Category: Writing
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Announcing Our Nominations for The Pushcart Prize
Hello, Dear Chum, Thanks for stopping by! It’s good to see you. It’s been a busy year—but the year isn’t over yet! We’re roughly a month away from the release of Issue 4, a whopping triple-issue print anthology featuring the best of the year, the winner of our annual Dead Herring Prize, and a whole…
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“Lofgeornost” by Eric Fisher Stone
Beowulf’s last word means most eager for glory,though the gulf coast toad seeks anonymityand crickets juicy as mangos. Wartedlike some goblin dumpling, your soft stone sits in moss-slick ditches, your eyelidshelming black mirrors to marsh grasswhere Grendel might burble upfrom salted Texas jetties. Teach us your humility, jumping plum, rubbingbetween streams without seeking powerbeyond the…
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“The Sky is Falling” by Morganne Howell
2006 “What are you worried about?” my mother asks me across the patio table. She looks at my father for reassurance, who studies his stein. Charred fragments of the forest float down from the overcast sky and land in the crisp foam of his beer. He picks them out with a finger and wipes his…
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“Sinking Feeling” by Alice Lowe
In an Ursula LeGuin story written in the seventies and set in an unspecified future time, Manhattan is under eleven feet of water at low tide, and oyster beds occupy San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square. That’s fiction, but it’s a fact that New York City is sinking under its own weight. Relentless construction—the city’s million-plus-and-ever-increasing buildings…
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“Why We Pray” by Will Falk
We should have known – whenpollution turned the sun purpleand even the honest horizonshazed over – that we were trappedbetween the two halves ofthe last summer solstice.“Half day, half night,part Earth, part sky”was an eerie rhymechanted by passing timeas it dragged us alongto neither cold darknor scorching light,but blank, hatefulindifferent gray.But those moments thatalways flee…
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“The Japanese Beetle War” by Karen W. Burton
Japanese beetles hummed about my head, their iridescent thoraxes reflecting the summer sun. I closed my eyes and decided they were humming in the key of C sharp. I stood in their chorus and the sweltering heat while I considered my problem from different perspectives: Poetically: Rainbows were feasting on my blossoms Scientifically: popillia japonica…
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“Ode on a Trilobite” – Paulette Guerin
Antennae curving like scythes,they once moved like excited pupswaiting for their owner to arrive.This Cambrian creaturepatrolled the darkest seas,growing up to six feet long.But this one fits in my hand.Mid-curl, forever in chase,its eyeless carbon ghost lives on.Oh, ancestor of today’s cockroach,once the height of the food chain,teach me about impermanence! Paulette Guerin lives in…
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Laura McHugh: An Interview with the author of “What’s Done in Darkness”
Anybody who’s ever called the Ozarks home shares a particular heritage with the land itself in a way that is unique from the rest of the world. Almost a stereotype, we Ozarkians grew up catching lightning bugs, climbing trees, and tearing through the hills barefoot. We are born of honeysuckle and dogwood and baptized in…
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#amwriting #exorcisms
It occurred to me during a recent bout of creative drought that I’m most involved and even prolific when I’m writing about things that are difficult to talk about or for which I lack the right audience. Morbid as it may be, the more whatever I’m working on seems capable of making somebody else squirm…
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#amwriting
When you don’t know what to write, write. Right? Well—that’s kind of like somebody saying, “Cheer up,” when you’re down in the dumps. Down there, usually we’re not asking for help. Writing can be like that. We understand intellectually that we should just cheer up (or just write), it’s what we want, in fact. Or…
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Spacing in Novels: It’s All Between the Lines
Over the years, I’ve attended many Comic-Con events around the area. It’s a great way for independent authors to purchase a booth on the floor, highlight their new novel series with posters, and sign physical copies. Yet, I have come to a conclusion about the state of indie books at such events: great stories, but…
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Spotlight on “Ghost Town” by Paulette Guerin
Ghost Town Published in “Cave Region Review” “Another tie chipped into the river, hitting sky. The boys stripped their shirts, hooking them on iron spikes in the rotten wood of the train bridge. the scent of rain clung to the underside of every leaf; silkworms pillowed poison sumacs along the bank. The boy I liked…
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Announcing the Dead Herring Prize
Art—even lower-case-a art or writing—is not a surefire way to get rich. Sure, it would be nice, but for creative people, the process itself is the reward. We create art because it helps us to maintain some semblance of sanity—creating things heals us. We create because we must. But, hey, baby’s gotta eat! The editors…
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The Pouting Trout Life Jacket
Good morning and good day, you pretty, shiny fishes and creatures. This is the Pouting Trout. Feel the sun’s healing and know it is a new and better day. I just wanted to let you know I am out here. I am listening. I know what you’re going through, and I know it isn’t easy,…
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#amwriting #freewriting
Developing a solid writing habit is not easy, and often, it’s plain hard. How can I make more time to write? What should I work on now that I’ve made the time? Where do I start? Where do I go from there? How do I know if I’m on the right track? I don’t know…
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How to Make a Real Difference in the Worlds
Maybe it’s just me (I’m pretty cynical), but every time I encounter The Next Great Idea That’s Going to Change the World, my built-in, shock-proof bullshit detector starts screeching. I don’t care if it’s an advertisement for a new product or a blurb on the news or just Joe Blow blowin’. I don’t want to…
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Ontological Proof of Common Decency
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” -Nobody, ever Isn’t it funny how the right combination of words, overheard and out of context, have the power to make us feel outright outrage for a total stranger? It isn’t ha-ha funny, but there’s a joke in there somewhere—a commentary on…
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#amwriting #really #noreally
The more we write—and even more so, the more we read—the more glaring it becomes how much more we have to learn, not only as writers, but as participants in the world at large. It’s easy to imagine that people like Stephen King (perhaps the most obvious example) are exempt from this notion and simply…
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Five Journals to Submit Speculative Fiction
Three-Lobed Burning Eye What a name. They say to name is to know—whoever they are, whatever they know. One thing’s for sure: the folks at 3LBE know what they’re doing. If you’ve written a gripping, writhing head-scratcher of a speculative story, you should send that puppy to 3LBE! Even if you haven’t, you should swim…
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Rooster Wails at a Midwest Crossroads: Alice in Chains Classics and Art for Art’s Sake
Maybe you remember (the era has become mostly a blur to me), but during the 1990s the Universe slipped into a real sweet spot. That much I remember. There was a beautiful synchronicity at work—or perhaps at play is more appropriate. I don’t want to call it The Grunge Renaissance because there was so much…
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No Joke: We’re Ope’n!
Ope here, The day has finally come: April Fool’s day and the first day of Skipjack Review’s inaugural reading period. Pardon my pun, but the editors and I await your submissions with baited breath. Finish up your final polishing and send us your work! We here at Skipjack Review love reading, as writers and…
the water and the gills 