Kelle Groom’s: How to Live: A Memoir-in-Essays

Congratulations to SR Contributor Kelle Groom on her forthcoming book, How to Live: A Memoir-in-Essays. 

The book has already earned strong praise from established voices. Read some of the reviews:

“Kelle Groom is a navigator of the soul’s voyage, from mooring to mooring, no matter the tumultuous seas. She is a writer of deepest heart and purest eye, who seizes you and takes you where she wanders. How to Live is one of the most beautiful books I know, a profound reckoning.” — Susanna Sonnenberg, author of Her Last Death and She Matters: A Life in Friendships

“At its simplest, this is the story of a restless search for a place to be– a way to live– after a series of devastating events. But there’s nothing simple about it. Kelle Groom has created a marvel: a haunted, haunting, beautifully sustained dream of a book.” — Joan Wickersham, author of The Suicide Index and The News from Spain

“Is home the place you left, or the place you are now? This is a central question in this fiercely won, wildly original, and ultimately beautiful meditation. Kelle Groom is one of our most gifted writers, and this book is her Odyssey, which means we will end up back where we started, only changed. Along the way we will visit strange lands, we will come face-to-face with our fears, we will find ourselves among kind strangers, and we will understand why we are alive. This is a book which wrestles with our hardest, darkest questions, and comes out on the side of gratitude. ” — Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City and This is the Night Our House Will Catch Fire

“It’s really a book where the tissue between life and death feels very thin at times and Kelle Groom negotiates these mortal stations like a wandering medieval saint on residencies and short term teaching jobs who finds consolation, wisdom and suicidal despair in violet rain, flashes of feeling in the grasp of a hand, while the euphoria of love and eloquent scraps of knowledge keenly ornament this trail where being a bare faced reader is precisely enough. Kelle Groom writes with a relentless and avid consciousness and in this story there is a child and I think it her own becoming.” — Eileen Myles, author of Chelsea Girls and Afterglow

Kelle Groom is the author of the award-winning memoir I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl and four poetry collections. Groom’s honors include numerous fellowships and grants, and her works have received Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, Library Journal Best Memoir, Oprah O Magazine selection, and Oxford American Editor’s Pick. Her work has appeared in AGNI, American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, The New Yorker, New York Times, Ploughshares, and Poetry, among others.

Groom is a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow in Prose and Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Nonfiction. She was previously Distinguished Writer-in-Residence and Assistant Professor of Humanities at Sierra Nevada College, Lake Tahoe and formerly poetry editor of The Florida Review. She is now a nonfiction editor for AGNI Magazine and works as director of communications and foundation relations for Atlantic Center for the Arts. 

View four poems by Kelle Groom in issue 5 and “Dear Baby” in issue 13 of Superstition Review.

The book is available for preorder here. The book will be for sale from Tupelo Press starting October 1, 2023.

To learn more about Kelle Groom’s work, visit her website

Contributor Update: Kelle Groom

SpillToday we are excited to share that past contributor Kelle Groom has recently released her book Spill. The collection of poems has already received high praise from poet David Rivard, who says, “When I finished reading this urgent, restorative book, I wanted to turn to Kelle Groom — because it felt as if she were really there — and say, ‘Thank you for the honor of letting me stand inside this so-large heart while the world went on spinning in its unforgiving, totally forgivable way.'” Spill is available for purchase through Anhinga Press here.

Read four poems by Kelle Groom in Issue 5 of Superstition Review here.

Congratulations, Kelle!

Contributor Update: Kelle Groom

Cover art for Spill, the upcoming collection of poetry by Kelle GroomToday we have some exciting news from previous contributor Kelle Groom. Kelle’s new collection of poetry, Spill, is now available through her website here. The collection has already received some high praise on her website. Sophie Cabot Black says of the collection, “Kelle Groom’s newest book of poems tells it slant, as we are tipped into her world with a hand that seems both inconsolable and utterly aware.”

The book will be available October 10th through Anhinga Press. You can check out her powerful nonfiction piece “Dear Baby” in issue 13 of Superstition Review here.

Issue 5 Launch

Hello SR readers,

The team at Superstition Review is happy to announce that issue 5 is now online.


Art ImageOur art editors Lauren Brown and Gary Blair gathered work from 6 artists, including Edna Dapo, Nicki Reed, and Daniel Elson (pictured left).Born in northern Illinois, Daniel Elson has made props and animatronics for spook houses and theme parks, co-starred on a reality television series about torture for the History Channel, and sold the rights to his likeness to Cartoon Network. Former clients include Disney, Playboy, The Tonight Show, Rockstar Energy Drink and “Screech” from Saved by the Bell. He now exhibits “fine art” internationally and works for his alma mater, Columbus College of Art and Design. His paintings and sculptures can be found in the private collections of people like Kevin Smith, Pete Wentz, and Ashlee Simpson.

Click here to view the art in Issue 5.


Fiction ImageFiction editors Donald Weir and Ginna Rosi collected stories from 10 writers, including Sean Lovelace, Fletcher Cline, and Anthony Varallo (pictured left).Anthony Varallo’s short story collection, Out Loud, won the 2008 Drue Heinz Literature Prize (University of Pittsburgh Press). His first collection, This Day in History, won the 2005 John Simmons Short Fiction Award (University of Iowa Press). Varallo is the recipient of an NEA Fellowship in Literature, and his stories have appeared in Gettysburg Review, New England Review, Epoch, Shenandoah, Harvard Review, and elsewhere. He received his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa/Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and his PhD from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Currently he is assistant professor of English at the College of Charleston, where he is the fiction editor for Crazyhorse.

Click here to read the fiction in Issue 5.


Interviews ImageOur editors conducted interviews with seven authors, including Pam Houston, David St. John, and Nick Flynn (pictured left).Nick Flynn’s most recent book is The Ticking is the Bomb (Norton, 2010), a memoir of bewilderment and becoming a father, which Kirkus calls “. . . a stunningly beautiful cascade of images.” His previous memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City (Norton, 2004), won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award, was shortlisted for France’s Prix Femina, and has been translated into thirteen languages. He is also the author of two books of poetry, Some Ether (Graywolf, 2000), and Blind Huber (Graywolf, 2002), and a play, Alice Invents a Little Game and Alice Always Wins (Faber, 2008), for which he received fellowships from, among other organizations, The Guggenheim Foundation and The Library of Congress. Some of the venues his poems, essays and non-fiction have appeared in include The New Yorker, the Paris Review, National Public Radio’s This American Life, and The New York Times Book Review. His film credits include artistic collaborator and “field poet” on the film Darwin’s Nightmare, which was nominated for an Academy Award for best feature documentary in 2006. Each spring he teaches at the University of Houston, and he then spends the rest of the year in Brooklyn (and elsewhere).

Click here to read the interviews in Issue 5.


Nonfiction ImageNonfiction editors Britney Gulbrandsen and Kimberly Singleton gathered eight essays from authors such as Jerry Eckert, Susan Messer, and Marie Mockett (pictured left).

Marie was born in Carmel, California to a Japanese mother and American father. Her Japanese family owns a Zen Buddhist temple where she often played as a child, and which, among other things, performs exorcisms. In 2009, Marie attended the Bread Loaf Conference as a Bernard O’Keefe Scholar in Nonfiction. Marie’s essay “Letter from a Japanese Crematorium” was published in Agni 65, cited as distinguished in the 2008 Best American Essays, and anthologized in Creative Nonfiction 3, edited by Lee Gutkind. Marie’s debut novel, Picking Bones from Ash, was published by Graywolf Press on October 1st, 2009.

Click here to read the nonfiction in Issue 5.


Poetry ImagePoetry editors Haley Coles and Anthony Cuevas gathered poems from 17 poets, including Jesse Lee Kercheval, Marcia Golub, Simon Perchik, and Kelle Groom (pictured left).Kelle Groom’s poetry collections are Five Kingdoms (Anhinga Press, 2010), Luckily, winner of a Florida Book Award, and Underwater City (University Press of Florida, 2004). Her poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and Poetry and is forthcoming in Best American Poetry 2010. She has published nonfiction in Agni, Bloomsbury Review, Ploughshares, West Branch, and Witness, among others. Groom has been awarded fellowships and scholarships from Atlantic Center for the Arts, Millay Colony, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and a grant award from the State of Florida, Division of Cultural Affairs.

Click here to read the poetry in Issue 5.


Many thanks to all of the student interns, faculty advisors, and supporters who made this possible. I hope you enjoy the magazine.

Sincerely,

Patricia Colleen Murphy,
Managing Editor