Prairie Schooner

Prairie Schooner Submission Manager We're working a bit more slowly than usual. To those of you with outstanding submissions, we appreciate your patience! The Schooner’s intention is to publish the best and most interesting writing avai...

Today is the FINAL day to submit to our Summer Creative Nonfiction Contest! Send us essays up to 5,000 words for a chance to win $1,000 and publication. This year's contest will be judged by @nezhukumatathil.bsky.social.

prairieschooner.submittable.com/submit

so pleased to be in the same issue as Lena Khalaf Tuffaha. 💚

Cover image of the Fall 2024 issue of the Schooner, featuring a photograph of a hallway lined with autumn leaves. Text above and below the cover reads "New Issue."

Volume 98 Number 3 Contributors Brenda Cárdenas Nina C. Peláez Bruce Parker Clare Rossini Natalie Scenters-Zapico Amy Nolan John Kinsella Dana Fang Hajjar Baban Page Hill Starzinger iheoma uzomba Preeti Vangani Amber Flora Thomas Urvi Kumbhat Kyoko Uchida James Scruton Glen Vecchione ire'ne lara silva Sonja Livingston Matthew Daddona Tsahai Makeda Laura Wetherington Michael Loyd Gray Michael Imossan Emily M. Green Rachel Neve-Midbar Lena Khalaf Tuffaha Daniel Millar Kat Finch Swati Rana Divya Mehrish Gabriel Houck Katie Hartsock Marcia Lynx Qualey Catalina Ocampo Londoño

Our latest issue is now available for purchase! Featuring work by @bcar.bsky.social, @lenakt.bsky.social, @ninacpelaez.bsky.social, @pagestar.bsky.social, @preetivangani.bsky.social, @michaelimossan.bsky.social, and more.

Order the issue here: prairieschooner.unl.edu/issue/fall-2...

Our Summer Creative Nonfiction Contest is coming to a close on August 1st at 11:59pm CST. Winner receives $1,000 & Publication.

Our Summer Creative Nonfiction Contest is coming to a close on August 1st!

Read our interview with guest judge Aimee Nezhukumatathil (@nezhukumatathil.bsky.social):

prairieschooner.unl.edu/digital-scho...

Find guidelines & submit your work here:

prairieschooner.submittable.com/submit

Our upcoming issue is getting some love! It will be available for purchase on our website very soon.

The book cover for the winner of the 2024 Raz/Shumaker Book Prize in Fiction. Mi Jin Kim's collection of stories, Invitation, will be published this September.

Invitation by Mi Jin Kim is now available for preorder through @univnebpress.bsky.social! Winner of the 2024 Raz/Shumaker Book Prize in Fiction, Kim's collection of stories will be published this September.

Preorder here: www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9781496244345/invitation/

Death Does Not End at the Sea by Gbenga Adesina is now available for preorder through @univnebpress.bsky.social! Winner of the 2024 Raz/Shumaker Book Prize in Poetry, Adesina's debut collection will be published this September.

Preorder here: www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/978...

Summer Creative Nonfiction Contest Submissions Closing august 1 Winner receives $1000 and publication “I adore writing that surprises me, teaches me something I didn’t know before I read the essay, and makes me feel like I’ve traveled without ever leaving my chair.” —Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Guest Judge

Less than 2 weeks left to enter our Summer Creative Nonfiction Contest! One winner receives $1000 & publication.

Read our interview with guest judge @nezhukumatathil.bsky.social: prairieschooner.unl.edu/digital-scho...

Find guidelines & submit your work here: prairieschooner.submittable.com/submit

"Silence is either a shield, a puzzle piece, or a commentary." 💬

IALA board member Lory Bedikian talks poetry, silence, and family history in her @prairie-schooner.bsky.social interview on Jagadakeer: Apology to the Body.

📖 Read here: bit.ly/40tsPtO

🌼 🌿 The Yale Review highlighted Aracelis Girmay's poem "flower" for their Poem of the Week in June! "flower" can be found in Girmay's upcoming collection GREEN OF ALL HEADS, available now for pre-order at www.boaeditions.org/collections/....

yalereview.org/article/arac...

I did a thing! My second poetry collection, A MAP OF MY WANT (@haymarketbooks) won the Midwest Book Award for Poetry!

TONIGHT, July 14, Joan Kwon Glass & Martín Espada will read in Barb Jennes’ series “Poetry in the Garden” in Ridgefield, CT @ 7pm in an evening focused on immigrant voices. Free & open to the public. 🎤📚 🌿 @joankwonglass.bsky.social @martinespadapoet.bsky.social keelertavernmuseum.org/events/526/p...

I find talk of "witness" abhorrent, both for how it relegates us all to voyeurs, and how it absolves us of the responsibility to constantly disrupt the machinery of carnage until we grind it to a halt. For those of us in the diaspora, "bearing witness" removes us from the record; it disappears what we have carried and refies the falsehood that what we are enduring today is somehow disconnected from what we have endured before. —Lena Khalaf Tuffaha Foreword to Fusion #12: Archive Issue 98.2, Selections from the Digital Schooner Global Fusion Series

Our recent Fusion-themed print issue includes selections from Fusion #12: Archive, guest edited by @lenakt.bsky.social and featuring Palestinian writers.

Learn more about the issue and our digital Fusion series here: prairieschooner.unl.edu/issue/summer...

Lillian Akampurira Aujo Out of a Shoe's Diary Later on in my life I would come to know if I wasn't stowed away in the mildewed closet where my skin would be caressed by sticky cobwebs-those minion clammy hands dampening my spirit I would be stacked body to body with others of my kind surrendered in cockroach-infested boxes where we would sing or pray for a stroll out on an airy sunny day that would begin with a rough buff here a brute brush there to go where my master willed until my spine was worn to a sliver and I became just another shoe and cold wings would sing my eulogy, my prayer forever lost in the unturned pages of my diary.

“Out of a Shoe’s Diary” by Lillian Akampurira Aujo appears in a shoe-themed portfolio of Ugandan writers guest edited by @bevnsengiyunva.bsky.social in our latest issue, which celebrates our digital Fusion series.

To learn more about the issue, visit prairieschooner.unl.edu/issue/summer...

The Schooner Summer Creative Nonfiction Contest Deadline: August 1 Winner receives $1000 and publication Guest Judge: Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Our Summer Creative Nonfiction Contest closes in less than one month! Get your essays in by August 1 for a chance to win $1000 and publication. This year's guest judge is @nezhukumatathil.bsky.social.

For guidelines and to submit: prairieschooner.submittable.com/submit

Can't wait to read this! Edited by our contributor, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai:

wordswithoutborders.org/contributors...

Auntie knows that it is not the fault of poetry's mother that poetry must hide behind a door and mark its corner with the color red it's not the mother's fault that men with thread-like black eyes, or blue as the sky line up to say I love you before descending on poetry's tiny frame my god he's as heavy as an elephant - Lê Vĩnh Tài , "To My Youngest Aunt . . ." Issue 98.2, Selections from the Digital Schooner Global Fusion Series

Lê Vĩnh Tài's "To My Youngest Aunt . . ." appears in a portfolio of Vietnamese writers guest edited by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai as part of our recent Fusion-themed issue.

Get the issue now, featuring selections from eight issues of our digital Fusion series: prairieschooner.unl.edu/issue/summer...

The Schooner Interviews Aimee Nezhukumatathil Summer Creative Nonfiction Contest Guest Judge "I can breathe in both genres, but essays help me draw a deeper breath."

With just one month left to submit to our Summer Creative Nonfiction Contest, we're excited to share an interview with this year's judge, @nezhukumatathil.bsky.social, who recently spoke with two of our nonfiction editors.

Read the interview on our blog: prairieschooner.unl.edu/digital-scho...

Jerrold Yam Acquaintance Sometimes, when the earth prepares for rain, I think of having a child. Like me it shall not know, gathering life at another's expense as cloud from lake, how cells become matter, how generously it lowers into being. And on nights when the weight of achievement bears down on its furs and wires, the cord like a ladder tucked away to keep from tripping, it may recognise who seeks behind grace, patient plougher sifting a harvest of arteries. No prize on earth will be equal to dust. Turning, its soil is renewed, bone panelled like oak and pliant walnut, seconds before birth he holds it, in love's toothed harrows, and runs.

“Acquaintance” by Jerrold Yam appears in a portfolio of Singaporean poets guest edited by @alvinpang.bsky.social in our current issue, which celebrates our digital Fusion series in print.

Order a copy of our latest issue: prairieschooner.unl.edu/issue/summer...

The Schooner Interviews "Lyricism relies on the sounds of a story, the voices in history, whether they are personal or cultural." —Lory Bedikian

Our latest interview on the Schooner blog features Lory Bedikian, winner of the 2023 Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry for her collection Jagadakeer: Apology to the Body, published by @univnebpress.bsky.social.

Read the interview here: prairieschooner.unl.edu/digital-scho...

September 30!

Cover of "Might Kindred" A mountainscape sits inside the side profile of a human silhouette amongst a background of greenery sprouting eyes and flowers

"Writing is a kind / of loving. Loving sticks a widget into the / machinery of doubt."

Read the rest of "The End is the Beginning" by Mónica Gomery, author of MIGHT KINDRED ( @prairie-schooner.bsky.social‬) on @poetsorg.bsky.social:‬ bit.ly/444Tcav

"Once I started writing more flash I became very serious about sentences."

Don't miss this terrific interview in @prairie-schooner.bsky.social‬ with Fiction Editor @janellebassett.bsky.social‬: buff.ly/jetCczw

Come to my table, my beloveds, my betrayers. Let me feed you from the bowl of life. Cross my threshold empty of palm, open of heart, eager of belly. I have picked only fruit already fallen and herb without malice and flesh anointed and absolved. I have placed a carnation beside each of your knives. —Sharanya Manivannan, "Benediction for the Feast" Issue 98.2, Selections from the Digital Schooner Global Fusion Series

"Benediction for the Feast" by @sharanyamanivannan.bsky.social appears in a Feast-themed portfolio in our latest issue, which celebrates our digital Fusion series.

Get the new issue here: prairieschooner.unl.edu/issue/summer...

The Schooner Interviews "I like to read sentences that twirl." —Janelle Bassett

Recently, the Schooner's Graduate Research Assistant Manasseh Awuni spoke with @janellebassett.bsky.social about her collection Thanks for This Riot, winner of the 2023 Raz/Shumaker Book Prize in Fiction.

Read the interview on our blog: prairieschooner.unl.edu/digital-scho...

"I would like to speak of leaving rather than living, as we often identify home through the prism of our own spatial impermanence, or by means of how genuinely our home leaves us before we leave it. When birds leave their nests, they fly away; when people leave their homes-they remember." -Nikola Madzirov, "Home--A Place of Leaving" Issue 98.2, Selections from the Digital Schooner Global Fusion Series

Nikola Madžirov writes about the theme "Home" in his foreword to a portfolio featuring writers from Macedonia/The Balkans in our latest issue, a celebration of our online Fusion series.

Get the current issue here: prairieschooner.unl.edu/issue/summer...

White quote shape at top with black words: "Featured Interview. Genre, like gender, is a construct" and red quote marks. Bottom half has red background, the name Sarah Fawn Montgomery in white, and the white CR logo. In the middle toward the left is a small circular picture of Montgomery, a white woman with short dark hair and glasses wearing a cable-knit sweater

On our site today, an interview with @sfmontgomery.bsky.social about craft choices in her essay collection, Abbreviate, out now with @smallharborpub.bsky.social:

"Genre, like gender, is a construct, so I was particularly interested in exploring these constructs..." Link in first comment.

Photo of Timothy Schaffert

We're very excited to announce that the new Glenna Luschei Endowed Editor-in-Chief of Prairie Schooner is Timothy Schaffert, Adele Hall Professor of English and director of creative writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Read more about Schaffert here: news.unl.edu/article/scha...

I don't like things that don't choose me the joys inside me now have made a mission out of breathing better the way I'm breathing when I need a little joy a little heavy on the vacant side a little small and needy on the hopeless side —Mandisa Mabuthoe, "i tend to wish a lot when witnessing demands that i be still and feel" Issue 98.2, Selections from the Digital Schooner Global Fusion Series

Mandisa Mabuthoe appears in a "Womb" themed portfolio in our latest issue, featuring selections from our online Fusion series. Fusion #2: Womb was guest edited by Tjawangwa Dema and featured poets from Botswana.

Get the new print issue here: prairieschooner.unl.edu/issue/summer...

Jennifer Compton Ex-Yugo All the good songs come from the men leaning on staves-watching sheep graze on a field without fences. So I am told. In this country they dry hay on this sort of wooden rack-and in that country they dry hay on another sort of rack. The little barefoot girl runs with a switch through the enclave of pensions for pilgrims after the eager cluster of early morning goats. Two cows loll at their ease chewing good cud viewing the laborious bent humans, grandma and her daughter's daughter, planting spuds. Another grandma in black kneeling among ripe strawberries in the patch that in another country would be her front lawn. Not a weed. The cherry orchard slaps the windows of our bus extravagantly. And how delicious they are, small and so sweet in a white paper cone, and so cheap.

The Schooner Selections from the Digital Schooner Global Fusion Series Curated and edited by Kwame Dawes

Jennifer Compton's poem "Ex-Yugo" appears in the first of eight portfolios in our latest issue, celebrating our online Fusion series. Compton's poem first appeared in our Work-themed Australia Fusion issue guest edited by David Prater.

Get the issue here: prairieschooner.unl.edu/issue/summer...