series, this wonderful new blog by Minnesota based comic artist Kyle Harabedian. Dining In is an intimate look at quarantine life which is masterfully conveyed through Kyle’s unique art style.
By Morgan Dykeman
2012 was the first year I was eligible to cast a vote for President. I was 20 years old, a student at a small liberal arts college that was proud to boast about 1,000 students total in a rural swath of Western North Carolina, just south of Asheville. We were as far left as they… Read more »
By David Janey
the stale smell of adolescence lingers still in the varnished wood floors and bleachers of my high school gymnasium. Memories aged fifty years now are just that: faded but not gone, like a scar from an ancient wound or the sting of a racist slight. Only on election days do we come here, only to… Read more »
By Christina Baquero Dudley
Let me take you on a trip. It’s right about the turn of the century, and I’m a 15-year-old engrossed in everything normal and expected: blink 182, school, friends, and boys. Except there is one aspect that’s not so normal in my suburban upbringing: my father is not a U.S. citizen. And that didn’t mean… Read more »
By Michael Ansara
My 28-year-old son turns to me, “You failed, you failed.” We are attempting to discuss the morality of the moment. Is violence against police morally defensible? Is there any case that can be made to not vote? I am attempting to pass on lessons from my youth. He is having none of it. “You failed completely,” he hurls at me in bitter condemnation. “Completely.”
By Kelvin Kellman
Like every school boy, I was cultured to dine with fine silver;piercing steak with polished tines and cutting with the right. Because eating bare hands in the manner of my forebearsmirrors the manners of every other primate shooting from tree to tree. I recite the rosary, venerate men (now saints) that lookzero like me, did… Read more »
By William Torphy
A deadly disease infects us all. We acquire it from birth. It threatens lives and incites fear. The disease is racism. Black Americans have been subjected to brutality—physically, spiritually, and economically—since their ancestors were forced into slave ships and transported as chattel to this continent. From the “slave patrols” that subjected slaves to prohibitive surveillance,… Read more »
By Maria Luisa Arroyo Cruzado
The few times that I’ve walked into the Big Y in Longmeadow, MA, the supermarket closest to the university, at which I teach, I steel myself against the barbed gazes. This is a predominantly white market situated in a predominantly white, affluent suburb. I am less than a stranger. I am a walking abomination, a… Read more »
By Eduardo Mendieta
Essential: adj. 1: of, relating to or constituting an essence <voting is an ~right of citizenship> <~ oils> 2: of an utmost importance: INDISPENSABLE…Synonyms IMPERATIVE, NECESSARY, NECESSITOUS—essentially adv. Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Eleventh Edition My mother is now retired, and I am glad and thankful, but today were she not she would be an “essential worker.” Before… Read more »
By David Janey
lost promises imagine you’re in a class, a class withno instructor, only a syllabus, only oneassignment; describe these troublesometimes, explain our collective cruelty, untangleour web of deception, describe – us – to astranger, a stranger as close as a twin alsoin a class with no instructor but on a distantplain, in a parallel universe far… Read more »
By Doug Canter
Three days after George Floyd’s unjustified murder in Minneapolis, I read a frustrated plea from a fellow teacher at Western High School in Baltimore City where I teach tenth grade English. The email’s subject line, “Trigger warning,” captured the pain and frustration of my colleague who wrote: “As we are inundated with the unavoidable and… Read more »
By Lisa Braxton
They stepped out of front doors, proceeded down spacious brick pathways to the foot of their manicured lawns, and with the precision of a military unit, pivoted to face us. All of them were white—men and women—homeowners in a leafy enclave in Fairfield County Connecticut suburbia anchored by raised ranches, Dutch Colonials, and split-level homes.… Read more »
By Donna Weaver
Braids I Never Had They tell her, “You always be lyin’, Tisha.”Tisha looks like she knows how to have sex. Her face doesn’tneed any makeup. And I like that sound the beaded braids make when she shakes her head,‘No’. She doesn’t want the white people music in this store.She scratches her scalp between braids. They… Read more »
By Tessa Clare
When I was sixteen, my mother told me to be grateful for any job that I could get. As a woman of color, I was raised to believe that opportunities were scarce and that I should make the most of any one that I could find. It didn’t matter that my mother spent the majority… Read more »
By Kristian Macaron
At seven A.M. on a Saturday, I was making coffee and my doorbell rang. On the other side of it were two police officers. I grew up and have spent most of my life in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which has the one of the highest violent crime rates in the U.S., and is also an… Read more »
By tina scott lassiter
Pleasure is found on the grounds of a garden estate that I frequently walk and photograph. When the pandemic restrictions began to lift, I received a members only invitation to visit; I immediately made an appointment for the first hour on opening day. It felt strange driving through Rock Creek Park to this best kept… Read more »
By Margo Gabriel
The pancetta crackles in the pan as I dice shallots. This dish won’t taste nearly as delicious as it would if I enjoyed it alfresco at MIDA, one of my favorite Italian eateries in Boston’s South End. On this night of quarantine, I settle for a homemade version of carbonara and a glass of wine.… Read more »
By Melissa Jenks
An article came out recently exploring the idea that some people, during the coronavirus, especially those consistently and chronically afflicted with anxiety and depression, have had their illness lift during the crisis. The author explored several theories as to why, including the concept that the worst has already happened, so what else is there to… Read more »
By Caitlin T.D. Robinson
In the age of the coronavirus, fear, sadness, and suffering prevail. Unemployment, illness, and death are just some of the trials we face in this global pandemic. Amidst these difficult times, flowers bloom and humans find new ways to connect. A great deal of tenderness and meaning can be experienced when we look for it. … Read more »
By Shilpi Suneja
When the pandemic erupted like a cursed piece of do-it-yourself Ikea furniture, I was planning to travel to Rome with my mom. The trip was to be her seventieth birthday present. To date, I have done very little to mark her birthdays: no surprise diamonds, no cruises (thank god!), no large family gatherings. It’s just… Read more »
By Kangsen Feka Wakai
T.M. leads the walk towards his new apartment at the end of the hallway on the first floor of his new home. Fidgeting with the keys, he struggles to fit the key into the lock. He shakes his sweaty head, smiles nervously, and wiggles the key again. Maybe he is overwhelmed by the enormity of… Read more »
By Nadia Ghent
By Nadia Ghent I’ve always done my work at the kitchen table, an oversized, blonde, oak pedestal table that was one of the first pieces of “grown-up” furniture my husband and I bought for our new house almost thirty years ago. The gouge marks are still there from our two cross-country moves, New York City… Read more »
By Eduardo Mendieta
In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle provided us one of the most important definitions of what it means to be human, namely that we are “zoon politikon” –that we are political animals. Aristotle added some nuance to this definition when, in his Politics, he said that humans, in addition to being political animals, are also “zoon echon… Read more »
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