Short Forms Contest - A Few Things to Think About

by Barbara Westwood Diehl

Our general guidelines are provided in each Submittable category, but some additional thoughts on the short forms are included here. Keeping in mind that there are very few “rules” for writers with boundless imaginations and creativity. 

Total word limit for each contest category (prose poem, flash fiction, flash creative nonfiction) is 1,000. 

One, two, or three flash fiction works in one Word doc, but no more than 1,000 words for all works combined. 

If a finalist is not selected for a $400 prize, the editors may decide to select the work for publication with payment at the BR’s usual rate of $50.

Judging criteria: 

• Adherence to the submission guidelines. No more than three works and/or 1,000 words total in a submission. Submissions in the prose poem category should clearly be prose poems, e.g, not lineated.
  
   
• Other grounds for disqualifying contest submissions: Use of copyrighted material such as song lyrics or lines from other writers’ poems. Other legal and/or ethical considerations, such as plagiarism or defamatory or demeaning statements. Writers misrepresenting themselves. (The identities of contest submitters are concealed, but we do check for this later during the judging process.)
  
   
• Contest submissions should be well crafted and not in need of significant editing. A punctuation error or a skipped or misspelled word in otherwise well-written work—not a problem. But prize-winning work should show careful attention to language.
   
• Clarity, concision, precision, authority, evidence of the writer’s skill with language and grasp of subject matter. No factual inaccuracies. Smooth, logical flow. We should feel like we’re in capable hands when we read the work. We can slow down and enjoy the writing; it would likely be a pleasure to read it out loud. 
  
   
• Does the work fit the short-form genre? Would the work be better suited to a longer form? Maybe it feels like the writer has a lot to say but is squeezing it into a flash for contest purposes. Or narrative lift-off is taking too long. Or the work doesn’t end well. You’re left unsatisfied. The work should have a tight focus; there’s usually no space in the short form for going off on tangents—unless those tangents serve a purpose and enrich the work; they’re clearly part of a design, the architecture of the work. 
  
   
• Is the content fresh, original, surprising—or address a familiar subject in an unexpected way? If it delivers a message, does it do so without feeling heavy handed, agenda driven? Does it grab your interest and keep it until the final word? 
  
   
• Does the content feel significant, meaningful, have some sort of emotional impact—not frivolous, silly? Humor can be good—we all love humor—but it should still be meaningful. 
  
   
• Does the ending have power and contribute to that feeling of emotional impact? Is the ending the natural culmination of everything that came before? Twists and surprises of various kinds can work in flash (great flash is often full of surprises), but they should make sense in the context of the work. Endings shouldn’t come out of the blue; they also shouldn’t feel like a punchline. Subtlety can be lovely but not to the point of dullness, or being overly ambiguous, or leaving the reader with a flat feeling.
  
   
• The short-form work can be a tightly compressed narrative, stream of consciousness, burst of emotion through images, or something experimental, like a set of operating instructions or a classified ad. The possibilities are endless. Short forms are a wonderful license to experiment, e.g., when writing a prose poem, for the prose writer to be more playful with language and for the poet to write without the constraint of lines. When experimenting with forms, think about how that form (such as a recipe or prayer) may, or may not, enrich the meaning of the work. Does the form fit the content? Does the experimental form cloud the meaning? Or does the form enhance the work and provide an experience that would have been lost in a more traditional form?
   

Our contest deadline is November 30, and the final judge is Francine Witte.

Surprise us. Make us wonder how you abracadabra meaning into such a small space. 

Comments:

Fall 2024 Issue Launched October 27

by Barbara Westwood Diehl

We hope that you enjoy the poems and short stories by the following writers in our fall 2024 issue, which launched on October 27:

Andrea Bradley
Susan Comninos
Lindsay M. D'Andrea
Coby-Dillon English
Jarred Johnson
Stephen Kampa
Andrew Kozma
Julia Levine
Forester McClatchey
Gary McDowell
Wayne Mok
Tony Motzenbacker
Mary Simmons
Mandy Moe Pwint Tu

Thanks to everyone who made this issue possible!

And thank you for being a Baltimore Review reader!

Congratulations to Katherine Tunning and Frank Reilly! Their stories were included in the Best American Short Stories “Other Distinguished Stories of 2023” list.

We are now reading for our winter issue: poems, short stories, and creative nonfiction—and contest submissions: prose poems, flash fiction, and flash creative nonfiction. Deadline: November 30. We look forward to reading your work. 

Comments:

Jonathan Wood

by

Comments:

Mary Simmons

by

Comments:

Tony Motzenbacker

by

Comments:

Wayne Mok

by

Comments:

Gary McDowell

by

Comments:

Forester McClatchey

by

Comments:

Andrew Kozma

by

Comments:

Stephen Kampa

by

Comments:

Jarred Johnson

by

Comments:

Mandy Moe Pwint Tu

by

Comments:

Julia Levine

by

Comments:

Coby-Dillon English

by

Comments:

Lindsay M. D’Andrea

by

Comments:

Susan Comninos

by

Comments:

Andrea Bradley

by

Comments:

A Few Tips About Submitting

by Julia Wilson

The world is filled with fantastic writers who would like to get published. You are one of them. There is nothing I can do to guarantee you will get published, but there are some tactics I, a reader at Baltimore Review, can suggest to avoid common pitfalls that could put you out of the running.

First, read the publication to make sure your piece fits the ethos of the publication to which you are submitting. You may have written a detailed world-building story but submitted it to a magazine that leans toward publishing flash fiction. This is especially tempting to ignore if you are using Submittable and sending your piece out in batches. My recommendation, though not great for efficient submitting, is to submit one by one to carefully chosen publications and restrain from submitting, even if you love the publication, if you don’t see your piece fitting into the general tenor.

Almost equally as important, carefully read the guidelines for each publication you are submitting to and follow them exactly. No two publications will be the same. Check for specifications about spacing, font, length, etc. If a publication says 5,000 words is the maximum allowed, don’t try to squeeze in 5,050. Cut your piece by 50 words instead. Don’t say “about 5,000 words.” That is a red flag to me that it is more than 5,000 words. And always proofread your work carefully.

This is a more personal dislike, certainly not universal, but I would avoid cutesy cover letters. My taste tends toward a concise cover letter that mentions publications you have been published in and some biographical details. I am less entranced by details of your mushroom-eating guinea pig. I will add that some readers avoid reading the cover letter until after reviewing the piece, to begin their review with a clean slate.

I do like to see a piece that starts with a magnetic first paragraph and has a strong voice and unique story arc. We read a lot of pieces, and we’re looking for something that really entrances us from the first word. It’s less about a genre and more about inventiveness, tight writing, and craft. However, there are a few topics that are so frequently written about it’s hard to find a fresh angle. Grandmothers, dementia, cancer, and COVID are a few of them.

I would be remiss if I didn’t end with some words of encouragement. Literary journals get thousands of submissions (over 12,000 for this journal over the past year). You will get more rejections than acceptances, if you are anything like the rest of us. That does not by any means signify that you are not an excellent writer. You may never know why your piece has been rejected by the publications and will often receive a formulaic rejection email. So does everyone else.

Keep writing if it’s enjoyable to you and submit when you consider your piece ready, if you’d like. It might take a while, but you will get published.

Comments:

Summer 2024 Issue Launched July 31

by Barbara Westwood Diehl

We hope that you enjoy the poems, short stories, and creative nonfiction by the following writers:

Genevieve Abravanel
Amanda Auchter
Caroline Barnes
Al Dixon
Taylor Ebersole
Melissa Darcey Hall
Bari Lynn Hein
Sarah Sugiyama Issever
Nick Manning
Kaecey McCormick
Noreen Ocampo
Maurine Ogonnaya Ogbaa
Genevieve Payne
Nina Colette Peláez
Anne Rudig
Annie Trinh
Ernie Wang

Congratulations to our contest winners, Amanda Auchter (prose poem category), Taylor Ebersole (flash fiction category), and Al Dixon (flash creative nonfiction category). 

Special thanks to our contest final judge, the wonderful Kathy Flann. 

Thanks to everyone who made this issue possible!

And thank you for being a Baltimore Review reader!


We are now reading for our fall issue: poems, short stories, and creative nonfiction. Our Submittable doors will open on August 8—a short delay so that we can catch up.  
 

Comments:

Genevieve Payne

by

Comments:

Annie Trinh

by

Comments:

Maurine Ogonnaya Ogbaa

by

Comments:

Ernie Wang

by

Comments:

Anne Rudig

by

Comments:

Nina Colette Peláez

by

Comments:

Noreen Ocampo

by

Comments:

Kaecey McCormick

by

Comments:

Nick Manning

by

Comments:

Sarah Sugiyama Issever

by

Comments:

Bari Lynn Hein

by

Comments:

Melissa Darcey Hall

by

Comments:

Taylor Ebersole

by

Comments:

Al Dixon

by

Comments:

Caroline Barnes

by

Comments:

Amanda Auchter

by

Comments:

Genevieve Abravanel

by

Comments:

My Journey Back to Writing

by Maggie Oster

As soon as I learned how to write, I started writing stories. While I was still a kid, I set a goal to publish a book by the arbitrary age of twenty-five. Back then I thought this was young enough to be impressive but old enough to be realistic. However, at some point between setting the goal and turning twenty-five, I lost the will (or the discipline or the inspiration) to write. There are so many things I could blame: pragmatism, imposter syndrome, being overwhelmed by adult responsibilities. It’s complicated, but I essentially gave up on this dream for a while.

I can’t remember exactly what got me to start thinking about writing again. There were stories still swirling inside me, and I started to feel them coming closer to the surface. It also had something to do with turning thirty. I felt simultaneously old and young—old enough to feel a sense of urgency to revive this latent dream and young enough to believe I still had time to do so. I started by picking up books on writing, carving out more time for reading for pleasure, and keeping thin journals stashed in several places to write down story ideas when they struck. Eventually, I decided to go back to school, and I’m currently finishing up a graduate degree in writing. 

Since deciding to start writing again, I’ve tried many exercises designed to bolster creativity and help writing flow more easily. I’ve tried maintaining a consistent “artist date” from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. I’ve tried a structured journal entry consisting of what I see, do, and overhear each day from Linda Barry’s Syllabus. I’ve tried keeping a collection of brief, matter-of-fact (yet somehow poetic) daily observations like Checkhov’s father used to do, a suggestion from my creative nonfiction professor. I took away the same basic lesson from each of these exercises: To be a writer is to be intentional about exploring and noticing the world around me.

Graduate school has helped me—and surprised me—enormously. First, it has given me access to the feedback, camaraderie, and inspiration that comes from being around other writers. I was afraid that everyone in a graduate writing program would be pretentious and worsen my imposter syndrome, but instead I’ve met many amazing and supportive people. Second, it has forced me to try ideas that might have otherwise stayed in my journal indefinitely. I often second-guess my ideas, and facing deadlines has forced me to try some of them without overthinking. It turns out I can’t always tell the full potential of a story until I start writing it. Third, it has pushed me to experiment in fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry and to play with various forms and constraints. Ultimately, it has increased my confidence just as I hoped it would. And I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I am not the oldest person in the program.

Every so often I feel a twinge of regret about the decade or so I lost, but there are things I’m thankful for, too. The maturity, perspective, and life experience I’ve gained in that time certainly contribute to my writing in countless ways. I now believe that it’s never too late to start (or restart) writing or to pursue publication. The truth is, when I was younger, I let other people make me feel like I was somehow already behind, but there’s no one-size-fits-all timeline for being a writer, nor is there one way to be a writer. The goal of publication aside, I can’t believe I went so long without doing something I love. Now, at thirty-two, I’m content with where I am as a writer. I realize that for any good writer, the process is never-ending, so I will continue to cherish every part.

Maggie Oster is a student in the Master's in Professional Writing program at Towson University and an intern at The Baltimore Review.

Comments:

Review of Ordinary Fissures, a Poetry Collection by Sara Eddy

by Paige Passantino

I’d highly recommend reading Ordinary Fissures in the summer, so Sara Eddy’s full-length collection comes out right on time. Granted, I’d highly recommend reading this book in any season—but the sticky summer heat pulls something extra out of the book, which is a swirling series of confessional poems about nature, love, bees, motherhood, childhood, and overall personhood, bringing the reader into the multitude of questions that tug and linger on the speaker’s heart and mind. What is an “ordinary” fissure? Which cracks in ourselves occur as the result of living, and which are there all along, waiting to be exposed with time?

Ordinary Fissure’s opening poem, “The Sow,” is a perfect start, planting the seeds for the curious, sharp, loving, and quietly furious voice in the pages to come. The sow is “grotesque, compelled / by rage darker than thunderstorms, witches.” Eddy’s first section of the collection (which is split into three) is perhaps its most ominous, full of unheeded warnings and the complex guilt and regret that comes with hindsight. This landscape of emotions plays out against the natural world, taking us from the speakers’ “bitchy,” buzzing backyard beehive to the edges of Yosemite; Laguna Beach to the “unimaginable world” of “stink bugs, mantis, earwig, and silverfish.” Yet the most compelling feature of this section, and possibly the collection at large, is its peculiar sense of time. While maintaining the appearance of chronological order, the poetic memories jump in a way that calls into question how we find, and define, the beginnings, middles, and endings of our own stories. 

The second section of Ordinary Fissures is ambitious, and manages to successfully capture moments from the speaker’s childhood, her parental relationships, later formation of her identity as a woman, mother, and wife, and her post-divorce shift toward a fierce and newfound autonomy—”I feel my new self charged / with poisonous glory”—in a mere 18 poems. It’s a thrill to be along for the ride, which is painfully vulnerable at times. “I’m old enough not to care what they think / but young enough to feel afraid”; “I’ve spent a lifetime / figuring out how to have friends / and still I don’t know how to keep them”; Eddy’s verse here embodies the honest, bare spirit of confessional poetry at its finest. Eddy also employs myth and fairy tale to great effect, weaving into the collection characters such as Naucrate, mother of Icarus, just as seamlessly as Goldilocks or images from her childhood storybooks. These stories continue the speaker’s rumination on memory, perception, and narrative, particularly in regard to the choices we make. “What power we have, to decide what is past, / what is present,” she writes, and later: “You must decide: / uproot the patch, or suffer / for the sharp green tang on your tongue?” 

We meet the title poem at the start of section three, which sets the reader up for the reflective pieces to come, rounding out Ordinary Fissures with a sense of understated grace and surprise. This final portion is haunted by the speaker’s earlier sense of regret and longing. She laments over perhaps realizing too late that she’s “gone the wrong way for miles and miles and miles”; “All those years I ignored Orion’s whispers”—yet the defiantly self-assured and vibrant voice of “beautiful anger” rings clear throughout Eddy’s conclusion: “I’ll wrap my hair around / my breasts and belly / like a prayer shawl for a mad god. / My prayer will be fuck you.” The ending contains new beginnings, but entirely avoids falling into the cliche of rounding up a collection about divorce and womanhood with a new relationship to save the day. Instead, the speaker meditatively returns to the natural world. “But Pileated Woodpeckers insist. / Bobcats, porcupines, weasels / impel you from the shadows.” Eddy lures us to join her speaker into her own deep woods, to the limits of the desert, and walks us back out again, emerging both broken and whole. 

At its heart, Ordinary Fissures is a collection of nature poems. There is no denying Eddy’s brilliance when it comes to writing about the natural world; this is a book dripping with the sap of summer, fireflies; raspberries with their “bright tiny pips,” common plantain, yellow dock, and stinging nettle; “azalea strength,” the loitering scent of hyacinth, and trees that talk to each other about the rain. The lush and sweeping nature imagery makes it all the more pleasant—and humorous—when Eddy drops us into poems that take place in Bed, Bath & Beyond, or when she writes “Google is just trolling me now” while virtually hiking beside the interstate, searching for “unearthly verdigris.” It is also a book about parenthood and personhood, grappling with how little we know, or perhaps how little we are capable of doing. Eddy’s work shines most in these humbling moments, moments where the speaker fights to restrain the “feral animal” in her chest that aims to protect her son “with fox-tooth and blood, chaos and rage,” before arriving at the realization that maybe all a parent can do is “make soup / and pay attention to the stock and the herbs,” just as the beekeeper can only focus on saving “just this one hive.” What Eddy insists is that this is indeed more than enough. 

__________________________________

Ordinary Fissures is published with Kelsay Books and can be purchased here. “Starvation” was published in the Fall 2019 issue of The Baltimore Review and can be read here. Eddy will also be reading with poet Ocean Vuong at 6:30pm on August 24 at the Dream Away Lodge in Becket, Massachusetts. You can find more information on her website: https://www.saraeddypoetry.com/

Comments:

Spring 2024 Issue Launched April 28, 2024

by Barbara Westwood Diehl

We hope that you enjoy the poems, short stories, and creative nonfiction by the following writers:

Kaique Antonio
Bobby Bangert
Amy Boyes
Sara R. Burnett
Stephen Cicirelli
Michael Don
Katherine Gekker
Linden Hibbert
Max Kruger-Dull
Susan Leslie Moore
Elisabeth Murawski
Rukman Ragas
Melody Sun
Norie Suzuki
Ryan White

Thanks to everyone who made this issue possible!

We are now reading for our summer issue: poems, short stories, and creative nonfiction.

Contest categories are open for prose poems, flash fiction, and flash creative nonfiction.

We close our submission doors on May 31.

Comments:

Ryan White

by

Comments:

Norie Suzuki

by

Comments:

Melody Sun

by

Comments:

Rukman Ragas

by

Comments:

Elisabeth Murawski

by

Comments:

Susan Leslie Moore

by

Comments:

Max Kruger-Dull

by

Comments:

Linden Hibbert

by

Comments:

Katherine Gekker

by

Comments:

Michael Don

by

Comments:

Stephen Cicirelli

by

Comments:

Sara R. Burnett

by

Comments:

Amy Boyes

by

Comments:

Bobby Bangert

by

Comments:

Kaique Antonio

by

Comments:

The Ill-Fitting Skin: A Review and an Interview with the Author, Shannon Robinson

by Julia Tagliere and Julia Wilson

“Don’t look, and it won’t hurt” was once common advice for enduring pain, but it also suggests an insight into Shannon Robinson’s award-winning debut collection The Ill-Fitting Skin. In her new book, which won the Press 53 Award for Short Fiction, Robinson explores themes of incredible pain: a parent’s dementia diagnosis, a miscarriage, the loss of a child to a poorly-understood disorder, even the loss of one’s self-concept through another’s abuse. 

But Robinson does not write of these experiences directly; instead, she writes of children becoming werewolves, of women birthing rabbits, of a songbird leasing space in a woman’s womb. Even in her less-speculative pieces, Robinson leads us to the pain at the heart of each piece via intentional misdirection, which allows readers an initial, almost superficial response: How baffling, to have your child turn into a werewolf! How terribly these little boys treat the girl who just wants to play their game! But then, just when the reader is thoroughly distracted by werewolves, litters of bunnies, and zombie cosplay, Robinson slides a knife under the ribs, piercing straight through to the story’s true dark heart, sometimes with as little as a single, casual line. 

The genius of Robinson’s fluid prose and somewhat unsettling tales is that they strike individual readers differently. It is easy to understand that the werewolves, the rabbits, the bird living in the belly are parables for a more real and also disturbing reality—but what reality? To write this review, we both read Robinson’s book, and while we came up with different understandings, likely influenced by our own life experiences, through Robinson’s skillful treatments we could easily recognize the truth of the other’s interpretation as well.

“Origin Stories,” the first story in the collection, starts with advice from parenting- of-toddlers books that seems patently obvious: Never bite back. But what if your child is a werewolf? In other words, what if your child is different from the other biting toddlers and is not just going through a phase? What if all the standard parenting advice is useless to you?

[Genna] remembered the very last time, pre-wolf, that Wystan acted out in public. They’d been at a park where he’d been throwing sand into other kids’ faces over and over despite her reminders, pleas, and threats, and then he began screaming when she dragged him out of the pit and away from the park. He struggled so hard to escape her grip, she thought he’d dislocate his arm. She thought she’d dislocate his arm… “What is wrong with your child? What is wrong with you?” No one actually said this, but she could hear all the other mothers thinking it…” 

“Rabbits,” written in the style of a fairy tale (but seemingly inspired by the wild true story of an 18th-century English woman, Mary Toft), depicts a woman birthing rabbits, endlessly. A connection can easily be drawn between that obviously fantastical situation and the eternal fixation on the fecundity of women, often with little regard for their well-being, a circumstance that has existed from the earliest times even to the present day:

I felt uncomfortable about being exposed to all those men, and I told Dr. Howard so in private. He patted my shoulder and called me a good girl. “Don’t worry,” he said. “They’re men of science. They won’t see a naked woman but a machine of flesh, operating as it was designed to do. Or in this case, with a fascinating variation.”

In “Changeling,” Robinson takes a hard look at the realities of dementia, devoid of any sentimentality or wishfulness. The knife in the gut comes from the inherent surrealism, all too familiar for those who’ve experienced it, of watching a loved one transform into an otherworldly being; in this case, one who obsessively unravels and re-knits old sweaters, alternates between trying to nurse and kill a therapeutic baby doll, and swears viciously and easily: 

I kiss her forehead, and she murmurs something. “What’s that, Mom?”
“You smell like cunt,” she says. 

A changeling, a mother turned callous vulgarian, a boy become monster, an intervention staged when it’s already too late. Robinson spares readers, briefly,  from direct, head-on collisions with the reality of some of these shared sorrows and fears, but only briefly. This collection is a haunting, poignant reminder not only of how many experiences we have in common, but also of the pain that was always there, hidden behind a shimmering subterfuge, waiting patiently for us to be ready to look. 
 

Interview with Shannon Robinson, author of The Ill-Fitting Skin
 

Baltimore  Review: First off, congratulations on this beautiful collection. When is the actual publication date?

Shannon Robinson: It's May 3, coming out with Press 53, and I will be 53 in the month that it's published.

BR: Can we ask how long you worked on this collection? 

SR: I started working on some of the stories during my MFA, which was  2010-2011, and the most recent ones are from the past two years. Some of them have been published, and some I've revised, and they've transformed somewhat, but it's all come together over the course of about a decade. A collection should be a group of stories that are bound together by some common theme or, you know, an emotional concern. Here, the thematic concerns are primarily motherhood, nurturing, and failed or compromised nurturing—nurturing of other people,  but also nurturing of the self as a woman. 

BR: I think that it really hits home, this overarching theme of people who are outliers in a way, that it feels like everyone's going through something, like childbearing years, disruptive children, or aging parents, but this feels beyond that. For example, the first piece in the collection, “Origin Story,” was really interesting, because when Julia and I were deciding to do this together, we each read the collection separately then got together and talked about what we thought these stories were about, and we had different ideas, particularly in “Origin Story.” It spoke to us differently depending on our own life experiences. Like, don't talk to me about your child who doesn't nap or anything like that, because I've got something more to worry about.

SR: I guess a lot of my stories come out of my personal experience. So even though this is a story about a werewolf, it’s rooted in the real. Parenting can be really fraught. You're just not prepared for it. Or maybe it's a matter of like, you're not listening when people are telling you that parenthood is difficult and motherhood is difficult. You know, I used to be the person giving a little bit of the hairy eyeball, I’m sorry to say, to somebody with a crying child or a kid who was acting out. I mean, you might have a particularly challenging child. Maybe you have a colicky child, maybe you have a child with behavioral issues. Maybe they are neurodivergent. A lot of parents, I think, identify with that feeling of like, I don't know what I'm doing. I am at sea or feeling alienated, and we're all feeling judged. Parenting can feel like you're very much on your own. I think that a lot of women are having children at an older age, and they're further along in their career, and they're no longer in this setting where they have the older woman, or the family or community to help them out, so it's an especially isolating and alienating experience. I'm glad you both had a different take on this, because what I didn't want was for it to feel like an allegory for one particular thing. I wanted it to feel like the metaphor had a lot of room for different interpretations.

I wrote “Miscarriages” many years ago. I had had a miscarriage and I felt very blocked. And so I just thought, oh, I’ll kind of just play around with writing small pieces. That's what I can manage right now. And then it seemed that the form was really suiting the subject matter; here are little compartments where this character can place her feelings. And there are lots compartments within that story—the titled sections, but also the images. There are lots of things that contain other things, not the least of which is the womb. 

BR: I have to comment on a very small thing that just hit me: the section title “Womb-ah womb-ah-womb-ah.” It sounds exactly like when you're listening to a fetal heartbeat. 

SR: Nothing prepares you for that. And I almost don't want to tell younger women about it, because it is such an amazing surprise when you have that first ultrasound. I was so floored by that—it's like it's an army marching. It's waves hitting the shore. It's that it's a life force and a whirling sound.

BR: You sometimes seem to approach experiences from a speculative place rather than approaching them head-on, like there's more multitudes contained in these stories than you could address head-on, and their impact is so large and vast, it's very hard to capture those. But if you start with a story of a werewolf or a bird taking up residence in a womb, it's a way of accessing those through misdirection. But then when you realize what the story is actually about, or what you believe it to be based on your own experiences, it's even more intense than if you had just gone immediately to the miscarriage, or if you had gone immediately to the loss of a sibling, for example.

SR: Yeah, I reach for the fantastical for the same reasons that poets reach for metaphors. This is just as a way of being able to explore something that is really difficult to pin down, really difficult to put into words, so why not reach for something that's beyond this reality? And one of the assets, one of the strengths, of the fantastical, is that it defamiliarizes what you were talking about. It takes you off your guard. It makes you rethink things. You approach it in a new way and you’re trying to orient yourself within this strangeness, and therefore, I think it allows for that really rich play of uncertainty and murky emotions and discovery. 

I like taking reality as a departure point, and then taking it somewhere strange. Or maybe I should say stranger, since reality is so often strange in itself. My story “The Rabbits,” which is about  a woman who gives birth to rabbits, is based on an actual, historical figure named Mary Toft. Now the real-life Mary Toft was an 18th-century hoaxster, a liar who managed to convince people that she'd given birth to rabbits. She made quite a sensation, and the medical community was fooled, at least for a time. But in my story, Mary Toft really does give birth to rabbits—except everyone comes to think she’s a fraud.

BR: I very much felt, after reading your story, less like she was a fraudster and more that she was a sympathetic figure, who had experienced the loss of a child, who had had great difficulty conceiving, and perhaps, was then taken advantage of by the doctor, who squirreled her away and reserved her as sort of a medical oddity to be poked and prodded and studied, and all at the hands of a group of really unsympathetic men in positions of authority. It really drained whatever power she had had. 

SR: Oh, yeah. Everybody was very, very happy to be part of this show. And then she was thrown under the bus—or the carriage, I guess, given the time period.

BR: Another aspect that is difficult to talk about, I think, is the dynamics of sexual power, of gender power, like in the story “Dirt.”

SR: “Dirt” is a story about working a job and about how it feels to be financially coerced. There are so many moments where she (the protagonist) feels like, I'm choosing to do this, I am choosing to remain here, I can do that. But really, she's not being given a choice. She's reacting to her financial situation. There's a movie out recently called The Royal Hotel, about these two girls who have run out of money while vacationing in Australia, and they end up working at a bar in the outback, in this mining town and the patrons are flirting with them. The men are very aggressive. It's highly sexualized. And these girls don't flirt back. And I remember watching that, thinking you know, you’ve got to play the game a little bit, otherwise, you're not going to get through this. But they don't want to. They don't want to, and that made me think of how many experiences I've had where I have reacted to advances that are inappropriate in a way like, oh, haha, I’m just sort of managing their egos, managing the discomfort—as if it's a job. And I think the discomfort is that she doesn't realize her agency is really compromised in this situation. I mean, it's not incidental that in her home life she is in a relationship with an academic. She's failed in that world, where she thought she was going to be taken care of and respected by her thesis supervisor. It ends up he's just interested in using her as a sounding board for his ego.

BR: I think she felt like she had the upper hand because she was attractive and an ordinary person and had no idiosyncrasies, and this guy was obviously a weirdo. And so she felt like she had the upper hand and it flipped on her. He still had the sexual upper hand. And he just tossed her out on the street basically and made her feel like dirt again. And how did that happen? That this guy who was sort of pathetic still had the upper hand? That is just so painfully what women go through all the time, which is you lose control of a situation. 

SR: He's good at this manipulation.

BR: I’d like to talk a bit about the piece “A Doom of Her Own.” I can't wait for an actual paper copy of your book so that I can do the tactile act of flipping the pages; it is going to be amazing. Even without that, though, I can envision the effect of turning back the pages of time, literally. I'd love to hear what brought you to that structure for this piece, this sort of reverse flip-book activity. 

SR: I was inspired by the Choose Your Own Adventure books that I read in the 80s as a kid. I don't know if you remember those series, but you would have an adventure, with a choice for what would happen next in the story at the bottom of the page. And always there was some kind of cheesy theme for each one, some extreme situation. You would be in a jungle, or you'd be in the vampire castle, you'd be here or there. So I wanted to use those themes as well to evoke this extreme storyland and graft that onto a story of a toxic relationship. I thought that would be fun,. I loved reading these stories as a kid, but I also found them frustrating, because you think, oh, here I am doing everything right, I am in charge here, and yet it's designed so that you'd still end up dying. You still fail. Sometimes you get stuck. And you'd have to keep going back, keep your finger on the one page so you can figure out, how do I get out of the maze? And then finally, you figure that out. So I thought yes, this is such a great metaphor for being stuck in a relationship or feeling gaslit or feeling manipulated. I want to get out of the story. How do I exit this story? 

BR: But also it was devastating because each time you flip back, you're presented with the possibility of a different choice, being presented with this sort of false hope to say you could still change things and get out, and then you realize, no, you can't.

SR: And that feeling means, pay attention; this is bad. Your frustrations and fears and desires are valid. If you’re hungry for something, that doesn’t mean you have to turn off your appetite, you know? You’re allowed to be hungry, and you’re allowed to feed yourself what you need.  

BR: So do you have any other projects that are in the works? 

SR: Yes, I am continuing to write short stories, but I'm also thinking about a novel that is based on a Victorian-era killer named Amelia Dyer. She was what's known as a baby farmer. So women of that era, poor women who could not afford to have another child to take care of and feed, would give their baby over to someone who would adopt the child, usually for a flat fee. But as you can imagine, this was not a regulated industry. These babies didn't fare well. Many of them died, and Amelia Dyer, she determined—what's cheaper than feeding these babies? Not feeding them. A lot of them ended up in the Thames. So I'm interested in her, and I'm interested in juxtaposing that with a speculative future element, where there is a detective who is working with cases of children who have been left in what's called the Stasis,  a device where you can just place a child in suspended animation. This technology, which was intended as a child care solution, has become problematic—as you can imagine. 

BR: Are there any authors that you would consider instrumental in the way you write or what you write? 

SR: Margaret Atwood was an early influence. I read everything that she wrote, everything I could get my hands on, as a young woman. She was the first author who I really became aware of, as in an author whose work I read in its entirety. She's a wildly inventive writer who also plays with genre, so I love that. Definitely, she was a strong influence, alongside Alice Munro. Later influences were  George Saunders, John Cheever, and Lorrie Moore—I love their humor, their sharpness, their deep-seated weirdness. Kelly Link and Danielle Evans are both so inspiring, as is Carmen Maria Machado and Karen Russell. I don't want to leave people out who are also amazing, but those are people who come to mind right now. 

Comments:

A Free Workshop! Putting the Poem in Prose Poem

by Barbara Westwood Diehl

Join BR editors Barbara Westwood Diehl and Paige Passantino for a free prose poem workshop via Zoom on Sunday, April 7, 2024 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern time. We'll take a look at sample prose poems, examine how they shuffle elements of prose and poetry, and provide timed exercises for you to write your own. Plus some time for chat and Q&A.

To register, send your email address to editor@baltimorereview.org, and we'll send you the Zoom link before the session.

Comments:

Behind the Scenes Part 2

by Jodie Abruscato

This is our second installment of Behind the Scenes, in which The Baltimore Review readers share how the review process works, what they’re looking for in a submission, and how reading for a literary journal affects their lives. They provided a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at The Baltimore Review.   

Marcie Roman

What genres do you review? 

Fiction and creative nonfiction 

Some reviewers have jobs related to literature, and others do not. What is your profession, and how does it affect—or not affect—your life as a writer and reader for a literary journal? 

My background is in film and theater production. Early on, I worked in the Art and Locations Departments, so I feel especially drawn to stories that have a vivid sense of place and specificity. In my own work, I'll often imagine aspects of the world that won't appear on the page, but I think (hope!) they create opportunities for the characters to reveal their true natures. I've also worked in script development, so I'm always hoping to read (and aim to write) tight dialogue. I find it helps to "rehearse" scenes by reading them aloud to see how they flow.

 
What are you looking for when reading submissions? 

In addition to the above, I love the musicality of language and the feeling of being carried into a piece by the rhythm and detail. I also enjoy being surprised.  Not because of a plot twist, but rather the kind of surprise that comes when you sense the writer made a discovery or deep insight through the writing. I'm also looking for a strong craft/authorial voice and a sense of urgency that gives the writing a pulse. As if this story had to be told.  And I want to leave the piece feeling as if the character and I went on an emotional journey together.

Is there anything you’d like The Baltimore Review readers and/or submitters to know about the review process?

The stories that often get elevated are the ones that have had several rounds of revisions before entering the queue. If a submission includes newer writing, setting it aside to give it a few more days to "marinate" can often reveal subtle weaknesses (and typos!) that might otherwise be missed when we've been looking at something too long. Like the Baltimore Review readers, I get excited by the work we receive, and it's such a thrill to discover a new voice. 

Barbara Westwood Diehl, founding and managing editor
 

What genres do you review? 

I read submissions in all the genres we publish and make final decisions about the work to be included in each issue. That said, I very much depend on the reviewing skills of the 20-25 readers we have at any one time to work through the thousands of submissions we receive during each submission period (February 1 – May 31 and August 1 – November 30). Most of us have strong opinions, and we spend considerable time reviewing in Submittable and discussing work in Zoom meetings. It’s a never-ending learning process. Highly recommended for writers, by the way—volunteering for journals and seeing the other side of Submittable. 


Some reviewers have jobs related to literature, and others do not. What is your profession, and how does it affect—or not affect—your life as a writer and reader for a literary journal?

I’ve been happily retired from administrative jobs for several years now. I have no idea how I managed the BR during all the years I had full-time employment—along with writing short stories and poems—but somehow, I made it work. Here’s a theory: I believe that if we have a passion for our work, we prioritize that work and make it happen. Some of my poems and stories began their lives as words scribbled on sticky notes while cooking or vacuuming, and I confess to reading submissions during quiet times in the office. (Sorry, former employers. It’s way too late to fire me—and I did catch some higher-ups playing Solitaire.)

On a more serious note, managing a literary journal does require some business know-how. There’s the creative side; there is also the budgeting/fundraising/time management/nonprofit organization reporting/social media/participation on panels/working with staff members/other administrative-duties-as-required side. Working in various administrative jobs over the years no doubt helped me with that latter side. 

I’ll give credit to all the wonderful faculty members at Towson University (my undergraduate degree) and Johns Hopkins University (my master’s degree) for the creative side—helping me become a better creative writer as well as a more astute reader. 

 
What are you looking for when reading submissions?

Oh, it would be so easy to get started on what I’m not looking for—but I won’t. And what might be a negative for me might not be a big deal for another editor. And I’ve been voted down on some submissions. (Then I blame it on reading fatigue and slink away from my computer in shame.)

Nuts and bolts stuff: I want to see that the submission guidelines have been followed. They’re not lengthy or complicated. Cover notes are not a big deal. Writers should demonstrate professionalism. “Thank you for considering my work.” A brief bio like those accompanying the work on our site. That’s it. Easy. I want to see that the writer has a firm command of the language: spelling, grammar, punctuation, word choice, attention to sentence structure, to sound and rhythm—an ear for the music in language. Vowels and consonants that make me hear music in my head. Clarity. A style that allows me to be immersed in the work without sensing the pulleys and levers and stagehands stumbling over props behind the curtain. A concise and precise use of language. Elegance. I want to sense, immediately, that I’m in good hands.

Content: I want to be surprised. Most of us read widely. We read a lot. Like other BR editors, I want to hear distinct voices. I want nuance and fresh insights. I want to learn. I want to see some new and startling facet of humanity. I want to have a sense of completeness and satisfaction—not that the work has been tied up with a bow, but that the work couldn’t have ended any other way. And maybe that it has a life beyond the page. There are characters that are still very much alive to me; I wonder what they’re up to. I want language and ideas that pop. Like a painting you can recall in more detail than a family member’s face. If a story has magical elements, I want to not stop believing for a minute, and I want to be able to defend its right to be called literary fiction. I want to sense confidence and authority in a writer’s work. And maybe be a little jealous.

I want to feel that a work’s form fits its content. That it had to be a 4,000-word story or flash fiction or micro or prose poem or lineated poem. That the stanza and line breaks and white spaces had to be precisely where they are. The architecture fits the furnishings that fit the inhabitants of that particular literary house. 

So—high marks for both craft and content. And, fingers crossed, consensus among the readers.
 

Is there anything you’d like The Baltimore Review readers and/or submitters to know about the review process?

All the work we publish comes in through Submittable. The work is what counts—not the cover note. Many of us don’t even look at the cover note before reading the work (and never with contest submissions). Every submission is read by at least one reader. We have worked hard to develop criteria for assessing submissions, and we do talk to each other about what we find amazing and what we find concerning. We are writers ourselves, and we try hard to treat writers as we want to be treated. I firmly believe that we should consider ourselves a literary community, not Team Editors and Team Writers. I believe most of us love reading and writing and have good intentions. When we decline work, we try to do so with respect, and writers who receive decline responses (we all do!) shouldn’t let that stop them from scouting out the perfect publications for their work. Sometimes it can be a gentle nudge to revise a bit more. When we accept work, we maintain communication with the writers so they know exactly what we need, the issue in which their work will appear, what and when they’ll be paid, and when the issue is launched so they can share it on social media. All those things we want ourselves as writers.   

Comments:

Behind the Scenes Part 1

by Jodie Abruscato

I asked three of The Baltimore Review readers to share how the review process works, what they’re looking for in a submission, and how reading for a literary journal affects their lives. They provided a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at The Baltimore Review.   

Julia Tagliere

What genres do you review? 

Fiction, creative nonfiction, and for contests, some poetry

Some reviewers have jobs related to literature, and others do not. What is your profession, and how does it affect—or not affect—your life as a writer and reader for a literary journal?

I'm a former high school Spanish and French teacher, which gave me not only a very solid grammar background (something not drilled as intensively nowadays as it used to be), but also built up a skill set that comes in very handy for reading for a lit mag: being able to read through stacks of submissions quickly and efficiently, kind of like grading papers. Having been out of the classroom for 20+ years now, however, I've been fortunate to be able to devote most of my time to reading, writing, editing, and studying. The more widely I've read, the better a reader I think I've become, which in turn has made me a better writer as well. I think being on the other side of Submittable is very helpful in my own writing because it keeps me humble, patient, and grateful as I submit my own work. Folks who work for lit mags do so for the love of it, and a great many of them are writers, also, which helps me remember that even if I don't thumbs-up a submission, that piece is someone else's pride and joy. It takes a lot of courage and faith and hope to hit send on a submission, and being on the receiving end of those is a great way to keep the process in perspective and make me a thoughtful, careful reader. 

What are you looking for when reading submissions?

When I last answered that question, I only noted things that turned me off, which is simpler to convey, but here goes:

1. Polish that piece. Don't send it without reading it out loud (helps you catch a lot of things before it's too late) and doing one final spelling/grammar check. Will we DQ you for a typo? No. Could it be the tiny little detail that makes the difference between two content-brilliant pieces? Yes.

2. A smooth read, by which I mean there's nothing that jerks me out of your narrative. Show your piece to at least one other reader and see if anything makes their attention stumble. Try to keep me in the narrative as much as possible. 

3. A great opening line or paragraph. Hook me right from the start with something that makes me want to keep reading, something that makes me keep asking what happens next.

4. Remember that there are no new stories under the sun (my shorthand for this I owe to Rocket from the Guardians of the Galaxy movie, i.e., "Everyone's got dead people." Virtually any reader who sees your piece has had some of the exact same experiences you're writing about: death, love, marriage, bullying, the pandemic, a childhood trauma. That's not to dismiss others' desire to write about them, your story is your story, but for it to rise to the level of literary fiction, you need to find some way to elevate a life event to help me see it in a completely different way. Play with the language, find unexpected angles or voices or structures that turn the whole thing on its head and make me say, "Wow, I never thought of it like that before."

5. Make me FEEL. Explore tactility; how does something feel or sound or taste or smell? But avoid cliches like the plague (see what I did there?); try to find some wholly fresh and inventive way of getting me into your world. One of my favorite examples of this is from Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous: "Then, your chin turning into a peach pit, you lower your face into your hands." It would have been so easy to just write, "Your chin wrinkled up," but with this peach pit analogy, I can see his mother's chin crumpling up as she begins to cry, I can feel it under my finger tip, and it's a lightning bolt of comprehension.

6. Lastly? READ. Read, read, read, read, read. Get to know the genre in which you're writing. If it's flash, read flash. If it's poetry, read poetry. Study those pieces, dissect them, highlight the daylights out of them to figure out what makes them tick. Trust me, it WILL make you a better writer. Read outside your comfort zone as much as possible. The goal is to grow, and if you haven't read widely, it shows in your work.  

Is there anything you’d like The Baltimore Review readers and/or submitters to know about the review process?

Over the years I've been reading for BR, I've had the opportunity to work with some exceptionally talented editors and writers. Every one of them understands the sacredness of this work; we are thoughtful in our discussions, mindful of how precious your submission is to you, and downright giddy when we find pieces that make us laugh or cry or mourn or fear in ways that we might never have expected. There's just nothing like reading something that makes you stop for a moment and savor. We all have our preferences and our own quirky, little idiosyncrasies about things writers do that drive us crazy, but we all recognize that writing is highly subjective, as is reading, and what one of us finds lovely, another editor may find too purple, and that's where the level of respect and professionalism of the BR team really shines. It's a pleasure to work with them, and Barbara Diehl, our founding and managing editor, does a marvelous job keeping us all moving forward as a team. It's an honor to be part of it. 

Adina Edelman

What genres do you review? 

Fiction and poetry

Some reviewers have jobs related to literature, and others do not. What is your profession, and how does it affect—or not affect—your life as a writer and reader for a literary journal?

I work as a book editor for authors of memoir and fiction (edelmanedits.com). I originally interned with The Baltimore Review to gain editorial experience, and I stayed on as a volunteer editor. I love the discussions that go on behind the scenes—what we like about a piece, whether it might prove insensitive, or if it was missing a crucial story element. Editing can be a lonely task, and joining with other people in the field and seeing their viewpoint is so refreshing. I definitely take those different viewpoints into my own work, letting them broaden my editorial eye. And, as I gain experience as a book editor, I bring what I learn into reading for the BR. I'm able to more easily pinpoint what's not working, why something is working, or what can be done to improve a submission. It's fun stuff.

What are you looking for when reading submissions?

One big thing is voice, and this is something that reading for The Baltimore Review has given me a strong appreciation for. Many writers are still finding their voice, and their writing may come across as flat and uninteresting. It's hard to nail voice. But when you read a story rich with it, it's like an espresso shot in a drink. Everything lights up, and it can easily carry you through an 18-page story. It's just dazzling.

Another thing I look for, and this is particular to poetry, is fresh perspective. Turning something mundane into something new. Making the ordinary extraordinary. And not doing it in a dramatic way but actually making it real. There's nothing new under the sun, but you can use certain language to turn those sun rays into something you've never seen before.

Is there anything you’d like The Baltimore Review readers and/or submitters to know about the review process?

I think it's important for readers to know that it's not just one person looking at their work and then done. It's a team. And for those submissions that get close, there's a lot of discussion. Writing—and reading—is so subjective, and we understand that. Know that rejection does not always mean the story doesn't have merit. It might have needed a couple more revisions, or perhaps it wasn't right for The Baltimore Review.

Coming from the other end, I do want to encourage all writers to please take time away from their work and then edit again before submitting. It's inevitable that a piece will have typos or grammar errors but show us that you care. Show us that you put in effort to make this work clean and presentable. It matters.

Elizabeth Knapp

What genres do you review? 

Poetry

 
Some reviewers have jobs related to literature, and others do not. What is your profession, and how does it affect—or not affect—your life as a writer and reader for a literary journal?

I'm a college English professor, so I live and breathe literature. It's often difficult for me to get into a groove with my own writing during the academic year, so summer is usually my most productive season. I read poetry submissions all year round, but as with my own writing, I have more time in the summer to devote to editorial work. 

 
What are you looking for when reading submissions?

I want a poem to “take the top of my head off,” to quote Emily Dickinson. If a poem does that on the first reading, I know it's a keeper. 

Is there anything you’d like The Baltimore Review readers and/or submitters to know about the review process?

I recommend that submitters keep their cover letters brief and professional.

Comments:

A Chat With Nine 2024 Debut Novelists—and Hear Them Read!

by Christa Davis

What if I told you that as a writer, rejection is part of the territory, part of the learning landscape? Yes, you will only be rejected if you submit your work, but you’ll learn a lot in the process, and you’ll only get published if you submit it.

In our last blog post, Lynn Stansbury shared her experience so far with the Poets & Writers’ 2023 “Get the Word Out cohort. The program introduces debut authors to the nitty-gritty of being published: publicity and marketing. Today we will introduce you to Lynn’s fellow writers in the program. Spoiler alert: most of these talented, award-winning authors were rejected many times before their work was accepted.

DON’T MISS this Friday’s Poets & Writers “Get the Word Out Fiction Reading” on February 23, 2024, at 7:00 PM ET. 

Kathya Alexander - Keep A’ Livin’

Kathya Alexander, author of Keep A’Livin’, “didn’t get published for years.” Her debut novel-in-verse is a captivating story about a young girl’s life during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. She says Keep A’Livin’ “shows activism as more than just a few famous protest speeches, the costs to those who dedicate themselves to activist work, and the passion that drives us ever forward to a better, more just future.” 

Kathya's advice to emerging writers: “Accept rejection as part of the process. And even though it’s hard, don’t take it personal. Just keep doing it over and over and over, and one day somebody will want exactly what you have to offer.”

Kathya Alexander’s plays, storytelling, and life as a teaching artist explore the beauty and complexity of contemporary African American life, the rich infusion of Black culture into American life, and what it means to be Black in America. Keep A’Livin’ is available for pre-order from Auntie Lute Press.

Christina Cooke - Broughtupsy

Christina Cooke’s debut novel Broughtupsy follows twenty-year-old Akú who, after years of rejection and separation, returns home to Jamaica and finds hope of reconciliation of who she is to her very conservative family and home culture, with the help of a brash young woman from the streets of Kingston.

Christina says rejections do not define your ability as a writer. “Sometimes it’s simply, ‘no, your piece isn’t a good fit for this issue even though it’s so lovely . . .’ Over time, you’ll develop the stamina and tenacity to see yourself through.” 

Born in Jamaica, now a Canadian citizen, Christina lives and writes in New York City. Visit her at christinajcooke.com. Broughtupsy is available now from Catapult.

 

Alisa Alering - Smothermoss

Alisa Alering’s first fiction submission never published. “Nor was the next or the next or the next. I had no idea what I was doing.” 

The road to publishing took many years for Alisa, but their debut novel, Smothermoss, “explores themes that emerge from an Appalachian childhood, caught up in the interplay between human and other sensibilities in the forest. Everyone has their own opinion.”  

Alisa’s advice to emerging writers: “Listen. Not just to teachers and successful writers but to your inner voice. Stay curious.” 

Award-winning writer, editor, writing coach, and former librarian, Alisa Alering writes fiction for adults and children and non-fiction that explores science, technology and the future. They live in Southern Arizona. Smothermoss is available for pre-order at Tin House.

Lena Valencia - Mystery Lights

“You need to submit work to get published. But the majority of your focus is better spent on what you do have control over: Your writing.” 

Lena Valencia’s wisdom draws from her writing—her submissions, rejections and lessons learned. “Publication is wonderful for a writing career, but I believe that a focus on craft, reading, and community will help any writer build a truly sustainable writing life.” 

Mystery Lights, Lena’s debut fiction collection, grapples with terrors familiar and fantastic. From the all-too-real horror of a sexual predator on a college campus to a lost sister transformed by cave-dwelling creatures, these stories floodlight women and girls caught at the crossroads of mundane daily life and existential dread. 

Lena Valencia lives in Brooklyn, NY. She is the managing editor and director of educational programming at One Story and the co-host of the reading series Ditmas Lit. Mystery Lights is available for pre-order from Tin House.

Parul Kapur: Inside the Mirror

Set in 1950s Bombay (Mumbai), Parul Kapur’s debut novel, Inside the Mirror, explores female creativity and identity-making at time and in a society that denies women the freedom to shape their own lives, even as that society struggles to assemble the shards of its own identity after two brutal centuries of European colonialism.

Parul’s first fiction submission: “was accepted right off the bat by Wascana Review, leading me to the dangerous belief that publication would come easily . . . I learned soon enough this was a lucky break and I . . . had much to learn about my craft.” 

For new writers, Parul says, “Write only about the things you care most deeply about and are most intrigued by.”

Parul Kapur was born in Assam, India, grew up in Connecticut, and holds an MFA from Columbia. Behind the Mirror is available from the University of Nebraska Press.

Jessie Ren Marshall: Women! In! Peril!

Jessie Ren Marshall’s debut story collection, Women! In! Peril!, follows a diverse cast of women—parents and children, queer girlfriends and straight divorcées, bad teachers and horny students, robots and sex workers—who are on the precipice of change and must decide whether to embrace that change or run for cover.

Full of wry humor, sharp social commentary, and an irrepressible sense of hope, Women! In! Peril! is a ferociously feminist reflection on love and the possibility of human growth.

Jessie says the best part about publication is “contact with people who also care about literature . . . it’s such a joy to find like-minded authors, editors, and readers.” She believes that literary magazines are a tremendous benefit for the community.  “Not only do lit mags support early career writers, they provide training for undergraduate and graduate students, help to make their institutions a center for the arts, and create a legacy of achievement and community.” 

Jessie Ren Marshall lives and writes off the grid on the Island of Hawai’i. Women! In! Peril! can be  pre-ordered from Bloomsbury.

Marissa Higgins: A Good Happy Girl

Debutiful’s Adam Vitcavage calls A Good Happy Girl “one of the sexiest, most sensual, and sapphic books in recent memory . . . Come for the tantalizing text but stay for the subtle, soft humane moments in between.”

Award-winning author Marissa Higgins’s debut novel, A Good Happy Girl, considers worlds without men. And women who will do what they can to get what they want. In her exploration of twisted desires, queer domesticity, and the effects of incarceration on the family, Marissa Higgins offers empathy to characters who often don’t receive it. With unsettling results.

Marissa Higgins lives in Washington, DC. A Good Happy Girl can be pre-ordered at Catapult.

Esinam Bediako: Blood on the Brain

“Do your research before submitting your work. Find lit mags you enjoy, publications where you think your writing fits, and submit there. And also, don’t give up . . . your piece will find a home in time.”

Esinam Bediako is a Ghanaian American writer from Detroit. She holds degrees in English/comparative lit, and teaching, and an MFA. She has taught high school English, edited textbooks, served as a secondary school administrator, and, during one nerve-wracking summer, worked as a pharmacy technician. 

Esi’s award-winning debut novel, Blood on the Brain, tells the story of a Ghanaian American grad student struggling to confront the challenges in her life. She deals with her problems the best way she knows how—by rushing headlong into new ones—until the pain of all her unresolved trauma finally catches up to her.

Esi lives in Claremont, California with her husband and their two sons, who create stories, videos, and other artwork with enviable speed and imagination. Her essay/poetry chapbook Self-Talk is due out this year from Porkbelly Press. Blood on the Brain can be pre-ordered from Amazon.

Bruna Dantas Lobato: Blue Light Hours

Bruna Dantas Lobato is a fiction writer and translator. Her translation of Stênio Gardel’s The Words that Remain won the 2023 National Book Award for Translated Literature. 

In her debut novel, Blue Light Hours, forthcoming in October 2024, Dantas Lobato limns a tender portrait of a mother and a daughter coming of age together four thousand miles apart. In America, a young Brazilian woman starts a new life in a small Vermont liberal arts college. At home a continent away, her lonely mother worries. In nightly video calls, in the Skype-blue light of their computers, they try to tell each other the news, when what’s new is beyond words.

Bruna says, “I’ve been lucky to meet wonderful writers, editors, and readers through the magazines I’ve worked with—including my agent, who found me on the pages of A Public Space.” Her advice to emerging writers: “Stick to it, push yourself to ask the hard questions, revise. Then submit to your favorite journals.”  

Bruna was born and raised in Natal, Brazil, and lives in St. Louis, Missouri, in the US, with her partner and pet bunny. For information about Blue Light Hours, due out from Grove Atlantic in October 2024, visit Bruna’s website HERE.

NOW, join the brilliant authors from the Poets & Writers’ 2023 “Get the Word Out" cohort as they perform a live virtual reading to celebrate their achievements.  Head over to Poets & Writers to RSVP to the 2024 Get the Word Out Fiction Reading on February 23, 2024, at 7:00 PM ET.   

Comments:

Winter 2024 Issue Launched January 19, 2024

by Barbara Westwood Diehl

Welcome to our winter 2024 issue!


Congratulations to our winter contest winners:

Sasha Wade – Prose Poem

Eileen Frankel Tomarchio – Flash Fiction

Elizabeth J. Wenger – Flash Creative Nonfiction

And special thanks to our final judge, Marion Winik.
 

We hope that you enjoy these short works as well as poems by Christopher Blackman, Jessica Hammack, Terrance Owens, and Hayden Saunier; fiction by Mike Cooper, Elizabeth DeKok, Derek Dirckx, Kirsten Imani Kasai, Sophie Klahr, and Franz Jørgen Neumann; and creative nonfiction by Derek Maiolo and Bob Ostertag.
 

Our Submittable doors open again for poems, short stories, and creative nonfiction on February 1. Summer contest categories open on March 1.

We are now reading for our spring 2024 issue.

Thank you for reading and supporting the work of writers!

Comments:

An Interview With Baltimore Review Editor Lynn Stansbury

by Christa Davis

I sat down with Baltimore Review’s own Lynn Stansbury, who was among the ten debut novelists in this year’s Poets & Writers’ 2023 “Get the Word Out” cohort. The program introduces fiction authors to the nitty-gritty of being published: publicity and marketing.   

Lynn’s forthcoming book, Not All Dead Together, depicts a lifetime of Guatemalan history, a meditation on family, heroism, and unlikely friendships in the midst of hostile surroundings. 

In this three-part blog series, writers of all levels will learn about the Poets & Writers’ 2023 “Get the Word Out” program. Through Lynn’s candid lens, she offers her own unique perspective about the program, how it works, and why publicity is essential to book publishing. 

Not All Dead Together is scheduled for release by Chin Music Press in Fall 2024. 

Where are you in your writing journey? Does it matter?

What matters is knowing where we want to go with our writing. A lot of us hope to publish our work, and whether you’re a new writer or an experienced novelist, it’s never too early or too late to learn about the publishing world. 

Without revealing too much, what would you say your upcoming book is about?

About taking responsibility. About building family across what are conventionally viewed as unbridgeable gaps of time, culture, history, and experience. Told across the sixty post-World War II years that have seen the US overthrow of Guatemala’s legitimately elected reformist president (reminds you of what?), then the Guatemalan Thirty Years War and the second Mayan genocide, Not All Dead Together chronicles a friendship that grows between two young women and their families, one Guatemalan, one gringa, a bond that survives and matures through thirty years of genocidal civil war and fifteen more of kleptocratic narco-terrorism. 

Tell us about any influences or inspirations you had when writing your book.

The way I craft stories—how they start, grow, and birth themselves in my head—are fairly consistent in both my long and short form fiction writing: a scene, a landscape, something happening in that landscape.

But this particular book, more than any of my other novels, grew from a conviction that in my Peace Corps years in Guatemala, I had been privileged to witness genuine heroism, again and again, among some amazing people. A story that kept growing over the years that followed. And that I needed to find a way to tell that story in a way that would honor them but not further endanger them. 

What drew you to P&W, and how did you hear about their program?

P&W has posted and curated some of the most useful websites for searching for literary agents, for possible contests, and appropriate journals for short story submissions.

 That said, notice of the “Get the Word Out” fellowship turned up in my gmail account at just the right moment and I jumped on it! 

Describe your reaction to the news that you were selected for the 2023 fiction cohort.

Mind you, the contract offer on Not All Dead Together had blown me out of the water. So “gobsmacked,” yes, but, being now among the “select” of being a “real” author, I guess I also thought, well, anything’s possible.

Describe the program so far. Are you optimistic about the process and how it aligns with your expectations?

May-Zhee Lim, a top publicist with Penguin Riverside, leads each session. The sessions take alternating forms. 

The core program is a series of “workshops” in which May-Zhee leads a discussion—usually framed around but not limited to questions she posts about where we are and how we are thinking about and dealing with our publicity and marketing issues. Through this process, May-Zhee has done a wonderful job of building us into a mutually supportive working group. 

The workshops then alternate with seminars featuring a guest presenter. We have had three so far: Nora Alice Demick, a marketing specialist with Penguin Riverside, Hernan Diaz, Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, and Spencer Ruchti, author events manager for Thirds Space Books, the largest independent bookseller in Seattle. The fourth presenter, January 17, will be Miwa Messer, the host of the Barnes & Noble “Poured Over” book review podcast series. The information that we’re getting certainly meets my expectations; the access to the top tiers of the current publishing scene has been awe-inspiring. 

Are there any misconceptions about publishing that aspiring writers should know about?

I was surprised by the array of tasks and odd bits of expertise that the writer (like the patient and their family in health care) thought were going to be handled by the professional team but which in fact one must do or at least coordinate oneself. For many of us, the writerly headspace is a solo voyage across a wide and lonely sea. Whereas the experience of actually being published—especially by smaller indie presses, particularly those that will still look at un-agented work—is like herding cats. 

Finish this sentence: The future of fiction writing is _______.

As rich and full of possibility as ever. Not least because we humans keep having to discover and relearn the same stuff over and over again. And storytelling is so often how we do that.

Lynn Stansbury is a fiction editor for Baltimore Review and lives in the Seattle, Washington area with her husband. Not All Dead Together, her fifth novel but her first to make it beyond iUniverse, is due in October 2024 by Chin Music Press. 

Christa Davis is a graduate student of Professional Writing at Towson University, a Marine Corps veteran, and reads fiction and CNF submissions for Baltimore Review. She enjoys time with family, genealogy, history, and writing nonfiction. 

Comments:

Elizabeth J. Wenger

by

Comments:

Sasha Wade

by

Comments:

Eileen Frankel Tomarchio

by

Comments:

Hayden Saunier

by

Comments:

Terrance Owens

by

Comments:

Bob Ostertag

by

Comments:

Franz Jørgen Neumann

by

Comments:

Derek Maiolo

by

Comments:

Sophie Klahr

by

Comments:

Kirsten Imani Kasai

by

Comments:

Jessica Hammack

by

Comments:

Derek Dirckx

by

Comments:

Elizabeth DeKok

by

Comments:

Mike Cooper

by

Comments:

Christopher Blackman

by

Comments:

Baltimore Review 2023 Prize Nominations

by Barbara Westwood Diehl

Baltimore Review 2023 Nominations:

The Best Short Stories of the Year: The O. Henry Prize Winners
July 1, 2022 – July 1, 2023

“You Wish This Were a Novel,” Matt Barrett

“Pictures of a Woman You Never Knew,” Abigail Oswald

“The Stirling Stone,” Frank Reilly

“The Scrape,” Kirk Vanderbeek

Best of the Net
Work published between July 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023

“Mezuzahs,” Jared Beloff

“Moose Prayer,” Kael Knight

“Envy,” Lance Larsen

“Alone at Passing Period,” Karis Lee

“Pictures of a Woman You Never Knew,” Abigail Oswald

“Erosion and the Laetoli Footprints,” Susan Blackwell Ramsey

“Bad Apple,” Lucy Zhang

“What I Remember,” Alison Zheng

“White Rabbit,” Huina Zheng

“There are so many levels called darkness,” Jane Zwart
 

Best Small Fictions
Work under 1,000 words published in 2023

“Daps for the Dead,” Sacha Bissonnette

“Sidewalks,” Robin Littell

“Seventeen,” Joshua Jones Lofflin

“Scorpion Season,” Cressida Blake Roe

“Ars Poetica,” Kelly Weber
 

Pushcart Prize 
Work published in 2023
 

“They Look Like Me,” Kayo Chang Black 

“The Home Front, 1992,” Sheila Black 

“Oxygen,” Brendan Constantine 

“Thiohnaka (Home),” Jim Genia 

“Laugh Machine,” Katherine Tunning 

“There are so many levels called darkness,” Jane Zwart 

Copies of our annual print compilation are sent to the Best American series editors each year. 

We also send copies of work published online after our print compilation is published.

And sometimes, nominations and even awards come as a pleasant surprise. We include a list of awards here.

Wishing all the best for the wonderful writers published in the past year’s issues!

Comments:

Fall 2023 Issue - Includes a “Featured Maryland Writers” Section

by Barbara Westwood Diehl

Welcome to our fall 2023 issue, which went live on November 6!

We decided to include a special section in this issue for writers who are Maryland residents. Yes, we publish the work of writers from all over the U.S. and beyond, but we have a special place in our hearts for the locals. We are so pleased to share the work of these Maryland writers: Ned Balbo, Tara A. Elliott, Matt Hohner, Joshua Jones Lofflin, Marie Pavlicek-Wehrli, and Jane Satterfield. 

We hope that you also enjoy the poems and short stories from Sascha Bissonnette, Sheila Black, Sara Burge, Brian Czyzyk, Renee Emerson, Jane McKinley, Areej Quraishi, Katherine Tunning, and Zachariah Claypole White. A good number of this issue’s contributors included comments and audio files with their work. A wonderful bonus.

Our Submittable doors are open through November 30 for poems, short stories, and creative nonfiction. We are also reading contest submissions: prose poems, flash fiction, and flash creative nonfiction. See each category’s submission guidelines if you would like your own work considered for our winter issue. 

We nominated many of our contributors for awards this year: Best of the Net, the various “Best American” anthologies, and more. Pushcart nominations will go in the mail soon. We will announce all award nominees on our blog in December. See our “Awards” page for a list of BR contributors' honors.  

Thank you for reading and supporting the work of writers!

Comments:

Zachariah Claypole White

by

Comments:

Katherine Tunning

by

Comments:

Jane Satterfield

by

Comments:

Areej Quraishi

by

Comments:

Marie Pavlicek-Wehrli

by

Comments:

Jane McKinley

by

Comments:

Joshua Jones Lofflin

by

Comments:

Matt Hohner

by

Comments:

Renee Emerson

by

Comments:

Tara A. Elliott

by

Comments:

Brian Czyzyk

by

Comments:

Sara Burge

by

Comments:

Sheila Black

by

Comments:

Sacha Bissonnette

by

Comments:

Ned Balbo

by

Comments:

Maryland Writers Feature Planned for Fall 2023 Issue

by Barbara Westwood Diehl

Attention local writers: 

We are planning a special Maryland Writers section for our fall 2023 issue. 

So Submittable categories are open for poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction categories for writers from anywhere—plus a special category for writers who are Maryland residents. 

So if you're currently a Maryland resident, consider submitting poems, short fiction, and creative nonfiction for this special fall 2023 section.

Three poems. Or prose that is 5,000 words or less (including flash length—we love flash).

Deadline to be included in this special section: October 7, 2023

Comments:

Two Free Generative Writing Sessions

by Barbara Westwood Diehl

Need to set aside an hour of writing time for yourself? Need someone to give you prompts and set the timer? Here are a couple of free generative writing sessions from Baltimore Review. If you want to receive the Zoom link the morning of each session, email editor@baltimorereview.org. 

Comments:

Our Summer 2023 Issue is Live

by Barbara Westwood Diehl

Welcome to our summer 2023 issue!



Congratulations to our summer contest winners:

Jarrett Moseley – Prose Poem

Robin Littell – Flash Fiction

Rochelle L. Johnson – Flash Creative Nonfiction

And special thanks to our final judge, Kelly Weber.
 

We hope that you enjoy these short works as well as poems by Brendan Constantine, Sara Elkamel, Michael J. Grabell, Bronte Heron, Virginia Kane, and Charlie Peck; fiction by Roxanne Lynn Doty, Jim Genia, Robert Osborne, Remy Reed Pincumbe, and Tom Roth; and creative nonfiction by Kayo Chang Black and Mimi Veshi.

We open our Submittable doors again for poems, short stories, and creative nonfiction on August 1. And we’ll announce our winter contest soon after. 

Also, we’re pulling our annual print compilation together, and that will be sent to contributors and available for purchase before the end of summer. The book will include the work in the summer and fall 2022 and winter and spring 2023 issues. 

Thank you for reading and supporting the work of writers!

Comments:

Mimi Veshi

by

Comments:

Tom Roth

by

Comments:

Remy Reed Pincumbe

by

Comments:

Charlie Peck

by

Comments: