Essay in THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 2018;
(cited in BAE 2015, 2016, 2020); PUSHCART poetry finalist

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Winter 2015

Editor’s Note:

So much good news to announce for SolLitMag: First, we welcome our terrific new Managing Editor and Blog Editor,  Amy Yelin. Amy is also a published author of fine nonfiction! And we announce our forthcoming (April, 2015) print anthology, Selections from Solstice, celebrating our first five years. And check for our forthcoming (2014) third eBook, Sadgirls, by Margaret Garcia. Also, we’ll have a booth at AWP 2015, monitor a panel on editors speak on diversity, and co-host a reception with Talking Writing and Juked.

Now to our Winter Issue: Here’s to an impressive diversity of styles in Fiction: Featuring acclaimed author Valerie Miner’s mysterious realistic piece. Moving into the magical realism of Laurie Foos, to the prose poetry of a lesbian encounter by Estela Gonzales, to the beautifully crafted realistic stories by Amrit Chima and Jerry Whitus, to the edgy postmodern realism of  Gary Percesepe, to the hardcore realism of  Sean Conway, and the quirky premise fiction of  Sean Gandert.

For Nonfiction we offer a range from the profound multi-media essay by Thomas Larson to Allen Gee’s deep-going metaphorical insights into deep-water fishing, to Debbie Merion’s in-depth look into anorexia.

Unending thanks to our devoted, creative editors Richard Hoffman, author of the acclaimed memoir Love & Fury, and to Ben Berman, poet and author of Strange Borderlands. (Order through our sidebar ads!) And with gratitude to Dzvinia Orlowsky for editing Poetry in Translation.  And thanks to DeWitt Henry for promoting two pieces in this issue. And to our devoted readers and staff.  Please Subscribe for free, follow us on Twitter, become a Facebook Friend.  Join our diverse, ever-growing community! We are promoting diversity in the arts!

Lee Hope, editor in chief

Ps. And order the new anthology, American Fiction, 2014, published by the distinguished New Rivers Press.

 

Poetry Editor’s Note:

I’m always fascinated by the process of how an issue comes together – begins to find a shape and form of its own. What happens, say, when John Blair’s poem, What Happens to the Future, suddenly finds it way next to Dwayne Martine’s, Artifact. Or what it’s like to read Len Krisak’s piece about a scarecrow festival in St. Charles, Illinois, juxtaposed next to Hedy Habra’s poem about protests in Gezi Park. Or what it means to consider Jacob Strautmann’s The Land of the Dead is Open for Business beside Geraldine Zetzel’s Survivor. And it seems fitting as we approach the winter solstice that the issue begins with the line: So, I have lost you, in a poem called Autumn, by Tran Nhuong, translated by Bruce Weigl and Nguyen Ba Chung and ends with this note from Geraldine Zetzel: Cold, let him not know/that I am to be your bride.

Ben Berman

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editors' Notes

  • EDITOR’S NOTE
    by Lee Hope
  • w
    Poetry Editor’s Note
    by Ben Berman

Fiction

  • ESCAPE ARTIST
    by Valerie Miner
  • The Secret Eater
    by Laurie Foos
  • Maga
    by Estela González
  • A Psalm
    by Jerry Whitus
  • Gabrielle
    by Gary Percesepe
  • ON THE BLACK SEA, WE FLOAT
    by Amrit Chima
  • Pass/Fail
    by Sean Conway
  • Rehabilitation Wing
    by Sean Gandert

Nonfiction

  • This Shining Night
    by Thomas Larson
  • By 2042
    by Allen Gee
  • Ess, Ess, Mein Kihnd
    by Debbie Merion

Photography

  • Corn Dogs, Blue Ribbons, and the American Pastoral
    by Meg Birnbaum

Poetry

  • Five Poems
    by Tran Nhuong and Nguyen Ba Chung
  • What Happens to the Future
    by John Blair
  • Artifact
    by Dwayne Martine
  • TATTOO
    by Denise Bergman
  • THE SALE
    by Sanjeev Sethi
  • ST. CHARLES SCARECROW FEST
    by Len Krisak
  • Gezi Park, 2013
    by Hedy Habra
  • The Land of the Dead Is Open for Business
    by Jacob Strautmann
  • Survivor
    by Geraldine Zetzel


Contributors

Avatar photoAlan Davis
Avatar photoAndrea Vassallo
Avatar photoBrett Riley
Avatar photoChristopher J. Calhoun
Avatar photoDonna Gordon
Avatar photoEstela González
Avatar photoGenia Blum
Avatar photoGeorge Drew
Avatar photoJ.D. Scrimgeour
Avatar photoJenifer DeBellis
Avatar photoJose Trejo-Maya
Avatar photoKarl Krolow
Avatar photoKate Tempest
Kathleen AgueroKathleen Aguero
Avatar photoKim McLarin
Avatar photoKuno Raeber
Avatar photoLinda Buckmaster
Avatar photoLou Jones
Avatar photoMeena Alexander
Avatar photoPenny Dickerson
Avatar photoRandall Horton
Regie Gibson,Regie O’Hare Gibson
Richard HoffmanRichard Hoffman
Avatar photoRichard Wile
Avatar photoSarah Colwill-Brown
Avatar photoShane Koyczan
Avatar photoSheryl White
Avatar photoTom Whalen
Avatar photoTomas Nieto
Avatar photoWendy Mnookin
Avatar photoWilliam Petersen
Avatar photoZilka Joseph

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