I’m excited about seeing “Impure Acts” (my translation of Mauro Covacich’s short story “Atti Impuri” ) in print in the HFR. The idea of an English translation of a contemporary Italian story set in postwar Poland intrigues me in that it interposes several layers of mediation between the reader and the narrator. You have Covacich who conjured up this scene in the mountains outside postwar Krakow and described it in Italian, and then you have the translator (me) importing the story from Italian into English.

Contributor SpotlightHaydens FerryApril 7, 2015Contributor Spotlight, Issue 55, Translation

Contributor Spotlight: Sarah Pemberton Strong

My poem “Mobile” was inspired by a baby gift for my newborn daughter—a mechanical crib mobile sent by a well-meaning relative I’d never met. This mobile, with its toxic-smelling plastic ponies and its beepy, teeth-grinding rendition of a piece of music I was fond of, struck me at first as the very nadir of technological achievement. As the poem says, whenever I looked at it—and smelled the chemicals coming off the plastic—it made me think of “asthma attacks and Chinese factory workers.” In an earlier draft, the poem went on to ask, “Why would anyone give a naked infant / such a complicated dance of suffering?” Although those lines didn’t make it into the final version, once I had posed that question, I wanted to try to answer it, or at least investigate it. That investigation comprises a large part of the pleasure poetry gives me—the experience of embarking on a quest I hadn’t intended to sign up for.

Contributor SpotlightHaydens FerryApril 3, 2015Contributor Spotlight, Poetry, Issue 55

Contributor Spotlight: Patrick Milian

The first poem I wrote was a libretto, a byzantine elaboration of “The Tell-Tale Heart.” My roommate asked me if I’d try writing the text for an opera he was hoping to write, so I tried. I tried writing the only way I knew how—which meant meter, rhyme, form, and capitalizing the first letter of every line. It took about a year to finish the libretto and, reading it now, it seems like a record of an idiosyncratic education in which arias turn into sonnets, duets are sung is terza rima, and Longfellow makes more than one appearance. These were the best methods I knew of making a poem sound like music.

Contributor SpotlightDana DMarch 25, 2015Contributor Spotlight, Issue 55

Contributor Spotlight: Michael Meyerhofer

The Gender Revolution, Televised began as a layman’s rumination on gender identity—what it means, what it does, how it starts. I suppose it was also fueled by my pessimistic view that whenever society has an opportunity to learn some great lesson, it typically squanders it, focusing instead on rants and curiosities. That’s certainly been true for pretty much any racial, religious, or gender-based scandal in recent history.

Dana DMarch 19, 2015Contributor Spotlight, Gender Identity, Issue 55

Contributor Spotlight: Matthew Baker

“HTML”: THE ORIGIN STORY

It’s strange to mourn someone you’ve never met. The story isn’t about him, but the story exists because of him, because he died, because the circumstances of his death were so preposterous, and so in that sense you could say that “html” is an elegy for Aaron Swartz. I’d been planning to write an English/HTML hybrid for years, but the project kept getting postponed in favor of other stories, it was always next up, it was never the priority. And then Aaron died.

Dana DMarch 13, 2015Contributor Spotlight, Issue 55, html, hybrid

Contributor Spotlight: Blair Hurley

I’ve always had an abiding interest in religion, and in Buddhism specifically, thanks to early exposure from a family friend who told me about her conversion. We’d sit at the kitchen table playing gin rummy and she would try to tell me about her experience. She said it was like her head was splitting open and the universe was pouring in. I often wondered what it felt like and whether I’d ever have that sort of experience. I wondered whether I wanted it, or whether I was afraid of the loss of control such ecstasy might feel like.

Dana DFebruary 24, 2015Buddhism, Fiction, Issue 55, religion

Contributor Spotlight: Mel Bosworth

I enjoy a brisk hike from time to time, a hike that’ll have me sitting in a cozy diner a few hours later with an awesome grilled cheese sandwich in my hands and a plate of greasy French Fries before me. Maybe a strong coffee. Food and drink to replenish my weary body. I don’t know that I’ll ever take a hike tantamount to the one that brings the characters of “This Place of Great Peril” to the summit of the 84th highest mountain in the world.

Dana DJanuary 29, 2015Contributor Spotlight, Issue 55, Snow Lotus Peak, Suelian Feng

Behind the Masthead: HFR Editors' Winter Fashions

Winter is our favorite season in the Sonoran Desert. Get inspired by our editors' super trendy winter fashions. What are your favorite Arizona winter trends?

Dana DJanuary 26, 2015Fashion, Issue 55, Issue 56

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