Tell Your Story, with Louise Nayer, a Two Part Zoom Class

Join Superstition Review in attending Tell Your Story, With Louise Nayer, a two part class on April 10th and April 17th that will be held over Zoom, and taught by five time published writer and winner of six California Arts Council grants, Louise Nayer.

This class will explore the elements of memoir writing, looking at how to “draw readers into your world.” Within the class, there will be “[e]xercises [that] will help you heighten language through sensory detail, learn the difference between scene and summary, and deal with time shifts by using flashback and slow-motion techniques. [The class] will also talk about how to find the right voice and fully engage your readers,” asking “What makes certain voices sing off the page?”

“In the second session of the class you’ll learn how to go deeper into scenes, how to structure a memoir, and narrative arc. Excerpts from Judith Barrington’s Writing the Memoir and from great memoir writers will be used for inspiration and to help with structure. [The class] will also discuss emotional blocks and ethical concerns, “making sure to incorporate “plenty of time for questions.” “The second session will include a supportive critique session where students bring in work to share. You’ll leave with a body of writing, some new writing friends, handouts sent by email, and the inspiration and determination to keep up a writing schedule.”

We look forward to seeing you there!

To register for the class click here. Be sure to also check out Louise’s website and Twitter.

Upcoming Queer Poetry Salon Event

Join Equality Arizona in celebrating queer artists this Saturday, October 17th, in a Queer Poetry Salon event held virtually. Queer Virtual Salon is local organization that acknowledges the voices and poetry of queer individuals. There will be an open mic where six people will have a chance to share their work. From then, the event will focus on the publication of a new full-length poetry collection by féi Hernandez published by Sun Dress Publications. féi Hernandez is an immigrant trans non-binary artist whose work has been featured in several literary magazines. They are an Advisory Board member of Gender Justice Los Angeles. The event will also feature guest speaker Nicole Goodwin, a New York-based poet and performance artist. Click the link here to register for the event.

For more information please contact Julian Delacruz at: jdelac17@asu.edu

The Grief Manuscript: An Interview with Frankie Rollins and Eric Aldrich


An Authors Talk


“The one thing I always know is mine is my artwork…my writing life…”

During her divorce in 2017, Frankie Rollins began creating her most recent work: The Grief Manuscript, as both a “compulsive and cathartic” way to channel the grief she found herself experiencing.

As humans, we are no stranger to grief—it can come in many shapes and forms, and it often affects us in ways we cannot predict. Oftentimes, we see grief as a negative experience, but, during this raw and vulnerable podcast, Frankie shares how grief can produce beautiful things—if we let it.

Frankie also discusses the power that art and writing provided her with in overcoming grief and turning it into a project that propelled and inspired her.

This Authors Talk with Frankie Rollins and Eric Aldrich is a rejuvenating, gentle (and much needed) reminder that though we may feel the grief of what we have lost, we can always hold onto the one thing that will always be ours—art.



Learn more about Frankie at her website.

Learn more about Eric at his website.

Mirrors and Doors with Patricia Ann McNair

An Authors Talk

Patricia Ann McNair

“Reading to relate is like looking in a mirror; I want to walk through a door.”

In this insightful Authors Talk, Patricia Ann McNair delves into the idea — and issue — of readers and writers only finding value in work they can relate to.

Many times she has heard the phrase, “I can’t relate,” from students and peers in regards to stories. As readers, it can be easy for us to become uncomfortable when confronted with stories that we cannot relate to and we cannot understand, but Patricia argues that it is exactly these stories we need to be reading.

When we read only stories we can understand, we are simply looking in a mirror; but, when we read stories that do not resemble our own, we are shown through an open door into a world we never would have encountered before.

“Write what you don’t know….”

Listen to her full Authors Talk below.

Check out Patricia’s newest work, Responsible Adults, coming out in December of 2020 (Cornerstone Press).

Learn more about Patricia here.

New Video: Tips for Submitting Work to Literary Magazines

Check out our latest YouTube video! Our Social Media Manager Roxanne Bingham took the time to sit down with Superstition Review Founding Editor Patricia Murphy and Hayden’s Ferry Review Supervising Editor Katherine Berta to give you some insider advice as the submission season begins.

Don’t miss the tips and tricks they discussed in this video, and don’t forget to submit your work to Superstition Review by August 31st for the chance to be featured in our 26th Issue!

Turn The Key, Walk In, A Guest Post by Jack Martin

In Worstward Ho, Samuel Beckett says, “Sick of the either, try the other.” To write, or to live and to love is to exist in the either. When is it time to try something else? How long must we wait? How many others are there?

When we write, if we scrawl a story, scribble a poem, even if we use a keyboard, we bring something to life, we invite others (do these others include the other I seek) to love as we have loved, to live as we have lived, to rethink our thoughts. Should I say imagination? Should I remind us that the root of the word imagination is image? The images we live are the real
sensory experiences the world offers. The images we write create another possibility, a sensory experience made of words. Nothing works harder than words, but when we look closer, they are only words. Is this the other?

Something written is not a lived experience, but it is a version. It may be something that has never happened, and as we write, it happens. Anything we write, it happens. Maybe the other arrives.

Twelve years ago, I found my best friend dead. I have tried to write about it. I lived it, and many times, I have tried to write about it. Version after version, it doesn’t hold together. It is all either. Not enough other.

Maybe now:

I knock. No answer.

I stand on the porch of my friend Tom’s trailer house, the trailer where I lived when I was in grad school. Tom let me live there for four years in his spare bedroom, rent free.

I knock again. No answer.

I turn the key, walk in. I say his name. I walk through the kitchen. He is in the hallway on his back on the floor. His eyes are open. He wears a dirty, old t-shirt and boxer shorts. The soles of his feet are toward me. His genitals spill from the right leg of his shorts. I look away. I suppose he was walking to the kitchen, got light-headed, and sat down on the floor. Then, he laid
back. Maybe he knew he was dying. Maybe he just wanted to rest.

I say his name again. I bend down, take his cold wrist. I feel his neck. No pulse. I stand. I walk back out the door.

I enter again. He is still on the floor, still dead.

The evening before, I begged him to let me take him back to the doctor. He’d been there earlier in the week. They’d said he had a sinus infection. Does it matter? Do you need to know what his death certificate said? Now, as a metaphor, does he live again? If I had stayed with him that night, if I had refused to leave until he went to the doctor, would I be telling a different
story? Where is the other when you need it?

Should I tell a different story now? I call his name, and Tom sits up, adjusts his boxers, and says, “Weldon Kees’ death wasn’t a suicide.” An angel breaks through the floor with a crowbar, climbs up into the room, and takes us all out to get ice cream.

Ok. Fine. People die, but what happens to our writing? Is it either or other? How many drafts have I let go too soon? Do I diminish my old friend by using his death as a figure? Am I grieving? Where is the other now?

I sit and wait. Will something worth saving appear on this page?

And… it doesn’t. I’m still looking for the other.

Working with the “What-Ifs,” An Authors Talk with J.M. Jones

J.M. Jones

We are so pleased to welcome J.M. Jones on our Authors Talk series to discuss his piece, “The Course of a Marriage,” published in Issue 24 of Superstition Review.

In this week’s Talk, J.M. delves into the minds of writers—poking at our curiosity about “what-if” scenarios and how we turn to writing to explore how they might have played out.

For him, this is where his story, “The Course of a Marriage” all began. Be sure to listen to to his captivating Talk below.



Want to learn more about J.M.? Check out his website here.

Jordyn Ochser, An Intern Update

Jordyn Ochser

The staff here at Superstition Review would like to congratulate our past intern, Jordyn Ochser, in her freelance editing career. Jordyn acted as our Fiction Editor for Issue 21 of Superstition Review.

After graduating from ASU with a BA in Creative Writing and Minor in Film Studies, Jordyn went on to create a career for herself as a freelance editor while she studies Forensic Linguistics at Hofstra University as a graduate student.

Congratulations on all your achievements Jordyn, we are so proud of you and look forward to seeing what else you will do.


If you’d like to learn more about Jordyn, you can check out her LinkedIn here.

Silver Linings, A Guest Post by Carolyn Guinzio

Carolyn Guinzio

A Reflection on Failure, Imperfection, and Change

In between working on remote classes for his freshmen year in college, my son has spent a little time installing whimsical signage in unexpected places around our scrap of land in the Ozarks. On a walk not long ago, I came across a sign on a tree in the middle of a field. Painted by hand was the Beckett directive to “Fail Better.”

In the time we’ve been staying home, the field around the tree has passed from early spring to early summer—the field is too overgrown and hazardous to walk through now.

While I was writing this, an email arrived. It brought news of a magazine rejecting a submission of poems. When I came back to this piece later and read the previous sentence, I had already forgotten that happened. Rejections are swift blows, quickly absorbed and leaving no lingering pain. It’s the same approach many of us take to writing: take risks, cast aside failure, forge ahead.

“…cast aside failure, forge ahead.”

A couple of months ago, I wrote a sequence on the anxiety of the impending threat. I have a screenshot on my phone from “Find My Friends,” my “friends” being my daughter and my son. There she is in Miami. There he is in New York. Here we are in Arkansas. There were many mitigating factors beyond mere geography, and writing a frantic, disjointed sequence that moved my terrors from my mind to the page was a balm. It was early March, and I embedded into the sequence the technique of counting backwards as a self-calming device while trying to fall asleep.

Since then, my social media feed is a veritable onslaught of pandemic-related special issues, calls for submissions, anthologies, and the like. Were my own two cents worth sharing? My two teenagers managed to get home in good time and good health, and I managed, through writing, counting backwards, and various other forms of self-medication, to survive with a strong sense of gratitude. It was worth writing. If it’s deemed worth sharing, who knows if anyone would ever have the time or desire to read it. And how much does that even matter?

“It was worth writing.”

Before I ever encountered the Beckett quote, (which is, in its entirety: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”) I always saw rejection as an opporrunity to improve a thing that, by sending it out somewhere, I had stamped as “done.” I’d been given a second chance. Any manner of creative pursuit, and any manner of being a parent, are prime environments for getting something wrong and trying to do better. I don’t know how many more books I’ll write, and I’m in the late stages of raising my kids. Right now, they would’ve been half home, half gone, pulling away in a getting-grown stage. Instead they are, for the moment, as present as they were before they even started kindergarten. It’s a second chance at being less imperfect, and all four of us have plenty of time to consider the question of what constitutes failure.