300.4 Fall Issue 2015

Our inaugural Torch Memorial Prize for Creative Nonfiction was a tremendous success, attracting nearly 200 submissions. Final judge Eula Biss called Clinton Crockett Peter's winning essay about Australia, "Rabbits and Convicts," very strong, very readable," giving her moments of pause throughout. We're excited that next year's judge will be the incomparable Patricia Hampl, author of A Romantic Introduction and The Florist's Daughter, who was one of the keynotes at our summer bicentennial conference.

Nearly five hundred writers, artists, and scholars from around the country joined in the conference festivities. On the heels of the conference and the publication of The Great Sympathetic: Walt Whitman and the North American Review, the newly revived NAR Press also now plans to publish two books every year. Keep an eye out for in 2016 for a book on the craft of fiction as well as a collection of essays by and about the naturalist John Burroughs. WE promsie not to wait a hundred more years before throwing another grand literary party!

This issue's peotry featrues a diverse and provocative suite of peoms selected by guest editor Heid E. Erdrich to honor Native American Heritage Month. Fiction includes Susan Jackson Rodgers's "Keep Me in the Dark," about a woman's brush with "transgression"; Todd James Pierece's "Ink & Paint," which explores a woman's desire for elbow room in the male-dominated field of Disney animation; and Joseph Scapetello's deconstruction of the entire masculine mythos of the Western in "Horseman Cowboy."

Enjoy the issue!

             -GT & JDS

 

ART

Cover   Umbria en plein aire [oil on paper] • Jim Burke

11   Untitled [graphic and digital] • Brianna Hertzog

17   Untitled [pen & ink and digital] • Anthony Ventura

21   Untitled [ink and digtal] • Jared Rogness

25   Untitled [digital paint] • Scott Anderson

 

FICTION

11   Keep Me in the Dark • Susan Jackson Rodgers

17   Horseman Cowboy • Joseph Scapellato

21   Ink and Paint: Walt Disney Studios, 1948-1954 • Todd James Pierce

25   Daily Double • Michael J Rosenbaum

 

NONFICTION

3   Rabbits and Convicts • Clinton Crockett Peters

34   On Reading • Anne P. Beatty

 

POETRY

6   Ranches with Wolves • Tiffany Midge

7   The Mythology Of My Birth • b: william bearhart

8   Family Ties • Trevino L. Brings Plenty

8   One Way • Eric Gansworth

9   Let Me Explain • Mark Turcotte

9   Ballast • Leanne Howe

10   A Lot of Poems Bathing in A Stream • Alexandria Peary

10   Experiments In Grief • Rick Bursky

16   Science Honor Society • Lawrence Bridges

16   Come Here Little Broom • Susan Sonde

20   Naming the Field • Doug Ramspeck

24   Hallucinate the House, Hallucinate the Woods • Anne Barngrover

32   The Net • Warren Slesinger

33   Mother Talks Back to the Monster • Carrie Shipers

40   First Memory • Phillip Dacey

40   Watch • David Moolten

         Maria Callas's Tapeworm • Frank Paino

         Rio de Janeiro is poised to become • Chloe Veylit

 

REVIEWS

41   The US in the UK • Robert L. King

44   That-Once Wild Thing • Maggie Trapp

45   Crosscuts: Brief DVD Reviews • Grant Tracey

46   Synecdoche: Brief Book Reviews • Rachel Morgan

48   Why We Should Tilt at Windmills [Past Perfect] • Lisa Higgs

 

MISCELLANY

2   From the Editors • NAR Staffers Out in the World

47   Contributors