Darkness follows us.
Car tires sneak
through these streets.
Above, headlights
smile and rumble
in on-coming traffic.
Below we keep our lives
hidden like graves.
We shoot out the sun
and day vanishes
into concrete as we
listen to the apostrophes
of tired blind men
click their canes
down unnumbered
alleys. The dust
under this bridge
never settles.
We look
into the muddy sky
where the gray light
of night pulls us
away. Always
the traffic to remind
us we breathe.
Tatiana Johnson-Boria (she/her) is the author of Nocturne in Joy (2023), winner of the 2024 Julia Ward Howe Book Prize in Poetry. As a trauma-informed educator, artist, facilitator, and mother; she uses her writing practice to dismantle racism, reckon with trauma, cultivate healing, and to explore the complex magic of mothering. She has received fellowships and awards from Tin House (now the McCormack Writing Center), the Massachusetts Cultural Council, MacDowell, the Brother Thomas Fellowship, and St. Botolph Club Foundation, among others. Tatiana is a 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee, teaches at GrubStreet, and has been on faculty at Emerson College, among other institutions. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Academy of American Poets, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, and more. She is represented by Lauren Scovel at Laura Gross Literary.
Monica Jimenez is the senior culture & trends editor for Tufts University news and features and assistant editor of Tufts Magazine, and a community ed acting and playwriting instructor. Her work has appeared in publications including Ruminate Magazine and the Mini Plays Review, and her plays have been produced in festivals including the Boston Theater Marathon, Boston Slam Theater, and Short ’N Sweet Hollywood. She is a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing program and former co-editor-in-chief, fiction editor, and designer of the Stonecoast Review. She was an honorable mention for Ruminate Magazine’s William Van Dyke Short Story Prize and winner of the flash fiction contest at the Boskone sci-fi and fantasy convention.
Dear Readers,
I am so excited to be able to present this issue as Solstice’s new Editor-in-Chief. I started at Solstice earlier this year as Treasurer, and I have been so impressed by this generous and talented community and Solstice’s commitment to publishing underserved writers and writers on the margins.
This issue features the winners and finalists of our annual Summer Writing Contest, chosen by our amazing guest judges, Jessica Treadway (fiction), Porsha Olayiwola (poetry), Sven Birkerts (nonfiction), and John Vasquez Mejias (graphic literature), as well wonderful pieces selected by our editors, poetry in translations, reviews, interviews, photographs, and more.
The winning fiction piece, “Say It Right” by Michael Kane, is in the voice of a narrator whose brother’s storytelling acumen begins to overtake the reality: “Long before death gave him a microphone, he had learned how to stand at the center of a room and let everyone else orbit.”
The winning poem, “eulogy through an unposted Instagram statement” by E’mon Lauren, is full of dynamic turns and frank emotion: “i’m always ahead of time and often feel unappreciated. how many poets wings have i opened?”
The winning nonfiction piece, “A Rarely Sung Song” by Catherine Mauk, begins with the author realizing she is a year old than she thought, and continues on through the complexities of a being a woman aging: “When the man handed me my new driver’s license, I slipped it into my wallet without looking at the picture―sure I would see my own grandmother looking back at me―and walked quickly through the maze of reception chairs into the autumn sun.”
The winning piece in graphic lit, “Sans Peur” by Andi Spark, tells the story of the family motto in a piece filled with both nostalgia and darkness: “I was forbidden to go into Dad’s shed without him. It was a treasure trove of useful stuff, unusual stuff, mysterious stuff, and dangerous things.”
I hope you enjoy these and all the other varied voices you’ll find in this issue. And please share and help us spread the word on these great writers and artists! We also invite you to sign up for our newsletter and keep up with us on social media (Facebook, Instagram) as we move into the Fall season.
Our regular reading period opens September 1st. In the meantime, please consider donating to help us continue bringing such amazing work into the world. Any amount is appreciated and helps us fulfill our mission to promote diverse voices.
Thank you for your support!
With gratitude,
M.P. Carver
NOTE FROM THE SOLSTICE BOARD:
We wish to share our deep enthusiasm in welcoming M.P. Carver as our Editor-in-Chief. The Solstice staff believes she has the expertise and vision to lead us forward as Solstice continues its outreach to marginalized and to emerging and established writers. M.P. is a gifted published poet and also a highly experienced arts administrator; for example, she serves as director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival. She will bring her energy and charisma to our community.
The Board sends its appreciation to Karen Sherk Chio, who, as EIC, influenced our future plans. We wish her well with her future and well-earned professional success.
We also wish to thank the Weinberg Family Fund for its generous donation to The Solstice Institute which will be a new program of workshops, mentorships and seminars for writers at different stages in their careers. The Weinberg family donation also will be used for other programming and will bring a lasting benefit to Solstice Literary Magazine.
The Solstice Board: Lee Hope, William Betcher, Drai Whitted, Eric Charles May, David Weinberg, and M.P. Carver
