The thing I love most about this job is the honor of helping to lift the literary community by curating and presenting superb writing from different countries and different traditions. This month I’m happy to present a varied collection of creative nonfiction from the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Romania.I’ve read a certain amount of masterful writing, and a certain amount of experimental writing, and it’s especially rewarding to read and publish a piece of masterful experimental writing. This is what Lucy Durneen has achieved with “Nothing Has Changed from How It Wasn’t.” I think you’re going to enjoy and admire it quite a bit.
One of the great pleasures of this job is to publish a writer’s debut work, as I’m doing this month with Mihai Scarlat’s “The Green Stove from Home.” And I believe this is the first time, in the three decades I’ve been editing literary magazines, that I’ve ever published a writer from Romania, so presenting this excellent piece is doubly satisfying for me.
“I’ll Get Back to You,” by Sandra Arnold, represents a combination of culture shocks and bureaucratic nightmares, with a storyline that works less like a plot and more like an intensity of accelerating anti-matter that engulfs you and sweeps you along in a mundane mystery of workaday frustration—and quest for meaning—in a foreign land. The effect is cumulative and unrelenting.
And I’m fairly certain this is the first time I’ve presented a story about toads. This story about toads is “Toads in The Morning Light,” by Ernest Slyman. I warrant that this story concerns itself actually with much more than toads. I will leave this symbolic exploration to you.
I am always interested in reading new work. I invite you to submit nonfiction on a topic of your choice. I’m looking for creative nonfiction, narrative nonfiction, memoirs, and personal essays—with the understanding that these categories often overlap—up to 10,000 words. Please submit work directly to me at [email protected]. I look forward to enjoying your work!