Literary Journals We Are Reading: Thrush

Three reasons why I read THRUSH and why you might too…1. To listen to the birds sing.2. Language and sound are paramount.3. To read about fragments of personhood and hope it helps.Sarah Giusti (she/they/he) has eyes like a sad dog. She is often deeply in love and unable to admit it. She has previously been published in …

Literary Journals We Are Reading: Forever Magazine

My name is Isaac (he/him). I’m stuck in between Roanoke and Blacksburg, VA. I’m a senior studying creative writing at Virginia Tech. I do photography and bar hopping for fun. I write to stay bored. Here’s three reasons why I read Forever Magazine, and why you might too:  If you like an alt lit aesthetic doused …

Literary Journals We Are Reading: Agni & Broken Pencil

Three reasons you should look into Agni The Art is beautiful both the ones for the poems and the cover pages for the magazines They have good ethics They capture largely international voices with their content, with stories, interviews, and conversations that always sound spectacular. Three reasons you should look into Broken Pencil The content is Wacky …

Literary Journals We Are Reading: Ghost Parachute

Three Reasons Why I Read Ghost Parachute: 1.     Because they’re a niche journal without limiting their scope. Ghost Parachute proudly collects only the strangest of stories, asking that submitters send in their wackiest pieces, but wackiness is subjective, no? 2.     Because as a writer myself, I’m excited by the prospect of having a story published in a journal that’s accompanied …

Literary Journals We Are Reading: Boyfriend Village

Three Reasons Why I Read “Boyfriend Village” (and You Should Too)…. 1. Every contribution becomes a living, breathing part of the Village—a warm, softly-lit home for Boyfriends—more than just a collection of art. With every issue available on the website, you can drop by anytime for a coffee date and cookies from the cabinet. 2. …

Literary Journals We Are Reading: Flash Frog

Three reasons why I read Flash Frog, and why you might too: 1. The weekly flash fiction they publish is always brief, impactful, and diverse. Each new short story is radically different from the last, and I can enjoy them without committing too much time to reading them. 2. Each story is accompanied by a unique …

Literary Journals We Are Reading: Salt Hill Journal

Our creative writing editors just finished the Fall 2023 Reading Period—thank you to all the writers out there, including those submitting their poetry and fiction to the minnesota review. Our editors want to share with you what else they were reading this fall. Over the next few weeks, we will share a series of posts …

Submission Highlight: “The Dead Tree” by Alysia Gonzales

By Laura Lindengren “The Dead Tree” is one of my favorite entries from the Fall 2022 submission period. It succeeds in a skill that is surprisingly rare: writing about reality in a way that actually feels realistic. Realistic fiction authors must face the balancing act of creating an engrossing reality, while not sounding like a …

I Will Not Write For You

By Jenna Kim And I don’t want you to write for me. I’m personally tired of trying to write nice, pretty, mellifluous words. I’m tired of trying to conform. I think I kind of want to go apeshit. And maybe I actually will, because I want to write for “me.” I want to write for …

Advice from a Ghost

By Laurel Molloy I am a ghost. I wander through the striping shadows as the sun blinks above the trees. I watch behind this computer screen, my reflection painted across the words that walk themselves along. I am an editor whose work is hidden behind a veil. But mark me, I don’t mind being a …

Why We Rejected You // Why We Sent your Dish Back

By Ben Hotaling Ehm… hello, reader. Before we start, I want you to know; I'm not here as a coin-sorting mass of fine-fitted divots, nor am I an omnipotent literary recipe book. No, I'm nothing more than an honest smile and an open hand. Welcome. Please, sit where you like, throw your shoes aside, set …

How I Became a Coping Mechanic (And Why You Might Be One Too)

By Julian Borda I didn’t know what to expect when I started as an editor for the minnesota review, but as I stepped into the press’ workspace for the first time, my circuits just about went haywire. The gears in my head had been turning mad, banging against brain cogs and mind motors out of …

Fanfiction and the Bardic Tradition

By Kaitlyn Grube It’s such a shame that bards are extinct. I first had that thought sitting in my British Literature class while studying Beowulf of all things. It sparked a thread of sorrow in my chest that hasn’t gone away. I’m sure my friends are tired of me going on this same rant every …

I Am a Spectacle and So Are You

By Grace Gaynor Come inside and take off your boots, your thick jacket. Hang the weight of your key ring, heart, and shame on the hook by the front door. What should I call you? Where are you from? (I could say I am from this world, this perfect one I have built on the …

Love letter from an MFA editor

By Cat Santana This is the end for me and the minnesota review, (tmr) blog. It’s over. Forever. As Taylor so rightly put it, “We are never ever getting back together.” The journal and this blog have been handed from the Virginia Tech graduate students over to the undergraduates, rendering this the second to last …

Writing and Witnessing Ukraine from Diaspora

by Xander Gershberg In 2019 I traveled around Central and Eastern Europe to visit the places my ancestors had lived. My brother joined me in Poland, the country we were closest to in time. Our grandmother, we called her Safta, was born in the Polish town of Tarnow, one hour east of Krakow. Thanks to …

Not Yet the End of Grief: Review of Dianne LeBlanc’s The Feast Delayed

by Jayne Marek Diane LeBlanc, The Feast Delayed. Terrapin Books, 2021. $16.00 Diane LeBlanc’s first full-length poetry collection delivers complex personal truths through deft imagery and spare language. Weather and seasons, parent-child anxieties, and the impermanence of physical existence propel the fifty poems in this book. LeBlanc’s principal themes derive from the abrasive truths that …

Writing CNF at The End of The World: Prompts

By Taylor Portela As we continue to ebb at whatever threshold of the pandemic we’re currently at, the importance of archiving my life has become more important – not only so I can rest my queer mind with having some type of creative afterlife, but so I can begin to come to terms with who I’ve …

Finding Family in an MFA

By Mina Buzzek I moved to Blacksburg, Virginia alone. When I arrived, my roommates were sitting out on the porch, smoking cigarettes and planning their syllabi for the upcoming semester. I thought to myself: this feels like home.  My roommate makes dinner for all of us most nights. They are kind about my diet, and …

The Poetics of Fandom: The X-Men Persona Poems of Gary Jackson and Stephanie Burt

By Xander Gershberg I’m going to use this blog to talk about a cross-section of topics I can rarely find anyone in my own life interested in but know there is an audience for: poetry and comics. Specifically, poetry about the X-Men, the focus of Gary Jackson’s Missing You, Metropolis (2009) and Stephanie Burt’s recent …