Monday Miscellany - August 30, 2021
by Baltimore Review Staff Members
Happy Monday! I see that today is Frankenstein Day, the birthday of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, author of Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. Celebrate by reading the book for free on the Project Gutenberg site, one of 66,099 ebooks and one of 26 by Shelley you can read there. If you’re not up for slogging through a Gothic novel, there are always the many Frankenstein, inspired-by-Frankenstein, and spoofs-of-Frankenstein movies. You don’t have to wait until Halloween.
A Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley quote some of us can, no doubt, relate to:
“My dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable than my writings.”
I hear you, Ms. Shelley.
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We submitted our Best of the Net nominations and are keeping our fingers crossed. I want you to know that it's no easy task selecting the two short stories, two creative nonfiction works, and six poems we’re allowed to nominate for Best of the Net each year. I ask my fellow editors for their recommendations, and I spend a lot of time narrowing them down. It’s hard. I want everyone we publish to get further recognition and a wider audience. Fortunately, there are a number of nomination opportunities, and we nominate our contributors for every prize or honor possible. We’re thrilled when they receive the recognition they deserve.
Our Best of the Net nominations from our Summer 2020 through Spring 2021 issues:
Short Stories:
Claire O’Connor – “Home From the Wars”
Maria Zoccola – “We Hold Our Treasures, We Bury Them”
Creative Nonfiction:
Emily James – “The Reckoning”
Kathleen Melin – “All I Can Tell You”
Poems:
Mary Ardery – “Kawana Campsite”
Charlie Clark – “Devil Watching as, in the Midst of Your Isolation, Your Child Insists on Opening All of Her Umbrellas”
Emily Rose Cole – “Stricken Ghazal”
Chera Hammons – “Ghazal after the Electrocardiogram”
Lance Larsen – “Everything is a Prayer to Something”
Adrian S. Potter – “In Which Love Is a Kind of Falling”
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We're still in the process of proofreading Baltimore Review 2021 (oh how easy to miss things, and thank goodness for my proofreaders), our annual print compilation of the poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction published online. For this one: the Summer and Fall 2020 and Winter and Spring 2021 issues. Coming soon.
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A couple more resources for writers and book lovers:
Literary Hub
Publishing . . . and Other Forms of Insanity
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Congratulations to BR board member Michael Downs on his Best American Essays Notable!
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Finally, one more writing prompt. Hope it sparks an idea for you!
Amy Collini prefaces each section of her creative nonfiction piece “Definitions” with a word and its definition. She uses these words—the spelling bee words of her story—to capture the experience. Try listing some words that interest you, along with their definitions. Look for connections between them. See if this inspires a story or poem.