Purchase MQR 56:4 (Fall 2017) in print or as a downloadable PDF.
POETRY
Becca Barniskis: “Martian vs. Village,” “Comet 67P Village,” & “It Takes a Child to Raise a Village”
Barniskis has a chapbook of poems, Mimi and Xavier Star in a Museum That Fits Entirely in One’s Pocket (Anomalous Press). Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals including LIT, Colorado Review, TYPO, Vinyl, Southword, Works & Days Quarterly, MARY, and Sporklet. She performs her poetry to live audiences regularly as part of the bands Downrange Telemetrics and Pancake7. Find out more at beccabarniskis.com.
V.V. Ganeshananthan: “The Faithful Scholar Dreams of Being Exact”
Ganeshananthan’s debut novel, Love Marriage (Random House, 2008), was longlisted for the Orange Prize and named one of Washington Post Book World’s Best of 2008. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard, and the American Academy in Berlin, she is at work on a second novel, excerpts of which have appeared in Granta, Ploughshares, and Best American Nonrequired Reading 2014. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota. Follow her on Twitter @V_V_G.
Gabriela Garcia: “Tourist at the Sisters of Charity”
Garcia is an MFA candidate at Purdue University and fiction editor of Sycamore Review. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in Tin House, Ninth Letter, Iowa Review, Indiana Review, National Geographic Traveler, and elsewhere. Find out more at gabrielagarciawriter.com. She tweets about mostly cats @gabimgarcia.
Shen Haobo (translated by Liang Yujing): “Still Life”
Haobo, born in 1976, is considered one of the most controversial voices among the new generation of Chinese poets for being both wickedly erotic and politically satirical in his poetry. As the leading poet of the Lower Body group, he is the author of five poetry collections. His poems, translated by Liang Yujing, are forthcoming in Cincinnati Review, Massachusetts Review, Jubilat, Minnesota Review, and Modern Poetry in Translation (UK).
Yujing grew up in China and is currently a PhD candidate at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He is the Chinese translator of Best New Zealand Poems 2014 (Wai-te-ata Press) and the English translator of Zero Distance: New Poetry from China (Tinfish Press, 2017). Find him on Twitter @liangyujing1 or on Facebook @yujing.liang.5.
Stevie Howell: “As a Child”
Howell is an Irish-Canadian writer and editor whose poetry has appeared in BOAAT, Prairie Schooner, Gigantic Sequins, The Cossack Review, Prelude, and elsewhere. Howell’s first collection of poetry, Sharps (Goose Lane, 2014), was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. A second collection of poetry, I left nothing inside on purpose, is forthcoming in Spring 2018 from Penguin Random House Canada. Howell is the poetry editor at This Magazine as well as an MFA candidate in creative writing at NYU. Find out more at steviehowell.ca, or follow Howell on Twitter @steviehowl.
Terrell Jamal Terry: “Chemicals & Instruments”
Terry is the author of the poetry collection Aroma Truce (Black Lawrence Press, 2017). His poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, The Literary Review, West Branch, The Journal, Green Mountains Review, Crab Orchard Review, cream city review, and elsewhere. He resides in Pittsburgh, PA. Find out more at terrelljamalterry.com.
Madison Jones: “Blackberry” & “Nocturne”
Jones is a doctoral candidate in writing studies at the University of Florida. His dissertation research explores the role of places and environments in networked writing. His poetry collection Reflections on the Dark Water was released by Solomon & George in 2016. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Louisiana Literature, Shenandoah, Painted Bride Quarterly, Greensboro Review, and elsewhere. He has reviewed for Kenyon Review Online, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and storySouth. Find out more at madisonpjones.com, or follow him on Twitter @mpjonesiv.
Jen Karetnick: “Custody”
Karetnick is the author of seven collections of poetry, most recently The Treasures That Prevail (Whitepoint Press, 2016), a finalist for the Poetry Society of Virginia Book Prize. Her work has appeared recently or is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Cutthroat, The Missouri Review, One, Painted Bride Quarterly, Verse Daily, and Waxwing. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, she works as the Creative Writing Director for Miami Arts Charter School and as a freelance dining critic, lifestyle journalist, and trade book author. Find her on Facebook @Kavetchnik, follow her Twitter @Kavetchnik, or follow her on Instagram @JenKaretnick.
Ann Lauinger: “Men Mowing” & “Parentalia”
Lauinger’s two books of poetry are Persuasions of Fall, winner of the Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry, and Against Butterflies. Her work has appeared in publications such as Cumberland River Review, Georgia Review, Parnassus, and The Southern Poetry Review; and has been featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. She is a member of the literature faculty at Sarah Lawrence College.
Mike Soto: “At the Top of the Ferris Wheel, the City”
Soto is a first generation Mexican-American, raised in East Dallas and in a small town in Michoacán. His current manuscript uses themes from the drug war taking place along a fictional U.S./ Mexico border town. The manuscript can be described as a Narco Acid Western told in about forty-five poems. It is written in lineage with Alejandro Jodorowsky’s film, El Topo. Find out more at mikesoto.com, or follow him on Instagram @sike__moto.
G.C. Waldrep: “Wyoming Aubade” & “The Giftless Pavillion”
Waldrep’s most recent books are a long poem, Testament (BOA Editions, 2015), and a chapbook, Susquehanna (Omnidawn, 2013). With Joshua Corey, he edited The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral (Ahsahta, 2012). His new collection, feast gently, is due out from Tupelo Press in 2018. He lives in Lewisburg, PA, where he teaches at Bucknell University, edits the journal West Branch, and serves as Editor-at-Large for The Kenyon Review.
NONFICTION
Margaret Morganroth Gullette: “The One Who Feeds Us All: Old Farmers and Farm Fiction Amid the Global Food Crisis”
Gullette is an internationally known age critic, the author of Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People (Rutgers University Press, 2017), and two earlier prize-winning books, Declining to Decline (winner of the Emily Toth Prize for “the best feminist book on American popular culture”) and Agewise (winner of an Eric Hoffer Book Prize). Her essay here, on fiction about old farmers, complements the chapter in Ending Ageism called “Vert-de-Gris: Rescuing the Land Lovers.” Her essays are often cited as notable in Best American Essays. She is a resident scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center, Brandeis. Follow her on Twitter @gullette_mm.
Corey Van Landingham: “Antebellum”
Van Landingham is the author of Antidote, winner of the 2012 Ohio State University Press/The Journal Award in Poetry, and the recipient of a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry 2014, Boston Review, Kenyon Review, and The New Yorker, among other places. She’s currently a doctoral student in English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Cincinnati, and a Book Review Editor for Kenyon Review. Find out more at coreyvanlandingham.com.
FICTION
Taylor Adams: “Five Chapters, In Black”
Adams is a student at the University of Michigan, class of 2020, majoring in Vocal Performance at the School of Music, Theater, and Dance.
Jenny Irish: “Worry”
Irish lives in Arizona where she serves as the Assistant Director of Arizona State University’s Creative Writing Program. She has been previously published in Alaska Quarterly Review, Catapult, Georgia Review, and others. Her first book, Common Ancestor, was published by Black Lawrence Press in 2017. Find out more at jennyirish.com, or follow her on Twitter @jenny___irish.
Sara Schaff: “The Invention of Love”
Schaff is the author of Say Something Nice About Me (Augury Books, 2016), a 2017 Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist for Short Fiction and a CLMP Firecracker Award Finalist in Fiction. Her writing has appeared in LitHub, Joyland, Hobart, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing at St. Lawrence University in upstate New York. Find out more at saraschaff.com, or follow her on Twitter @schaff_sara.
Anna Sabat: “Big Sister”
Sabat’s work has appeared in Pif Magazine, Fiction, Podium, and Crescent Review. She is currently working on a collection of interlinked short stories, each of which focuses on a daughter or granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. She lives in New York City.
J. Howard Siegal: “Confessions of an Aphrodite Bug”
Siegal writes fiction, nonfiction, music, code, and recipes. He plays barrelhouse piano and pulls occasional stints in world music projects. Currently, he is following up a dystopian folk album with a draft of his first novel. He lives with his wife and two children near Chicago.
Rebecca Townley: “What the Body Told”
Townley was born and raised in Shaker Heights, Ohio. She is currently based in the cloud forest of Monteverde, Costa Rica, where she is at work on a novel.
Marléne Zadig: “Absolute Zero”
Zadig is a born-and-bred Californian. Her short fiction made Longform’s Top 5 List of Best Fiction in 2015 and appears in places like StoryQuarterly, Joyland, Slice, and Green Mountains Review. She’s currently writing a novel about wildfire in the West. Find out more at marlenezadig.com, or follow her on Twitter @MarleneZadig.
