The Carolina Quarterly

04/19/2023

Our next April Artist feature is two for the price of one, with poetry by Sun Tzu-Ping translated from Taiwanese Mandarin to English by Nicholas Wong.

We hope you enjoy these three poems this from Volume 71.3, our most recent edition! Check out our website to read more or purchase a copy.

04/17/2023

“If we speak of grammar, horizon is singular, but what of geography? Of time?”

Swipe for more poetry by Hannah Bonner, where every line will draw you into Bonner's gripping, poetic otherworld.

Hannah Bonner is our second April Artist Feature this . Each poem depicts a landscape that questions ideas of time, life and memory. We hope you enjoy these four poems, originally featured in our most recent edition, Volume 71.3. Check out our page and website for more!

04/12/2023

We are always open for submissions of your poetry, short fiction, non-fiction and reviews!
Check out our website (https://thecarolinaquarterly.com/) for more information – we look forward to the opportunity to feature your work in an upcoming, eye-catching issue.

04/10/2023

What are you reading in the sun this week? This National Poetry Month, we’re devouring poems from our three most recent issues, including work by Alexandria Hall, Hannah Bonner, Nicholas Wong, Sarah Edwards, Emma Aylor, Jake Bailey, Matthew Brailas, Kelley White, Georgia Dennison, Sneha Subramanian Kanta, Fracisco Márquez, Victoria Sitt, and G.C. Waldrep. Read more on our page!

04/04/2023

Do you love book fairs? We do too! At Spring Conference, you'll have the opportunity to visit exhibitors Bull City Press, The Carolina Quarterly, UNC Asheville's Great Smokies Writing Program, North Carolina Literary Review, Press 53, UNCG Greensboro Review Publishing Lab, and author Jamie Lisa Forbes. Registration to attend is required.

Learn about all conference classes and events here: https://tinyurl.com/sc23portal

*A note to potential exhibitors that all exhibitor tables have been claimed for this conference.

04/04/2023

We're proud to present Ambrose Rhapsody Murray as our first April Artist Feature!

While their current work has ventured seamlessly into the medium of textile collage, we love these digital collages we had the pleasure of publishing in Spring/Summer 2017 for CQ Volume 66.3. Click through to see the art and Ambrose's description of their process.

04/03/2023

"and my hands would be streaked from unearthing wild onions in a tender frenzy"

Walk outside, take a deep breath, and let us know if it smells like wild onions wherever you are in the comments below!

We are so lucky to have so many talented poets, including wordsmith Sarah Edwards, in our current edition.
Read more like "Route" by Sarah Edwards in the Carolina Quarterly!

Route

Up ahead in Tennessee, treelines move with the brisk calculation of bees
and there is a dangerous sweetness to the air
like lily stems slick to the jar.

Every mile or so, a green Exxon sign occurs
like a relief. The price of gas is gaining on us,
O, rising—scrabbling up. In January, I began
to write and tell you everything I could
but Gmail’s suggested language eroded instinct.

When I was a child often I waited
for the long headlights to dissolve
against the blue shed so that once they did
I could go running, go tripping
over long jean skirts to greet someone, and my hands would be streaked

from unearthing wild onions in a tender frenzy
and the affliction came from fearing
that the un-met feeling stayed fragment.

In the car, the radio moves beneath us
like dolphins in dark water: mimes two calves
who think together without thought.

03/28/2023

Traveling to Italy isn't always a Roman Holiday...

In his personal essay "Therapy Italian Style," Cary Mandel reveals how a unique community helped him recover from a depressive episode after moving to Milan. Read more in our most recent publication, CQ Volume 71.3!

03/21/2023

"A bit more green" for your feed as Spring unfurls!

Took a walk with Carolina Quarterly Volume 71.3, which fit right in amongst the blooms.

Quote from "Lethe" by Hannah Bonner (Spring/Summer 2022, Volume 71.3)

Lethe

In the predawn bluish milk
of forgetting, a bit more

green – and the dirt darker
where the leaves mulch over.

Every day a wilderness
my body can't contain.

Every day an other.
The clock ticks,

the sun salts air,
the light the light the light

03/07/2023

We hope these quotes make your brain fizz!

This spring, we're looking through our archives and celebrating past works, like these poems by Rochelle Robinson-Dukes from Volume 70.1 (Fall 2020).

Enjoy one of these full poems below, and check out our page for more -

Women in Grief: silence/ breweries/ death

When you don’t respond
to my texts or emails,
a cacophony of self-doubt bangs
through me like bongos
on a humid archipelago
calling to its distant siblings;
a sister-girl meets me
to pour fancily brewed booze
on emotional wounds,
sterilizing my grief,
making you innocent.
You don’t love or need me,
and the silence sings
your indifference, hangs me
by bubbles inside a cheap glass

until the flashlight of incoming
call splices into the evening
as a dipsomaniac dips into
our conversation at the bar.
It is my mother,
telling me that her brother is dying
from the sugar he’s had since
he fell in love with donuts and soda.
So, the walk from Spiteful
to Begyle Brewery is puffed with
family stories centered in sauerkraut
and Catholicism. I can barely empathize,
clinging to her every word,
watching stars hang like fuzzy ornaments,
awaiting your call and my next drink.
I think of my dead father who taught me
the science of a boilermaker.

02/28/2023

DEBUT DESTINY HEMPHILL COLLECTION DROPS TOMORROW!!!!

Get ready for Destiny Hemphill's new poetry collection, MOTHERWORLD: A DEVOTIONAL FOR THE ALTER-LIFE, with these quotes from her poetry in The Carolina Quarterly Volume 69.3! Check out our website for more, and preorder with Action Books.

02/21/2023

We love this celebration of poetry and beautiful language in Boatemaa Agyeman-Mensah's review of Chris Abani's 2022 poetry collection SMOKING THE BIBLE from Volume 71.3!

02/16/2023

"I want to paint you every morning as you unfurl"

Loving all the love poems this week! Thank you to Omotunde Oredipe for all the feels from this poem!

"Sea of Love" by Omotunde Oredipe

Dark skinned goddess reclining.
White sheet careless over your

slender thighs and nothing else.
The line of your neck gently angled

away from the window that bathes
you in soft light.

I want to paint you
every morning as you unfurl

from a sea of love.
Fragments of Arion’s forgotten music

weaving through our dreamscape
and we’re dancing

in somebody’s wedding hall
after all the guests have gone home.

Before you marry him,
I want to kiss you in the

rain somewhere,
in Lagos, outside your favorite café.

From The Carolina Quarterly, Volume 70.1

04/07/2022

Proud to be a part of this historic moment!!! 🐏

03/24/2022

Come say hi at the AWP Conference at booth - we’re here until this Saturday, March 26 🖋

03/22/2022

We are pleased and proud to announce that our issue is live and will soon be in your hands!

Take a peek: https://thecarolinaquarterly.com

02/16/2022

Self love starts with nail care in “Self-Portrait In Six Gels” by .forster26 💕 Read the rest in The Carolina Quarterly Vol 71. 1

01/18/2022

Reflecting on the season with "Discount Enterprise" by Georgia Dennison from Vol 71.1 (pictures 2 & 3)

11/08/2021

We are pleased and proud to announce that our issue is live and coming to your mailboxes soon!

Look forward to by and by and -fiction by and by and and a special feature by and

Subscribe on our website: https://thecarolinaquarterly.com/subscribe/

11/02/2021

Leaf some room on your bookcase for what is soon to fall...⁠

Subscribe on our website or click the following link: https://thecarolinaquarterly.com/subscribe/

06/30/2021

🌞Coming in hot: Our Spring / Summer issue has arrived. Read the work of our wonderful contributors, and purchase Volume 70.3 in digital and print here: https://bit.ly/3hcqXj3.

03/19/2021

Get the tabs, highlighters, and multi-colored pens ready — the work inside is *that* good. (Though we know most of you prefer black pen 👀)

We have print and digital copies available, so click the link in our bio to get Volume 70.2.

If you’d like to see your work published in our upcoming issues, please send us your words. We’re open to , , , and .

03/19/2021

"These poems move like a strong predator—practiced, precise, addressing mortality openly." - Tegan Daly

Read the full review of Kristen George Bagdanov's FOSSILS IN THE MAKING here: https://bit.ly/3eWirE4. Published by Black Ocean

Fossils in the Making: A Review March 8, 2021  By Carly Schnitzler by TEGAN DALY credit: Black Ocean Press Kristen George Bagdanov, Fossils in the Making (Black Ocean Press, 2019), pp. 112. This review was originally published in the Winter 2021 print issue of Carolina Quarterly. In her debut colle...

03/16/2021

"There are two important questions a reader should ask when experiencing a text: what transcends the contours of individuality within the realm of human experience? And how does it do so?" - E. Jones

Read the full review of AN ORPHANAGE OF DREAMS here: http://bit.ly/3lj0Sz8. Published by Coffee House Press.

03/01/2021

Volume 70.2 is live! Read our wonderful Winter 2021 contributors’ work by clicking here: https://bit.ly/37600bc.