"The Suit" by Julie Marie Wade

“The Suit,” published in the Spring 2019 issue of American Literary Review, is an essay by Julie Marie Wade in which Wade questions, but never resolves, what it means for her to be born in a female body.

Much of the essay is set in scene and centered around a tight-fitting suit that Wade’s mother is committed to squeezing her husband—Wade’s father—into. When Wade’s image-obsessed mother is not home, her father splurges on James Bond films and hotdogs and explains to Wade that “every man wants to be James Bond,” even though he doesn’t believe he will ever be similar to the handsome agent.

Meanwhile, Wade’s mother encourages Wade to nominate her as “Most Inspirational Mother,” via a department store writing contest. Between scenes, Wade gives us drafts of her contest submission where she wrestles with representing her mother in “equal parts nice and true.” Wade tries to define her mother as a woman who “can see through who people appear to be and identify who they might be.” In these drafts, we understand that although Wade praises her mother, she also examines how her family relationships influence the way she approaches her own identity.

Through metaphor, shopping with her parents, and contest drafts, this coming-of-age essay is a story that explores gender identity in a home that explicitly encourages traditional roles.

 

Review by Alyssa Witbeck Alexander

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2019 Laux/Millar Poetry Prize Winner

In the Fall 2019 issue of Raleigh Review, readers can find the winners and finalists of the 2019 Laux/Millar Poetry Prize, selected by Dorianne Laux & Joseph Millar. Readers can easily find these pieces in the current issue as they're outlined in gradient blue (winner) and pink (finalists).

Winner
“Iguana Iguana” by Caylin Capra-Thomas

Finalists:
"At the Bar" by Cameron McGill
"The Land in Both Our Names" by Suzanne Grove
"After Watching The Quiet Man" by Hannah Dow
"Sertraline" by Emily Nason

Submissions to the 2020 Laux/Millar Poetry Prize will reopen in April and run through May.​​

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October 2019 Award-Winning Books

Today we’re bringing you a tall stack of award-winning fiction and poetry books published this past month. Click Read More to find the full list.

Today we’re bringing you a tall stack of award-winning fiction and poetry books published this past month.

Winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, Driving in Cars with Homeless Men by Kate Wisel, was released at the start of the month. Prize judge Min Jin Lee says of the selection: “You can hear the crackle of heat and the roar of a powerful fire burning through these pages. Young angry women, brokenhearted mothers, and men who are lost to themselves and others struggle in the world of Driving in Cars with Homeless Men.”

Ashley Wurzbacher’s Happy Like This won the 2019 John Simmons Short Fiction Award. Judge Carmen Maria Machado says of the debut story collection: “these dark, lyrical, sinewy stories about women’s relationships with their bodies and with each other” “surprised [her] at every turn.”

Emily Wortman-Wunder won the 2019 Iowa Short Fiction Award with Not a Thing to Comfort You. Also judged by Machado, she calls the collection funny and inventive with “such careful attention paid to these stories, to people and the environment alike.”

Leanna Petronella took home the 2018 Pleiades Press Editors Prize for Poetry with the collection The Imaginary Age. The stories the poems tell are of loss, though Petronella refuses to romanticize grief, instead highlighting the many guises and contours of grief’s ugliness.

Avery Colt is a Snake, A Thief, A Liar by Ron Austin won the Nilsen Prize for a First Novel (submissions currently open until November 15). The semi-autobiographical linked short story collection is charged with urgency and emotion as it follows the misadventures of Avery Colt as he struggles to survive in North St. Louis.

Haesong Kwon’s The People’s Field won the 2018 Cowles Poetry Prize. Jenny Yang Cropp made the final selection for the prize and says, “These poems, short and spare, carry the intensity of distillation but resist the epigrammatic as they show us a rich and complex landscape that asks for and earns.”

Mid-month saw the release of The Lightness of Water & Other Stories by Rhonda Browning White, winner of the 2019 Press 53 Award for Fiction (open until December 31). Selected by Press 53 publisher and editor-in-chief Kevin Morgan Watson, the short story collection is “down-to-earth, driven by strong characters, especially women, who speak a deep truth about the human condition and our relationships with one another and the world.”

Bruce Weigl brought home the prize for the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award with his poetry collection On the Shores of Welcome Home. In these poems, Weigl meditates on the ghosts and the grace one encounters in life’s second act.

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2019 Raymond Carver Contest Winners

The Fall 2019 issue of Carve Magazine features the winners of the 2019 Raymond Carver Contest, guest-judged by Claire Fuller. These can be found online, as well as in the print issue. An interview with each writer can be found after their stories in the print edition.

First Place
“Private Lives” by April Sopkin

Second Place
“Gravity House” by Carolyn Bishop

Third Place
“The Enchanted Forest” by Brian Crawford

Editor’s Choice
“The Ghost Rider” by Erica Plouffe Lazure

The Raymond Carver Contest reopens for submissions in April. The Carve Magazine Prose & Poetry Contest is currently open until November 15.

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'How to Tell If You Are Human: Diagram Poems' by Jessy Randall

Do you ever find yourself feeling out of sorts, unable to tell if you’re still human? Jessy Randall has considered this feeling and helps readers handle it with an instructional manual of sorts in How to Tell If You Are Human: Diagram Poems, part of the Pleaides Press Visual Poetry Series.

Repurposing graphs and images to create visual poems, Randall’s works are minimal in style as they capture the complexity of human emotions. Although most of poems are just one sentence or phrase long, they manage to make connections with readers, leaving space to insert themselves as the speaker, to figure out whether or not they’re human.

 

Review by Katy Haas

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Heron Tree Found in the Public Domain

Between October 2016 and February 2017, Heron Tree online poetry journal published a series of works "constructed from materials in the pubic domain in the United States." Editors Chris Campolo and Rebecca Resinski then compiled these into a PDF ebook, Found in the Public Domain, that is free to download.

Contributors include Melissa Frederick, Wendy DeGroat, Karen L. George, Howie Good, Tamiko Nimura, Winston Plowes, Deborah Purdy, M. A. Scott, Margo Taft Stever, Carey Voss, and Sarah Ann Winn. The booklet includes a section of notes from each contributor on their source(s) and process.

Heron Tree publishes poems individually on their website and collects them into volumes and special issues. All content is available for readers online. The publications is open for submissions for volume seven through December 1, 2019.

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3Elements Review Themed Writing Prompts

Looking to spark your motivation for writing? Try the latest prompt from 3Elements Review: Carriage, Pinwheel, Scour.

Each quarter, 3Elements Review presents three elements, and all three must be used in the story or poem in order to be considered for publication. 

The editors expand on this guideline, "Your story or poem doesn’t have to be about the three elements or even revolve around them; simply use your imagination to create whatever you want. You can use any form of the words/elements for the given submission period. For example, if the elements are: Flash, Whimsy, and Seizure; we would accept the usage of Flashed, Whimsical, and Seizures."

3Elements also accepts artwork and photography based on at least one of the elements - "but creating something that represents all three elements will really impress us."

The deadline for this quarter is November 30, 2019.

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