The Kenyon Review

Meet the Poetry Contributors for Issue 33

Superstition Review

Our editors are hard at work building Issue 33 of Superstition Review, which will launch May 1. This issue features ten poets: Anastacia Renee, CD Eskilson, Ian C. Williams, Lindsey Schaffer, Megan J. Arlett, Patricia David-Muffett, Rachel Mallalieu, Sara E. Hughes, Shehrbano Naqvi, and Tatiana Dolgushina.

Anastacia-Reneé (She/They) is a queer writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, playwright, former radio host, TEDX speaker, and podcaster. She is the author of Here In The (Middle) Of Nowhere, Side Notes From The Archivist, (v.) and Forget It. Sidenotes from the Archivist was selected as one of “NYPL Best Books of 2023,” and, The American Library Associations (RUSA) “Notable Books of 2024.” Anastacia-Reneé served as Seattle Civic Poet during Seattle’s inaugural year of UNESCO status as well as Hugo House Poet-in-Residence, and Jack Straw Fellowship Curator. Her work has been anthologized and published widely.

CD Eskilson is a trans poet, editor, and translator living in Arkansas. They are a recipient of the C.D. Wright/Academy of American Poets Prize, as well as a Best of the Net, Best New Poets, and a Pushcart Prize nominee. Their debut poetry collection, Scream / Queen, is forthcoming from Acre Books.

Ian C. Williams is an Appalachian poet and the author of Every Wreckage (2024 Fernwood Press). His work has been included in Fourteen Hills, Moon City Review, Salamander, and Appalachian Review, among others. He is the editor-in-chief for Jarfly: A Poetry Magazine. Williams lives with his wife and two sons in Fairmont, West Virginia.

Lindsey Schaffer is the author of City of Contradiction (Selcouth Station) and Witch City (dancing girl press, forthcoming). Her work has appeared in The Eunoia Review, Reservoir Road Literary Review, and elsewhere. Lindsey has received scholarships and fellowships from the Indiana Writers Workshop, AWP, the City of Bloomington, and the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University. She serves as a poetry editor for Variant Literature.

Megan J. Arlett was born in the UK, grew up in Spain, and now lives in New Mexico. The recipient of two Academy of American Poets Prizes, her work has appeared in Best New Poets 2019, Best New British and Irish Poets, Gulf Coast, The Kenyon Review, New England Review, Passages North, and Prairie Schooner, among others.

Patricia Davis-Muffett (she/her) holds an MFA from the University of Minnesota. Her chapbook, Alchemy of Yeast and Tears, was published in spring 2023. Her work has won honors including Best of the Net nomination and second place in the 2024 Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Contest (selected by Marge Piercy), and appears in Best New Poets, Atlanta Review, Whale Road Review, Calyx and About Place, among others.

Rachel Mallalieu is an emergency physician and mother of five. She is the author of the chapbook A History of Resurrection (Alien Buddha Press 2022). Some of her recent work is featured or forthcoming in Nelle, Chestnut Review, Whale Road Review, and DIALOGIST.

Sara E. Hughes is a Massachusetts-born poet. She received an honorable mention for the American Poets College & University Prize in 2022. She is a 2022 Wild Seeds Writer’s Retreat Fellow and a 2022 Aspen Words participant. Sara is the recipient of the 2021 Elaine V. Beilin, Howard Hirt, and Marjorie Sparrow Awards of Framingham State University. Sara’s work is forthcoming in Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora. Sara is a fellow at Randolph College’s MFA program.

Tatiana Dolgushina is a Soviet immigrant, born in Soviet Russia and raised in Ukraine, Argentina, Chile, and the United States. This multilingual and multicultural identity is central to her work. Her chapbook, Carried/in our language was a finalist for the Vinyl 45 Chapbook Prize and is forthcoming from YesYes Books in 2025. A graduate of the Oregon State MFA, her writing is forthcoming or has been published in Beloit Poetry Journal, Rattle, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Hunger Mountain, New Farmer’s Almanac, the other side of hope, Collateral, and elsewhere.

Meet the Interview Contributors for Issue 33: Part 1

Superstition Review

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.

SR Pod/Vod Series: Writer Mark Jacobs

Superstition Review

Each Tuesday we feature audio or video of an SR Contributor reading their work. Today we’re proud to feature a podcast by Mark Jacobs.

Mark JacobsA former U.S. Foreign Service officer, Mark Jacobs has published more than 100 stories in magazines including The Atlantic, The Southern Humanities Review, The Idaho Review, The Southern Review, and The Kenyon Review. He has stories forthcoming in several magazines including Playboy. His story “How Birds Communicate” won The Iowa Review fiction prize. His books include A Handful of Kings, published by Simon and Shuster, and Stone Cowboy, by Soho Press, which won the Maria Thomas Award.

His website can be found at www.markjacobsauthor.com.

You can listen to the podcast on our iTunes Channel.

You can read along with the work in Superstition Review.

SR Pod/Vod Series: Maureen Alsop

Maureen Alsop

Each Tuesday we feature audio or video of an SR Contributor reading their work. Today we’re proud to feature a podcast by Maureen Alsop.

maureenalsopMaureen Alsop, Ph.D. is the author of Mirror Inside Coffin (forthcoming, Cherry Grove Collections), Mantic (Augury Books, 2013), Apparition Wren (Main Street Rag), and several chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in various journals including Watershed Review, Your Impossible Voice, ditch, The Laurel Review, AGNI, Blackbird, Tampa Review, Action Yes, Drunken Boat, The Kenyon Review, and Verse Daily.

You can listen to the podcast on our iTunes Channel.

You can read along with the work in Superstition Review.

SR Pod/Vod Series: Poet Emilia Phillips

Superstition Review

Each Tuesday we feature audio or video of an SR Contributor reading their work. Today we’re proud to feature a podcast by Emilia Phillips.

Emilia Phillips is the author of Signaletics (University of Akron Press, 2013) and two chapbooks including Bestiary of Gall (Sundress Publications, 2013). She has held fellowships from U.S. Poets in Mexico and Vermont Studio Center and received the 2012 Poetry Prize from The Journal and Second Place in Narrative’s 2012 30 Below Contest. Her poetry appears in AGNI, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Kenyon Review, The Paris-American, and elsewhere. She is an adjunct instructor of creative writing at Virginia Commonwealth University, the associate literary editor of Blackbird, the De Novo Poetry Prize and social media coordinator for C&R Press, and the prose editor for 32 Poems. She lives in Richmond, Virginia.

You can read along with her poems in Issue 6 of Superstition Review.

To subscribe to our iTunes U channel, go to http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/superstition-review-online/id552593273

An Interview with Lee Martin

Jake Adler

Superstition Review is excited to announce our publication of Lee Martin for our next issue, due out this December.

Martin is the author of The Bright Forever, and three other novels, including his latest, Break the Skin, which was published by Crown in June 2011. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in such places as Harper’s, Ms., Creative Nonfiction, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, Fourth Genre, River Teeth, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, and Glimmer Train. He is the winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council. He teaches in the MFA Program at Ohio State University, where he was the winner of the 2006 Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching.

Click here for a trailer for Martin’s latest novel, and here for a brief clip of Lee Martin speaking about the story and characters he has created for it.

Superstition Review also had the opportunity to speak with Martin:

Superstition Review: What first made you fall in love with literature?

Lee Martin: I was an only child who spent a good deal of time sitting on porches, in kitchens, in barber shops, listening to the adults tell stories. I was always in love with language. My mother was a grade school teacher, and she had books in our home. She read to me when I was a child. When I started school, I asked my teacher for permission to take my books home to show my mother. I was so proud of them! Before those first school days, when I stayed with my grandmother while my mother was teaching, I would take books off the shelves in her bedroom and sit on the floor with them. I couldn’t read, but I loved the way the books felt in my hands. I loved the way they smelled. I loved the patterns the text made on the pages. All of this is to say, that from an early age I knew books and I had an aesthetic response to them. It was only natural that I would eventually want to write books of my own. I got serious about the prospect of that when I went to the MFA program at the University of Arkansas in 1982. Five years later, I published my first story. At the time, I decided to apply at Arkansas, I was coordinating an Educational Talent Search program that helped culturally or financially disadvantaged people get into college. I shouldn’t admit this to the taxpayers (we were a federally funded program), but I always found ways to spend some time working on my stories when I was supposed to be doing other things for my job. I knew, then, it was time to make a choice to either pursue my craft completely or to give it up. My decision to accept the offer from Arkansas sent me down a path that I’ve never regretted.

SR: What are some of the best things about being both a teacher of literature, as well as a creator of it?

LM: I do love to teach. I love the intense conversations we can have over the choices a writer has made in a story or an essay. I love seeing students develop their skills. I also love those moments of solitude when it’s just me and the page, and I have this material I want to shape, and little by little I do it, which makes me feel that I’ve reached into the world and done something with a little part of it. I like the uncertainty of that process and how it finally comes to something that coheres. Finally, I love doing a reading or talking to classes at the universities I visit. I love performing my work, and I love sharing what I’ve come to know over the years with writers who are just at the beginning of their journeys. I guess, to answer your question more pointedly, I love it all. I love everything about being a teacher and a writer.

SR: If you could offer your students–or any aspiring writers for that matter–just one piece of advice, what would it be?

LM: I think it’s so important to begin to read a good deal and to read the way a writer does–to read with an eye toward the various artistic choices that a writer makes and what those choices allow and, perhaps, don’t allow. Young writers in undergraduate programs will have plenty of opportunity to read the way a literary theorist does, but it’s important to remember that stories, poems, essays, and novels are made objects. If you want to write them yourselves, you have to start figuring out how they get made.

Look for Lee Martin’s work in the forthcoming issue of Superstition Review.