The Online Literary Magazine at Arizona State University
A month from today is our Issue 33 Launch Party! Join us on April 26th from 11:00 am – 12:00 pm Arizona time to celebrate with us. We look forward to seeing you there! To register, scan to QR code on the image above or click here.
The warmest of wishes to Katie M. Flynn, a previous s[r] contributor, on the recent publication of her short story collection, Island Rule! The book was published with Scout Press, and is available for purchase now wherever books are sold.
We were delighted to her that an expanded version of the story “Bury the Bird,” which was published in Superstition Review Issue 17, appears in her collection as “Disaster Kids.”
In twelve interconnected stories, Katie M. Flynn weaves the myth and pathos of contemporary America, bringing her imaginative foresight to a world in which people, places, and even animals are not always what they seem. From the seismic wealth gaps of California to the potential jeopardy of a Minnesota mortuary-turned-playground, Island Rule is about the mysterious ways we’re connected without suspecting it, about growth following decay, and about how we are shaped by and shape the world we live in – a world where humans behave like animals, and animals make their presence known. Pygmy rabbits, whales, rats, and birds change the course of the lives of libidinous college students, self-righteous joggers, and fighting sisters.
Island Rule has already received glowing reviews:
“This short-story collection mixes the mundane and the bizarre with an authority stemming from its concrete sense of place . . . the overall effect is appealingly weird, as if the uncanny valley took literary form. A compelling exercise in worldbuilding and genre blending that toggles among the recent past, present, and near future.”
Kirkus Reviews
“A wonderfully eerie collection, Island Rule haunts and delights. Flynn’s writing is taut and teeming, making a world of bone mounds and monsters as alarmingly real as teenage angst and midlife crises . . . Island Rule revels in exploring darkness at the edges of our world, and what happens when we invite it in.”
Erika Swyler, author of The Light from Other Stars
“Flynn has been compared to the likes of Jennifer Egan and Karen Russell, but her voice is unmistakably original.”
Nob Hill Gazette
Katie M. Flynn is a writer, editor, and educator based in San Francisco. Her short fiction has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Tin House, and Tor.com, among other publications. She has been awarded Colorado Review’s Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction, a fellowship from the San Francisco Writers Grotto, and the Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative Writing. Katie holds an MFA from the University of San Francisco and an MA in Geography from UCLA. Her first novel, The Companions, was published in March 2020, and her interconnected collection of short stories, Island Rule, came out March 2024 with Scout Press/Gallery Books. You can find out more about Katie at katiemflynn.com.
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We are excited to highlight Taylor Dilger, past SR intern, on her recent accomplishments. Taylor was just featured as the alum of the week by the Columbia & Radcliffe Publishing Courses which is run by Columbia’s School of Journalism. Taylor participated in a small interview, where she talks about why passion is important:
Q: What was your favorite part of the course?
A: My favorite part was meeting and working with so many amazing people. Everyone was so interesting, smart, and wonderful to be around. I absolutely loved having conversations with CPC people while walking around Oxford.
Q: What was the most valuable thing you learned at the course?
A: To keep an open mind and learn from/talk to everyone. You never know what you’ll end up doing or who you’ll need to know. I also gained a deeper appreciation of books—where they come from, how they’re made, and the people who make them.
Q: Any advice for applicants?
A: Someone at the course said, “You’re all here because you’ve shown us you’re passionate about this industry.” Don’t worry if you don’t have a lot of publishing experience or knowledge, show why you want to be there, what you can contribute, or what your goals in publishing are.
You can see the full interview on the Columbia School of Journalism LinkedIn here.
Taylor completed the Columbia Publishing Course at Oxford about five months ago. She says about the process: “It was probably the best month of my life doing what I love with the most amazing people in the world whom I am now lucky enough to call friends. I am extremely grateful to all of the people who made this happen and I’m so excited to enter the world of publishing.”
Taylor is now working as an Editorial Assistant for Wiley. She was the Blog Editor for Superstition Review during Issue 29, the student Editor in Chief for Issue 30, and Advertising Coordinator for Issue 31. Connect with Taylor on her LinkedIn profile to follow along on her journey.
Congratulations, Taylor! We are so proud of you!
Past Contributor Ute Behrend will be exhibiting her photographic work, “Flowers you gave to me,” with Beck & Eggeling International Fine Art from May 17th to July 13th 2024.
The exhibition, following the theme of “The bouquet of flowers, the ephemeral splendor,” is curated by artist Hartmut Neumann, who focuses on the bouquet of flowers—as an artistic installation that precedes photography—as a central theme.
In an ambivalent way, I make fun of the fact that women dream of men they are in love with standing outside the door with flowers, because they are also in love with THEM. The flowers are in the foreground. The men are out of focus. The bouquets are very select.
With these pictures I am creating a collection of men “who are in love with me.” The bouquets are preserved through the photo. And with them, the memory of the moment of falling in love.
Ute Behrend
You can view her photographs, “Ballons,” “Horses Near the Lake,” and “Girl with Sheep” in Issue 17.
Ute Behrend is a German artist, publisher and visual editor. She is co-founder of BUMMBUMM BOOKS publishing and a member of the DGPH. She is also a member of the presidium of the German Photographic Academy (DFA). Behrend’s photographs and video installations have been exhibited internationally and are part of numerous public collections. She published her first book “Girls some Boys and Other Cookies” with Scalo Publishers in Zurich in 1996, and has since written 7 other books, including most recently “Cows and Cars.” Her work has received many awards, including the Julia Margaret Cameron Award, the German Photo Book Prize, and the Merck Prize. You can find out more about Ute Behrend on her website.
We at Superstition Review are pleased to highlight past contributor Ayşe Papatya Bucak’s upcoming speaking event at the Calvin Center for Faith and Writing’s “2024 Festival of Faith & Writing.”
The biennial conference is running April 11-13th, in-person at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It is “a three-day celebration of literature and belief” bringing together over 2,000 people of different faiths.
You can register for the conference here.
Ayşe’s interview with Superstition Review about her book, The Trojan War Museum and Other Stories can be read in Issue 25.
Ayşe Papatya Bucak is the author of The Trojan War Museum and Other Stories, which was shortlisted for the 2020 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection. Two of the stories in the book were also selected for the O. Henry and Pushcart Prize anthologies. Her writing has been published in a variety of journals, including One Story, Guernica, Bomb, Creative Nonfiction, Witness, Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, The Pinch, The Iowa Review, and Brevity. Bucak was born in Istanbul, Turkey to an American mother and a Turkish father, but spent most of her childhood in Havertown, Pennsylvania just outside of Philadelphia. She holds a BA from Princeton University and an MFA from Arizona State University. She is an associate professor at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida, and a contributing editor for the journal Copper Nickel. You can find out more about Ayşe on her website.
Our editors are hard at work building Issue 33 of Superstition Review, which will launch May 1. This issue features interviews with eight award-winning authors. Here we are featuring the four authors, whose interviews are being conducted by Phoebe Nguyen. The authors are: Christina Vo, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Lisa Ko, and Sally Wen Mao.
Christina Vo is a writer, who currently works in development for Stanford University. She previously worked for international organizations in Vietnam and Switzerland and also ran a floral design business in San Francisco. She is the author of one previous memoir, The Veil Between Two Worlds (She Writes Press). Vo resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
A poet and multimedia artist, Diana Khoi Nguyen is the author of Root Fractures (2024) and Ghost Of (2018), which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her video work has been exhibited at the Miller ICA. Nguyen is a MacDowell and Kundiman fellow, and a member of the Vietnamese artist collective, She Who Has No Master(s). She’s received an NEA fellowship and awards from the 92Y “Discovery” Poetry and 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery contests. She teaches in the Randolph College Low-Residency MFA and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh.
Lisa Ko is the author of The Leavers, a novel which was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction and won the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. Her writing has appeared in Best American Short Stories 2016, The New York Times, BuzzFeed, O. Magazine, and elsewhere. She has been awarded fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the MacDowell Colony, among others. Born in Queens and raised in Jersey, she lives in Brooklyn.
Sally Wen Mao is currently an MFA candidate at Cornell University. The recipient of fellowships from Kundiman and Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets, she has poems in Cave Wall, Another Chicago Magazine, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Copper Nickel, and Crab Orchard Review, among others. Her work has won first place in the 2010 Rhino Poetry Journal Editor’s Prize.
We want to celebrate Isabel Lineberry, our blog editor for issue 23, for her new position as the Junior Agent and Rights Assistant at Pérez Literary & Entertainment. Isabel was just promoted to this position and was previously the assistant to the managing director.
Congratulations, Isabel! We are so proud of you!
Connect with Isabel on her LinkedIn profile to follow along on her journey.
A little about Pérez Literary & Entertainment:
Pérez Literary & Entertainment is a full-service agency dedicated to storytelling in all of its forms. We believe in the power of words to open minds and change lives.
At PLE, we are dedicated to building our clients’ careers book by book, story by story. We see our clients as our business partners and nurture long-term relationships. In today’s fast moving marketplace, we are on the constant lookout for opportunities in both traditional and non-traditional media. We are committed to empowering our clients and helping them to formulate the best strategies to achieve their storytelling goals.
Founded by a New Yorker in London, Pérez Literary & Entertainment is a transatlantic agency working holistically throughout the English-speaking world. As a multilingual and multicultural firm, PLE values diverse voices and international perspectives. We are advocates for the stories that need to be told and champions for the people who tell them.
On a day-to-day basis, we speak with editors, scouts and co-agents from around the world to sell, promote and grow our authors. We opened our doors in February 2023 and had the opportunity to celebrate PLE with those peers at our London launch party.
Her nonfiction piece, “Seven is the Hour of Water” can be read in Issue 31, and her short story, “Fistfuls,” can be read in Issue 17. She has also contributed an Author Talk which you can listen to on our blog.
Note from the author:
“Other authors might be interested to know that being persistent can pay off. I submitted my first flash fiction to DIAGRAM in 2015. It got rejected. I’ve sent them ten other pieces since. They were either rejected or withdrawn by me (and published elsewhere). But this year the editors and I agreed that DIAGRAM was the perfect home for these essays. I thank the editors for publishing my work and thank you all for reading!”
If you want to follow Claire’s adventures, she has launched a newsletter featuring travel-related personal essays which you can sign up for here.
Claire Polders grew up in the Netherlands and now roams the world. She’s the author of four novels in Dutch, one novel for younger readers (A Whale in Paris, Simon & Schuster), and many short stories and essays. Recurrent themes in her writing are identity, feminism, social justice, traveling, and death. She works on a memoir about elder abuse, a speculative novel, and a short prose collection. You can find out more about Claire on her website and social media: f x i g in
Our editors are hard at work building Issue 33 of Superstition Review, which will launch May 1. This issue features interviews with eight award-winning authors. Here we are featuring the four authors, whose interviews are being conducted by Madelynn Paz. The authors are: Elwin Cotman, Gina Chung, Zara Chowdhary, and Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez. Read more about the authors below.
Elwin Cotman was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where the post-industrial landscape greatly influenced his love for myth and adventure. He is the author of three prior collections of speculative short stories: The Jack Daniels Sessions EP, Hard Times Blues, and Dance on Saturday, which was a finalist of the Philip K. Dick Award. Cotman holds a BA from the University of Pittsburgh and an MFA from Mills College.
Gina Chung is a Korean American writer from New Jersey currently living in Brooklyn, New York. A recipient of the Pushcart Prize, she is a 2021-2022 Center for Fiction/Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellow and holds an MFA in fiction from The New School. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, Catapult, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Idaho Review, The Rumpus, Pleiades, F(r)iction, and Wigleaf, among others, and has been recognized by several contests, including the American Short(er) Fiction Contest, the Los Angeles Review Literary Awards, and the Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contest.
Zara Chowdhary is a writer and lecturer at the University of Wisconsin. She has an MFA in creative writing and environment from Iowa State University and a master’s in writing for performance from the University of Leeds. She has previously written for documentary television, advertising, and film. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin with her partner, child, and two cats.
Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez was born and raised in Tucson, Arizona, as a second-generation immigrant. She
graduated from high school at the top of her class and, in 2018, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with
a degree in philosophy, politics, and economics. She worked as a banking analyst at Wells Fargo and is now a
product manager at a big tech company, where she uses her background and knowledge to empower communities.
She has been featured on NPR’s Latino USA and delivered a viral TED Talk on finding opportunity and stability in
the United States while examining flaws in narratives that simplify and idealize the immigrant experience. She lives
in Brooklyn, New York.
Congratulations to past Superstition Review contributor, Cameron Barnett, on the upcoming publication of his second poetry collection, Murmur. The collection is available now from Autumn House Press!
The second book by NAACP Image Award finalist Cameron Barnett, Murmur considers the question of how we become who we are. The answers Barnett offers in these poems are neither safe nor easy, as he traces a Black man’s lineage through time and space in contemporary America, navigating personal experiences, political hypocrisies, pop culture, social history, astronomy, and language. Barnett synthesizes unexpected connections and contradictions, exploring the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 and the death of Terence Crutcher in 2016 and searching both the stars of Andromeda and a plantation in South Carolina. A diagnosis from the poet’s infancy haunts the poet as he wonders, “like too many Black men,” if “a heart is not enough to keep me alive.”
The collection includes two poems first published by s[r]. “Muck,” and the titular “Murmur,” can be read in Issue 22.
Murmur is already receiving attention and praise:
Cameron Barnett’s Murmur is in fact a glorious shout. These poems shake up histories, both intimate and political. They stir and disturb the ways we look at love, at race, at our people and ourselves. A bold, beautiful, and brilliant collection!
Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
“‘Murmur’ plays jazz on the spinal cord.”
Monica Prince, poet and author of Roadmap: a Choreopoem
“With poems spanning histories, both personal and collective, and poems that center Blackness as a site of joy, promise, pain, and possibilities, these poems compel us toward knowledge we are deeply implicated in.”
M. Soledad Caballero, author of I Was a Bell
Cameron Barnett is a poet and teacher from Pittsburgh. He is the author of The Drowning Boy’s Guide to Water, the winner of the Autumn House Press Rising Writer Prize and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. He is a graduate of Duquesne University and earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of Pittsburgh. Other honors include a 2019 Carol R. Brown Creative Achievement Award for Emerging Artist and serving as the ’22-’24 Emerging Black Writer in Residence at Chatham University. Cameron teaches at his middle school alma mater, Falk Laboratory School. His work explores the complexity of race, place, and relationships for Black people in America. His work can be found on his website and social media: x i.