Happy Friday!
This is quick check-in to remind you we are still, in fact, a website that publishes writing.
In this newsletter, I will share links to writing we have published.
That is what will happen in this newsletter.
The Best of Our Net
We recently announced our 2023 Sundress Best of the Net nominees. This year’s selections (published between July 1, 2021 and June 30, 2022) are:
Poetry
1. "Exhibits in the Museum of Dust" by Jared Beloff
2. "The Phrase Is 'Comfortable in Your Own Skin' but Who Has Ever Felt Such a Thing?" by Amorak Huey
3. "Fat Poem" by Brooke Kolcow
4. "Things I Wish I Told My Mother Before She Died" by Ezra Solway
5. "Five Arguments with Czeslaw about 'Self-Image'" by Alina Stefanescu
6. "Euryale" by Julia Watson
Fiction
1. "Take a Femur, Leave a Femur" by Leigh Chadwick
2. "Watermelon Boyfriend, HaHa Lounge, '94" by Robin Zlotnick
Nonfiction
1. "On Missing the Women’s Evolution (or the Importance of Becky Lynch’s Broken Nose)" by Emmy Ritchey
2. "As Soon as You Leave This Town" by Liz Shulman
Art
1-3. Alan Michael Parker: "Pink Wriggler," "NASA’s Deluxe Retirement Plan," "Wet Dog Smell"
The New Stuff
I’ve been off this newsletter for a while because my health has been not-great. So it’s tough to know how far you, the reader, would like me to go back in time—what you might consider new. Thus, I’m going to blast you with a whooooooole bunch of links to recently published pieces. The more, the merrier. Let’s go.
Interviews
This week I interviewed Jai Chakrabarti, author of the award-winning novel A Play for the End of the World. He talked about how his background as a data scientist influences his approach to constructing a story.
A while back ago, we posted L.A. Sklba’s interview with Marcy Dermansky, author of Hurricane Girl. Read it again for the first time.
Fiction
So much new fiction! We’ve been posting new stories every week and will be continuing to do so for the foreseeable future. I’ll go back, say, ten weeks here, in case you’ve been ignoring us (yes, I am giving you an accusatory look):
“Wishes Made in the Dark” by Areej Quraishi
“Geraldine Foggs” by Yun Wei
“The Invitation” by Steph Wagner-Kinnear
“A Night in October” by Megan Neary
“Selected User Comments From the Lowest-Rated ‘Take a Step Back/Tuning’ on the Grateful Dead’s Message Board” by John Waddy Bullion
“Love is Iraq” by Christine Ma-Kellams
“The Funeral Clown” by Will Musgrove
“To Taste a Merman” by Lisa Alletson
“Intersubjectivity” by Soramimi Hanarejima
“Pink Hearts, Yellow Moons” by Paula Brancato
Nonfiction
Again, let’s go back pretty far here, just so we can include Leigh Chadwick.
“Forever” by Leigh Chadwick
“Seeing Scars” by Jillian Luft
“The Fibonacci Grawlix (or: Bullshit Repellant” by Marshall Moore
“Little Rock Suicide Girl” by Jay Parr
“On Giving Up” by Jesse Bradley
“a halottak nyelve” by William R. Soldan
“The Sweetest Taboo” by Saira Khan
“Thank You for Destroying What I Tried to Build” by Jena Salon
“book coupons” by Rebecca Suzuki
“The Anatomy of a Powerlifter” by Jessica Martinez
Poetry
Whoa this stuff is good.
“Almost Famous” by Shelby Hinte
“Hometel” by Nicole Tallman
“Burning” by Prosper Ifeanyi
“Ritual” by Marc Vincenz
“How Cousteau’s Coral Killed Picasso” by Jared Beloff and Adrian Dallas Frandle
Comics
These beauties are still coming out weekly courtesy Alan Michael Parker. Here’s one:
For more Ampydoo comics, go here. Look around.
The Other Stuff
You have a little over two more months to enter our 2022 writing contest.
We recently posted a Submittable form to fill our poetry editor vacancy and got far more applications than expected. We’re working through them now. I will announce the new poetry staff sometime in the next two weeks. We’re still reading poetry submissions. Responses to poem submissions should arrive quickly once the new staff is in place. We’ll be expanding the section, and the new poetry team will consist of 5-6 editors. More on that in the next newsletter.
Speaking of the next newsletter, I’m thinking of taking a more focused approach to this Substack, switching to shorter newsletters that cover 1-2 topics rather than long surveys of content. In theory (pun intended?), there will be a weekly roundup of new stuff and an additional email covering a specific topic. Time (and my time available) will tell.
Oh, and I almost forgot: we have new mugs and stickers. Hold on a sec while I go take a new picture of them to share here.
I’m hoping to channel my inner Bezos (wait, do I have an inner Bezos?) and mail these stickers to contributors next week. The design and distribution (BAM, out comes the inner Bezos) of the mugs is still a work-in-progress, but we’re hoping to have those available next month.
TTFN
See you next week with a poetry update and even more links.
Here’s some stuff you can do if the above links weren’t quite enough:
#BeBest,
Matt Borondy
Guy Who Feeds the Corgi
Identity Theory