New World Writing Quarterly

The Winter Issue fea­tures work by Bob Hicok, Gerald Fleming, Jennifer Pashley, Pia Ehrhardt, Jane Armstrong, Bobbie Ann Mason, Jeffrey Allen, Simeon Berry, Allan Rossi, and others.

The Fall 2013 issue of NWW is up with new work from Andy Plattner, Eric Pankey, Joe David Bellamy, Rose Hunter, Alfred Corn, Richard Mirabella. All that plus Quincy Lehr’s won­der­ful­ly abun­dant poem, “The Dark Lord of the Tiki Bar.”

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On February 16, 1965, the Sheriff of Dallas County, Alabama threw one of the most famous punch­es in American his­to­ry, on the steps of the cour­t­house in Selma. The man that Sheriff Jim Clark punched in the face, C.T. Vivian, was named yes­ter­day as a recip­i­ent of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Repurposing Your Big Box

Before you begin, you must divest your­self of sen­ti­men­tal mem­o­ries of your grand open­ing.  The park­ing lot was full, cars cir­cling, spilling out onto the sur­round­ing streets.  The cus­tomers wait­ed on the side­walk for hours, sprawled on fold­ing chairs, bun­dled in blan­kets, gulp­ing big gulps. They near­ly crushed one anoth­er when the doors first slid open. 

from Box City

1983, Houston, Texas. October­.  According to the Colonial Americans, this was the Hunter’s moon.  Trip found a big swath of vel­vet tucked away in Judy’s clos­et.  It was mid­night blue.  “This is what the guy meant when he sang about blue vel­vet,” Trip told Nora.   They cut stars from card­board and wrapped them in tin­foil, attach­ing them to the cloth, and sang By the Light of the Silvery Moon as he cut the cres­cent moon. 

Lake Resort

Almost fif­teen years ago, Lane bought a lake resort with her sis­ter, Elsa. It was a wild thing to do. It was the sort of thing you did when the world was blar­ing around you, when every­thing seemed too real and impos­si­ble any­way and dan­ger was famil­iar enough that you were tired of being afraid of it. Maybe some peo­ple would do drugs or cut off all their hair or go out danc­ing and bring home a stranger. Lane took out an enor­mous loan and bought a row of house­keep­ing cot­tages on 400 feet of lakeshore. 

Three Pieces

A Red, Red Rose

When you shiv­er in heels, there is always the chance that you will fall in a hur­ry. I would like to learn the trick to not turn­ing to con­fet­ti when dressed up. Until that time, which will no doubt be nev­er, I will stick with these extreme­ly unprovoca­tive crêpe-soled shoes designed to pre­vent roman­tic encoun­ters; they work, essen­tial­ly, like hel­mets for the entire body (and soul, what­ev­er that is). My moth­er did not avoid rock and roll, or heels, or the prac­tice of unfold­ing her body (and maybe even her soul) in a flash, even when she had young chil­dren, even when she had old children. 

Three Poems

On Birds, Women and Fire

The goldfinch needs fire,
the cold slip of her flicks past
as sound­less as a thought
lost to a ques­tion.  But you,
you need water.

We’re work­ing hard to fin­ish up the sum­mer issue of NWW. Starting now we have sev­er­al new pieces online, with more to come.

Delighted to report that we’ve added a ter­rif­ic new Jennifer Pashley sto­ry “Hearts” to the Spring issue, along with four won­der­ful pieces by Diane Kirsten Martin. And last but not least, an intrigu­ing short non­fic­tion work by Tiff Holland.  Click –more

We’ve pub­lished the Spring 2013 issue tonight, clev­er­ly avoid­ing pub­lish­ing it on April 1. The issue includes work by Baron Wormser, Peter Shippy, Sidney Rifkin, Paul Lisicky, Robert Lopez, Lydia Copeland Gwyn and more. All of the work is won­der­ful –more

Gypsy Cante

Inside my mother’s clos­et it was cool and dim. Everything fell away: the sound of raised voic­es, clos­ing doors. I’d breathe in the musky scent of a pash­mi­na embroi­dered with vines and lilies, run my fin­gers over a bead­ed clutch the azure of the Himalayan sky—things my moth­er brought from India when she board­ed the plane that long ago day in the 50s and flew to America. 

Four Shorts

Now I Am Doubled Over

Allow me to say a few words, he says, and then he says, peo­ple think back­wards. I say to the per­son next to me, I can’t believe we’ve allowed this to go on and the per­son next to me says, I don’t know what you mean. At this point I’m livid, I am beside myself. I think about start­ing a fire or set­ting off an explo­sive but I don’t because that’s not a nice thing to do on a Sunday morn­ing and I don’t have match­es on me or kin­dling or any­thing that even resem­bles dyna­mite so I remain seat­ed beside myself. And it feels espe­cial­ly true because at this point it’s as if I’m both the one who said, I can’t believe we’ve allowed this to go on and the one who said, I don’t know what you mean. 

We’ve got­ten an ear­ly start with our Winter 2013 issue which you can find at the top of the col­umn to the right. We want to thank par­tic­u­lar­ly Denise Duhamel, Cathryn Hankla, Bruce Smith, Nin Andrews, Teresa Svoboda and Randall Mann for their –more

BlipMagazine has changed its name to New World Writing after the greatlit­er­ary mag­a­zine of the 1950’s. They were, of course, think­ing of world writ­ing, where­as we are think­ing more of the (per­pet­u­al­ly) new –more