New England Review

  • Subscribe/Order
  • Back Issues
    • Vol. 43, No. 1 (2022)
    • Vol. 42, No. 4 (2021)
    • Vol. 42, No. 3 (2021)
    • Vol. 42, No. 2 (2021)
    • Vol. 42, No. 1 (2021)
    • Vol. 41 (2020)
      • Vol. 41, No. 4 (2020)
      • Vol. 41, No. 3 (2020)
      • Vol. 41, No. 2 (2020)
      • Black Lives Matter
      • Vol. 41, No.1 (2020)
    • Vol. 40 (2019)
      • Vol. 40, No. 4 (2019)
      • Vol. 40, No. 3 (2019)
      • Vol. 40, No. 2 (2019)
      • Vol. 40, No 1 (2019)
    • Vol. 39 (2018)
      • Vol. 39, No. 4 (2018)
      • Vol. 39, No. 3 (2018)
      • Vol. 39, No. 2 (2018)
      • Vol. 39, No. 1 (2018)
    • Vol. 38 (2017)
      • Vol. 38, No. 4 (2017)
      • Vol. 38, No. 3 (2017)
      • Vol.38, No. 2 (2017)
      • Vol. 38, No. 1 (2017)
    • Vol. 37 (2016)
      • Vol. 37, No. 4 (2016)
      • Vol. 37, No. 3 (2016)
      • Vol. 37, No. 2 (2016)
      • Vol. 37, No. 1 (2016)
    • Vol. 36 (2015)
      • Vol. 36, No. 4 (2015)
      • Vol. 36, No. 3 (2015)
      • Vol. 36, No. 2 (2015)
      • Vol. 36, No. 1 (2015)
    • Vol. 35 (2014-2015)
      • Vol. 35, No.1 (2014)
      • Vol. 35, No. 2 (2014)
      • Vol. 35, No. 3 (2014)
      • Vol. 35, No. 4 (2015)
    • Vol. 34 (2013-2014)
      • Vol. 34, No. 1 (2013)
      • Vol. 34, No. 2 (2013)
      • Vol. 34, Nos. 3-4 (2014)
    • Vol. 33 (2012-2013)
      • Vol. 33, No. 1 (2012)
      • Vol. 33, No. 2 (2012)
      • Vol. 33, No. 3 (2012)
      • Vol. 33, No. 4 (2013)
    • Vol. 32 (2011-2012)
      • Vol. 32, No. 1 (2011)
      • Vol. 32, No. 2 (2011)
      • Vol. 32, No. 3 (2011)
      • Vol. 32, No. 4 (2012)
    • Vol. 31 (2010)
      • Vol. 31, No. 1 (2010)
      • Vol. 31, No. 2 (2010)
      • Vol. 31, No. 3 (2010)
      • Vol. 31, No. 4 (2010-2011)
    • Vol. 30 (2009)
      • Vol. 30, No. 1 (2009)
      • Vol. 30, No. 2 (2009)
      • Vol. 30, No. 3 (2009)
      • Vol. 30, No. 4 (2009-2010)
    • Vol. 29 (2008)
      • Vol. 29, No. 1 (2008)
      • Vol. 29, No. 2 (2008)
      • Vol. 29, No. 3 (2008)
      • Vol. 29, No. 4 (2008)
    • Vol. 28 (2007)
      • Vol. 28, No. 1 (2007)
      • Vol. 28, No. 2 (2007)
      • Vol. 28, No. 3 (2007)
      • Vol. 28, No. 4 (2007)
    • Vol. 27 (2006)
      • Vol. 27, No. 1 (2006)
      • Vol. 27, No. 2 (2006)
      • Vol. 27, No. 3 (2006)
      • Vol. 27, No. 4 (2006)
    • Vol. 26 (2005)
      • Vol. 26, No. 1 (2005)
      • Vol. 26, No. 2 (2005)
      • Vol. 26, No. 3 (2005)
      • Vol. 26, No. 4 (2005)
    • Vol. 25 (2004)
      • Vol. 25, Nos. 1-2 (2004)
      • Vol. 25, No. 3 (2004)
      • Vol. 25, No. 4 (2004)
    • Vol. 24 (2003)
      • Vol. 24, No. 1 (2003)
      • Vol. 24, No. 2 (2003)
      • Vol. 24, No. 3 (2003)
      • Vol. 24, No. 4 (2004)
  • About
    • Masthead
    • NER Award Winners
    • Press
    • Award for Emerging Writers
    • Readers and Interns
    • Books by our authors
    • Contact
  • Audio
  • Events
  • Submit

New Books by NER Authors

September 2, 2016

Cannibal“Safiya Sinclair writes strange, mythological, gorgeously elaborate lyric poems, with a diction that is both arcane and contemporary …. Her language is distinctive, assured, and a marvel to read.
—Cathy Park Hong, from her introduction to Safiya Sinclair in Boston Review

NER author and 2016 Bread Loaf Fellow Safiya Sinclair has had her first full-length collection, Cannibal (University of Nebraska Press, 2016), published. Sinclair received the 2016 Whiting Writers’ Award, and Cannibal won the 2015 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. Her poems explore Jamaican childhood and history, race relations in America, womanhood, otherness, and exile.

 Sinclair was born in Montego Bay, Jamaica. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, The Kenyon Review, The Nation, New England Review, Boston Review, Gulf Coast, The Gettysburg Review, TriQuarterly, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere.  She is also the author of the chapbook Catacombs (Argos Books, 2011). She received her MFA in poetry at the University of Virginia, and is currently a PhD candidate in literature and creative writing at the University of Southern California.

Sinclair’s poem “Good Hair” was published NER 37.2. Cannibal is available from University of Nebraska Press and other booksellers.

℘

World-of-Made-and-Unmade-JPEG-200x259

“Mead’s earthiness sometimes morphs into otherworldliness …. In addressing the relationship of mortality to ideas of resolution, celebration, and homecoming, Mead asks, “How will you spend your courage?”
–
Publishers Weekly

NER poet Jane Mead’s fifth collection of poetry, World of Made and Unmade, will be published by Alice James Books in September 2016. Selections from World of Made And Unmade will appear in NER 37.3.

Mead is the author of four full-length books of poetry, most recently Money Money Money | Water Water Water, from Alice James Books. Her poems have been published widely in anthologies and journals and she is the recipient of grants and awards from the Whiting, Guggenheim and Lannan Foundations. She has taught at many colleges and universities including Colby College, The University of Iowa and Wake Forest University. She now manages the ranch her grandfather purchased in the early 1900’s in Northern California, where she grows zinfandel and cabernet wine-grapes. She teaches in the Drew University low-residency MFA program in Poetry and Poetry in Translation.

℘

The_Exit_Coach_Staffel_front_cover-330“The Exit Coach is a book of wonderful, astute stories. Staffel’s characters keep falling upon whatever they least expect. . . . A remarkable collection.”
—Joan Silber

NER author Megan Staffel‘s collection The Exit Coach will be published by Four Way Books in September 2017. The Exit Coach is a compilation of six short stories and a novella, all “linked through reoccurring characters, settings, and themes. The protagonists experience deeply personal transformations and struggle to reconcile their various personas and shifting identities” (Publisher’s Weekly). “Tertium Quid,” one of the stories in the collection, was published in NER 32.4. Staffel’s work has also appeared in NER 31.1, 34.2, and on NER Digital.

Staffel is the author of the collection of short fiction, Lessons in Another Language (Four Way Books) and two novels, The Notebook of Lost Things (Soho Press) and She Wanted Something Else ( North Point Press) and a first collection of short stories, A Length of Wire and Other Stories (Pym-Randall Press). Her short stories have appeared in numerous journals including New England Review, The Northwest Review, Ploughshares, Gargoyle, The Seattle Review, and The Kansas Quarterly. Her stories have been short listed in Best American Short Stories and nominated for The Pushcart Prize.

Staffel teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Previously, she taught at the University of Iowa, Kansas State University, Rochester Institute of Technology and Vermont College. She has two adult children and splits her time between Brooklyn, New York and and a farm in a small town in western New York State.

℘

younMonica Youn, a three-time NER poet, will have her third collection of poetry published this September. Blackacre: Poems (Graywolf Press) “is virtuosic: poems so sharp and fine they cut deep past the body or the self or the mind—they’re needles of rain carving out a canyon. Death is as close as birth, and as far. Youn dazzles with her enigmatic loopholes—the taut noose, the elusive umbilicus, the Möbius qualities of longing and lack and love—which shadow or shape who we are, and what can be called ours” (Brenda Shaughnessy).

Youn is the author of two previous poetry collections, Barter and Ignatz, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. A former lawyer, she teaches at Princeton University and in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Her poetry has previously appeared in NER 21.1, 22.3, and 37.1.

℘

ganassiNER translator Ian Ganassi‘s poetry collection, titled Mean Numbers (China Grove Press), will be published on September 15.  Ganassi writes, “I would like my poems to change people’s experience of reality, to help free them, if only briefly, from what Wallace Stevens called the ‘malady of the quotidian.'”

Ganassi’s new translation of the Aeneid, Book 7, appears in the most recent issue of NER (37.2). Ganassi’s translations of books 1–6 of the Aeneid have appeared previously in NER. He is the inaugural winner of the China Grove Prize in Poetry. His poetry and prose have appeared in more than 50 literary journals. Critical essays have appeared in Octopus, American Letters & Commentary, The Gettysburg Review, and Boulevard, among others. Selections from “The Corpses,”a collage series in collaboration with painter Laura Bell, have been included in art and literary publications and exhibited in galleries in New York City, New Haven, CT, and elsewhere. Ganassi has worked as a percussionist, accompanying Modern, Caribbean, and African dance in New Haven, and as a teacher of writing and literature.

Mean Numbers is available online and from China Grove Press.

 

Filed Under: NER Authors' Books Tagged With: Ian Ganassi, jane mead, Megan Staffel, Monica Youn, Safiya Sinclair

There is no ordinary

October 25, 2012

Messenger | By Megan Staffel

Once, on a cold and snowy morning, there was a sharp, aggressive knocking on the glass door in our kitchen. It was a chicken.

“What’s that chicken doing?” Graham asked. The chickens lived in the shed behind our house and when the snow was deep, they rarely went outside of the small shoveled area in front of their door.

“That’s just a crazy one. She always wants something. Ignore her.” That is, more or less, what I said. It was a slow, relaxed Sunday, the animals were fed, and I had a cup of hot tea in my hand. So I turned around and went back upstairs where I was reading. In our family, I was the authority on chickens because I was the one who fed and watered them, and collected their eggs. And it was true, there was one hen who was far more talkative than the others. Every time I went outside she ran up to me, complaining.

Graham stayed at the table reading the paper, and the chicken, standing in deep snow, knocked the glass. When that had no effect, she flew up and hit the pane with her talons. That got his attention. He pulled a jacket over his bathrobe, slipped his bare feet into boots, and went outside to investigate.

The birds were panicked. He arrived just in time to see a blur of feathers and stripes turn into an enormous raccoon with a chicken in his mouth. So Graham raced back, found his 22, and leaving the door open, ran to the shed.

My husband is a good shot even with an old, little used gun that has a warped sight, and his first bullet found its mark. “It was a raccoon!” he shouted up to me. I said something in response, something admiring, maybe I said, “My hero!” and went back to my book. Several hours later I came down for lunch and there was Graham on the phone, and next to him, busy looking around, was the messenger. “What’s she doing here?” I said.

We realized the hen had been in the house for hours. She must have slipped in when Graham left the door open. But there weren’t any droppings. Somehow, she had figured out that a place that didn’t have straw on the ground required different behavior. Quiet was the other change. She had been absolutely quiet as she walked around.

I marveled at her grasp of abstract notions.  That we meant safety, that the big shed was the place where we lived, that the way to find us was to go around the big shed to the one door that was glass and make a big sound.

I like to remember this event. It reminds me that when I think I know what’s going on, I can be mistaken, that there is the unexpected in the ordinary. No, better yet, that there is no ordinary, not anywhere.

*

NER Digital is a creative writing series for the web. Megan Staffel’s stories have been published in NER, Ploughshares, Northwest Review, Seattle Review, and other journals, and collected in Lessons in Another Language (Fourway Books, 2010). She is the author of the novels, The Notebook of Lost Things and She Wanted Something Else and a first collection of stories, A Length of Wire And Other Stories. She teaches in the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and has contributed to A Kite in the Wind: Fiction Writers on their Craft.

Filed Under: NER Digital Tagged With: Megan Staffel, Messenger

Megan Staffel

Tertium Quid

March 27, 2012

Fiction from NER 32.4. 

Втёрся-парень-в-хоровод

Meredith was a good person. She had been young once, but now she had entered the age of entropy, and the great media machine of American culture gunned past her, its probes searching out juveniles. Movies, music, TV shows, like bathing suits and bras, were not created for a person like her. Sixty and beyond, it was the age no one wanted to be reminded of, except of course the other women who had reached it also. They were an army that is no longer needed yet still wanders the countryside, doing all of the things they were taught to do despite the fact that no one was watching.

[Read more]

Megan Staffel is the author of two novels, The Notebook of Lost Things (Soho, 1999) and She Wanted Something Else (North Point, 1987), and two collections of  short stories, including the recently published Lessons in Another Language (Four Way Books). Her stories have been published in numerous journals including New England Review, Ploughshares, and the Common. She teaches in the M.F.A. Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: Megan Staffel, Tertium Quid

Announcing the New Issue of NER (Vol. 32, #4)

January 26, 2012

The new issue of New England Review has just shipped from the printer, and a preview is available here on our website. Order a copy or subscribe today to receive the full content of this beautifully printed issue of NER.

In these pages, you’ll find new stories by Peter LaSalle, Zana Previti, Katya Reno, Caedra Scott-Flaherty, Gregory Spatz, Megan Staffel, and David Yost, appearing alongside new poems by Larry Bradley, Adam Giannelli, Janice Greenwood, A. Van Jordan, Laura Kasischke, Matthew Olzmann, Jacques J. Rancourt, and Carrie Shipers.

In nonfiction, Eileen Pollack revisits the ranch house of her childhood, Theodore Leinwand contends with Charles Olson contending with Shakespeare, Robert B. Ray asks if movie stars are ultimately unskilled workers, and Jonathan Levy makes a case for the use of dialogues in learning. Plus a new translation of Virgil’s Aeneid Book 5 by Ian Ganassi, Samuel Butler‘s thoughts on memory, Norman Davies on “How States Die,” and cover art by Tim Fitts.

Filed Under: News & Notes Tagged With: Carrie Shipers, Matthew Olzmann, Megan Staffel, Robert B. Ray, Zana Previti


Vol. 43, No. 2

Subscribe

NER Digital

Rosalie Moffett

Writer’s Notebook—Hysterosalpingography

Rosalie Moffett

Many of the poems I’ve been writing lately are trying to figure out how to think about the future, how to reasonably hope, and what we must be resigned to. How can you imagine the future when the present is so slippery, so ready to dissolve?

Sign up for our newsletter

Click here to join our list and receive occasional news and always-great writing.

categories

Navigation

  • Subscribe/Order
  • Back Issues
  • About
  • Events
  • Audio
  • NER Out Loud
  • Emerging Writers Award
  • Support NER
  • Advertising
  • The Podcast

Categories

Copyright © 2022 · facebook · twitter

 

Loading Comments...