The Online Literary Magazine at Arizona State University
Features and news about other literary organizations, artists, authors, and poets.
Equatorial is a literary magazine dedicated to publishing talented undergraduate poets. Its founding editor, Benjamin Faro, is pursuing his MFA in Poetry at Queens University of Charlotte.
Issue One of Equatorial featured five outstanding students and focused on themes of exploration. Submissions for Issue Two of Equatorial will be open until November 30, 2022. Read Equatorial‘s guidelines and submit here!
The Narrative Storytelling Initiative‘s goal is to enhance access and public engagement with narrators and narratives. They are currently looking for messages written to Mother Earth in the future, with a maximum of 100 words. These messages will be included in a special exhibition piece at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory during the last two weeks of October.
Learn more and submit your message here!
Alice Kaltman’s short story collection Almost Deadly, Almost Good will be released this November, published by the Word West Press. Kaltman’s book features fourteen interlinked short stories: the first embody the seven deadly sins, the last the seven heavenly virtues. With rich, reoccurring characters and compelling plots, Kaltman creates a collection that’s impossible to put down.
Kaltman’s opening story “Sunset Lounge (Lust)” follows a woman pining after her daughter’s attractive older boyfriend. In an unexpected but riveting twist, we discover tantalizing details about the boyfriend in “A Fancy Job (Gluttony),” and the ultimate conclusion comes in “Knickers in a Twist (Charity).” Just as the stories are linked, Almost Deadly, Almost Good links good and bad, with a special attention to gender and class.
Story after brilliantly written story, we’re shown our own fears, our own foibles, our own forbidden desires, and tenderest heartaches. These are stories of human beings under pressure, at their most “changeable” moments, and we readers can’t look away. Nor do we want to. With candor, wisdom, and humor, almost deadly, almost good reminds us to be good to ourselves and to each other for we are all at once, beautiful and aching and ridiculous.
Kathy Fish, Author of Wildlife: Collected Works from 2003-2018
Alice Kaltman is the author of Staggerwing, Dawg Towne, Wavehouse, and The Tantalizing Tale of Grace Minnaugh. To learn more about Kaltman, visit her website.
To preorder Almost Deadly, Almost Good, go here.
We’re also very excited to share an interview that dives deeper into Kaltman’s collection. This interview was conducted via email by our Blog Editor, Brennie Shoup.
Brennie Shoup: Could you discuss your inspirations for Almost Deadly, Almost Good?
Alice Kaltman: The original idea for a linked collection occurred to me after I wrote the first story in the book, Sunset Lounge. It was so clearly a story about LUST that it got me thinking how fun it would be to create a chapbook based on the Seven Deadly Sins. I already had a few stories and characters that fit the bill for other Sins: Greedy Senator Levinson from Into the Woods, poor languorous Cecil from Cecil’s New Friends, envious Greta from Come On Over to My Place. Once I’d finished the other sinful stories, I fiddled with content to link them. Characters appear deeply in the plots of other stories, or sometimes they just pass by. So much fun!
BS: This collection is full of humor. Could you discuss this humor and how you balanced it with more serious themes?
AK: I’ve always felt that pathos is more tolerable if it can be softened with humor. That’s not always the case, and there are writers out there who do gut-punching stuff that I love, that make me weep. Sometimes tragedy needs to stand on its own broken, bloody legs. But in my own writing, I veer towards the humorous. It makes it feel more human and authentic to my vision of people and the crazy misguided things they do. I’ve been a psychotherapist for over 30 years. If you can’t laugh, you’ll sink. Need I say more?
BS: Despite its title and theme, most of the stories in this collection don’t appear to be explicitly religious. What made you choose the motif of the seven deadly sins and seven heavenly virtues?
AK: I can’t recall who it was, but I mentioned this project to someone along the way and they said, “Hey, why don’t you do the Heavenly Virtues also?” I had no idea what the Seven Heavenly Virtues were. I’m an agnostic Jew, who veers towards the areligious. And Jews don’t really ‘do’ sins and virtues. But I looked the Virtues up and …goldmine. I fiddled with new content and old content, pulled some sections from my novel Dawg Towne, added some new stories and revisited old ones. It was super fun to change POVs, add links that weren’t there before, change timelines, etc. Plagiarizing one’s own work is one of a writer’s deepest pleasures. Or at least one of mine.
Congratulations to Su Cho for her debut poetry collection The Symmetry of Fish, published by Penguin Books. Winner of the National Poetry Series, Cho’s collection explores immigration, family, and language. At the heart of the collection is a coming-of-age narrative, and Cho offers insights about how language changes and condenses over generations, not diluted but distilled.
Each year, the National Poetry Series chooses five poetry manuscripts to publish, with the goal of increasing the number of poetry collections published and available. Paige Lewis, author of Space Struck, chose Su Cho’s manuscript for publication.
In her debut collection, The Symmetry of Fish, Su Cho presents us with a speaker who attempts to separate seemingly unlike things: the religious and flippant, the fishbone from the flesh, herself from her memories. In one poem Cho writes of a desire ‘to isolate these moments / pipette them into test tubes / whirl them in a centrifuge.’ Lucky for us, this turns out to be an impossible endeavor. Instead, we are graced with a glorious combination of the incompatible…
Paige lewis, author of Space Struck
Su Cho’s essay “Cleaving Translation” won the 2019 Wabash Prize in Nonfiction. She was a finalist for the 2019 Black Warrior Review Nonfiction Contest and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. To learn more about her, visit her website.
This poetry is quite marvelous. All hits no skips. I was incredibly moved by these poems about family and immigration and the relationship we have to languages. I particularly loved the poem about translating for parents. I look forward to more from Su Cho.
Roxane gay, author of Hunger
The Symmetry of Fish will be available October 11, 2022. To preorder the collection, go here.
Four Palaces Publishing is currently open to submissions for their fiction anthology contest. They are searching for short stories between 2,000 and 6,000 words long. They will also accept up to three flash fiction pieces. The theme of their anthology is “Desire to Escape.” The author of the winning story will receive $1,000 and a mentorship from guest judge Ivelisse Rodriguez, whose short story collection Love War Stories was a 2019 PEN/Faulkner finalist and a 2018 Foreword Reviews INDIES finalist.
Founded in 2021, Four Palaces’ goal is to promote and publish works by previously unpublished writers from underrepresented communities.
Frederick Tran is the executive director and publisher of Four Palaces. Emily Townsend is the managing editor, and her nonfiction piece “Consider the Honeybee” appeared in Issue 19 of Superstition Review.
Submissions close August 31, 2022! Go here to submit your story.
Equatorial Literary Magazine is launching its inaugural issue and is seeking poetry, art, and fiction submissions from undergraduates around the world. This magazine values artistic self-expression and appreciates the many different approaches to storytelling and the unique ways people see the world. If you want an opportunity to raise your voice and express yourself in ways you never have before, go ahead and submit!
The submission period for this Spring issue is from April 1st to May 31st.
To see the specific guidelines for each category, check out their submissions page. For fiction, submit short stories between five to fifteen pages; for poetry, submit up to five poems; and for art, submit up to five images. Once everything is good to go, simply send your submission to equatorial.mag@gmail.com.
Happy submitting!
Manifest/o, a new journal for Arizona artists, is accepting art submissions to publish in its prototype issue that will launch May 2022.
All Arizona-based artists are encouraged to submit creative nonfiction, digital media, drawing, fiction, paintings, photography, poetry, prose, and any other art that can be displayed in a digital format to capture the theme “Arizona Art in the Moment.”
Visit the Manifest/o website for more information on literary and visual submission requirements.
The submission period ends on Thursday, March 31. Send all submissions and questions to manifestoartaz@gmail.com.
Calling all local writers! The Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture is looking for a practicing writer to develop creative writing lesson plans, activities, and other resources for sixth-grade students at Title I schools in Deer Valley Unified School District. The focus is on narrative writing. The stipend is $3,500 to $4,000. The commitment is 8 hours a week from March 1 to May 15, 2022, with at least one day of in-person instruction. While some teaching or educational experience is required, writers of all backgrounds and experience levels are encouraged to apply. The deadline to apply is February 20, 2022. To learn more, you can read the full guidelines, download the call, and submit your application at http://bit.ly/POACLAPS.
It’s time for the 8th annual Tempe Writing Contest & Cover Design Contest sponsored by Tempe Public Library, Arizona State University, and The Friends of the Tempe Public Library. The submissions are open now until February 14.
Who can enter? The contest is open to High School students, College students, and adults in the Phoenix area.
What are the submission guidelines?
Poetry – a poem up to 100 lines
Fiction – a short story up to 3500 words
Creative Nonfiction – a work of creative nonfiction up to 3500 words (including essay, memoir, and literary journalism?
Learn more about eligibility, submission guidelines, and cover design specifications on the Tempe Writing Contest website. Winners will be announced on March 12 and the winning entries will be published in print and online on the Tempe Public Library website.
You can submit here. Happy writing!
SR is excited to have recently hosted past contributor Martha Silano as a guest lecturer! In the lecture, Martha discusses her background in poetry as both a poet and poetry editor, including how she chooses poems as an editor. She provides insightful guidance on how to curate poems for a magazine and how to approach selecting poems for a magazine. If you’re a poetry editor looking for advice, be sure to watch the video below.
View the lecture here:
Check out Martha’s work in Issue 27 and visit her website to learn all about her work and upcoming workshops. Keep up with Martha on Twitter and Instagram. Thank you so much for your time, Martha!