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Craft Articles

Craft

The Dark Pages: Updating Patterns of Rape in Fiction by Zoe Marzo

Zoe Marzo is a writer in Los Angeles. She has a B.A. from Antioch University Los Angeles and an M.F.A. in fiction writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She’s a doctoral student in Depth Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Popshot Quarterly, Tahoma Literary Review, and other publications.

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Craft

Chiasmus by Matthew Wimberley

Matthew Wimberley grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains. He is the author of two collections of poetry, Daniel Boone’s Window (LSU, 2020), selected by Dave Smith for the Southern Messenger Poetry series, and All the Great Territories (SIU, 2020), winner of the 2018 Crab Orchard Poetry Series First Book award, winner of the Weatherford Award. Winner of the 2015 William Matthews Prize from the Asheville Poetry Review, his work was selected by Mary Szybist for the 2016 Best New Poets Anthology and his writing has appeared most recently in the Poem-a-Day series from the Academy of American Poets. Wimberley received his MFA from NYU where he worked with children at St. Mary’s Hospital as a Starworks Fellow. He is an Assistant Professor of English at Lees-McRae College in Banner Elk, NC.

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Craft

Cultivating Empathy through Mimetic Forms by Brenna Womer

Brenna Womer is an experimental prose writer, poet, and professor. She is the author of honeypot (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019) and two chapbooks, Atypical Cells of Undetermined Significance (C&R Press, 2018) and cost of living (Finishing Line Press, 2022). Her work has appeared in North American Review, Indiana Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Pinch, and elsewhere. She is the editor of Shenandoah and a contributing editor for Story Magazine.

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Being Nobody, or How I Was Radicalized by Emily Dickinson | by M. Jamie Zuckerman

M Jaime Zuckerman is the author of two chapbooks, most recently Letters to Melville (Ghost Proposal, 2018) as well as poems in BOAAT, Diode, Fairy Tale Review, Hunger Mountain, Palette, Prairie Schooner, Southern Humanities Review, and other journals. She serves as the associate editor for Sixth Finch and a senior reader for Ploughshares. She grew up in the woods but now lives and teaches in Boston, MA.

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Craft

On Place | by Sharon Fagan McDermott & When I Say Here | by M.C. Benner Dixon

Sharon Fagan McDermott is a poet, musician, and a teacher of literature at a private school in Pittsburgh, PA. Her most recent collection of poetry, Life Without Furniture, published by Jacar Press (2018) wrestles with finding and feeling at home in the world and seeking sanctuary in an often challenging life. As National Book Award winning poet Terrance Hayes says about this new collection: “Sharon Fagan McDermott inhabits the spaces between the common and the uncommon…The whole world, visible and invisible, inhabits this wonderful new book.” Additionally, Fagan McDermott has published three chapbook collections, Voluptuous, Alley Scatting (Parallel Press, 2005), and Bitter Acoustic, which won the 2011 Jacar Press Chapbook competition.

M.C. Benner Dixon lives, writes, and grows things in Pittsburgh, PA. Working in both prose and poetry, her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review Online, Sampsonia Way, SLICE Magazine, Appalachian Review, Vastarien, HeartWood Literary Magazine, pacificREVIEW, Paperbark Literary Magazine, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, and elsewhere.

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Craft

Dramatic Situation: On Listening for Story in Poetry | by A. Loudermilk

A. Loudermilk’s Strange Valentine won the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. His poems can be found in publications like Cream City Review, Gargoyle, Smaritsh Pace, Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, and Tin House, and his essays in The Writer’s Chronicle, PopMatters, Midwest Quarterly, and the Journal of International Women’s Studies. He’s taught creative writing at Hampshire College and Maryland Institute College of Arts.

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Craft

Dissent by Descent—Diving into the Madness and Rejecting Genre Boundaries | by Cassidy McCants

Cassidy McCants is a writer and editor from Tulsa, Oklahoma. She received her M.F.A. in fiction writing at Vermont College of Fine Arts. She edits for Nimrod Journal and is creator/editor of Apple in the Dark. Her prose has appeared in The Lascaux Review, Liars’ League NYC, Gravel, The Idle Class, filling Station, Witch Craft Magazine, and other publications. She won the 2020 Innovative Short Fiction Contest from The Conium Review, and her stories have received honorable mentions from Glimmer Train Press. She is a 2020 Artist INC fellow.

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Craft

The Nonfiction of Skin | by Alizabeth Worley

Alizabeth Worley lives in Utah with her husband, Michael, and their two sons, just north of BYU where she received an MFA. She was a 2016 poetry winner of the AWP Intro Journals award and her essays, poems, and illustrated works have appeared in Iron Horse Literary Review, Hobart, Sweet: A Literary Confection, and elsewhere. You can find more of her work at alizabethworley.com.

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Craft

What Is Poetry For? | by James McKee

James McKee enjoys failing in his dogged attempts to keep pace with the unrelenting cultural onslaught of late-imperial Gotham. His debut poetry collection, The Stargazers, was published in the spring of 2020, and his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in New Ohio Review, New World Writing, The Ocotillo Review, Illuminations, CutBank, The Raintown Review, Flyway, Saranac Review, THINK, The Midwest Quarterly, Xavier Review, and elsewhere. He spends his free time, when not writing or reading, traveling less than he would like and brooding more than he can help.

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Poets of Dos Lenguas | by Alejandro Lemus-Gomez

Alejandro Lemus-Gomez is a Davies-Jackson Scholar of Modern and Medieval Languages at the University of Cambridge. He was a finalist for the 2020 C.D. Wright Emerging Poet’s Prize and a 2019 Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets fellow. His poetry and academic work is forthcoming or has appeared in The Journal, the Afro-Hispanic Review, storySouth, The Indiana Review Online, and other journals.

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GRIST CRAFT ARTICLES

Delightfully Weird by Tommy Dean

Tommy Dean is the author of two flash fiction chapbooks Special Like the People on TV (Redbird Chapbooks, 2014) and Covenants (ELJ Editions, 2021), and a full flash collection, Hollows (Alternating Current Press 2022). He lives in Indiana where he currently is the Editor at Fractured Lit and Uncharted Magazine. A recipient of the 2019 Lascaux Prize in Short Fiction, his writing can be found in Best Microfiction 2019 and 2020, Best Small Fiction 2019 and 2022, Monkeybicycle, and numerous litmags. Find him at tommydeanwriter.com and on Twitter @TommyDeanWriter.

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Wristwatches and Miniature Clocks by Daniel Abiva Hunt

Daniel Abiva Hunt is a writer from South Jersey. His stories and essays appear or are forthcoming in The Masters Review, CRAFT, The Maine Review, Portland Review, and elsewhere. He previously served as assistant fiction editor for Gulf Coast, and he is currently a PhD student at the University of Cincinnati, where he teaches and studies fiction.

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On Reality, Fiction and Neurodiversity by Victoria Costello

Victoria Costello is a writer and teacher of memoir and auto-fiction based in Ashland, Oregon. Her debut novel, Orchid Child, forthcoming from Between the Lines Publishing in June, 2023, is based on the three-generation family story she first told in her memoir, A Lethal Inheritance (Prometheus Books/2012). As a science journalist, she’s written feature articles for Scientific American MIND, Psychology Today, Brain World, and Huffington Post. She earned an Emmy Award as a writer/producer of documentary films, including This Island Earth and Wolf Nation, shown on PBS, Discovery, and The Disney Channel. Themes of ancestry, neurodiversity, and mysticism reoccur in her latest writings and workshops. Visit her website, victoriacostelloauthor.com for contact info and to read more of her work.

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“Where in the body do I begin”: Grass and Hunger in Layli Long Soldier’s Whereas by James Ciano

James Ciano holds an MFA from New York University, and has received support from the Vermont Studio Center and The Community of Writers. His poems have recently appeared in Southern Humanities Review, Quarterly West, and Nashville Review. Originally from New York, he lives in Los Angeles, California where he is currently a Provost Fellow at the University of Southern California, pursuing a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing.

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Show us your work.

We read for our ProForma Contest every spring from March 15 – April 30 and for general submissions from May 15 – August 15. Our print issue is published annually with accompanying online content.