Category: Uncategorized

Welcome to the Spring 2022 issue of Whale Road Review! In these creative pieces, you’ll find the gardens and birds you might expect in a spring issue, but some of these gardens are haunted, and some of the birds are like bombs. A few of these pieces will take you to church, but if the church building isn’t on fire, it might have been converted into a night club. Wanna dance?

Issue 26 features poetry and short prose by C.S. Carrier, Sarah-Jane Crowson, Dagne Forrest, Jeff Friedman, Yanita Georgieva, Dhwanee Goyal, Connie Jordan Green, Mary Grimm, lukas ray hall, Saba Keramati, B. Tyler Lee, Rebecca Lehmann, Colin Lubner, Katherine Maynard, Autumn McClintock, Kindra McDonald, Joy Moore, Arlene Naganawa, Jeanne Obbard, Kathryn Petruccelli, Meg Pokrass, Margaret Rozga, Luci Shaw, and Ashley Wagner.

Our pedagogy papers include a scene ruining/repairing activity from Rebecca Arrowsmith and a perspective-shifting personal narrative lesson from Diane Forman.

This issue also features reviews of poetry collections by Risa Denenberg and Adrienne Su, a review of Marjorie Maddox’s book of poetic forms and exercises, and an interview with Evan Morgan Williams about his recent short story collection. Thanks to Maria McLeod, E. A. Miller Mlcak, Kathryn Pratt Russell, and Chrissy Kolaya for giving us glimpses into these exciting new books.

When you find some pieces to love, as you will, please share them and tip the authors who have “Tip the Author” links under their bios. Even very small tips mean a lot (and add up). Thanks for reading! Please be safe and well.

Katie Manning
Editor-in-Chief

Leave a Comment

Happy winter issue of Whale Road Review! “Is it winter / yet?” Yvanna Vien Tica’s poem begins, and inside this issue, it is. Reading these creative pieces—which feature space, trains, fossils, and so much more—feels a lot like unwrapping gifts.

Issue 25 features poetry and short prose by Abra Bertman, Annette C. Boehm, Marisa P. Clark, Joanne Clarkson, Hollie Dugas, Diane D. Gillette, Rick Hollon, Ra’Niqua Lee, Tingyu Liu, Jory Mickelson, Cameron Morse, J. Alan Nelson, Carolyn Oliver, Simon Perchik, Lisa Raatikainen, Gretchen Rockwell, Angeline Schellenberg, Matthew Schultz, Martha Silano, Meg Stout, Claire Sunberg, and Yvanna Vien Tica.

In our pedagogy papers, Melody Heide teaches students to love their darlings while Bupinder Singh teaches descriptive writing with mindfulness.

The reviews in this issue by Jessica Gigot, Meghan Sterling, and K. Andrew Turner take us inside a flash fiction collection by John Brantingham and new poetry collections by Holly J. Hughes and Robin Reagler.

To close the issue, we have two insightful interviews with writers named Sarah: Riley Breitbarth interviewed Sarah Bigham about her experimental memoir, Kind Chemist Wife: Musings at 3 a.m., and Angie Dribben interviewed Sarah J. Sloat about her collection of Stephen King erasure poetry, Hotel Almighty.

Please spread some holiday cheer and tip the authors who have “Tip the Author” links under their bios! If you’re also a writer, please visit our guidelines and send us your work during our December submission window. Thanks for reading!

Katie Manning
Editor-in-Chief

Leave a Comment

Thanks for joining us for the Fall 2021 issue of Whale Road Review! This issue provides a full spread of autumn vibes: from a harvest moon, pumpkins, and apple trees to carnivals, cemeteries, and body horror. The creative pieces will invite you in with cup of tea and leave you dreaming with the oldest dog.

Issue 24 features poetry and short prose by Jordi Alonso, Sarah Cavar, Brittney Corrigan, Jesse Curran, Martins Deep, Risa Denenberg, Eleri Denham, Cat Dixon, Samantha Fain, Marc Frazier, Trivarna Hariharan, Karah Kemmerly, Sue Mell, Matt Miller, Julie L. Moore, Diane Payne, Ren Pike, Rachel Pittman, Luci Shaw, Nova Wang, Emma Williams, and Melody Wilson.

For more teaching ideas, check out this issue’s creative writing pedagogy papers: Rebecca Lauren offers craft sheets for building protagonists, Katie Darby Mullins takes inspiration from an Aimee Mann song for an exercise in negation, and Annaleta Nichols makes figurative language more accessible by breaking it down to form and meaning.

The reviews in this issue explore a flash memoir collection by Joanna Penn Cooper and new poetry collections by River Dixon, Daniel Edward Moore, and Merrijane Rice. Thanks to Claire Bateman, Aarik Danielsen, Theric Jepson, and Bojana Stojcic for sharing these books with us.

Finally, this issue closes with two wonderful interviews: Michael Knotts and Hallie Sneed interviewed Alyse Bensel about her new book, Rare Wondrous Things, and Anna Leahy gathered three poets who are also publishers and/or contest judges— Kelli Russell Agodon, Allison Blevins, and Victoria Chang—to talk about reading, writing, and publishing chapbooks.

If you enjoy the work in this issue, please tip the authors who have “Tip the Author” links under their bios. Even a small amount will mean a lot. Thank you for reading!

Katie Manning
Editor-in-Chief

Leave a Comment

Welcome to our Summer 2021 issue of Whale Road Review! This issue teems with life—one poem even brings statues to life—but it’s also haunted by loss, the way many of us are now and always. These pieces are also full of longing: some for travel and others for home, some for the past and others for a better future. These pieces remind me to be gentle with myself. “In the here and now, when there are still so many unknowns,” Kaleb Tutt writes in his review, “we need art to let us know we aren’t alone.”

Issue 23 features poetry and short prose by Deborah Bacharach, Valerie Bacharach, Brian Wallace Baker, Ray Ball, Jack B. Bedell, Jacquelyn Bengfort, Lauren Camp, Sarah Carey, Claire Denson, Suzanne Edison, Ben Egerton, CD Eskilson, Kimberly Glanzman, Talia Gordon, Julia Hands, Jessica Kim, Polchate (Jam) Kraprayoon, Aaron LoPatin, Alice Lowe, Amy Miller, and Danielle Rose.

The pedagogy papers in this issue invite students to shake up their craft to get at truth, to calm their inner critic, and to find time to write even in the busiest schedule. These papers will likely be useful reminders for all of us in addition to offering helpful activities for those who teach. Thanks to Jacey de la Torre, Diane Forman, and Beverly Army Williams for sharing their work.

This issue’s reviews delve into new novels by Tara Lynn Marta and Michael Pritchett and a new poetry collection by Preston Smith. Thanks also to Sara Pisak, Robert Stewart, and Kaleb Tutt for these summer reading suggestions!

The closer for this issue is a spectacular interview with Jason Schwartzman (but not that Jason Schwartzman), author of No One You Know: Strangers and the Stories We Tell, conducted by the delightfully detailed interviewer Laura Evers.

If you have the means, please tip the authors who have “Tip the Author” links under their bios. Even small amounts will add up, and you’ll let them know that you value their work. Thank you for reading!

Katie Manning
Editor-in-Chief

P.S. We just reopened for our June reading period, so if you’re also a writer, we’d love to read your poetry and short prose.

Leave a Comment

Welcome to our Spring 2021 issue and to the sixth year of Whale Road Review!

We’re in awe of the creative pieces in this issue. They seem to call and respond to each other, especially on the subjects of parents, lovers, and God. Issue 22 features poetry and short prose by Nadia Arioli, Heather Bourbeau, Caroliena Cabada, Kai Coggin, Barbara Crooker, Nicelle Davis, Sheila Dong, Auden Eagerton, Luciana Francis, Katie Karnehm-Esh, Sally Rosen Kindred, Anna Leahy, Courtney LeBlanc, Marjorie Maddox, Fatima Malik, Dayna Patterson, Michele Sharpe, Gail Thomas, Rodd Whelpley, Sunni Brown Wilkinson, Chila Woychik, Sarah Yang, and Wei Zheng.

In the pedagogy papers, Alison Lowenstein offers timely tips for running a virtual drop-in writing workshop, John Gerard Fagan uses letter writing to teach balance in creative nonfiction, and E. K. Taylor borrows the format of speed dating to focus and improve peer critique.

This issue’s reviews take us inside new poetry collections by Grace Carras, Jennifer L. Knox, and Frank Watson and into a new anthology from The Sheddies, a group of poets in Belfast, Maine. Thanks also to Cheryl Caesar, Nate Logan, Thomas R. Moore, and Jim O’Loughlin for their thoughtful work.

As a grand finale, this issue also features a fantastic interview with Caroline Earleywine, author of Lesbian Fashion Struggles, conducted by Risa Denenberg, co-founder Headmistress Press.

If you enjoy this issue and have the means, please tip the authors whose pages have a “Tip the Author” link under the bio. Thank you for reading! We hope you and yours are well and that better days are ahead.

Katie Manning
Editor-in-Chief

Leave a Comment

Welcome to our Winter 2020 issue, which marks the 5-year anniversary of Whale Road Review! We’re so thrilled to celebrate this milestone with the writers in this issue and to look back at the incredible work we’ve published since 2015. What an honor it is to get to do this work.

“Isolation is a sea in which we swim,” Luci Shaw’s poem in this issue begins, and many of these pieces take us into solitary spaces—a childhood closet used for hiding, a phone booth used for calling the dead—or bring us into intimate experiences of past connections that are no longer possible. They allow us to return to Eden more than once and to travel to Alabama, Bethlehem, Otsuchi, Taichung, and Washington when many of us have been unable to travel for months. A few of these pieces also made me laugh out loud, and I needed that too.

Issue 21 features poetry and short prose by Michael Akuchie, Dan Albergotti, Grace Bauer, Caroline Collins, Morgan Eklund, Jennifer Givhan, Shemaiah Gonzalez, Stephanie L. Harper, Jordan Hill, Tiffany Hsieh, Laurie Klein, Alea Marie, Libby Maxey, Matthew Miller, Maria S. Picone, Sara Quinn Rivara, Luci Shaw, Cathy Ulrich, Elinor Ann Walker, William Woolfitt, and Meg Yardley.

The pedagogy papers in this issue focus on process and revision. Thanks to Wendy Call, Brent House, and Adrian Markle for sharing their expertise!

Thanks also to John Brantingham, Jennifer Saunders, Rebecca A. Spears, Allison Backous Troy, and Lindsey Weishar for their engaging reviews of new poetry collections by Matt Sedillo, Sonia Greenfield, William Woolfitt, Ann Conway, and Cameron Morse.

As a special feature, this issue also includes an interview with Siân Griffiths about her new short story collection. Eliza Souers, Eric Van Gorden, Hannah Hicks, and Kailee Isham sent such a fantastic interview that we’ve officially added interviews to our submission guidelines, and we’d love to see more of them in our inbox.

Speaking of submissions, we’re now open again for the month of December, and we look forward to reading more poetry and short prose for our upcoming Spring and Summer 2021 issues.

Thank you for reading! If you enjoy this issue and are able, please tip the authors whose pages have a “Tip the Author” link under the bio. Please take good care and stay well!

Katie Manning
Editor-in-Chief

Leave a Comment

The writers in our Fall 2020 issue have captured so much of the grief and chaos of the present moment in deeply personal ways and with so much beauty. I feel stunned by and grateful for their work.

Issue 20 features new poetry and short prose by Paul David Adkins, Katherine Anderson Howell, Kerry Carnahan, Sarah Cavar, Ifoghale Eguwe, Nathaniel Lee Hansen, Jeremy T. Karn, Avery Kerr, Susan L. Leary, Danelle Lejeune, Sarah Lilius, Aaron Magloire, Devon Miller-Duggan, Cameron Morse, Simon Perchik, Kimberly Ramos, Liz Boltz Ranfeld, Susan Rich, Gretchen Rockwell, Grace Q. Song, Brooke Stanish, and Sunita Theiss.

The pedagogy papers in this issue include full lesson plans: Elizabeth Jorgensen offers a multi-day schedule for teaching students the Korean poetic form sijo, and E. K. Taylor provides an exercise for teaching style by having students remove eleven features of style.

Thanks to Julian Day, Kim Jacobs-Beck, Mary Anna Kruch, and Livia Meneghin for providing this issue’s reviews, which take us inside of recent poetry collections by Kiki Petrosino, Megan Mary Moore, Cheryl Caesar, and Khaled Mattawa.

We hope these pieces speak to you and linger with you through the season to come. Please take good care of yourselves and others. If you enjoy this issue and are able, please tip the authors whose pages have a “Tip the Author” link under the bio. Thanks for reading.

Katie Manning
Editor-in-Chief

2 Comments

We chose the creative work for this Summer 2020 issue back in December and January. I loved these pieces then, but I need them even more now: “A friend’s trying to sneak past death,” Michael Lauchlan’s poem begins. Reading this issue again after the latest violence against Black people in the U.S. and after 2.5 months of sheltering in place feels like traveling through time and space with the ghost of summer past. Here are the good times and dark undercurrents, the brothers and flawed parents, the nursery rhymes and arcade games, the tanning beds and cancer cells, the pools and lakes and beaches, and so much more.

Issue 19 features new poetry and short prose by Jordi Alonso, gina marie bernard, Chloe N. Clark, Linda Dove, Samantha Duncan, Suzanne Edison, M. Brett Gaffney, Ben Groner III, Ken Hada, Karen Bjork Kubin, Michael Lauchlan, Elizabeth Joy Levinson, Christopher Linforth, D.S. Martin, Shawnte Orion, Lee Potts, Lex Runciman, Elizabeth C. Taylor, Kami Westhoff, and Paul Willis.

The pedagogy papers in this issue draw from the sacred and the secular: Jacob Stratman offers a poetry exercise based on a Catholic tradition, and Jason D. DeHart makes a case for using popular texts to energize students’ writing.

This issue’s reviews by Alex Carrigan, Robin Gow, and Evan Reibsome already persuaded me to buy new poetry books by Zefyr Lisowski and Robert Fillman, along with the newest anthology of women’s writing from Quail Bell Magazine.

We hope this issue provides you with some comfort and company in these overwhelming days. Please take good care of yourselves and others. If you enjoy this issue and are able, please tip the authors whose pages have a “Tip the Author” link under the bio. Thanks for reading.

Katie Manning
Editor-in-Chief

P.S. If you’re also a writer of poetry and short prose, please visit our guidelines and send us your work during our June reading period. We’ll consider pedagogy papers and reviews any time.

2 Comments

Oh, readers. Our new Spring 2020 issue is breathtaking. We’re honored to get to share this gorgeous, haunting writing with you.

Issue 18 features new poetry and short prose by Michele Bombardier, Beth Boylan, Ronda Piszk Broatch, Jacob Butlett, Catharina Coenen, Jessica Covil, Meg Eden, Rebecca Edgren, Theresa Senato Edwards, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Robbie Gamble, Dave Harrity, Sonja Johanson, Suzanne Langlois, Cameron Morse, Twila Newey, Dayna Patterson, Bettina Tate Pedersen, Kyle Potvin, and Luci Shaw.

This issue’s pedagogy papers use rating systems in new contexts to enliven creative nonfiction and use a newly created form—the golden shovel—to introduce students to formal poetry. Thanks to Bethany Lee and Jeremy Michael Reed for sharing their work!

This issue also includes insightful reviews of recent poetry collections by Lauren K. Alleyne and Sarah Carey alongside a fascinating interview with Laura Kauffman. Thanks to Hope Fischbach, Alana Pearce, and Jody Collins for sharing their enthusiasm for these books and poets!

We hope this finds you well and able to steal some time to savor these pieces. Thanks for reading.

2 Comments

Welcome to our Winter 2019 issue! We’ve got some wonderful writing that will bring you ziplines and landmines, mothers and lovers, glaciers and God. This issue will walk you into winter, through resolutions, and to the other side of February.

Issue 17 features new poetry and short prose by Susan Blackwell Ramsey, Allison Blevins, Marisa P. Clark, Joan Colby, Lynn Domina, Jennifer Fliss, Marissa Glover, Connie Jordan Green, Bára Hladík, Arminé Iknadossian, Abbie Kiefer, Laurie Kolp, Xiaoly Li, Mary Makofske, Susan O’Dell Underwood, John Sibley Williams, Hannah Silverstein, Billie R. Tadros, and Jenny Wong.

This issue’s pedagogy papers offer ideas for infusing fabulism into poetry prompts and for teaching creative writing beyond rubrics. We’re grateful to Catherine Moore and Robert Nisbet for their work.

Thanks also to Michele Bombardier, Wendy Taylor Carlisle, F.I. Goldhaber, and Catherine Kyle for taking us inside recent poetry collections by Heather Derr-Smith, Ann Fisher-Wirth, Shaindel Beers, and Alexis David in this issue’s reviews.

We hope our fourth anniversary issue will find you warm and well. Thanks for reading!

Leave a Comment