Chicago Quarterly Review

21/07/2024

From "The Pets" by Lauren K. Watel, CQR #39:
"After her husband ate his breakfast and left for the hospital, Liz Lapidus fed the family pets, a gray indoor-outdoor tabby (Sigmund) and a crimson-and-violet betta fish (Waldo) with a penchant for attacking its own reflection."

Lauren K. Watel's poetry recently appeared in The New York Review of Books, The Hudson Review, Lake Effect, ABSTRACT magazine TV, Sugar House Review, and Birmingham Poetry Review and is forthcoming in Literary Imagination, JMWW and Pembroke. Her fiction has been published in Pithead Chapel, Colorado Review, Ploughshares and others. Her essay "Hunger," the honorable mention of the 2021 Summer Essay Contest, appeared in Prairie Schooner, and other essays can be found in Five Points and World Literature Today. Pulitzer-winning composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich set Watel’s prose poem honoring Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to music, and the piece premiered at the Dallas Symphony. Her work has also appeared in The Paris Review, THE NATION, Narrative, Tin House, The Antioch Review, and The Massachusetts Review, among others. Her fiction won awards from Poets & Writers, Writers Digest, Moment Magazine-Karma Foundation and Mississippi Review. She was awarded a Visiting Artist residency at the American Academy in Rome, a Distinguished Fellowship at Hambidge Art Center and a residency at Art Farm at Serenby.

21/07/2024

From "Ars Poetica" by Jessica Bell Rizzolo, CQR #39:

"I speak for those who’ve seen good deaths:
natural limits, reasons, ends.

Before morphine,
my mother’s eyes flickered

feral. I tasted bread
each time I kissed her dying skin."

Jessica Bell Rizzolo is a conservation scientist and poet who lives in Chicago, Illinois. Her academic writing has been featured in Global Ecology and Conservation, Nature Conservation, Society & Animals, Frontiers in Conservation Science and elsewhere. Her poetry has most recently appeared or is upcoming in Memorious, Salamander, Sublunary Review, and Literary Mama. She has participated in workshops hosted by the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Fine Arts Work Center.

15/07/2024

From "Kai In Nature" by Kirstin Scott, CQR #39:
"We want to connect, says the Expert, and so Kai is trying. For example right now he’s in the backyard. The old grass pokes him through his socks, a small breeze moves across his bare shoulders."

Kirstin Scott is the author of Motherlunge, which won the AWP Prize for the Novel and was a finalist for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. Her short stories have appeared in The Cimarron Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, New Letters, Sonora Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, PANK, and elsewhere; she lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.

14/07/2024

From "Afterglow" by Michael Mattes, CQR #39: "While approaching an empty intersection on the north side of the plateau, I see a bloom of violet light fluxing over a high-voltage line where it terminates inside the local substation."

Michael Mattes’ fiction has appeared in Chicago Quarterly Review, (spring 2022), Santa Monica Review, World Literature Today, West Branch, The Carolina Quarterly, Southwestern American Literature, Cirque, and elsewhere. In late summer 2024, Cornerstone Press will publish a collection of his stories titled An Instinct for Movement. That same collection was also a finalist for the 2023 Iron Horse Prize for a first book of prose (Texas Tech University Press). A wistful former denizen of the Chicago neighborhood of Old Town, Michael presently resides with his family in Sammamish, Washington, and online at https://buff.ly/3HeuQPK.

14/07/2024

From "Weight" by Sarah Seybold, CQR #39:
"When I flew my mom out to visit me in Oregon,
she told me she wanted to be cremated.
No one in our family had been cremated before,
but she worried her casket would be too heavy."

Sarah Seybold grew up in Indiana and graduated from Indiana University. Her writing has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, Gargoyle, South Dakota Review, So to Speak, and ZYZZYVA Literary Magazine. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Oregon and lives with her husband and daughter in Columbus, Ohio.

13/07/2024

From "A Helpful Mover" by Ryan Kristopher Jory, CQR #39: "Doug was raised in southwest Ohio, on a rural route so far removed from high society, he was twenty-two before he owned a pair of shoes that wasn’t from Kmart."

Ryan Kristopher Jory was born in Flint, Michigan, and raised in a small town on its outskirts. His middle name is a tribute to his mother, Kristine, who taught him to read after others could not and instilled in him a lifelong love of fiction and poetry. He studied creative writing at the University of Michigan and Miami University of Ohio. In 2006, he received a Hopwood Award in the Undergraduate Short Fiction category. His stories have appeared in Necessary Fiction, Hobart, MoonPark Review, and a few other literary journals. His first novel, The Orange Story, was serialized by Straylight Magazine in 2010. He made the Wigleaf Top 50 Longlist in 2019. He presently resides with his husband in San Diego, California, where he is employed as a paralegal.

03/07/2024

From "Handle Your Business" by Glenn Taylor, CQR #39: "I met Vickie Vinciguerra in fourth grade. She wore brown roller skates with the brakes burnt off. I watched her pick up speed on the uneven sidewalk beside the grade school playground where I sat and filled my gym socks with gravel. Vickie gave me double middle fingers as she rolled by. She was the first human I understood."

Glenn Taylor’s fourth novel, The Songs of Betty Baach was published in March 2023. His first novel, The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart, was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award. Glenn’s work has appeared in such venues as the The Oxford American magazine, Tin House, Electric Literature, and Huizache. Born and raised in Huntington, West Virginia, he now resides in Morgantown, where he teaches in the MFA Program at West Virginia University.

02/07/2024

Here's a chance to get feedback on a novel in progress from the brilliant Karen Joy Fowler--in a three-hour online workshop. Karen's work will be featured in the Fall 2024 issue of the Chicago Quarterly Review!

New date! We are thrilled to offer a virtual fiction workshop with celebrated author Karen Joy Fowler on Sunday, July 21st (12-3pm PDT). This workshop is open to writers who have a book-length fiction project in progress.
Find details and registration here:
https://catamaranliteraryreader.com/register-for-courses-1

01/07/2024

From "Leaving the Wishbone Intact" by Mickie Kennedy, CQR #39:
"Grandmother used to break down a whole chicken,
the kind my grocery store no longer sells.
Her hands around the carcass, cleaving

the breasts, the wings, the thighs,
balancing the wishbone on a windowsill."

Mickie Kennedy (he/him) is a gay, neurodivergent writer who resides in Baltimore County, Maryland with his family and a shy cat that lives under his son's bed. A Pushcart Prize nominee, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Threepenny Review, The Southern Review, Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, Black Warrior Review, Copper Nickel, and elsewhere. A finalist for the 2023 Pablo Neruda Prize, he earned an MFA from George Mason University. Follow him on Twitter/X or his website mickiekennedy.com.

30/06/2024

From "Daljeet Singh" by Bipin Aurora, CQR #39: "Daljeet Singh was a short Sikh boy fourteen years old. He was fair-skinned, not a bad complexion. He wore a turban on his head. Sometimes it was pink, sometimes it was green. Sometimes it was other colors as well."

Bipin Aurora has worked as an economist, an energy analyst, and a systems analyst. A collection of his stories, Notes of a Mediocre Man: Stories of India and America, was published by Guernica Editions (Canada). His fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, Michigan Quarterly Review, Southwest Review, Witness, BOULEVARD, AGNI, The Fiddlehead, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Confrontation, and numerous other publications, and is forthcoming in The Missouri Review, Black Warrior Review, and Subtropics. One story was recently cited as Notable in Best American Short Stories 2023.

27/06/2024

He wrote the novel “American Skin,” taught at Columbia and contributed all over Chicago. He died June 13 at age 56.

26/06/2024

Congratulations to CQR founder Syed Afzal Haider on the publication of his story collection THE DYING SUN!

The Dying Sun and Other Stories Syed Afzal Haider (author) “Syed Haider displays a range and sophistication that is all too rare in American fiction. From the trauma of the partition of India…

23/06/2024

From "Raven's Bolo Tie," by Scott Brennan, CQR #39: "The year was 1947 and Victor Cedarstaff was riding his horse in the Chihuahuan Desert when a gust of wind blew the cowboy hat off his head."

Scott Brennan, a writer and photographer, divides his time between Miami, Florida, and Vermont. Recent work has appeared in The Hopkins Review, december, Columbia Journal, Prodavinci, and Smithsonian. A recipient of the Scotti Merrill Award, his first book of poetry, Raft Made of Seagull Feathers (Main Street Rag), was published in 2022.

23/06/2024

From "After" by Eleanor Goodman, CQR #39:
"After,
in the shower at home,
my hair came out in clumps.
Every day,
tangled strands draped
limply on the porcelain,
got trapped between my legs
as my body rejected
what it could no longer use."

Eleanor Goodman is the author of the poetry collection Nine Dragon Island, and the translator of five books from Chinese. She is a Research Associate at the Harvard University Fairbank Center and a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.

22/06/2024

From "Hyponotus" by Sinclair Cabocel, CQR #39: "The titanic southern mountain range looms over the horizon of the everlit polar desert, fascinating one particular penguin to no end."

Sinclair Cabocel studied English and Economics at the College of William & Mary (as a 1693 Scholar) and at Oxford University. Primarily focused on both short and long-form fiction, Sinclair writes to expose the tenuous underlying principles that govern contemporary late-capitalist society—and under what circumstances such principles are permitted to bend and break. Refusing to be bound by a single genre, setting, or tone, his stories span sociological strata, speculative near-futures, and even species. Sinclair’s writing has also appeared (or is forthcoming) in J-journal and Failbetter, and he is currently querying two major projects: Hyperreal, an ambitiously eclectic short story collection, and Folly Bridge, a Secret-History-meets-It-Can’t-Happen-Here novel about a trio of Oxford scholars driven to insanity—and worse—by a flock of psychotic geese. A fixture at several writing groups and open mics, Sinclair can often be found holding court at cafés and clubs across Lower Manhattan, where he presently resides. Explore his oeuvre at sinclairsays.com, or stalk him tastefully on Instagram and Twitter.

22/06/2024

From "Scavenging" by Christine Sneed, CQR #39: "At this hour, the garbage trucks haven’t
yet started their trips to the last resort, Mom’s name for the landfill less than a mile away. It’s where she drags me two mornings a week to look for anything she can clean up and sell."

Christine Sneed's most recent books are Direct Sunlight and Please Be Advised: A Novel in Memos. She has had stories in past issues of CQR and in The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, Boulevard, Ploughshares, and New England Review. She has received the Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year Award, the Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction, the Society of Midland Authors Award, and has been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She teaches creative writing for the MFA program housed in Northwestern University's School of Professional Studies, for Stanford Continuing Studies, UCLA-Extension, and for Regis University. She lives in Pasadena, California, with her partner and eats more donuts than any good doctor would recommend.

22/06/2024

We at the Chicago Quarterly Review are deeply saddened to learn of the passing of our friend Don De Grazia. He contributed to our Chicago Issue in 2013, took part in many of our events, and was a great supporter ever since.

Don De Grazia, associate professor in the English and Creative Writing Department died on June 13 at 56 years old.   De Grazia, who was also a Columbia alum, helped build the creative writing program and served as coordinator. He was the author of the novel “American Skin.”   His stories also ...

17/06/2024

From "The Curious Amorous Habits Of Ludwig II" By Don Clermont, CQR #39:
"Linda never wears his helmet because he hates war. Linda doesn’t wear his helmet because he loves his hair. He can’t enjoy his food unless his hair is curled so Linda’s hairdresser comes to the castle each day to shampoo his hair."

Don Clermont is a poet and short story writer. His poems have appeared in Salamander, Yemassee, and elsewhere, and he was a finalist for the 2020 Steve Kowit Poetry Prize. He currently lives in Berlin where he is working on a novel. This is his first fiction publication.

16/06/2024

From "Sublime Evil" by Lee Matthew Goldberg, CQR #39:
"Sol Goldmann stepped out onto a six-inch beam thirty stories over Madison Avenue. On his belt, he carried forty-five pounds of equipment, including two spud wrenches, an eight-pound be**er, a crowbar, and a few dozen inch-thick bolts in a hip pouch."

Lee Matthew Goldberg is the author of fourteen novels including The Ancestor and The Mentor along with his five-book Desire Card series. The Great Gimmelmans came out in 2023. He was nominated for an Anthony Award and the Prix du Polar. After graduating with an MFA from the New School, he’s been published in multiple languages and his writing has also appeared in CrimeReads, Pipeline Artists, Lithub, Electric Literature, Writer's Digest, Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB), The Millions, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, LitReactor, Mystery Tribune, The Nerd Daily, Monkeybicycle, Fiction Writers Review, Cagibi, Necessary Fiction, the anthology Dirty Boulevard, The Montreal Review, and others. He is the co-curator of The Guerrilla Lit Reading Series and lives in New York City. Follow him at https://buff.ly/39zxzTC

16/06/2024

From "Night Fishing" (After Gibbons Ruark) by Matt Poindexter, CQR #39:
"The tide goes slack, my daughter reels our lines
in through the bluish black till our tackle clacks
against the dock. The whole night takes a break–"

Matt Poindexter’s (he/him/his) poems have appeared in the Best New Poets series, The Awl, Meridian, Greensboro Review, and elsewhere. He previously served as the editor of Inch (Bull City Press). He lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina

15/06/2024

From "Mr Burkhanov And Izel" by Jake Spears, CQR #39:
"In the spring, when the ground softened and the ramps were cropping up and covering the forest floor, I headed outside the city with the intent to forage them, but could instead only meander along the trails, veer off occasionally to search under the trees, bend down and brush the smooth green leaves for their smell, unable to bring myself to slide my fingers around their bulbs and yank them from the ground."

Jake Spears is a writer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They earned their MFA in fiction from the University of Pittsburgh. Their stories have previously appeared in Wilderness House Literary Review, 3:AM Magazine, Hotel, and Eleven Stories: The Desperate Literature Short Fiction Selection Prize 2019. They currently live in Lafayette, Indiana, where they teach English to international students at Purdue University. They are looking to find a home for their first novel and are writing their second. Jake enjoys taking walks through cities and nature, learning about history, cooking, and foraging with the seasons.

09/06/2024

From "The Unremarkable Earthly Trials Of A Balloonist" by Marcus Spiegel, CQR #39:
"In interviews Flip liked to point out that ballooning was the earliest form of aviation but the method known as cluster ballooning was the closest you could come to the experience of flying in dreams."

Marcus Spiegel’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Boulevard, Southwest Review, North American Review, Pembroke Magazine, and Conjunctions Online. His story, “A Tale of Two Trolls,” originally published in Santa Monica Review, was republished in the 2022 Pushcart Prize XLVI anthology. Originally from the plains of Canada, he now lives in Nashville. He is working on a collection of short fiction and a collection of essays.

27/05/2024

From "Ex Manic Pixie Vs. The Zombies" by Kim Samek, CQR #39: "FedEx delivers the exes to my house in the weeks before my wedding. Every Tuesday, there is a new ex sitting on my porch. The playwright is the first to appear. The philosopher-turned- hedge-fund-manager ex is delivered next."

Kim Samek is a half-Thai Emmy-nominated comedy writer and television executive producer. Her TV credits include Word-Girl on PBS, MTV’s Catfish, and Issa Rae’s Sweet Life: Los Angeles. She studied creative writing and German Literature at Stanford University. In a previous life, she worked at Sony Music. Her other short fiction appears or is forthcoming in Catapult, Guernica, Ecotone, Gulf Coast, Southern Humanities Review, Electric Literature, Swamp pink Literary Journal, North American Review, and The Threepenny Review. A native of Seattle, she calls Los Angeles home.

26/05/2024

From "Highlights of Student Exams" by Kenneth Gangemi, CQR #39:
"Ukrainians come from Ukrainia.
Gothic cathedrals are supported by flying buttocks.
Noah loaded the animals with his wife,
Joan of Ark. Mammograms are sent by Western Union."

Kenneth Gangemi has lived in Florida, Mexico, California, and New York City. He has published poetry and fiction in magazines and anthologies. All his books were published in England, and translations have appeared in France, Germany, Denmark, and Turkey. His fiction has won a Pushcart Prize, a New York State grant, and a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. Black Sparrow Press published Lydia, a collection of poetry. Cindy Degener at Sterling Lord sold "Olt", his first book, to Marion Boyars. He wrote "The Interceptor Pilot", a cinematic novel about the Vietnam War in nine months. It was first published in France and later by Marion Boyars. He was awarded summer residencies at Blue Mountain Center, the Millay Colony for the Arts, and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. "Olt" received three reviews in The New York Times and a full-page review by Guy Davenport in LIFE magazine. The publisher offered him a contract to write "The Volcanoes from Puebla". Betty Ann Clarke at ICM submitted the proposal and negotiated the contract. The rough sixty-five- page manuscript was based on his year of living in Mexico. Originating in pocket notebooks, it was part novel, memoir, travel book, autobiography, and motorcycle journal. He used the advance to take a six-month trip on a motorcycle to Mexico and Guatemala to gather more material for the book. He now lives in New York City and is working on a novel and a second collection of poetry.

26/05/2024

From "The Long March" by Juan Martinez, CQR #39: "People make too much of the relationship between pictures and words, just as they make too much of what a husband and wife may say to each other, or between one’s mood and the weather."

Juan Martinez is the author of the novel "Extended Stay", released in January 2023 from the University of Arizona Press’s Camino del Sol series. Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, called it “a fresh and stunning debut.” The novel was shortlisted for the Chicago Review of Books prize, was a New York Public Library book of the day, and was one
of Crimereads and Tor.com’s best horror novels of the year. His short-story collection Best Worst American was released in 2017 by Small Beer Press and won the inaugural Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award for debut speculative fiction. His work has appeared in various literary journals and anthologies, including McSweeney's, TriQuarterly, Conjunctions, NIGHTMARE, Huizache, Small Odysseys, The Sunday Morning Transport, NPR ’s Selected Shorts, Ecotone, Shenandoah, Sudden Fiction Latino, and Norton's Flash Fiction America.

25/05/2024

From "The Last Of His Kind" by Nicole Simonsen, CQR #39: "The doctor lifts the scalpel, twisting it in the dim firelight. On a busy morning, he’ll do five surgeries in a row, he says, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam! Though he has never operated on such a large eye before. But, not to worry! An eye is an eye is an eye."

Nicole Simonsen is a writer from Northern California. In her day job, she has taught mostly high school English, though last year she forayed into the fascinating, terrifying, and hilarious world of 7th grade. It is not for the faint of heart. When she isn’t teaching or working on some piece of writing, she enjoys walking her dogs, fantasizing about travel, and reading. And although she loves short stories more than anything, she is also attempting to finish a novel about a head injury and a very difficult mother-daughter relationship. Her stories have appeared in Southern Humanities Review, Booth, Catamaran, and other places. In 2021, she won the Fiction Prize at Salamander Magazine. You can find a complete listing of her work at https://buff.ly/3V4dRXQ.

06/05/2024

From "Blanks" by Dennis Hauck, CQR #38:

"Greg and the professor talked hair over Scrabble.
'It’s about perception,' said Greg, 'readjustment. Throwing away our instincts and adapting to a new way of being, a new environment.'"

Dennis Hauck is the writer, producer, and director of the feature film Too Late starring Academy Award nominee John Hawkes. The film was hailed as "a masterwork" by the Los Angeles Times, "a dazzling debut" by Village Voice, and was a New York Times Critics' Pick. He has received the Kodak Auteur Award in recognition of "unparalleled talent as a filmmaker and devotion to motion picture film.” As a singer/songwriter he is best known for the song “Halyna Hutchins”, a folk hero tribute to his late friend and collaborator who was shot and killed on the set of the Alec Baldwin film Rust. https://buff.ly/3UVWZUl

05/05/2024

From "The Piano Player" by Rebecca Fox, CQR #38:
"On the same evening in January when Daniel Daly went missing, Solomon Costa and his wife, Eloise, were in the audience at Daniel’s final performance. The tickets were a Christmas gift."

Rebecca Fox is a Midwest-based writer, storyteller, and educator. Her fiction explores the intersections of life, faith, doubt, and wonder, all flavored with a dash of magic. Her nonfiction has previously appeared in The Under Review and Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment. Rebecca studied English at Wheaton College and earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Central Florida. She has worked in nonprofit development, is an alumna of the Arts Fellowship Orlando, and now teaches writing at the University of Northwestern - St. Paul.

05/05/2024

From "My Barber" by Daniel Saalfeld, CQR #38:
"He cuts some more of my hair
and adds, half seriously, in his French accent
that if it were up to him, he’d kill everyone."

Daniel Saalfeld’s poems have appeared in many journals, including The Hopkins Review, The Southeast Review, The Seattle Review, The Cimarron Review, The South Carolina Review, Tar River Poetry, VPR: Valparaiso Poetry Review, Poet Lore, and The Pinch. A Fulbright Scholar recipient, he lectured on American poetry in Russia.

28/04/2024

From "Madness: A Meditation" by John Robinson, CQR #38: "Madness accompanies the creation of art. The artist amplifies himself, stretching his inner being, exhausting his reserves of imagination, nerves, and destroying his natural resources of restraint and placidity."

John Robinson is a novelist, playwright, essayist, memoirist, and short story writer, who lives in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. His novels include January’s Dream and Legends of the Lost, and his work has appeared in Ploughshares, The Sewanee Review, the Chicago Quarterly Review, The Cimarron Review, Post Road Magazine, the Green Mountains Review, epiphany, Mount Hope Magazine, The Bitter Oleander, The Tampa Review, Redivider, North Dakota Quarterly, South Dakota Review, The Writer, Oyez Review, Concho River Review, 2 Bridges Review, Midwest Review, The Wisconsin Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, Tulane Review, the Rhode Island Review, the Tishman Review, Delmarva Review theNewerYork, Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, The Meadow, Zymbol, and has been translated into thirty-two languages. He has contributed political commentary, created award-winning drama, appeared in various anthologies, and written and lived in three countries: Scotland, Spain, and the United States.