New England Review

Welcome to NER 41.3

Fall 2020 Issue: Haunted and Haunting

The fall issue of New England Review (41.3), just released and shipping now from the printer, is haunted by ghosts and spirits, and by the trauma of history that is never quite settled. Ghosts come calling in May-lee Chai’s essay about the women of Nanjing, in fiction by Rwandan author Scholastique Mukasonga, and in poems by both torrin a. greathouse and Mark Wunderlich. They take center stage in a new translation of a work by Qing dynasty “Investigator of the Strange” Ji Yun and in a contemporary short story by Kirk Wilson.

Haunted in other ways are a new imagining of Rimbaud’s Season in Hell by poet and pacifist John Kinsella, fiction by contemporary Mexican writer Karla Marrufo, an essay about literature and trauma by Jeneva Stone, and poetry by Elisa Gabbert.

In addition to the above, you’ll find new poems by Anders Carlson-Wee, Victoria Chang, Justin Danzy, Lynn Domina, Denise Duhamel, Rodney Jones, Sydney Lea, Shara McCallum, Christina Pugh, and Brandon Som, and translations of poetry by Nobel laureate Nelly Sachs by Joshua Weiner with Linda B. Parshall.

More fiction by Kenneth Calhoun, Meron Hadero, and Kate Petersen and nonfiction by Laurence de Looze, Clifford Howard, and Alyssa Pelish.

Cover art, “The Summer Night Was Unusually Dark,” is by Danish artist Heidi P.

With or without the ghosts, the powerful work in this issue will stay with you. Order a copy in print or ebook today, or better yet, subscribe.

October 2020

New Books by NER Authors

October continues to be a busy publication month for NER authors!

More new books this month include a memoir from poet Natasha Trethewey, a book of bedtime stories for adults from Charles Holdefer, a volume of poetry from Jan Beatty, and a new novel in a multi-volume masterwork from Eugene Mirabelli.

You can shop these October books and more from fall 2020 on the New England Review‘s Author Books Fall 2020 Bookshop page.

October 2020

New Books by NER Authors

Our authors have had a busy publication schedule this October! Some of their new books this month include include a mock-epic poem from Sydney Lea, a debut full-length poetry collection from Carlos Andrés Gómez, a series of personal essays from Peter LaSalle, a volume of poetry from Fiona Sze-Lorrain and a collection of essays from Michael Cohen.

Find them and more from the fall on the New England Review‘s new bookshelf at Bookshop.org.

NER Interns: Where are they now?

Vedika Khanna

Current NER summer intern Simone Edgar Holmes ’20.5 talks to Vedika Khanna ’14, former NER intern and current assistant editor for HarperCollins Publishers, about the publishing industry and some exciting upcoming books.

Simone Edgar Holmes: When were you an intern at NER and what was the highlight of your experience?

Vedika Khanna: I was a fall intern at NER in 2010. Reading submissions and discussing them with Carolyn [Kuebler] was by far the highlight. That was the first time I analyzed and assessed writing with the question of whether it ought to be published, which was very different from what I was doing in my creative writing classes at Middlebury. My current approach to considering submissions is built off what I learned from Carolyn during my internship.

SEH: That’s wonderful to hear! You now work as an Assistant Editor for HarperCollins Publishers in New York City––sounds like a dream job! What were some steps you took to get to where you are now?

VK: I did a lot of informational interviews, some through the Middlebury network, when I first got to NYC. They gave me a basic understanding of how the publishing industry works. I then interned at the Writers House literary agency, where I honed my skills, gained a more in-depth view of publishing, and got clarity on how I wanted to be a part of it. After that, I applied to jobs and was eventually hired as an Editorial Assistant at HarperCollins. Summarizing it like this makes it sound easy, but it actually took almost three years to land my job after arriving in NYC.

SEH: Briefly, what does your day-to-day at HarperCollins look like? 

VK: I assist two editors, one who works on fiction and one who works on nonfiction. My day-to-day work largely involves shepherding their books through the publication process. This can include anything from working on contract requests to writing copy to creating jacket memos to prepping manuscripts for the production team, and more. I’m also trying to acquire books for my own list, so I’m consistently networking with literary agents, reading submissions, and working on the same tasks mentioned earlier for my own titles.

SEH: It’s great to get a sense of what your job entails. What was one skill you developed as an undergraduate, either in school or any internships, that most benefits you in you today in your professional work? 

VK: Working as a peer writing tutor at Middlebury completely shaped the way in which I edit books. The big picture, questions-based approach to editing students’ essays transfers seamlessly to book editing, as do the interpersonal skills involved in working with people on their writing one-on-one.

SEH: I’m also a peer writing tutor, and have noticed a similar transfer of skills to submissions reading for NER. Does reading for your job making reading for pleasure any less appealing? If not, have you read any good books lately?

VK: I would say reading for pleasure has become more difficult since I started working in publishing, but not less appealing. It’s rejuvenating to get lost in books but finding time to read for fun amidst all the other reading I have to do is tricky. I make as much time for it as I can.

Recently I’ve really enjoyed Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli, Good Talk by Mira Jacob, and Circe by Madeline Miller. I also can’t help but recommend three amazing books coming out this fall: When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole, Written in the Stars by Alexandria Bellefleur, and Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth.

SEH: Thank you Vedika for speaking with me today! I’ve enjoyed Madeline Miller’s Circe myself, and look forward to reading your other recommendations once they’re out this fall.

Mark Wunderlich

Writer’s Notebook—Sky Burial

My suffering did not last, though once I recovered, I knew that I had been changed by the experience.

Mark Wunderlich, author of
the poem series “Sky Burial” (NER 40.3).
Photo credit:  Nicholas Kahn

Why do poets write about the worst things that have happened to them? What do we mean when we refer to our identity? Does our identity consist of the totality of what we do and say? What we know and make? What others have done to us? What portion of our identity do we inherit from our family and ancestors? Which parts of our inheritance can we choose, and which can we reject? What does it mean to be a victim, and is victimhood a part of an identity? These are the questions that drove me to write the poem series called “Sky Burial,” on a summer day in Umbria where I had gone on an artists’ residency. The poem also recalls the summer of 2015, when, after several months in a diagnosed major depression, during which the medications I was taking were not delivering relief, and the lifeline of therapy, though usually a reliable source of comfort and connection, was now beginning to fray, and as my much-hoped-for recovery started to seem unattainable, I found myself sitting in the grass in my yard with the barrel of a shotgun in my mouth and my finger on the trigger, rehearsing my own violent death. 

For anyone reading this, I want you to know that I recovered. As in my previous depressive episodes, the medication started to work, and I began to pull myself out of a vast emptiness that was my mental illness; the poem explains—I hope—just what came between me and my wish to end my own life. I did not pull the trigger that day, nor the next, and with each passing day I began the slow process of returning to myself, of shedding the bleakness and ugliness around me, of awakening my instinct for survival. Weeks later, a day came when I was outside with the sun on my face, and I remember smelling the trail of wood smoke on the air and thinking how wonderful it smelled—homey and comforting and sharp—and just like that I had experienced pleasure once again. Therapy helped me to understand how my life had come undone, and an SSRI helped to lift me from a torpor and a lassitude that had enveloped me for months. 

My suffering did not last, though once I recovered, I knew that I had been changed by the experience. I came to see my suicidal episode as a metaphorical death, my depression as a kind of trip through the deep recesses of the underworld. As part of my recovery, I began to tell the story of my time wandering in the land of shades. The poem sequence documents my survival, but it is also testament to my unwillingness to see myself as damaged, or as a victim making a play for your sympathy. Instead, I see the poem as a meditation on the nature of suffering, and on our ability to survive just about anything. I am not a damaged person for having suffered my own illness, having withstood the violence of others, or having inherited an unhappy family history. I am neither the hero nor the victim of my own circumstances. I want experience to mean something, and poetry is the most reliable mechanism I know by which I can render experience into something durable, useful, and encompassing, and which makes the lived life a life of meaning.

Mark Wunderlich is the author of four books of poems, most recently God of Nothingness (Graywolf, 2021). His other books are The Earth Avails (Graywolf, 2014), which received the Rilke Prize, Voluntary Servitude (Graywolf, 2004), and The Anchorage (University of Massachusetts, 1999), which received the Lambda Literary Award. He directs the Bennington Writing Seminars graduate writing program and lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.

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