Online Features 

Cover Artist: Pamela Carroll

Born in Detroit, Michigan in 1986, Andrea Kowch attended the College for Creative Studies on scholarship, and graduated Summa Cum Laude with a BFA in 2009. 2005, she was granted a National ARTS in the Visual Arts Award from the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. Her work is represented by RJD Galleries in New York.

“Inspired by memories, inner emotions, history, and my fascination with nature and the human psyche, the stories behind my paintings stem from life’s emotions and experiences, resulting in narrative, allegorical imagery that illustrates the parallels between human experience and the mysteries of the natural world.” —Andrea Kowch

Interview: Chitra Divakaruni

To preview Maggie Paul’s interview with Chitra Divakaruni click on the title below:

Chitra Divakaruni Interview

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an award-winning writer, activist, professor, and speaker and the author of twentyone books, including The Mistress of Spices (Anchor Books, 1998), Sister of My Heart (Anchor Books, 2000), The Palace of Illusions (Anchor Books, 2009), and most recently, Independence (William Morrow, 2023). Her work has been published in over a hundred magazines and anthologies, including The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Best American Short Stories, and The O. Henry Prize Stories, and translated into thirty languages. Her awards include an American Book Award, a pen Oakland Josephine Miles Award, a Premio Scanno, and a Light of India award. She is the McDavid Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Houston.

To preview selected poetry, fiction, and nonfiction features click on the title below:

Fiction: Christie Cochrell

Sea Stars

Christie Cochrell’s work has been published by Catamaran Literary Reader, Lowestoft Chronicle, The Cumberland River Review, Tin House, and a variety of others, receiving several awards and Pushcart Prize nominations. Chosen as New Mexico Young Poet of the Year while growing up in Santa Fe, she’s more recently published a volume of collected poems, Contagious Magic (Indy Pub, 2020). She lives by the ocean in Santa Cruz, California—too often lured away from her writing by otters, pelicans, and seaside walks.

Nonfiction: W. Goodwin

Ashes on the Tide

W Goodwin is a writer and a visual artist bound by blood and experience to salt water. Goodwin graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, studied scientific photography at the Brooks Institute, traveled across multiple continents and oceans, taught high school and university level sciences, raised two excellent children, and founded two so-so businesses, including a sailing/navigation school from which this story was born. Goodwin’s photographic art and short stories have appeared in numerous literary journals, news sources, and websites. Goodwin currently lives at the foot of the Colorado Rockies with partner Jan and dawg Pete.

Poetry: Jose Oseguera

Where the Music Comes From

José Oseguera is a Los Angeles–based writer of poetry, short fiction, and literary nonfiction. His writing has been featured in Emrys Journal, Hiram Poetry Review, Inlandia, and The Literarian. He was named one of the Sixty-Four Best Poets of 2019 by the Black Mountain Press. His work has also won the Nancy Dew Taylor Award. He is the author of the poetry collection The Milk of Your Blood (Kelsay Books, 2020).

Translation:

Araceli Ardon
translated from the Spanish by C.M.Mayo

A Cup of Tea

Mexican author Araceli Ardón is the author of the novel Historias íntimas de la casa de don Eulogio (Ediciones Vieira, 1998); the short story collection El arzobispo de gorro azul (Ediciones Vieira, 2006); a children’s book, La pandilla de Miguel (Instituto Electoral de Querétaro, 2002); a biography of Don Roberto Ruiz, a Querétaro entrepreneur and philanthropist; and a biography of Junipero Serra both in a separate book and published in the art book Los caminos de Fray Junípero Serra en Querétaro / The Paths of Junipero Serra in Querétaro (Fundación DRT, 2013). In addition, she is the editor of the anthology of essays Romance de piedra y canto (Municipio de Querétaro, 1998) and of Restituto Rodríguez, Surrealista (Código Áureo, 2014), a collection of original fiction by various Mexican and other writers inspired and accompanied by paintings by Rodríguez, which includes this story, translated by permission of the author.

C. M. Mayo grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, although she is a native of Texas and has lived in Mexico City for most of her adult life. Her most recent book is Meteor, which won the Gival Press Poetry Prize, and her collection of short fiction, Sky Over El Nido, won the Flannery O’Connor Award. Some of her translations of Mexican writer Rose Mary Salum’s short fiction have appeared in Catamaran. In 2017 she was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters.

Issue 42 Fall 2023

Cover & Table of Contents