Issue 6 Extras
Check out our Issue 6 Extras: In an interview with M.J. Fievre, best-selling suspense writer Dean Koontz discusses his craft. “The biggest rewards, creatively and even financially, require risk,” says Koontz, ” sometimes a lot of risk.” Read the interview here! Get an exclusive preview of Edwidge Danticat‘s latest book, Claire of the Sea Light. […]
Ground Zero: An Interview with Steven Church
Steven Church is the author of The Guinness Book of Me: A Memoir of Record and Theoretical Killings: Essays and Accidents. His essays have been published or are forthcoming in The Rumpus, Prairie Schooner, Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, AGNI, and Passages North; and his piece, “Auscultation” was chosen by Edwidge Danticat for inclusion in the […]
Denise Duhamel: “I confess that I’m a poet.”
Denise Duhamel is the author, most recently, of Blowout (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013), Ka-Ching! (Pittsburgh, 2009), Two and Two (Pittsburgh, 2005), Mille et un Sentiments (Firewheel, 2005), and Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems (Pittsburgh, 2001). She is the guest editor for Best American Poetry 2013. A recipient of a National Endowment for […]
Interview with Julie Wade
Born in Seattle in 1979, Julie Marie Wade completed a Master of Arts in English at Western Washington University in 2003, a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry at the University of Pittsburgh in 2006, and a PhD in Interdisciplinary Humanities at the University of Louisville in 2012. She is the author of Wishbone: A […]
John McNally: Who’s on First?
John McNally is the author of three novels: After the Workshop, The Book of Ralph and America’s Report Card; and two story collections, Troublemakers and Ghosts of Chicago. He is also author of two nonfiction books: The Creative Writer’s Survival Guide: Advice from an Unrepentant Novelist and Vivid and Continuous: Essays and Exercises for Writing […]
Dean Koontz: On Writing
Born and raised in Pennsylvania, Dean Koontz is one of the most recognized, read, and loved suspense writers of the 20th century, with books published in 38 languages. The New York Times describes his writing as “psychologically complex, masterly and satisfying,” and Rolling Stone calls him “America’s most popular suspense novelist.” Dean is the author […]
EDITOR’S PICK: NONFICTION
Reflections, by Kathie Klarreich
Every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, when the official count has cleared, the women in my writing workshops at Homestead Correctional Institution file out of our bitterly cold classroom. Sometimes, if the head count is off, we have to stay put for an extra 10, 20 even 30 minutes, so we fill the … [Read More...]
EDITOR’S PICK: POETRY
The Elm, by Laura Madeline Wiseman
The elm makes a dark companion. Dear rot. Dear disease. Groping like a monster, it towers along the bike path, hurtling limbs in fall storm. Dear jagged edge. Dear scarred hole. Why do the cyclists choke? White throated tunnel to pass through—ahhh —do they cringe at … [Read More...]
MORE POETRY
In Transit, by Brandel France de Bravo
No one expected me. Everything awaited me. - Patti Smith, Just Kids After Kansas and before the bony ground, that tubular nowhere of suspended belief, between always winter and the spare room … [Read More...]
Horse Girl, by Carolyn Stice
After dark I peek into your room, watch breath steam from of your long, supple form, flowing out and down along the carpet’s edges and window’s lip until the whole place hums with you. Liquid … [Read More...]
Sunday Night, by Ira Sukrungruang
—after Camille T. Dungy Sex swung like that: like the pendulum of her undone belt, like the fleshy parts of our peeled nakedness. Plush as worsted yarn in a cat’s claw, sex. The swing, the … [Read More...]
We Watched the Lights, by Jason Irwin
for Joan M. Burns (1971-2008) It was an evening in mid July. You and your brother were staying at a hotel downtown, on your way back to Florida, after weeks of traveling across the north … [Read More...]
Counterpoint, by Kevin McLellan
Anticipating non sequiturs and the beauty of haphazard (the beauty of haphazard) the fire station tests its tenor siren and if this palindrome m sound had a shape it would be a … [Read More...]
When The Bread Fails, by Liz Ahl
The vast sweltering kitchen inside the sweltering farmhouse inside the sweltering county inside the sweltering July -- no real rain for two weeks and yet the air hangs a hot damp dishrag … [Read More...]
ART FEATURE
Artist Anjanette Delgado
Anjanette Delgado is an Emmy award-winning journalist. She has written for NBC, CNN, Univisión and Telemundo, NPR, and Vogue, among other outlets. In 2002, she wrote and developed the sitcom “Great in Bed” for HBO Latam. Her first novel, The Heartbreak Pill, won the Latino International Book … [Read More...]
es tan triste el sonido cuando se acaba, by Anjanette Delgado
MORE ART
Geoffrey Miller: Adoration
Geoffrey Miller's most recent photography publications are ‘Kyoto – 006’ Mused Vol. 6, Issue … [Read More...]
Artist Leah Givens
Leah's photographs have appeared in journals including The Colored Lens, The Bellingham Review, and … [Read More...]
Elizabeth Collins: Too Cool for School
Elizabeth Collins is a writer, editor, professor and English tutor. An award-winning essayist and former news reporter, she holds her MFA in Writing … [Read More...]
All That Glitters: Sliver of Stone Nonfiction
ISSUE 6: MORE FEATURES
Steven Church: Bad Whistle
Whistling at a bullfight in Spain is rare. The Spanish whistle, like an American “boo,” is considered mocking and bitter. You don’t whistle unless the matador really has it coming, unless the performance is weak or the bull dies slowly and painfully beneath his clumsy hand. Whistling in an American coalmine or a gold mine […]
Julie Marie Wade: Poems
Born in Seattle in 1979, Julie Marie Wade completed a Master of Arts in English at Western Washington University in 2003, a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry at the University of Pittsburgh in 2006, and a PhD in Interdisciplinary Humanities at the University of Louisville in 2012. She is the author of Wishbone: A […]
John McNally: After the Workshop
A Deleted Chapter The only public reading of my fiction I ever gave was at my undergraduate university. I was a senior and had been invited by the creative writing faculty to pair up with the new fiction writer-in-residence, a recent MFA grad from SUNY-Buffalo named Colin Granville, whose first book had just been released […]
Denise Duhamel: Blowout
Poems from BLOWOUT, University of Pittsburgh Press (2013) FOURTH GRADE BOYFRIEND In fourth grade, the fattest boy in class wrote me a love letter that read, Welcome to this new school. You are very pretty. I want to be your boyfriend. I didn’t like his plaid shirt or his big melon head, so I crumpled […]
EDITOR’S PICK: FICTION
Cat Therapy, by Claire Guyton
When your cat Tuxie stares at you with vacant, glazed eyes—when one ear twitches, her body still, her air expectant—she is asking for (A) attention, (B) food, or (C) your spot on the sofa. I’m sorry, no, the answer is (A) attention. Do you think your late nights at work prevent you from giving her enough attention? Do you think she sits at the door in the evening, waiting for you, her paw reaching with hope to the door knob, wishing … [Read More...]
MORE FICTION
Communion, by Kelly DuMar
Kit crawls out from behind the boxwood shrub as soon as she hears the hiss of the door closing and … [Read More...]
Numerous Engagements, by Lucas Shepherd
WHY WE DO IT My friend Casey and I are constantly getting engaged. You should see the way her … [Read More...]
MORE ART
Julius Kalamarz: Woman With Gun
Julius Kalamarz received his MFA from Columbia University. His work has appeared in Opium Magazine, The Los Angeles Review, >kill author, Ninth … [Read More...]
Martha Clarkson: Jim and His Car
Martha Clarkson manages corporate workplace design in Seattle. Her poetry, photos, and fiction can be found in monkeybicycle6, Clackamas Literary … [Read More...]
Artist Chello Sherman
Michelle "Chello" Sherman is currently a senior at Bloomsburg University in north eastern Pennsylvania. A nontraditional student, Sherman is an … [Read More...]
PAST INTERVIEWS
Debra Dean: The Mirrored World
Debra Dean’s bestselling debut novel, The Madonnas of Leningrad was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a #1 Booksense Pick, a Booklist Top Ten Novel, and an American Library Association Notable Book of the Year. It has been published in twenty languages. Her collection of short stories, Confessions of a Falling Woman, won the Paterson […]
Joe Clifford on ebooks, blogging, self-promotion, and rehab
Joe Clifford’s collection of short stories, Choice Cuts, was recently published by Snubnose Press. Joe is the producer of Lip Service West, a “gritty, real, raw” reading series in Oakland, CA. His work has appeared in Big Bridge, the Connecticut Review, Drunken Boat, Fringe, Opium, Shotgun Honey, Thuglit, Word Riot, and Underground Voices, among others. Joe was […]
Melissa Broder might be a cowgirl, might be a crone
Melissa Broder is the author of two poetry collections, most recently Meat Heart. Poems appear in Guernica, The Missouri Review, Redivider, Court Green, et al. She edits La Petite Zine. Melissa was interviewed by Kacee Belcher for Sliver of Stone Magazine. Kacee Belcher: I’m so grateful that you agreed to do this interview. From what […]
Dinty W. Moore: A Most Mindful Writer
Dinty W. Moore is the Director of Creative Writing at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, a town he describes as “the funkadelicious, hillbilly-hippie Appalachian epicenter of the locally-grown, locally-consumed, goats-are-for-cheese, paw-paws-are-for-eatin’, artisanal-salsa, our-farmers-market-rocks-the-hills sub-culture.” Before he became a writer, Moore worked as a police reporter, a documentary filmmaker, a modern dancer, a zookeeper, and a […]
Elmaz Abinader: Looking Inward
Elmaz Abinader’s books, Children of the Roojme, a Family’s Journey from Lebanon, and In the Country of my Dreams, as well as her play, Country of Origin, all illustrate personal lives negotiating hostile terrain. Elmaz recently performed Country of Origin at the Kennedy Center; Oregon Drama Critics cited Country of Origin for its excellence by […]
Dorianne Laux: Poet of Compassion
Dorianne Laux’s most recent collections are The Book of Men and Facts about the Moon. A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and winner of the Oregon Book Award and The Roanoke-Chowan Award for Poetry, Laux is also author of Awake, What We Carry, and Smoke from BOA Editions. She teaches poetry in the MFA Program at North Carolina […]
Paul Lisicky’s Stories Are Built to Last
The titles of Paul Lisicky’s books reveal a writer concerned with the process of building and demolition—of the self. Whether he’s writing fiction, memoir, poetry, or, more recently, blurring the lines between all those genres, Lisicky explores the process and power of identity. He and his characters struggle to erect and maintain the narratives which […]
Lynne Barrett: Magpies
Lynne Barrett is the award-winning author of the story collections The Secret Names of Women, The Land of Go, and, most recently, Magpies, which was published by Carnegie Mellon University Press Sept. 1, 2011. She co-edited Birth: A Literary Companion and The James M. Cain Cookbook. Her work has appeared in Delta Blues, A Dixie […]
Louis Lowy: Die Laughing
Louis Lowy’s work has appeared in Coral Living Magazine, New Plains Review, The Florida Book Review, Ethereal Tales, Bête Noire, Pushing Out the Boat, and The MacGuffin Magazine, among others. His short story, “The One Cupper,” has been sent to Best American Mystery Stories for consideration. Lowy is a recipient of the Florida Individual Artist […]
Susan Orlean: On Writing
Susan Orlean is a writer and a journalist. She is the author of several books, including Saturday Night, Red Socks and Bluefish, The Orchid Thief, The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup: My Encounters with Extraordinary People, My Kind of Place: Travel Stories from a Woman Who’s Been Everywhere, Throw me a Bone, and most recently Lazy […]
Mark Vonnegut: On Art and Creativity
Mark Vonnegut is a memoirist and a pediatrician. He is the author of The Eden Express, which was published in 1975. It chronicles the time in his life after graduating from Swarthmore, when he moved to British Columbia with his friends to set up a commune, and his initial experiences with mental illness. His most […]
