Panhandler Magazine and Panhandler Books

02/05/2024

Proper Imposters is now available for pre-order! Follow the link to reserve your copy now!

Proper Imposters is available for preorder from University Press of Florida!

30/04/2024

In anticipation of Proper Imposters (now available for pre-order), we sat down with Jason Ockert, author of "The Body Collector", to talk about his work, the intensity of the dieting industry, and what we owe ourselves.

Follow the link below to check it out!

Proper Imposters – Forthcoming January 2025 Jason Ockert Interview Hannah Bocz: Thank you so much for talking with us. It’s a pleasure. Jason Ockert: It’s my pleasure! HB: So, …

10/04/2024

In 2023, we featured artist Soynika Edwards-Bush and her collection entitled “Mama, These Look Like Lost Souls.”

Elizabet Elliott, director and curator at the Alabama Contemporary Art Center, describes the collection as "a treatise on Black knowing and knowness. It invites you to explore what is remembered, what is lost, and what is truly knowable from the artist’s vantage point, and by that an act of radical empathy."

Soynika Edwards-Bush will be showing “Mama, These Look Like Lost Souls” at the Wiregrass Museum in Dothan, Alabama beginning April 18th.

Visit the link in our bio to read our full feature and follow to learn more about how you can view her work.

02/04/2024

Visit the link in our bio to read our interview with Mauricio Montiel Figueiras in anticipation of his novella Crowd.

19/03/2024

We recently had the privilege of speaking with Mauricio Montiel Figueiras, author of the novella Crowd featured in our upcoming book Proper Imposters.

Follow the link to read what Mauricio has to say about the novella's cultural references and surrealist style, as well as other projects that have drawn him to the appeal of the crowd.

06/03/2024

Flashback to our 2022 feature of artist Nicole Salimbene's work at the intersection of poetics, psychology, environmentalism and contemplative practice. These images are from a 2020 collection of tapestries.

You can read about Nicole's process based in Louise Bourgeois' mantra of "I do, I undo, I redo" at the link in our bio and make sure to check out what has been working on since!

01/03/2024

If you're in Pensacola, be sure to check out tonight's "Poets in the Punkhouse" event downtown!
Poets Lee Ann Brown, Ericka Streeter Hodge, and Jamey Jones will be reading.
The event is free, but donations will be collected for the Palestine Children's Relief Fund.

27/02/2024

If you missed Nathan Holic's latest story, "The Mangrove Man," be sure to go back and check it out at:

Nathan Holic is the author of Bright Lights, Medium-Sized City, a not-so-medium-sized novel from Burrow Press. He is also the author of The Things I Don’t See (a tiny but awesome novella, from Main…

23/02/2024

Well, we really should call today "First Six Lines Friday," but we feel justified cheating with the opening poem of Lauren Goodwin Slaughter's Spectacle, entitled "Alice the Co**se Flower Blooms at the Chicago Botanic Garden."

20/02/2024

We had a great time sitting down with Jason Ockert and Mauricio Montiel Figueiras to discuss their upcoming work in Proper Imposters! We look forward to sharing those interviews, but in the meantime, go back and check out this interview The Panhandler did with Jason Ockert in 2022: https://buff.ly/3UMwYqH

Jason Ockert is the author of the novel Wasp Box and three collections of short stories: Shadowselves, Neighbors of Nothing, and Rabbit Punches. His fiction has appeared in Best American Mystery St…

14/02/2024

Happy Valentine's Day from Panhandler Magazine and Books! We hope you can find inspiration to write today. And if you're having trouble, you can revisit our first interview with poet Taije Silverman to find out how she experiences poetry through her everyday loves.

01/02/2024

“You can finish reading a novella in one long sitting, but that doesn’t mean that it will be finished with you. Jason Ockert’s The Body Collector is a triumph of big-hearted surrealism. With nods to Borges, Saramago, this nightmarish tale follows Duncan Weaver, your average overweight life insurance agent who may or may not have died. A few times. Duncan may be struggling to lose weight, but his body is not what it seems when the Body Collector comes to collect his due. I wish I could start it all over again for the first time!”

–Jessica Anthony, author of Enter the Aardvark

16/01/2024

📚 From the Archives

2024 marks eight years since we had the privilege of interviewing poet Matthew Olzmann for Panhandler Magazine. You can read his thoughts on the creative process and poetry's power of discovery at the link in our stories.

12/12/2023

"Sophomore year in high school, desperate for friends after my family’s move from Michigan to Florida, I got suckered into joining a club called Gulf Coast Cleanup, and spending my Thanksgiving weekend on a canoe collecting river garbage..."

Check out our new feature, "The Mangrove Man," by Nathan Holic! Now available at:

Nathan Holic is the author of Bright Lights, Medium-Sized City, a not-so-medium-sized novel from Burrow Press. He is also the author of The Things I Don’t See (a tiny but awesome novella, from Main…

09/12/2023

Praise for G v. P by Jeff Parker, featured in Proper Imposters coming Fall 2024.

“This brilliantly imagined tale of thorny friendship between two master storytellers is unlike anything I have ever read. A surreal road story brimming with metaphysical horrors and marvels, Parker’s G v. P gives us a darkly funny and deeply moving meditation on life, death, and art that you’ll never forget.”

– Mona Awad, author of Bunny

See the link in our bio to learn more!

07/12/2023

From the archives:

Poet Elizabeth Bradfield, on the interplay between poetry and other disciplines: "It was such a rich conversation because we make these little boxes to operate in these worlds, but really, our minds aren’t in the box. They’re ranging. Scientists are interested in poetry, and I think poets are interested in information..."

To read more, check out our 2014 interview with Elizabeth Bradfield:

Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of Interpretive Work (Arktoi Books/Red Hen Press, 2008), which won the Audre Lorde Award and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and Approaching Ice (Perse…

01/12/2023

Enjoy this First Line Friday from David James Poissant's debut novel Lake Life.

Check out the link in our story to read an excerpt from Lake Life and an interview with the author (2020).

24/11/2023

Take a breath this Friday with the first line of Emily Sandberg's short story "Ears" featured in Panhandler Magazine.

Check out the link in our story to read more!

22/11/2023

In case you missed it, check out "Where All Good Flappers Go" by Dr. David Earle!

In this collection of 1920s short stories, Dr. Earle celebrates the charm of flappers–young women of the era known for their irreverence and unconventional attitude. Dr. David Earle has assembled a collection of colorful short stories that celebrate the awe-inspiring charm of flappers.

Step into the Jazz Age with this captivating collection.

https://news.uwf.edu/uwf-professor-celebrates-iconic-1920s-flappers-in-anthology-of-short-stories/?fbclid=IwAR2OAsyHkZ1E-JeFBPWV902Yvw4g-V0MMZAg_4lPJTCUTMQCeJTD67M_RVM

In “Where All Good Flappers Go: Essential Stories of the Jazz Age,” Dr. David Earle has assembled a collection of colorful short stories written primarily in the 1920s that celebrate the awe-inspiring charm of flappers: young women from the era who embraced an irreverent persona and unconvention...

20/11/2023

We couldn't agree more with author Nick White's thoughts on Lalita! Find out more at the link in our bio!

“Chaya Bhuvaneswar's Lalita is a tale of survival and redemption. There is humor here, too, and the title character is brilliantly rendered on the page: full of gumption and resolve. Once you meet her, you won't be able to forget her, and you will follow her anywhere. As with other masters of the novella - Katherine Anne Porter, Elizabeth Strout - Bhuvaneswar is able to render an epic in miniature form.”

– Nick White, author of Sweet and Low: Stories and How to Survive a Summer: A Novel

16/11/2023

From the Archives!

Two years ago yesterday, Caroline Goodwin published her collection of poetry entitled Old Snow, White Sun.

Check out the link in our stories to read her poem "In a Time of Mourning" from the collection featured in Panhandler Magazine's 2019 issue.

10/11/2023

Praise is in for the novellas of Proper Imposters, starting with Mauricio Montiel Figueiras' Crowd.

06/11/2023

Join us tomorrow at the UWF Pace Library as we welcome Scott Satterwhite, UWF English professor and co-director of the 309 Punk Project!

Time: 4:30 PM - 5:30 PM
Location: Library Multipurpose Room, 2nd Floor

Discover the background of the 309 Punk Project and get a sneak peek at upcoming events.

04/11/2023

You'll find us enjoying a little rereading this Saturday with Jason Ockert's "Where the Survivors are Buried." In the final story of his book Shadowselves, Ockert imbibes the landscape of Florida with dark and speculative themes of loss.

27/10/2023

This First Line Friday has us dreaming of White Dancing Elephants, Chaya Bhuvaneswar's debut short story collection from 2018.

Her newest work "Lalita" will appear in our upcoming book Proper Imposters.

21/10/2023

Check out our magazine's newest feature on Maxx Sizeler, a New Orleans-based visual artist.

Maxx Sizeler (he/him), born and based in New Orleans, is a visual artist of many media and fine woodworker. Maxx received a MFA from The University of New Orleans, a BFA from Parsons School of Desi…

09/10/2023

The Body Collector features a reclusive night-shift worker who tries a daring weight-loss experiment only to find himself pursued by a stalker no one else can see. When Donna Langford discovers the body of Duncan Weaver and revives him, she unwittingly drags a festering darkness back from the dead. Together, the unlikely couple begin the dubious task of finding a way into the light. The Body Collector examines the struggle we face to find meaningful human connections in a temporary world.

We are proud to introduce the final novella in our upcoming book, Proper Imposters.

05/10/2023

Lalita deals with the escape from, and aftermath of, family violence including childhood abuse. The revelation of Lalita’s character emerges as she attempts to navigate normal adult sexuality and relationships in light of her trauma. The story opens with Lalita trying to execute “a simple plan” of escape involving cash, a sleep-over by her college roommate and the bold seduction of a boy she has decided to lose her virginity to. The actual events startle Lalita into taking action, and soon she is launched into a “new life” – only to find that it is colored darkly by the life she left. She carefully attempts to re-engage with her parents, talks to her psychiatrist aunt, and finds her way into stable psychotherapy – only to prepare herself for the loss of her boyfriend, Tom, as they grow apart and a compelling artist/rape survivor becomes a threat to Lalita’s nascent love affair.

Excited for this novella written by Chaya Bhuvaneswar!

29/09/2023

From their gruesome deathbeds in Moscow and Baltimore, fictionalized versions of the tragic geniuses Nikolai Gogol and Edgar Allen Poe look back on their lives and remember, in this raucous and daring novella, an epic, transformational, and ahistorical road trip they took together as young men. An imagining of an encounter that never happened, G v P is a meditation on creative imagination and literary influence, and, above all else, speaks to the reverie of an alternate history that might have been.

We look forward to sharing Jeff Parker's "G v P," the second novella in our upcoming book "Proper Imposters."

05/05/2023

We recently interviewed author Taije Silverman and asked her to share her thoughts on her latest collection, "Now You Can Join the Others." Read more below:

📖 https://panhandlermagazine.com/taije-silverman-now-you-can-join-the-others/