Natalie Young’s All of This Was Once Under Water

Natalie Padilla Young

Congratulations to Natalie Young for the release of her first book, titled All of This Was Once Under Water, published by Quarter Press. The collection is “part of a manuscript that mixes factual scenery and history with speculative fiction, in order to explore peculiarities in human nature, culture, identity, and environment.”

The book’s cover art and illustration were done by Maximiliane Spieß. Maxi is from western Germany where she works as an illustrator and writes novels in her free time. The Limited Edition hardcover book includes 8+ illustrations by Maxi in offset printing on matte pages. The book is printed in full color and comes with a blue vellum dust jacket.

All of This Was Once Under Water by Natalie Padilla Young (Published by Quarter Press)

The book has received many reviews regarding the beautiful narrative it establishes and the themes it is able to intertwine across each poem. Read them below:

All of This Was Once Under Water is entrancing, beguiling, disquieting—a collection of poetic dispatches from a terrain of lost faith and ecological decline. A genderless alien from another world, a philosophical monster residing in the Great Salt Lake, and a human “She” with a long-buried trauma: these are just some of the dramatis personae in this compendious collection that make the familiar strange again. Interspersed fragments of history about the birth of the Mormon Church comment ironically on our current state. The tone isn’t elegiac. There is hope in these searching poems, in their sensuous encounter with nature—not to mention a love affair between alien and human. The wondrous attention, the wry melancholy, and the sly humor of these poems will allow readers to glimpse their own lives with new eyes.” —Dan O’Brien.

“In All of This Was Once Under Water, Natalie Padilla Young conjures a physical and metaphysical universe in which the history of the Great Salt Lake and the struggles of her Mormon ancestors intertwine. Narratives of suffering, phantasmagorical legend, environmental threat, science, faith, love, and gender fluidity unspool in language as pristine and biting as salt. A great imagination is at work in these poems as Young probes the enmeshed lives of an alien, a lone human She, and a mythic monster in startling diction and syntax and haunting imagery.”  – Teresa Cader, History of Hurricanes, The Paper Wasp, Guests.

Natalie Young is a founding and managing editor of Sugar House Review, a poetry magazine. She also works as an art director for an ad agency based in Salt Lake City. Her poems from this series have been published in Green Mountains Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Rattle, South Dakota Review, Terrain.org, Drunken Boat, Pilgrimage, and elsewhere.

View her poem “Notes on Earth Life” in issue 18 of Superstition Review.

The limited edition is currently in preorder. Only 250 copies have been printed. Order yours today here.

SR Pod/Vod Series: Writer William Cordeiro

WillIam CordeiroEach Tuesday we feature audio or video of an SR Contributor reading their work. Today we’re proud to feature a podcast by William Cordeiro.

Will recently completed his MFA and Ph.D. from Cornell University. His work appears or is forthcoming in Copper Nickel, Cortland Review, Crab Orchard Review, CutBank Online, Drunken Boat, Fiction Southeast, Fourteen Hills, Harpur Palate, Phoebe, and elsewhere. He is grateful for residencies from ART 342, Blue Mountain Center, Ora Lerman Trust, Petrified Forest National Park, and Risley AIR at Cornell University. He lives in Flagstaff, Arizona, where he is a faculty member in the Honors Program at Northern Arizona University. 

You can listen to the podcast on our iTunes Channel.

You can read along with the work in Superstition Review.

 

SR Pod/Vod Series: Writer Svetlana Lavochkina

Each Tuesday we feature audio or video of an SR Contributor reading their work. Today we’re proud to feature a podcast by Svetlana Lavochkina.

svetlanalavochkinaSvetlana Lavochkina is a writer of fiction and translator of poetry. Her novella Dam Duchess was chosen runner-up for the 2013 Paris Literary Prize. Born and educated in Ukraine, Svetlana currently resides in Germany with her husband and two sons. Her work has been published in Circumference, Witness, Cerise Press, Drunken Boat, Eclectica, Mad Hatters’ Review, The Literary Review, and Chamber Four Fiction Anthology. Svetlana is co-founder and president of Leipzig Writers, a non-profit organization supporting literary projects.

You can listen to the podcast on our iTunes Channel.

You can read along with the work in Superstition Review.

Drunken Boat Accepting Submissions for Inaugural Book Contest in Poetry

Drunken BoatDrunken Boat will accept submissions until June 25, 2014 for its inaugural book contest in poetry, including hybrid, multi-authored, and translated manuscripts. Forrest Gander will select the contest winner. The winning poet will receive publication, $500, 20 author copies, a debut reading at AWP and ads in both print and online sources. Drunken Boat books are distributed by SPD.

Excerpts from finalist manuscripts will be published in a special Drunken Boat folio issue. The contest is open to all writers, including those who have already published books of poems, but the manuscript as a whole must be previously unpublished. The journal respectfully requests that colleagues, current students, recent students, and close friends of Forrest Gander refrain from submitting, as these manuscripts are ineligible. Also, current Drunken Boat staff members and interns may not submit to the contest.

The reading fee is $25; for an additional $3 to cover shipping costs, contest entrants can opt to receive a copy of the winning book or any Drunken Boat book. The contest winner will be announced via email newsletter and website in September 2014. The winning book will be published in April 2015.

Manuscripts between 30 and 120 pages should be submitted, along with a table of contents and cover page with the manuscript title only. If applicable, include an acknowledgements page of previous publications. Don’t include any identifying information in your submission.

Simultaneous submissions are acceptable, but please let Drunken Boat know if a submitted manuscript is accepted elsewhere. Poets who are unable to pay the reading fee can contact Drunken Boat at editor@drunkenboat.com to inquire about options.

Drunken Boat endorses and abides by the Code of Ethics developed by the Council of Literary Magazines and Press (CLMP). Drunken Boat is fully committed to fairness, believes that contest procedures should be transparent. If you have questions about our policies or practices, please do not hesitate to inquire by email.

To submit: https://drunkenboat.submittable.com/submit

 

 

SR Pod/Vod Series: Poet Suzanne Marie Hopcroft

Each Tuesday we feature audio or video of an SR Contributor reading their work. Today we’re proud to feature a podcast by Suzanne Marie Hopcroft.


Suzanne HopcroftSuzanne Marie Hopcroft’s poetry is forthcoming or has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Drunken Boat, The Carolina Quarterly, The Southern Humanities Review, and Valparaiso Poetry Review.  Suzanne is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at Yale University and will begin her MFA in poetry at The University of California, Irvine in the fall.

 

To learn more about Suzanne, you can visit her website.

You can read along with her poetry in Issue 9 of Superstition Review.

To subscribe to our iTunes U channel, go to http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/superstition-review-online/id552593273

SR Pod/Vod Series: Poet Nicholas YB Wong

Each Tuesday we feature audio or video of an SR Contributor reading their work. Today we’re proud to feature a vodcast by Nicholas YB Wong.

Nicholas WongNicholas YB Wong received his MFA at the City University of Hong Kong and is the author of Cities of Sameness. He is a finalist of New Letters Poetry Award and a semi-finalist of the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. He is on the editorial board ofDrunken Boat and Mead: Magazine of Literature and Libations. Corgis are his favorite human breed.

To learn more about Nicholas, visit his website.

 

You can read along with his poems in Issue 10 of Superstition Review.

To subscribe to our iTunes U channel, go to http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/superstition-review-online/id552593273