Published at Suffolk University, the newest issue of Salamander features 2025 Fiction Contest First Place Winner “Scheherazade in the Tropics” by Ivan Suazo and Second Place Winner “The Wild Hunt” by Andrew Joseph Kane as selected by Final Judge Helen Phillips. Readers will also find additional fiction by Bizzy Coy and Kate Lister Campbell, creative nonfiction by Gwen Niekamp, Jillian McKelvey, Sarah C. Baldwin, Acie Clark, and Kristina Garvin, with an art portfolio by Catherine Graffam.
For those looking for more poetry, Salamander 60 offers much to appreciate, with works by Mk Smith Despres, Angie Macri, Hana Damon-Tollenaere, Ansel Elkins, Anastasia Vassos, Emma Bolden, Jonathan Greenhause, Tiffany Promise, Laura Cesarco Eglin, Jane Donohue, Christian Paulisich, Richard Lyons, Jehanne Dubrow, Jill Michelle, Connemara Wadsworth, Eneida P. Alcalde, Allie Hoback, Hope F. Wabuke, Rebecca Foust, Jackie Delaney, Eben E.B. Bein, Bunkong Tuon, Christy Lee Barnes, Emily Schulten, Jeffrey Thompson, Cecil Sayre, Shana Hill, Jeff McRae, Michelle Matz, Dimitri Reyes, David Thoreen, Daniel Gaughan, Carolene Kurien, Sandra Marchetti, Francis Lunney, Julia Lisella, Darren C. Demaree, Gemma Cooper-Novack, Kunjana Parashar, Jonathan B. Aibel, Hanaa Ahmad Jabr, Wadaq Qais, Jennifer Jean, Javen Tanner, Sonya Schneider, and Dina Folgia.
After twenty-seven years, Jennifer Barber has left her position as Editor-in-Chief of Salamander. In the Summer 2019 issue, readers can find a portfolio, edited by Fred Marchant, dedicated to Barber’s work with Salamander over the years.
After twenty-six years as editor-in-chief of Salamander, Suffolk University’s literary journal, Jennifer Barber has announced she is “stepping down to pursue other projects.”
With spare yet deeply evocative prose, “Floating Garden” sweeps us up into the span of a singular life, one that is as sacred as any other, one for whom “the words for things take us from what matters.” This story is a profound meditation on the nature of brutality – of man against man, of man against nature – yet it is also an unsentimental song of how we can be redeemed, “like dust into soil, so dark, so primordial.” This is a lovely gem of a tale.
Told in a rollicking, expressionistic voice, “The Hooligan Present” delivers that rarest of reading experiences; it actually makes you laugh, and then it makes you cry, and then it leaves you grateful for such artistry, for such a generous and humane vision of this dirty old world.
Salamander #39 features the 2014 fiction prize winner judged by Jennifer Haigh: “Dimension” by Barrett Warner. Of his work, Haigh says it is a “coming-of-age tale turned inside out, the hit-and-run love story of an unlikely couple on the skids. Their ill-fated affair is sketched with marvelous economy, style , and verve. Wise, playful, startling in its insight, this is a story made of remarkable sentences laid end to end.’
The newest issue of Salamander (v17 n1) includes the winning story of the 2011 Salamander Fiction Contest, “The Aerialist” by Hester Kaplan, and honorable mention, “The Blue Demon of Ikumi” by Kelly Luce. This year’s contest was judged by Jim Shepherd. A full list of finalists is available on the publication’s website.