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
M.P. Carver is a poet and visual artist from Salem, MA. She is Director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, miCrO-Founder of Molecule: a tiny lit mag, and teaches at Salem State University. Her work has been published in Rattle, Mantis, and Nixes Mate, among others. She has received funding or fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Essex Community Foundation, the T.S. Eliot Foundation, and Disquiet International. In 2022 her poem “You & God & I” was awarded the New England Poetry Club’s E.E. Cummings Prize. Her chapbook, Selachipmorpha, was published by Incessant Pipe in 2015, and a chapbook with Lily Poetry Review Books, Hard Up, is available now.
More at mpcarver.com.
