Contributor Update, John Nieves

Join Superstition Review in congratulating past contributor John Nieves on his new poetry collection, Curio, out now. Winner of the 13th Annual Elixir Press Poetry Award, Curio, with a lens of curiosity, explores a wide range of topics, including the significance of humans and the traces we leave behind.

“Augury— ‘the bones’/ can only reveal what is asked of them,’ John A. Nieves writes in this stunning first book. Part scientist, part shaman, Nieves is unswervingly intelligent and deftly imaginative at knowing what to ask of the world. Human-scale, empathetic, and far-reaching, these poems engage the full range of the curiosity at the root of curio: the epistemological work of a mind turning/returning. From a father’s machine work to Schrodinger’s cat, archeology, bloodwork, and language, Nieves reminds us of the ‘magic / in the artifact’ and ‘in the making.”

Alexandra Teague, author of The Principles Behind Flotation

To order your copy of Curio click here. Be sure to also check out John’s website as well as his past work in Issue 9 and 15.

Contributor Update, Caitlin Horrocks

Join Superstition Review in congratulating one of our past contributors, Caitlin Horrocks, on her new book, Life Among the Terranauts, out now. Named a Best Book of January 2021 by Entertainment Weekly and Apple Books, this collection of short stories “demonstrates all the inventiveness that won admirers for Horrocks’s first collection. In “The Sleep,” reprinted in Best American Short Stories, residents of a town in the frigid Midwest decide to hibernate through the bitter winters. In the title story, half a dozen people move into an experimental biodome for a shot at a million dollars, if they can survive two years. And in “Sun City,” published in The New Yorker, a young woman meets her grandmother’s roommate in the wake of her death and attempts to solve the mystery of whether the two women were lovers.”

“Vigorous and supremely crafted, Horrocks’s second collection explores human frailties, desires, and mechanisms for survival… Horrocks’s linguistic finesse and narrative range is impressive, and she brings incisive humor, pathos, and wit to her characters and their predicaments. The result is an immersive and engaging work that astutely captures the complexities of the human condition.”

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Click here to order your copy of Life Among the Terranauts. Be sure to also check out Caitlin’s website and Twitter, as well as, our interview with her in Issue 9.

Contributor Update, Elizabeth Bernays: Six Legs Walking

book cover for Six Legs Walking

Today we are happy to share the news of past contributor Elizabeth Bernays. Elizabeth’s newest book, Six Legs Walking, is available for pre-order and will be published this September by Raised Voice Press. In this collection of autobiographical essays, Elizabeth shares how she followed her scientific curiosity around the world, studied insects, and explored culture from Australia, Europe, Africa, Asia, and America.

More information about Elizabeth and her forthcoming book can be found here. You can find her nonfiction essay from Issue 9 here as well as her nonfiction essay from Issue 6 here.

Congratulations, Liz!

Contributor Update, Christopher Citro: 2018 Meek Awards

Today we are happy to announce the news of past contributor Christopher Citro! Christopher’s nonfiction piece, titled “Root That Mountain,” published in 2018 by The Florida Review, has been awarded the Review’s 2018 Meek Award for Creative Nonfiction! Furthermore, three of his poems are forthcoming in the newest volume of Raleigh Review.

More information about “Root That Mountain” can be found here, more information about his forthcoming works and events here and Christopher’s poems in S[r}’s Issue 9 can be found here.

Congratulations Christopher!

Contributor Update, Carolyn Lavender: Drawings Showcased in Tempe Center of the Arts Exhibition

We are happy to announce that past contributor Carolyn Lavender from Issue 9 has been selected to showcase her graphite and acrylic drawings at the Tempe Center of the Arts “draw” exhibition. Tempe Center of the Arts states that “Artists were selected by a distinguished panel of community jury panelists including artists Alexandra Bowers, Joe Ray and Sarah Spencer as well as architect John Kane. In a highly competitive process, 11 Arizona artists were selected, three of which will work in studio spaces set up inside the gallery for 12 weeks this summer.” The exhibition will be open from May 25- September 1st. Come check out her work!

#ArtLitPhx

Click here to view Carolyn Lavender’s website

Contributor Update: Douglas Light

Cover for Where Night Stops by Douglas LightToday we are excited to announce that past contributor Douglas Light will be releasing his latest novel Where Night Stops. The book will be released January 16th, 2018 from Rare Bird Books but is available for pre-order from Amazon now.

Our interview with Douglas Light can be read in Issue 9 of Superstition Review.

Congratulations, Douglas!

 

Contributor Update: Christopher Citro

Today"The Low Crumble of Distant Applause" we are pleased to share news about past contributor Christopher Citro. Christopher’s poem “The Low Crumble of Distant Applause” will be featured in The Laurel Review’s  upcoming Issue 50.1. Stay updated about its release by visiting their website here.

Read four poems by Christopher in Issue 9 of Superstition Review here.

Contributor Update: Benjamin Vogt

A New Garden Ethic by Benjamin VogtToday we are excited to announce that past contributor Benjamin Vogt has recently released a book. A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion for an Uncertain Future addresses why we need a new garden ethic and the urgent need for wilderness in our daily lives. Benjamin also touches on the idea that environmentalism is not political, but rather social justice for all species marginalized today and for those facing extinction tomorrow. Purchase a copy of A New Garden Ethic from New Society Publishers here.

To read Benjamin’s essay, “Across the Flats” in Issue 9 of Superstition Review click here.

Contributor Update: Adam Houle Brings It Home With “Stray”

Good afternoon! Superstition Review is elated to announce that past contributor Adam Houle’s first book, titled “Stray” will be dropping March 21st from the good folks over at Lithic Press. Lauded by press and peers alike, “Stray” features an updated version of one of Houle’s poems that were featured in the Poetry section of Issue 9, which can all be found here. Go pre-order your copy of “Stray” right here, right now, and behold the wonders of Houle’s poetry!

Buy this book!
The cover art for Adam Houle’s first book “Stray,” forthcoming from Lithic Press.

Guest Post, Lori Brack: A Spider Season

SpiderIn July, just outside the back door at elbow height, I discovered an orb weaver, Argiope aurantia, growing more and more enormous each week, clinging to its web. The pattern of its weaving was mostly invisible except for one thick white zigzag down the web’s vertical axis. Each time I opened the door, the whole edifice swayed and swung. The spider hung in wait.

A bestiary I found on the plush seat of a chair in a used bookstore in August opened naturally to a full-page photograph of this very spider, as if the book had been placed there, marked for me. Aha, I thought. Now I’ll know what it is and whether I should be afraid. The book, however, was written in Spanish and so I noted araña tejedora and came home to look up the second word, not a cognate like the arachnid that I imagine poses in araña. The search engine brought back “weaving machine,” “loom” when I typed in tejedora. Where I had hoped for clarity, I found only the obvious. So, it must be its beauty and the peach-pit size of its body, its long striped legs, I decided, that rate a whole page in full color. But once I knew its Spanish name, I had other questions: How long would it last, protected under the roof of the porch? Would it go before I needed the rake and snow shovel, their handles bound with spider silk to make one pillar holding up the web?

Then, September sun began to brighten lawns with its slight touch of yellow. Crickets increased their volume. I watched from my chair a patch where leaf shadow flickered through the doomed leaves of a pin oak. That moving light fanned from chair legs to table legs, disappeared soon, and on the loom of days autumn came on.

*

I discovered the spider has other names: garden spider, corn spider, writing spider, the one who reweaves her web, or at least the zigzag, every night. I noticed in mid-October as nights began to cool that she was a bit off-center in her web and found myself thinking that her death must be near, caught myself, made sure I didn’t wish it, having known her so long. A day or two later, I found the web empty. I worried she had tried to get into my warm house, so I glanced at my feet and the rugs on both sides of the door. I looked for her under the web on the porch step. Finally, I looked up and found her body hanging high over the web, legs bent toward her huge torso. It was near freezing the night before. I wondered if she is built only for summer, her fragile mechanism like a watch’s once-wound gears. I don’t know how she lived, and then I needed some explanation of how she died.

*

A naturalist would have more to say than genus and species, scrupulous research standing in where I have only this willingness to look, and a list of mysteries:

Did I watch because I recognized the spider or her labor? Did I covet her design because I strain to find my own? Or did I envy the sharpness of her zigzag, that she could resay it every night, whiter, cleaner, clearer each time, and that saying it seemed to make her bigger and more powerful each day?

What do I know about the spider? Only my response to her, my fascination and desire to see up against my side-eye fear of looking too close. I know this: scale is part of my bafflement – I could never get small enough or close enough to understand or feel how it is to be her. And part of this puzzle is my revulsion when I leaned in to see. I loved her web more than I love her? No. I loved them both – but I was able to see web and zigzag in ways I could not see the spider.

*

The day after I mourned her empty web, I wrote: The spider awakes! As the day warmed, I watched her flex one or two of her folded legs, then another two or three. By dusk, she was back at the center of her web, gathering her silken glamor. I tried to lean closer to memorize her shape before the frost, but her size and grasp made something tickle at the back of my throat.

*

November, and the spider’s egg sac hangs like a plum from the porch roof. She spent her last days suspended near it, abandoning the summer web, its white line tattered and blurred. Each day of her death I opened the door slowly, looked for her before stepping out, watched as each cold night left her smaller, long legs folding closer to her body.

I read that her nearly violet brown sac could contain up to a thousand offspring. The females will emerge in spring looking just like her, only much tinier, and will grow a leg-span almost as wide as my hand over a summer, carrying the knowledge of web and weave in their impossibly expendable bodies. If they survive, every night they will remake like their mother from the substance of their spider selves a thick white line in even stitches, and when it’s time, they will construct the fruit-shaped sac to shelter their eggs.

*

A web yawns wide as out-flung arms. An egg sac keeps its secrets, dangling purse holding everything she spent.

Across the room, the little thrift shop Royal I bought for its sleek silver chrome despite its broken mechanism catches on its fancy keys a glint of sun as it rises. A naturalist would remind us that it is we who descend, our dangling pod turning out here, fixed to the star.

*

I did not rescue her body after it fell, after it lost its beauty and symmetry and became simply fearful. I cannot make my home out of the elements of my body as the spider taught. I use my house, solid uninspired stucco and plaster, to shelter the meander of my thoughts, the pattern I make with my notebooks and the flexible net of intention. She is gone now, blown away or crushed to dust. I keep vigil by marking off each writing day of oncoming winter, holding close with these stitches the seethe and foment of life inside.