Featuring: Sandra Dal Poggetto, Rick Newby, Frances Stilwell, Scott Hartman, Zachary Ostraff, Suzanne Strazza, Emily Withnall, Brooke Williams, L. Barthule, Hillary Behrman, Camille Meder, Leath Tonino, Zoe Boyer, Lorri Frisbee, Talley Kayser, & John Yohe. More info on this issue at the High Desert Journal website.
Online literary magazine High Desert Journal launched a new series “In the Time of COVID” – a virtual salon – back in October 2020. In this series, HDJ gathers together the best of their writers and artists to read from new works, share passages from classics, and open their hearts to discuss the current pandemic.
The first episodes of the series sees editor Charles Finn discussing life and art making in the time of COVID-19 with Robert Wrigley, Kim Barnes, Brooke Williams, Shann Ray, CMarie Fuhrman, and Joe Wilkins. The second episodes features poets laureate Kim Stafford, Paulann Petersen, Tami Haaland, and Sheryl Noethe. The third episode has Charles Finn being joined by visual artists Bobbie McKibbin, Barbara Michelman, and Karen Shimoda.
Drop by their website to watch the videos and don’t forget to subscribe to the YouTube channel.
High Desert Journal is a voice for the landscape and the people of the interior West. Through literature and visual arts, High Desert Journal has created an evolving conversation that deepens an understanding of the people, places, and issues of the interior West, a region rich in creativity, history and flux, yet often overlooked for its cultural resources.
On November 1, High Desert Journal debuted their 31st issue, along with a completely revised website. Issue 31 features new work from Melissa Kwasny, John Daniel, Chris La Tray, Michael Bishop, Keene Short, Stacey Boe Miller, Aaron A, Abeyta as well as many many more, and includes a photo essay by Brooke Williams.
With this issue High Desert Journal is now a paying market, offering $25/ poem, $50/essay or story, and $150/featured artist. In 2021 they will also be offering two $500 scholarships to low-income and minority writers to assist in attending workshops and writing/artist retreats. More details will be posted on the journal’s website in the new year.
Issue 31 also sees the addition of Corey Oglesby, their new web designer. Oglesby completely revised, revamped, improved, and updated the website. Click here to see the new site. Oglesby is a poet and musician originally from the Washington, D.C., area, currently living in North Idaho. A 2018 graduate of University of Idaho’s MFA program in Creative Writing, his work has most recently appeared in DIAGRAM, Barrow Street, jubilat, Hobart, The Meadow, Puerto del Sol, Blood Orange Review, and Beloit Poetry Journal, where his poem “Ballistics” was named a 2020 semi-finalist for the Adrienne Rich Award for Poetry. He was the Editor-in-Chief of Fugue Literary Journal from 2017 to 2018.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
Three poems by Laurinda Lind can be found in Issue 29 of High Desert Journal: “When I Lived in Soda Springs, Idaho & I Had a Belly at the Bar,” “When I Lived in Soda Springs, Idaho & the Cashier at the Convenience Store Was Friendly to Me,” and “When I Lived in Soda Springs, Idaho & I Had Not Yet Killed a Black Widow Spider.”
This series of prose poems is strong in its storytelling. They read quickly with sentences that run on as if the speaker can’t wait to get the words out. The speaker is not the only person in these pieces. They all include other people the speaker interacts with, a cast of characters that Lind brings to life for us: her neighbor “who later stole several hundred dollars from me & nearly killed my cat,” the “old guy” who “wanted to buy us beers,” the friendly cashier who was “short & pretty” with “huge green eyes” and later robbed the store she worked at, and the man who calls her and harasses her over the phone.
There’s an edge to the writing, a take-no-nonsense attitude in every piece. The speaker is a woman who is surviving against the odds in this strange, unfamiliar place with people and animals who make living there difficult. Lind fleshes out a speaker who readers can root for.
Did you know online literary magazine High Desert Journal features an exclusive podcast interview with Native American writer CMarie Fuhrman? If not, definitely go check it out. You may need to really crank the volume so you can hear her responses to the interviewer’s questions.
And I think that says something, too, about our culture not wanting to face death.
Listen to the the full interview here: www.highdesertjournal.com/podcast.
Online literary magazine High Desert Journal is open to submissions. They are a “forum for literary, visual and journalistic artists to contribute a deeper understanding of the landscape and people of the interior West.”
Deadline to submit to their Spring 2020 issue is March 15. Learn more…