The Online Literary Magazine at Arizona State University
Each Tuesday we feature audio or video of an SR Contributor reading their work. Today we’re proud to feature a podcast by Lilah Hegnauer.
Lilah Hegnauer is the author of Dark Under Kignada Stars (Ausable Press 2005). She teaches in the English Department at James Madison University.
You can read along with her poems in Issue 8 of Superstition Review.
To subscribe to our iTunes U channel, go to http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/superstition-review-online/id552593273
In Spaces and Other Places is a recent body of work by Michael Velliquette that marks a new trajectory in his practice, combining his mixed-media drawings with his complex cut paper constructions. Velliquette revisits the vocabulary of symbols and images found in his earlier works, including double-sided profiles, hands, and collectives of faceless figures, which he’s previously set in mythological, scenic narratives. Themes of exploration, alien encounter and transformation are played out in the backdrop of outer space.
Thursday, October 25
Morgan Lehman Gallery
The Study Project Space
535 W. 22nd St.
New York, NY 10011
www.morganlehmangallery.com
More information about the exhibit can be viewed here.
You can view more of Velliquette’s artwork in Issue 8 of Superstition Review.
Each Tuesday we feature audio or video of an SR Contributor reading their work. Today we’re proud to feature this podcast by Lucinda Roy.
Lucinda Roy’s publications include the poetry collections The Humming Birds (winner of the Eighth Mountain Poetry Prize), and Wailing the Dead to Sleep; the novels Lady Moses and The Hotel Alleluia; and a memoir-critique, No Right to Remain Silent: What We’ve Learned from the Tragedy at Virginia Tech. Her work has appeared recently or is forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Blackbird, Callaloo, Measure, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, River Styx, and USA Today. She is an Alumni Distinguished Professor in English at Virginia Tech, where she teaches fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry in the MFA program.
You can read along with her poems in Issue 8 of Superstition Review.
To subscribe to our iTunes U channel, go to http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/superstition-review-online/id552593273
My name is Corinne Randall and I am a Creative Writing (poetry concentration) major and Communication minor. This is my third semester working as an editor at Superstition Review. In the past, I worked as a poetry editor and I not only enjoyed the experience immensely, I grew from it as well. I learned about what it means to be an editor for a literary magazine and that is knowledge I will take with my throughout the rest of my career. I am now a nonfiction editor and am enjoying the different type of content I get to read every week.
Some of my favorite pieces of literature are William Shakespeare’s plays. I have always found them very interesting and I have taken a few classes on the subject. In addition, I enjoy reading books of poetry not only for my own personal enjoyment, but to further increase my writing skills within the genre. I have a goal to one day publish a book of poetry and I believe the best way to do so is to learn from those who have already done so.
Since this is my final semester here at ASU, I am thinking about what to do with my future after I graduate in December. As of now, pursuing an MA in Literature seems to be my main focus, with hopes to eventually teach writing or literature classes.
I look forward to Issue 10 of SR and I am honored to be a part of the process.
Karen Skolfield (Superstition Review fall 2011 contributor) has won the First Book Award for Poetry from Zone 3 Press, with Nancy Eimers as the final judge. Skolfield’s manuscript Frost in the Low Areas will be published fall 2013. To find out more about Skolfied, visit her online at http://www.karenskolfield.blogspot.com/
The book will contain the poem published in Issue 8 of Superstition Review.
Each week we feature one of our many talented interns here at Superstition Review.
Winona Manrique, Social Networking intern at Superstition Review, is a graduating senior at ASU. Having worked on Issue 8 of Superstition Review as Content Coordinator, she came on board for a second semester with the magazine to learn even more about the process of publishing.
Winona writes fiction as a hobby, which is how she first came to be interested in the publishing world. She has participated in NaNoWriMo four times in the last two years (twice in summer) with a 50% success rate. The writing community in the East Valley has allowed her tremendous opportunities both as a writer and a reader. She won the Glendon and Kathryn Swarthout Award for fiction with her first ever short story.
Born in New England, Winona has moved more times than she cares to count. She studied abroad in England and fell in love with Stonehenge, Beowulf, and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. She is currently applying to postgraduate programs in the United Kingdom to study Medieval History, something her English Literature major has allowed her a unique opportunity to specialize in.
When it comes to maintaining websites, knowing who is on the other end is a useful tool. Google Analytics provides us up to date information on who is visiting, where they’re coming from, where they’re going, and what they’re using to get there.
Thank you to our returning visitors and we’d like to welcome our new readers. We invite you to browse our blog and our archives of past issues. Come back and join us for the launch of Issue 9 April 1st.
If you are in Milwaukee, take time to stop by Rafael Francisco Salas’ new exhibit, Lucid Dreams.
Salas describes his inspiration for the new exhibit as an exploration of “the intersection of portraiture, representation, landscape, and architecture.” He feels that “historically these traditions elicit specific contextual and also visceral responses from viewers, and in combining or exploring them in oblique ways, new responses might arise.”
Lucid Dreams builds on Salas’ past work, which was created from an “emotional or atmospheric place […] that evoked a sense of dreams or nostalgia.” Salas worked to discover how adding new elements to his paintings would change how others reflect on them. Drawing from ideas and elements seen in small towns of the Midwest (Salas’s current home), Salas felt that “our current economic climate and position in the world has created an emotional [and] psychological key that complements themes I have previously explored.”
Presented by Portrait Society Gallery, you can see Rafael Francisco Salas’ newest creations January 20 through March 10, 2012. You can see more of Salas’ artwork in Issue 8.
Issue 8 of Superstition Review is packed with talented artists and writers. Here are a few highlights:
Art
New England artist Paul Chojnowski creates vivid images not with pencil or paint, but with fire. His “fire drawings” are detailed images made by burning, scorching and sanding the surface of paper or wood. Take a look at “After the Deluge” to see how Chojnowski burned and scorched a piece of maple veneer into a beautiful image.
Ready to let your imagination go to work? Check out the work of Rafael Francisco Salas. Salas’ bio states that he uses “landscape along with narrative and symbolic elements [to] create artworks that investigate the nature of nostalgia, memory and dreams.” In Untitled (Funeral), we see a funeral scene, but the casket is obscured by . . . something. This is where your imagination comes in. What does your brain interpret the something to be—a ghost, a dream, a memory?
Fiction
How’s this for a first sentence – “My son was born under the carob tree, and all three fathers were there to greet him.” Three fathers? You’re interested, aren’t you? Read Eric Maroney’s “Grow, Grow” and you will not only learn how this first sentence is possible, you’ll realize this is a beautiful story of hope.
If all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players, then we’re all stars of our own reality show or prime time TV drama. Eugenio Volpe explores this theme in his short story “Low Lives.”
Interviews
A peek into a writer’s brain can be just as entertaining and enlightening as reading their work. SR interviewed many fascinating writers this fall, including Darrin Doyle and Madison Smartt Bell.
In his interview, Doyle discusses how he creates the vivid images in his stories and talks about the difference between writing a short story and a novel (teaser – it has something to do with pregnancy).
Bell shares where he gets his inspiration (daemons: just read the interview) and what he is currently working on; a biography of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, first Emperor of Haiti, a romance, and a story about zombies. Real ones, though, not the movie kind.
Nonfiction
“Walking Sophie” is about kinderwagons, pollution, and Winston Churchill. How do these all fit together? Follow James Valvis on his daily trek with his infant daughter to the mailbox and the park and even further through the many emotions of rejection, endurance and what it means to be a father.
“I’ve never seen the top of my head.” How would you respond to the statement? Patrick Madden muses over this pronouncement from his daughter and other subjects in his set of essays “Contradiction: Poetry,” “Contradiction: Insanity,” and “Contradiction: Memory.”
Poetry
Ever lose part of a savannah? Misplaced a volcano? Read Karen Skolfield’s “Lost Mountain” to see if maybe you have.
“I Sit in on a Special Education Lesson” by Yu Shibuya shows how poetry can take an everyday occurrence and find the complexity of emotions that exist under the surface. Read this poem. You will not be disappointed.
Nor will you be disappointed with any of our other talented contributors to Superstition Review Issue 8. Now, go—look, read, repeat.
