Announcing the release of MQR 60:1, Our 60th Anniversary Issue Cover art by Eduardo Paolozzi, courtesy of UMMA and Diane Kirkpatrick Table of Contents Foreword Khaled Mattawa: Celebrating 60 Years of MQR Fiction Alice Adams: Complicities Kalisha Buckhanon: Card Parties Marilyn Chin: Round-Eyes L.C. Fiore: Bangalore Mary Gaitskill: The Woman Who Knew Judo Nguyen Viet […]
MQR Issue 60:1, Winter 2021 Read More »
AI (1947–2010) was an American poet. She published eight collections of poetry, including Killing Floor (1979), winner of the Lamont Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets; Sin (1986), winner of an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation; and Vice: New and Selected Poems (1999), which won the National Book Award for
Meet Our Contributors: Issue 60:1 Winter 2021 Read More »
This special issue celebrates Michigan Quarterly Review’s sixtieth anniversary, a remarkable milestone for any publication, let alone one devoted exclusively to literature and the arts. A special selection of previously published works was one of the first things we decided on for celebrating our anniversary. For several years at MQR we have been exploring and
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I returned to the lake. The lake was quiet, desolate. I collected a smooth stone from the river and rolled it in my palm. I put its cold surface to my lips. I watched the shiny backs of frogs in a patina of water rings. But Mother’s voice wouldn’t escape my head: The kappa grabs children’s feet.
Kappa: Winner of the Lawrence Fiction Prize Read More »
Letters from Daddy (29) 1. My love child of song, child of some place names aren’t meant — needed, if you can hear me in this prison yard, then I sing prayer like gospel in a four wall monstrosity of scribbled letters. + Mothers are apricot trees to pick from and fathers are mountains you
Letters from Daddy: Winner of the Page Davidson Clayton Prize for Emerging Poets Read More »
So, when she told me not to leave the car as she prepared to respond to a potentially violent situation, I experienced a surge of protectiveness and guilt out of a dereliction of chivalry. I fought the urge to go with her, nodding to show I understood her authority. I became hyper-aware of the straps of the seatbelt binding me to the passenger seat of her police cruiser.
Tithe of the Assassins We don’t know what they did with the newborns or with their mothers (but we can imagine). Those able to escape had to ignore the desperate cries of the dying. Now great shopping centers are sprouting up like mushrooms in damp darkness, where light is a boiling TV screen. Many survivors
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If we want our writing to have agency, if we want it to be part of the struggle to make a new and better world, I think it’s important to take a step back and examine our motivations as writers. How does the capitalist system influence the choices we make as writers?
Mark Nowak on Why We Write Read More »
Why I Chose It: Michigan Quarterly Review Reader David Freeman introduces Charlie Clark’s poem, “Devil Always Thought Pelagius Was a Second-Rate Christian,” from our Fall 2020 Issue. When I read Charlie Clark’s virtuosic poem, “Devil Always Thought Pelagius Was a Second-Rate Christian,” I am conflicted. To be clear, I am not conflicted about the poem’s content — it is
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In 2013, Indian American poet, editor, and professor Ravi Shankar was sentenced to a 90-day pretrial detention at Hartford Correctional Center, a level 4 high-security urban jail, for violating his probation for a DUI offense by driving while his license was suspended. During that time, he became the first American academic to be promoted while
