Quick, read the new stuff: “The Incumbent” by Kirsti MacKenzie, a review of Stacey D’Erasmo’s The Complicities by Darby M. Dixon III, “Scott’s Body” by Don Television, “Where Does Waffle House Get Their Eggs?” by Emma Smith-Stevens, “The Batman of Perry County” by Cody Shrum, and your latest Ampydoo Cartoon.
Dear Identity Theory Readers,
Life provides plenty of opportunities to recall the adage-as-equation “Expectations – Reality = Happiness.” But I needed to work poetry into the subject line of this email because it’s about poetry. So today, “Expectations – Reality = Poetry.” It’s not scientific. It’s not mathematical. It’s just a subject line. I’m only in it for the Substack “open rate” metric, which keeps our shareholders happy. (Our shareholders include one corgi, two cats, and a nearly dead desert houseplant.)
So anyway, big poetry news: we have a new poetry staff. They are nice. They are welcoming, smart, kind, inclusive, and all the other good stuff. You will like them. Here they are, in order of appearance (actually they’re in mostly alphabetical order, but “in order of appearance” has a cinematic quality to it, and one of them is a filmmaker):
The New Staff
Sara Sams, Poetry Editor
Sara Sams is the author of Atom City (2021), a book of poetry that scrutinizes the various legacies of her Manhattan Project hometown. Sara also translates poetry from Spanish (David Leo García, Adriana Bañares) and believes that all poems are experiments in translation. A graduate of Davidson College (B.A.) and Arizona State University (M.F.A.), Sara has served on the editorial staff of Parnassus: Poetry in Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Waxwing Magazine; she has also supported student editors as a faculty mentor for The Superstition Review. She currently teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Arizona. You can find her work online at saraesams.com.
Justin Aoba, Associate Poetry Editor
Justin Aoba is a writer and editor based in NYC. His poems appear or are forthcoming in Barren Magazine, The Hyacinth Review, Black Stone / White Stone, and elsewhere. He is a member of Heung Coalition and helps organize their creative writing workshop. You can find him at his blog extimateothers.com.
Lisa Cantwell, Associate Poetry Editor
Lisa Cantwell is a graduate of the MFA in Writing program at the University of San Francisco. Her poems have appeared in Ponder Review, december, Welter, The Pointed Circle, and Underblong, among other publications. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and is the winner of the 2022 Jeff Marks Memorial Poetry Prize. A freelance theatre director and educator, she lives in Santa Monica, California and has a rescue terrier mix named Seamus Heaney.
Elia Karra, Associate Poetry Editor
Elia Karra is an author and filmmaker from Athens, Greece, with an MFA in Creative Writing from Lindenwood University. Her work has appeared in HAD, The Daily Drunk, Crow & Cross Keys, and elsewhere. When not writing, she likes to play the drums, much to everyone's dismay. Visit her at eliakarra.com.
Vic Nogay, Associate Poetry Editor
Vic Nogay (www.vicnogay.com) is a proud Ohioan with a BA in English/Creative Writing from Denison University. She writes poetry and flash/micro fiction and is currently working on her first novel. Her micro poetry chapbook, under fire under water, was published in September 2022 by tiny wren publishing. Her work appears in Fractured Lit, Lost Balloon, Barren Magazine, and Little Engines among others.
Tianyu Yi, Associate Poetry Editor
Tianyu Yi was born and raised in Little Rock, AR, and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. She is the Wiley Birkhofer Fellow at the NYU MFA in Creative Writing Program, and is a graduate of Davidson College. She was a 2015 Brave New Voices Semifinalist, a two-time recipient of the Vereen Bell Memorial Awards, and her work can be found in the Missouri Review. She captains various amateur queer & trans soccer teams around New York, once held the speedrun world record for Hades on the Nintendo Switch, and is embarrassingly proud of her WPM average on TypeRacer.
The New Stuff
The vet says my corgi’s anxiety might be alleviated by something called “clicker training.” I’m pretty sure they meant “training him to click Identity Theory links.” If that’s supposed to be beneficial for him, perhaps it will work for you? Worth a shot.
Leonard Cohen, Alice Munro, Kirsti MacKenzie
Some of the best writers come from Canada, and we’re pleased to bring you new CNF from Canadian writer Kirsti MacKenzie (and also to take this opportunity to plug a new collection of Leonard Cohen’s early fiction writing, A Ballet of Lepers, out this month from Grove Press) (we’re not getting paid to plug that one, but it’s LEONARD COHEN).
Anyway, this one from Kirsti MacKenzie needs to go in your online lit mag TBR ASAP. In fact, click this link now and save yourself from procrastination: “The Incumbent” by Kirsti MacKenzie.
Waffle House + North Central Florida = SOLD
Let’s not forget our equally brilliant new essay, “Where Does Waffle House Get Their Eggs?” This piece from former Gainesville resident Emma Smith-Stevens is a fantastic read, and also it’s about Waffle House. An instant accept from me.
“After that, Batman went on hiatus.”
Here we have an A+ story by Cody Shrum: “The Batman of Perry County.”
The title may say it all, but in case you’re wondering, yes, it’s about someone dressing up as Batman in a place called Perry County.
And here’s another good one about a hotel night auditor: “Scott’s Body” by a writer going by the name of Don Television.
We are complicit in publishing a book review.
Darby M. Dixon III reviews Stacey D’Erasmo’s novel The Complicities.
P.S. Don’t forget your weekly cartoons.
Etc.
Submittable submissions are currently in the free zone. Get in there.
Speaking of Submittable, prose editor Sophie Newman is currently managing our submissions on there as I’ve been taking it easy in recent months. Feel free to say hi to her (she’s very nice and helpful with your questions), but be aware that if you’re trying to reach me directly, I’m best contacted via email.
We’ll be updating our poetry submission guidelines soon (teaser: translations coming?), but note that response time for new submissions will be slow over the next month or two as we get the new poetry staff acclimated and catch up on the backlog of submissions.
I continue to lag in sending out our new corgi stickers, but fret not: our worldwide corgi sticker initiative will begin as soon as I can make it to that post office near the Arby’s on Boulder Highway in Henderson, Nevada. (Sadly, not a Waffle House in sight.)
Okay, I’ve spent about as much time on this newsletter as a person should spend on a newsletter these days, so off you go. Read the new stuff. Experience happiness/poetry.
Your BFF,
Matt Borondy
Corgi Trainer in Training
Identity Theory
Follow us: Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | TikTok | LinkedIn