Fall/Winter 2013

Editor’s Note

This issue of Solsticelitmag is one of our best ever and embodies our commitment to diversity. First, our cover photograph by world-famous photographer Eli Reed, as well as the other eight pieces in his Mozambique series, depict his dedication to human rights. And in promoting human rights, please read in fiction: Nahid Rachlin’s haunting piece “Eye Clinic;” Kim McLarin’s stirring story of an African American mother and daughter on a job search; Lew McCreary’s amazing narrative of a Chinese woman running an orphanage, Richard Perry’s sensitive telling of a black father dying of Alzheimer’s; Thrity Umrigar’s passionate monologue against discrimination; an experimental work by Mardith Louisell: a premise piece by Dar Thomas, and two startling, disparate stories of illness versus romance, one by Bruce Pratt and the other by Erika Sanders.

And in nonfiction, we offer a provocative view of our world in Jabari Asim’s powerful, controversial essay about African American fathers and sons; William B. Patrick’s spiritual journey to a remote island in Fiji, and Lisa’s Hennessey’s account of a dark sexual coming-of age.

Please do click on Contributors for the bios of these vital authors.

And click on Staff to get to know our marvelous 22 dedicated volunteer writers, including our new staff members: Dzvinia Orlowsky, as visiting c0-editor of this issue, and also as our new Editor of Poetry in Translation. And we welcome as our new co-poetry editor Ben Berman, a constant amid flux. Also, welcome to our new video Editor for Performance Poetry, Regie Gibson. And welcome to our new Contributing Fiction/Nonfiction Editor, DeWitt Henry.

And thanks again to Susan Cassidy for her copyediting prowess and creative editorial assistance.

Solstice lit mag continues to grow: In early 2014, we will begin publishing e-books; and we offer the new Kurt Brown Memorial Fellowship in honor of our former poetry editor, for an aspiring MFA student in creative writing. Please see Fellowship.

Solsticelitmag promotes its writers, advertises their books and does occasional book reviews and interviews. We are an ever-growing community of writers and photographers who connect long after publication! Consider clicking Donate to support our worthy cause of promoting diversity in the arts, funded solely by your donations.

Warmly, Lee Hope, editor-in-chief

Poetry Editors’ Note

Selecting the outstanding poems for this issue, we continue to be moved across boundaries to revelations marked by an absolute and evident love of language. From Rae Paris’s shadowed “The Hanging Tree” to Vasyl Makhno’s impassioned “Returning to Granada,” from Tatiana Olga Rodeiro’s soulful “In the House of February” to the grit and grace of Ross Gay’s “Burial”—the poems in this issue push our understanding to places whose only cartography is designed by intimate, often startling, human experience.

Kurt Brown would have loved these poems. And you will too.

Dzvinia Orlowsky and Ben Berman