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I’ve been thinking about the terrorist attacks in Paris all weekend. It breaks my heart, all this hatred in the world. My deepest sympathies to the family and friends who lost loved ones and to all the people of France. I grieve with you.

I rode 65 miles/104.6 kms yesterday and it was really amazing to see the support for France offered up by the other cyclists. We all have our country’s flags that appear with our names on the rider board and people riding in France were deluged with “Ride on” thumb’s up. One rider even commented on how wonderful the support was. Many riders added “PFP” or #France or some other tag after their name. There was even talk of having a group ride against terrorism. It was a supportive communal kindness I did not expect to find in an online virtual cycling “game” and it made me glad to be part of it.

This morning Bookman was out working in the front yard cutting back perennials for the time when the snow arrives. Even though it was close to 60F/15C today, the cold and snow will eventually descend. And since I do the snow shoveling I can tell you it is a giant pain in the backside to have the dead perennials and grasses flop over onto the sidewalk and freeze there. Unfortunately Bookman’s hard work gave him a pain in the back and he barely made it into the house before he was hit with a big spasm.

He sprawled out on the floor just inside the door and lay there until the worst of it passed. I got the heating pad and arranged pillows on the couch and stood at the ready to lend a hand as he slowly struggled to get himself upright. Water and ibuprofen soon followed.

Gradually his back began to feel better and he was able to get up and carefully move around. We had plans to do the rafters on the chicken coop today and it seemed as though they were in jeopardy. However, not long after lunch Bookman decided he wanted to give the rafters a try, he needed to move around. I did all the bending and lifting and ever so carefully we managed to not only cut all the boards to build the rafters but we put all five of them together too!

Five rafters ready to install!

And now for something a little different. I’ve been thinking for a few months about wanting to try my hand at essay writing. I am not keen on the idea of writing an essay and then flogging it around to different websites or magazines trying to get it published. Nor do I want to purposely write commercial pieces with a specific audience or publication in mind. I just want to write essays on whatever I feel like.

I read an article at The Guardian the other day about how the internet is an ideal home for the essay. And I thought, hmm, what if? I haven’t made it past the idea stage to execution stage yet, but my plan is to create a separate website from this blog for the purpose of essays. I’d like to aim for two a month but I don’t know if that is too ambitious. It seems like it might be. I am thinking it would be good if the site were more active than just one or two essays a month from me, and wonder if any of you might be persuaded to write an essay? It could be a one-off or perhaps you enjoy essay writing so much you might want to write a few. In my mind, I am thinking posting one essay a week would be pretty decent. Topics will not be limited to books. My intent is a site for personal essay writing to explore whatever strikes my — or possibly your — fancy.

What do you think? Even if no one wants to contribute an essay I will still be moving ahead with it for my own personal experiments in writing. It could be a wild success or a terrible failure. But to me, essays are all about the process, the attempt, as the word “essay” implies. I don’t know when I will have this new venture up and running, but it is in the works and I already have begun a list of things I want to write about. It’s a little scary, a leap into the unknown for me, but no matter what happens, I’ll be glad I at least tried.

Two years ago, writing after the end of Hannibal's first season, I called the show a rich but ultimately unsatisfying feast.  I admired a lot about Bryan Fuller's take on Thomas Harris's novels and their sadistic, cannibalistic central character: its use of visuals and music to set an almost oppressively dreamlike tone, its willingness to flaunt the conventions of good storytelling, its clever

It's 6hrs before the Hugos. I am going to bed, but before that I will make this public prediction: I think the pups are going to be trounced — Abigail Nussbaum (@NussbaumAbigail) August 22, 2015 This year's Hugo results are a landmark occasion: they are the closest I've ever come to guessing the entire slate of winners.  In an informal poll last week among friends (which I'm now kicking myself

At around the 2:45 mark of the video of Norm MacDonald roasting Bob Saget, he tells a ridiculous joke about Saget looking "like a flower...yeah, a cauliflower" and he then repeats and somewhat explains the joke. Not a stand-up comedian, it is my determination that MacDonald does this repetition/explanation to hammer home just how absurd this joke (and the others in this fantastic routine) was. In other words, he HAD A REASON to do so.

Maybe my biggest recent pet peeve in reading is when an author does NOT trust their own writing, or apparently believe that their reading audience is of a junior high school level or below. After writing a beautiful passage, with a nice subtle point to it, they'll follow that passage and period up with the explanation. WHY??? Why not trust that you've made the point with your writing? Why not believe that the person reading your work has the ability to piece together what you've sewn?

I'll show no example of this as it would be incredibly rude, but I think it's something younger writers especially should pay attention to--TRUST YOUR WRITING//TRUST YOUR READERS--it will make your work stronger.

Reading the short story "Missionaries" by Jeremiah Chamberlin (truly a great story, very hard to believe the Author Notes that it was his first nationally published story) in the Winter 2007 issue of Michigan Quarterly Review, the first page alone had me realizing there are different means of offering information to your reader and Chamberlin had used a couple quite well already.

There's the simple idea of what is currently going on given to us by the narrator's thoughts:

"I'm pumping the gas. My brother-in-law, Chris, is washing the windshield."

There's information from the past given, again, through the thoughts of the narrator:

"Chris was born again in high school, though he isn't any more."

There's observation of what others are doing and possibly thinking, again, through the thoughts of the narrator:

"Then she turns to her blonde friend and they laugh, as if we'd taken some kind of bait."

And there's also via dialogue, which can also be used to give some information from the past, though more in the line of the action, as opposed to from somebody's recollection:

"'Holy shit,' he says. '1979 Pontiac Phoenix. This was my first ride.'" (from Chris).

Each of these, and there are others, just not from the first page of this short story, have their reasons for being used. The current through the narrator's thoughts is a simple and easy way to catch the reader up to what is going on and get the story started. Some of that information from the past can be filled in through the current action (Chris pointing out the girls are driving in the same model as his original car) and other material from the past, if it's necessary for the reader to know, might need to be dropped in through the narrator's thoughts if there's no clean way of doing so in the current action. It seems most frequently this type of information will be useful as a bit of foreshadowing that maybe could have been slipped in through current action later in the work, but then it might seem almost too conveniently brought up.

I think Chamberlin has made great choices with all of these examples and again, hope to see this story in a full collection in the future if this, again, his FIRST, is any indication of what other stories he's written might be like.

You could probably run an interesting poll among genre fans to see which ones find the elevator-pitch description for Netflix's new show Sense8--a globe-spanning genre series from the minds of the Wachowski siblings and J. Michael Straczynski--an immediate selling point, and which ones see it as a reason to stay away.  I have to admit that I'm in the latter group. The involvement of the

You want your manuscript, your novel, your short story, your poem, or your essay to have a great opening line--I'm sure you've heard that before. There are numerous lists and FB posts about great first lines--lines that grab the reader and say YES YOU WANT TO READ ME. Well, picking up a fantastic short story collection earlier today, Shannon Cain's Drue Heinz Prize winning The Necessity of Certain Behaviors (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), reminded me of just how important second lines are as well. I can promise you there have been novels and stories that absolutely sucked me in with grand slam opening lines that saw me quit reading when the promise of that start was horribly deflated by a second line so uninspired, so uninteresting, that it made me feel the author has played a trick on me with their opening line. They knew they'd written something so fantastic that anybody that looked at it would certainly keep reading--they had you and apparently figured that was all they needed to do.

To me, if the promise of that first sentence/line isn't followed at least pretty closely by the second, I start to have great fear that maybe the author only had one great sentence in them. That what I was about to spend what I consider precious time invested in the reading of, was simply not going to be able to be justified. However, when that second sentence is just as promising, if not even a little moreso, than the first--well, then I'm much more confident that I'm spending my time wisely.

In the story "The Steam Room," Cain starts the story with a pretty simple, yet informative, sentence:

"Helen was unhappily married to the mayor of their midsized American city."

It's not a wowser, but it's clean, it's informative and I'd keep reading. However, the second sentence:

"Sometimes she masturbated in the steam room of the downtown YMCA."

I'm in and not even necessarily for the perv factor so much as for the fact that I'm pretty sure at this point that Cain has created a very interesting character--one with a bit of darkness and something going on in her head. I want to read more.

Later in the collection, in "The Queer Zoo," Cain starts with:

"There's no actual policy at the Queer Zoo against hiring straight people: that would be illegal."

A sentence I would say that pulled me in a bit stronger than the opener of "The Steam Room." However, again, it's the following this up with another strong sentence that has me believing enough in the author to want to devote more time to the work, in this case:

"Sam is alert to rumors about the existence of other hetero employees, but so far none have turned out to be true."

It's a pattern for Cain in this very fine collection (more on that with a review soon) as really only one of the second sentences isn't pretty great even standing alone--and the one that isn't is exactly what it needed to be to move the story forward, which is exactly what I want each sentence I read to do.

In an earlier post I noted the following: "...--as a publisher, as a reader, search for what Jynne Dilling Martin referred to in a conversation with Roxane as "urgent, unheard stories." Between the end cap essays and this one in particular, it's got me thinking about my own reading habits and how they've changed since 2000 and the inception of the EWN--these essays have me thinking that those changes have been in the right direction, just maybe not fast and harsh enough."

Elsewhere, I have expounded a bit on my still fairly recent (2nd half of 2014 or so) book purchasing policy--no matter what the situation, be it in a new store, a used store, an online store, or requesting review copies from a publicist, I will make sure that there are at least as many female authored titles in my hand, cart, or email request as there are male authored titles.

The thought process behind this certainly kicked in after some VIDA sponsored numbers and reports started to come out. As one who had named his blog the Emerging Writers Network, I had obviously geared my reading since 2000 toward newer writers, or "mid-list" writers that I still felt were under-recognized and under-read. A lot of the authors I read in that first decade plus as a blogger, reviewer, etc. had me relying on other bloggers, on publicists, on literary journals, and reviews in order to "discover" these writers. And then, as I began to read much more than I had been the previous five to ten years, I began developing certain tastes, but also began to recognize names much more. I loved Brady Udall's first novel so of course I was going to buy his second novel. I loved the story collection of Anthony Doerr so it was only sensible I'd buy his novel, his memoir, his next novel. And what I slowly came to realize was that while yes, I tried to "even things out" in my own reading numbers, but MY OWN READING HISTORY was going to skew future numbers if I didn't consciously make an effort to dissuade that fact.

There were many more male authors whose "next book" would be a book I'd head into the store to purchase than those of female authors, simply because I'd read more of their "last books." The only way I could think to counter that was the buy one, at least buy one scenario detailed above. Heading into the store KNOWING I'd be picking up the new Benjamin Percy and TC Boyle novels meant that I'd need to search for two books penned by females.

A side project this spring as well as a personal issue has led to not a ton of reading for personal pleasure so far this calendar year, but at the halfway point of the year (yes, this post is a couple of weeks late) I had only reviewed three titles in more than simple posts showing their covers online somewhere---two by women (Trudy Lewis' The Empire Rolls, and Roxane Gay's Urgent, Unheard Stories) and one by Matt Bell (Baldur's Gate II). At the halfway point I had mentioned 90 different titles via Facebook--books I'd purchased, that I'd received in the mail, that I had downloaded to my kindle. 45 were by women and 45 were by men. There were most likely more titles, percentage-wise, by writers of color, and/or having been translated to English, than in past years as well. And while I haven't read many things I've purchased or received this year in full, I can say that there isn't a title I've bought that I haven't dipped into at least a page, or story, or chapter, and I cannot wait to get past this last little hump of non-personal reading time and to dig into all of these. The dips into titles by women whose books I'd never heard of but stumbled upon because I "had" to make sure I was leaving the store with a female penned title have been wonderful---exciting, wide-ranging, different--and I'm extremely happy that I made this "purchasing/requesting policy" change this last year. It's not a policy that has hurt anybody--I'm still buying the books that I would have bought (or asked for) before...I've just added a bunch of other urgent, and unheard, stories to my pile to enjoy.

Why is it the books I love the most are the hardest to write about? It can’t be only because I want you to love them too. I was going to say that maybe it is because they are the rich ones filled with lots of good things to talk about but that isn’t always the case, sometimes a simple book can blow me away. Likely it’s some combination of factors I would have to think long and hard about. Whatever the reasons, I loved The Art of Daring by Carl Phillips so much I have put off writing about it for two weeks hoping that in that time I would be able to figure out what to say about it, how to explain the reasons it is so very good and why I loved it so much. But I am coming up empty. If I leave it any longer I won’t write about it at all and that won’t do. So I just have to tell you about it as best I can and hope you can make sense of it.

The Art of Daring is a small book of several essays. I wrote about the first one already in which Phillips discusses resonance and restlessness. He carries these two ideas into the rest of the essays and adds to them thoughts on desire, resistance, loss, love, mercy, and, of course, daring. Phillips is a poet and his writing tends to the lyrical. I know, lyrical nonfiction, not a common thing. He is meditative and circles round and round an idea, looking at it from different angles and in different lights. And then he layers them up and then he digs back down. He does this across the essays so that while each one can be read separately, they are so intertwined it would be difficult to break them apart.

This is a book of literary criticism but it is unlike nearly all you have ever read. Not entirely unique, but definitely not run-of-the-mill. It is not at all academic. It is meant for the thoughtful, general reader. And while Phillips demonstrates and advances his arguments with analysis of poems, what he says can be expanded out to include more than poetry.

And now I want to give you a sample, a quote, but something short won’t convey the full sense of this book. Something longer then, which means I can’t give you several quotes because your eyes will glaze over or you will just skip them. So one quote, but which one? One about uncertainty? Or maybe one about our fragmented selves? A beautiful one about how a poem is a form and act of love? No, while these all tie into the title they seem unhinged without context, so I give you something that reflects the purpose of the book but does not require context:

The deeper one gets into what eventually amounts to a career, the harder it becomes to incorporate daring and risk into it. As in life, if we’re lucky, we grow more comfortable, successful, and accordingly more aware that there is more to lose. So there’s a resistance to changing what’s in place already. Meanwhile, we’re aware also of there being daily less time left, which can bring fear. This issue of time, it seems to me, should spur us on to live even more adventurously — if not now, then when? — but mostly it doesn’t, or so it seems when I look around me. Why risk what it’s taken all our lives to at last get hold of? Or if we haven’t gotten it by now, why try, why bother? And yet for the artist I think an appetite for a certain recklessness is crucial, if the work is not only to extend itself, but also deepen, and meaningfully complicate itself.

Even though I said this is a book of literary criticism, it struck me a number of times while I was reading that it was also a kind of self-help book as you can pick out from the quote. It’s not the kind that tells you how to get ahead or organize your life or lose ten pounds or find your soulmate, it’s much more subtle than that. Because really, when you exam closely the ideas Phillips discusses and how he talks about them, you start to realize that it is about more than reading poetry and literature, it’s about life and how one might go about it. With Phillips it is definitely an examined life but not the kind of examination that keeps one in place. Instead it is one that creates a restless curiosity, a desire to know, a space for uncertainty, a willingness to dare — dare to be vulnerable, to try something new, to reach out past one’s carefully tended and comfortable borders.

I finished the book not only appreciating a particular aspect of poetry and art and literature in general, but also wanting to be more daring in my own life. Because we all are writing our own stories and when it comes to the end, I want to be able to say Wow! That was good!

Jurassic World is a pretty bad movie.  What's interesting about it, however, is that the reasons for its badness are, for the most part, the reasons it should have been good.  With only a few exceptions, the ideas that went into Jurassic World, the fourquel-slash-reboot of Steven Spielberg's paradigm-defining 1993 blockbuster, are solid and interesting.  The basic premise of the movie--that

Yesterday afternoon, before I'd watched the final episode of Game of Thrones's fifth season, I read this essay by Aaron Bady about the show, in which he argues that it has overshot its natural ending point, and therefore no longer has anything to say: What has changed, I think, is that tragedy has become pornography. Not literal pornography, of course, because very specific forms of gratuitous

Whichever book ended up being the last stop in my meandering progress through the SF novels of Iain M. Banks--a journey that began nearly ten years ago--it was bound to be a bittersweet experience.  That that book has ended up being The Hydrogen Sonata only makes it more so.  Banks could not have known, when he sat down to write this novel, how little time he had left, or that it would turn out

"When I was younger, the future was... different."  So says Frank Walker (George Clooney), one of the heroes of Brad Bird's Tomorrowland, in the opening narration that acts as a frame for the film's story.  It probably says everything you need to know about this movie that Frank--and the film itself--seem entirely unaware of the irony and self-contradiction inherent in a statement like this, and

In the fifth episode of the new Netflix series Marvel's Daredevil, lawyer-by-day, vigilante-by-night Matt Murdoch (Charlie Cox) explains to his new friend Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson) how he sees the world.  Blinded in a childhood accident, Matt discovered that his other senses had become superhumanly sharp, allowing him to perceive far more than ordinary people.  "You have to think of it as

Last night I dreamed that I wrote an essay comparing...something, I don't know what, though I think it was related to writing...to the I Ching. I didn't know what the I Ching was in the dream, which makes sense, because I don't know what it is when I'm awake. In the dream, I just read a few screens worth of information about it, maybe the equivalent of a Slate article with a short film. Really short. Then I wrote the essay. I didn't get to the point in the dream where I was submitting the completed piece of writing. That's too bad, because I'd really like to know if there's a publication that would even consider such a thing.

Well, it appears that only in a dream would you find a short piece on the I Ching that would make it possible for you to write anything intelligent about it. (Though I'm trying right now.) Even the I Ching Wikipedia entry made my eyes glaze over two-thirds of the way through the second sentence. 

The best I can work out, the I Ching, known as The Book of Changes in English, is an ancient Chinese text used to tell the future. This makes it different from the zenny stuff I'm usually interested in reading, which deals with staying in the moment so you are not anxious about the future or regretful about the past.

As a general rule, you don't have to have completed psych 1 to analyze my dreams. But I'm at a loss as to where this I Ching business came from. Yes, I attend a tai chi/kung fu school, and those are both Chinese martial arts. And, yes, next Saturday is World Tai Chi Day, and I'm not taking part with my school because I'm going to a conference. And I did get a couple of e-mails about it.

But nobody mentioned the I Ching.

So, today I've been thinking about this and wondering what I could have written that essay on, even though, of course, I didn't really write an essay, I only dreamed I did. In dream world it happened. Here is what I came up with: If the I Ching is about telling the future, maybe I connected it to plotting a piece of fiction. Maybe I came up with a way to use it to work out the future, the plot, of a story.

How easy my life would be if I could find an ancient Chinese text that would do that. 

It's been less than a year since Tasha Robinson coined the phrase "Trinity syndrome," and yet it's already become one of the most useful terms in pop culture criticism.  Named for the female lead in Lana and Andy Wachowski's The Matrix, Trinity syndrome refers to a movie in which a female character is depicted as cool, competent, and badass, but always and inexplicably in the service of a much

It's been two days since I saw Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman and I'm still feeling exhilarated.  On the most basic level, this film is like nothing else I've seen in a movie theater in a long time, possibly forever, and I urge you to see it simply for the experience (and ideally in a movie theater, since this is a work worth being immersed in).  It's also a hard movie to write about, with

riverSedge is a journal of art and literature with an understanding of its place in the nation in south Texas on the border . Its name reflects our specific river edge with an openness to publish writers who use English, Tex-Mex, and Spanish and also the edges shared by all the best contemporary writing and art. 

Submit here.

General Submissions/Contest Guidelines

Deadline to Submit is 3/1/15

$5 submission fee in all genres (except book reviews)

3 prizes of $300 will be awarded in poetry, prose, and art. All entries are eligible for contest prizes. Dramatic scripts and graphic literature will be judged as prose.

Multiple submissions are welcome in all genres. Each submission should be submitted as a separate entry. In other words, do not send two or more entries as one document.

Previously unpublished work only. Self-published work (in print and/or on the web) is not eligible.

Simultaneous submissions are welcome, but please notify us of acceptance elsewhere as soon as possible.

Submissions in English, Spanish and anything in between are welcome.

Current staff, faculty, and students affiliated with UT-Pan American, UT-Brownsville, or South Texas College are not eligible to submit original work to riverSedge.

In Fact Books is seeking new essays for two upcoming book anthologies--tentatively titled, Beyond "Crazy": True Stories of Surviving Mental Illness and Becoming a Teacher.

Beyond Crazy: 
Every year, one in four American adults will endure the trials of a diagnosable mental health disorder. But although many Americans have experienced a mental illness, either firsthand or through a family member, friend, or colleague, the stigma surrounding mental illness remains. We believe that the most important tool we have for defusing the power of this stigma is sharing true stories and revealing the real people beneath labels.

In Fact Books seeks original stories for an upcoming anthology tentatively titled BEYOND "CRAZY": TRUE STORIES OF SURVIVING MENTAL ILLNESS. Stories should combine a strong and compelling narrative with an informative or reflective element, reaching beyond a strictly personal experience for some universal or deeper meaning. 

We’re looking for well-written prose, rich with detail and a distinctive voice; writing should be evocative, vivid, and dramatic. All essays must tell true stories and be factually accurate. Everything we publish goes through a rigorous fact-checking process; editors may ask for sources and citations. Authors of accepted essays will be awarded a modest honorarium upon publication.

Guidelines: Essays must be previously unpublished and no longer than 4,500 words. Multiple entries are welcome, as are entries from outside the United States.
See submission guidelines are available at our website. 
Deadline: February 9, 2015

********
 
Becoming A Teacher:
For a new anthology, In Fact Books is seeking true stories exploring and reflecting on the process of becoming a teacher. 

Education is a hotly-contested subject, but too often the voices of teachers themselves are left out of the discussion. This fall, approximately 3.5 million full-time teachers headed into classrooms in the United States. What motivates them to enter, and to stay in, this demanding profession, and how are their daily lives affected by ongoing changes in the education system? "Becoming a Teacher" will present readers with the world of education from the perspective of elementary and secondary school teachers, recalling and reflecting on the most salient moments of their careers. 

We're looking for stories that, collectively, represent a wide variety of teachers and teaching experiences--in public or private or religious or charter schools, in cities or suburbs or rural areas, with typically-developing students or those with special needs, at home or internationally. Stories should combine a strong and compelling narrative with an informative or reflective element, reaching beyond a strictly personal experience for some universal or deeper meaning.

We're looking for well-written prose, rich with detail and a distinctive voice; writing should be evocative, vivid, and dramatic. All essays must tell true stories and be factually accurate. Everything we publish goes through a rigorous fact-checking process; editors may ask for sources and citations. 

Guidelines: Essays must be previously unpublished and no longer than 4,500 words. Multiple submissions are welcome, as are entries from outside the United States.

See submission guidelines are available at our website.
Deadline: March 9, 2015

THE WINTER ANTHOLOGY WRITING CONTEST
Final judge: Srikanth Reddy 

Entry fee: $10
 
Deadline: January 31
 
Please send up to 50 pages in any genre (a book or book-length manuscript somewhat over 50 pages is acceptable). Send writings of which you are the sole author and that were not written earlier than 1999. Published and unpublished writings are equally welcome. Two or three poems or a single story or essay are as welcome as entire books. 

To get a sense of our aesthetics, see our previous volumes. All work will be read by the editors, with finalists judged by Srikanth Reddy. Multiple entries are welcome, as are entries including a mix of genres. We accept entries until January 31st. The final decision will be announced here in late winter 2015. In the event that none of the entries meets our standards, no winner will be declared. 

The winner will be published in Volume 5 of The Winter Anthology and receive a $1000 honorarium. Finalists will also be considered for publication.
To enter electronically, use our Submittable page.

Apple Valley Review - Call for Submissions 

Submission deadline: March 15, 2015 

Apple Valley Review is currently reading submissions of poetry, personal essays, and short fiction for the Spring 2015 issue (Vol. 10, No. 1). All work must be original, previously unpublished, and in English. Please note that we do not accept simultaneous submissions. 

Several pieces from the journal have later appeared as selections, finalists, and/or notable stories in Best American Essays, Best of the Net, Best of the Web, and storySouth Million Writers Award. 

All published work is automatically considered for our annual editor's prize. 

To submit, please send 1-6 poems or 1-3 essays/short stories, all pasted into the body of a single e-mail message, to our editor:

editorATleahbrowningDOTnet (Change AT to @ and DOT to . )

The current issue, previous issues, subscription information, and complete submission guidelines are available online.

GATES OPEN! SUBMIT! 

Iron Horse Literary Review is now accepting submissions for our annual Single-Author Competition. This year, we are seeking to publish a prose chapbook composed of either stories or essays. Roxane Gay will judge. 

To submit, send a manuscript of 50-65 pages composed of either stories or essays in which each new piece begins on a new page. The author’s name and contact information must appear on a title cover sheet, but it must NOT appear anywhere else on the manuscript unless it's nonfiction and the author is referring to him or herself inside the manuscript. While portions of the chapbook may have been published elsewhere, the collection as a whole must be previously unpublished. 

The finished product will emphasize your title, not the name of Iron Horse, and the winner will receive $1,000 and 15 copies. Your $15 entry fee comes with a one-year subscription to the journal.  

Go here for more info, and send us your best by Feb. 28th!

CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY POETRY CENTER BOOK CONTESTS

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay has been popping up all over the place it seems these last several months and now I have finished it I understand why. Since I read Laurie Penny’s book just before picking this one up I can’t help but make a few comparisons. Both are essay collections but where Penny focuses on gender and patriarchy, Gay is more wide ranging with essays on competitive Scrabble, teaching, race, gender, books and movies. Penny is pissed off and doesn’t give a rat’s ass if she offends anyone. Gay is more measured, moderate, questioning and even funny. Both women have been raped. Penny almost died from anorexia. Gay struggles with being overweight. Both understand that feminism is a bigger issue than women having equal opportunity to make money. Gay refers to this as feminist essentialism and it is why she calls herself a bad feminist.

Feminist essentialism is what second wave feminism from the seventies got boxed into — humorless, militant, pornography-hating, hairy-legged, no make-up allowed women with unwavering principles and if you waver, you’re not a real feminist and you’re kicked out of the club. Second wave feminists also had a hard time addressing racial issues as well as heteronormativity. All this morphed into the kind of feminism Elizabeth Wurtzel writes about in a 2012 Atlantic article in which “real feminists earn a living, have money and means of their own.” And later that same year in a Harper’s Bazaar article she added that real feminists also work hard to be beautiful and would never “misrepresent the cause by appearing less than hale and happy.” If that’s what feminism is, no wonder Gay calls herself a bad feminist. I’m bad too!

Gay admits to being a bundle of contradictions. She often finds herself singing along happily to songs that are blatantly misogynist but the tune is so catchy she just can’t help herself. She dates men she knows are not good for her and she has, and probably will again, fake an orgasm because it is easier than taking the time and effort to get what she wants from a man who she is sure she will never have sex with again. She really likes to watch bad reality television.

Feminism is not perfect, she says, but that doesn’t mean it is not worthwhile. We forget that feminism is powered by people and people are flawed and

[f]or whatever reason, we hold feminism to an unreasonable standard where the movement must be everything we want and must always make the best choices. When feminism falls short of our expectations, we decide the problem is with feminism rather than with the flawed people who act in the name of the movement.

Gay’s favorite definition of feminism was offered by an Australian woman named Su in 1996:

feminists are ‘just women who don’t want to be treated like shit.’

Gay has a fantastic essay, “Peculiar Benefits,” about privilege. Most of us who live in western industrialized countries have privilege of one kind or another. I’m white, middle-class, educated, able-bodied, and in a heterosexual relationship that allows me to be married (Minnesota allows same-sex marriage — yay! — but that didn’t happen until 2013). I probably have other privileges I haven’t even thought about. They are nothing to be ashamed of. They are to be recognized and acknowledged for what they are. I know there are people in my city and all over the world who don’t have half the privileges I do. I don’t have to do anything about it, but I try to in my own imperfect way. As Gay says,

You need to understand the extent of your privilege, the consequences of your privilege, and remain aware that people who are different from you move through and experience the world in ways you might never know anything about. …You could, however, use that privilege for the greater good — try to level the playing field for everyone, to work for social justice, to bring attention to how those without certain privileges are disenfranchised. We’ve seen what the hoarding of privilege has done, and the results are shameful.

I could go on and on about how wonderful this book is. Gay’s writing on rape culture is excellent and her essay on trigger warnings, “The Illusion of Safety/The Safety of Illusion,” is a thoughtful discussion on the topic. Her examination of racism, especially in books, film and television, is also fantastic.

I read an interview with Gay recently (sorry, I don’t remember where!) in which she expressed her surprise that Bad Feminist is doing so well. This is her first foray into nonfiction, she considers herself a novelist, and this book was outside her comfort zone. I’m glad she wrote it and I hope there will be others. If you’ve not had a chance to read the book yet and are wondering if you should, yes, definitely give it a go.

Iron Horse Literary Review is now accepting submissions for our annual Single-Author Competition. This year, we are seeking to publish a prose chapbook composed of either stories or essays. Roxane Gay will judge. 

To submit, send a manuscript of 50-65 pages composed of either stories or essays in which each new piece begins on a new page. The author’s name and contact information must appear on a title cover sheet, but it must NOT appear anywhere else on the manuscript unless it's nonfiction and the author is referring to him or herself inside the manuscript. While portions of the chapbook may have been published elsewhere, the collection as a whole must be previously unpublished. 

The finished product will emphasize your title, not the name of Iron Horse, and the winner will receive $1,000 and 15 copies. Your $15 entry fee comes with a one-year subscription to the journal. 

For more information, go here. Send us your best by Feb. 28th!