The highlight of my two years in UNC-Greensboro’s MFA program was the workshop led by visiting writer Richard Bausch. He inspired the class with his practical advice and his obvious love of the written word. I was encouraged by this man who made himself into a writer by sheer will, who, despite having a wife and children and a full time job, despite not being gifted with the innate brilliance of a Hemingway, say, or an Updike, was unflagging in his determination to turn himself into an accomplished writer. Bausch’s workshop boiled down to one particular piece of advice: “Just show up every morning. Something will happen.”
Read MoreHere are five notes on two poems (“first son” & “sixth son”) from my short project, The Seven Sons of Golden, featured in Hayden’s Ferry Review #54…
1. I had an idea for a story: A young woman’s scandalous, unwanted pregnancy is unfortunately revealed when her belly begins to glow and change colors: an absurd exaggeration of a very real skin-pigmentation phenomenon that sometimes occurs during pregnancy. How do our bodies betray our secrets? The story, of course, never materialized; I’m not a very good writer. But the seed of the idea gestated and transformed into the short poetic sequence from which these two poems (“first son” & “sixth son”) are taken. The mother’s physical discoloration became, in the poems, something allegorical via her naming, i.e. “Golden.” Instead of only one pregnancy, she becomes a sort of grotesque baby-factory – churning out son after (figurative) son.
Read MoreYou’ve already met new international poetry editor Brian Bender and new prose editor Gary Garrison—now we’re pleased to introduce to you our new poetry editor, Jacqueline Balderrama. The new staff is already hard at work on the fall issue, combing through the submissions to their flash prose contest (deadline today!). Kacie Blackburn caught up with Jackie to discuss what she looks for in poetry submissions and what inspires her own poetry.
Read MoreThe writer in me loves the nighttime. I imagine creeping up on the sleeping world to take it unawares. The night tells us its secrets, and demands the same of us, unheld-back. It’s a space for reflection. It feels hidden enough for a young couple to “go in for their first kiss.”
But the night can also be a time when the young couple “knocks front teeth” and feels the sudden terror of that. The night can be rife with danger: dark, too quiet, supine, riddled with the regrets of the day’s long life. It can be fraught with desires and the futility to act on them. A wished-for futurity that won’t come. It can be a time when the heart races, and the only way to slow it is to get up, open the front door and, as if enacting Nietzsche’s nudge to “Remain faithful to the earth,” step out into the world and take a deep breath under the little afterlives of its street lamps.
Read MoreIn the whirl of finals week and last-minute vacation preparations, did you forget to submit to Hayden’s Ferry Review’s “500 for 500” Flash-Prose Contest? Well, no worries, because we are extending our deadline! We will be accepting submissions for one more week; on May 23rd, we’ll be closing submissions for good.
The contest winner, chosen by author Catherine Zobal Dent, will receive a $500 prize, as well as publication in issue 55. Two runner-ups will also receive monetary prizes. So send us your best 500 words!
Find more details on the contest here!
Read MoreKyle McCord (who had a poem in HFR52) and Nick Courtright will be reading tomorrow (Wednesday), May 14th at 11th Monk3y Industries at 7 PM with alum Bojan Luis!
Nick Courtright is the author of Let There Be Light, out now from Gold Wake Press, and Punchline, a 2012 National Poetry Series finalist. His work has appeared in The Southern Review, AGNI, Boston Review, and Kenyon Review Online, among numerous others, and a chapbook, Elegy for the Builder’s Wife, is available from Blue Hour Press. He lives in Austin, Texas with his wife, Michelle, and sons, William and Samuel; also, he teaches writing and literature at Concordia University.
Read MoreIn a week we'll be closing our "500 for 500" Flash-Prose contest. We're so excited to have Catherine Zobal Dent, author of Unfinished Stories of Girls, judging the contest.
I first met Catherine five years ago. I was an undergraduate writing major at Susuquehanna University, and Catherine and her partner, Silas, were applying for an Associate Professor position at the SU Writers Institute. To no one's surprise, they got the job. Over the following years, I was fortunate enough to know Catherine first as a professor, and then as an adviser, writing mentor, author, and friend.
Read MoreI’ve been told that love poems and funny poems are the most difficult variety to write. I’d add travel poems to that list, as well. Let me start over.
For many, the pursuit of a career in writing is quite literally that. Pursuit. One that has taken (and continues to take) me from state to state, school to school, and job to job, following barely visible tracks and trails. A mentor here, a workshop community there. A published poem here, a note of encouragement there. Sacrifices have to be made and things tend to get complicated when a second person enters the picture, especially if that person is also a writer.
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