Welcome to the Fall 2014 Issue of Barely South Review featuring new poems by Ellen Kombiyil, Chris Mink, Maggie Rosen, Daniel Ruefman, and Michael Schmeltzer, flash fiction by Rupprecht Mayer, Elle Faye, and Eleanor Levine, nonfiction by Kerri Dieffenwierth, Monica F. Jacobe, and Bernard Grant, and cover art by Addie Rose Price.
Leading things off, we have the winner and finalists of the 2014 Norton Girault Literary Prize in Creative Nonfiction, judged by Claire Dederer, author of the memoir Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses.Claire named Greg Marshall’s “Never Get AIDS” as this year’s winner, calling it “a discomfiting, funny, and tenderly observed essay illustrating all too painfully how one 7th grader’s
sexual identity was formed in and by the age of AIDS.” She awarded Kelly Wolfe’s “Early Mourning Flight” and Marley Andino’s “Water Capes and James Bond” second and third place respectively.
You’ll also find the winners and runner-ups of the 2014 ODU Poetry Prize, co-sponsored by the ODU MFA Creative writing program, the Poetry Society of Virginia, and the Academy of American Poets. This year’s judge was poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of Miracle fruit,At the Drive-In Volcano, and Fishbone. She awarded David Baah the undergraduate prize for his poem “Good Shepard,” and Michael Alessi the graduate prize for “Sow.” She also selected Willie Wilson’s “Ode to a Seibles’ Poem” and Lucian Mattison’s “From the Balcony: The Birds”as Honorable Mentions. You can read what Aimee had to say about each of the finalists here.
In celebration of our journal’s literary heritage, this issue also features two fantastic stories reprinted from our days as The Dominion Review:“Cannibals” by Sue William Silverman (volume 14, 1996) and “Seeing Red” by Karen Lee Boren (volume 13, 1995). Special thanks to both Sue and Karen for the permission to reprint their stories, to New Rivers Press (who will publish “Seeing Red” as part of Karen’s forthcoming collection Mother Tongue, due out later this year) for their permission as well, and to the special collections at ODU and the University of Wisconsin-Madison for helping us track down the complete run of The Dominion Review. You can read editorials on rediscovering both “Cannibals” and “Seeing Red” over at our blog. Over the next few months, check the blog for new book reviews and editorials from the rest of our staff.
Coming up next will be our Winter Craft annual, which will feature interviews with Michael Ruhlman, Jane Hirschfield, Kate Christensen, Annia Ciezadlo, Tarfia Faizullah, Luisa Igloria, Tara Shea Burke, and others. Until then, let this issue of Barely South Review keep you warm.
– Michael Alessi, Managing Editor
Table of Contents
- Never Get AIDS [Norton Girault Prize Winner]
- Early Mourning Flight [Norton Girault Prize 1st Runner-Up]
- Water Capes and James Bond [Norton Girault Prize 2nd Runner-Up]
- Slipping on Sidewalks as an Act of Divining [Poetry]
- The Momentum of Flung Stones [Poetry]
- Jet Wash [Flash Nonfiction]
- From the World of the Triple Jumpers [Flash Fiction]
- The Sheep [Flash Fiction]
- Postcards from Rainbow City [Poetry]
- Favorite Stories to Read Aloud [Poetry]
- Pieces of Her [Nonfiction]
- What are you having? [Poetry]
- Repeated Cycle [Flash Nonfiction]
- Between Panic & Desire the Blades of Our Bodies [Poetry]
- The Universe Goes Dark [Poetry]
- Becky and Spinoza [Flash Fiction]
- Ode to a Seibles’ Poem [Undergraduate ODU Poetry Prize Runner-Up]
- Good Shepard [Undergraduate ODU Poetry Prize Winner]
- From the Balcony: The Birds [Graduate ODU Poetry Prize Runner-Up]
- Sow [Graduate ODU Poetry Prize Winner]
- Cannibals [Fiction]
- Seeing Red [Fiction]