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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
M. Evelina Galang: Angel de la Luna and the 5th Glorious Mystery
The day my father disappeared he gave me one thousand pesos. “I’ll be home in three days,” Papang said, counting the money. “But just in case. Take care of your ináy, Angel.” It’s been two weeks. My mother is out of her mind. This morning, St. Magdalena’s school bus pulls up to our house. The [...]
S.O.S. BACKSTAGE
Holly Mayes: Art Editor
Holly grew up in a small town in Central Florida and graduated in 1999 from the Harrison School for the Visual and Performing Arts. She has actively participated in local art shows and festivals, including the Winter Park Art Festival and Art on the Park in Lakeland. Her self portrait, Me, was … [Read More...]
EDITOR’S PICK: NEW RELEASE
“Subverting timeworn clichés about beauty, this book delivers a fresh exploration of everything from body art and big noses to musical ‘perfection’ and misguided parenting. It’s a stunning, unforgettable collection.”—Diana Spechler, author of Who By Fire and SkinnyTHE BEAUTIFUL … [Read More...]
EDITOR’S PICK: Fiction
Eggs
Did the place sell pie? Larry Delane couldn’t smell pie, so he huffed his gloves: burnt butter, … [Read More...]
NONFICTION NEWS
Nicholas Garnett: Guest Editor
If you're a faithful reader of Sliver of Stone, you probably remember the essay titled "All That Glitters," which appeared in the very first issue (August 2010). Congratulations to Nicholas Garnett! "All That Glitters" was chosen to be included in the 2010 Best of the Net Anthology. It has been … [Read More...]
Come, I’m waiting for you
ISSUE 4: MORE FEATURES
Paul Lisicky: Mask
(an excerpt from the memoir THE NARROW DOOR) It’s just me and Denise in her room at the hospice. Her family has just stepped out to the waiting room down the hall, and they’ve given me some minutes to be alone with her. I look at her sleeping face, grab her big warm toe poking [...]
Dorianne Laux: The Book of Men
Mine Own Phil Levine after W.S. Merwin What he told me, I will tell you There was a war on It seemed we had lived through Too many to name, to number There was no arrogance about him No vanity, only the strong backs Of his words pressed against The tonnage of a page His [...]
Chris Hannan, Louisiana Poet
Born and raised in New Orleans, Chris Hannan is a 2004 graduate of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts where he received a bachelor of arts in the Classics, and a 2008 graduate of the the Loyola University, New Orleans, College of Law, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Loyola Law [...]
EDITOR’S PICK: POETRY
Sad Bones
The open throats in your heart sing sore today. Rasp, heave and rust. Winter’s worn you like an … [Read More...]
The Elephant Graves
Elephants know a macadam of bone,cracked hips, shin shards, old tusks, and skulls,gravel of … [Read More...]
EDITOR’S PICK: NONFICTION
Swallowed
When she is seventeen, my grandmother gets married in the mouth of a thirty thousand pound whale.At … [Read More...]
PAST INTERVIEWS
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 [...]
Les Standiford: On Bringing Adam Home
Les Standiford is the author of the critically acclaimed Last Train to Paradise, Meet You in Hell, Washington Burning, and The Man Who Invented Christmas, as well as ten novels. His latest book, Bringing Adam Home, will be on sale March 1, 2011. About Bringing Adam Home, Scott Turow wrote that “This tale of the [...]
Dan Wakefield: Creating from the Spirit
Dan Wakefield is a novelist, journalist and screenwriter whose best-selling novels Going All The Way and Starting Over were produced as feature films; he created the NBC prime time TV series “James at 15.” A documentary film has been produced of his memoir New York in the Fifties. His non-fiction books on spirituality include Returning: [...]
Sean Kenniff: Stop *Effing Yourself
Sean Kenniff describes himself as an ordinary guy who has had some extraordinary experiences. He’s a neurologist, television journalist, author, radio host, and former reality TV show contestant. But above everything else he is a happy, compassionate and very thankful man. We asked him a bit about himself and also about his new book, Stop [...]
Steve Perrault: Expansion and Containment
Steve Perrault’s background in art, philosophy, theology and clinical psychology (B.A. and three graduate degrees) creates a mysterious connection and deep appreciation of the incongruent aspects of life. Born and raised in Minneapolis, Perrault entered Catholic seminary at age seventeen. For thirteen years he lived in the context of seminary and monastic life, working in [...]
Who’s Kristin Meyers?
For Kristin Meyers, being an artist was never a choice or a decision; it ‘s what she’s always done and therefore who she is. One of her earliest memories of her sculptural interests: dismantling her own highchair using the back of a spoon. “My mother was horrified as she walked in to see the [...]
Adam Simon: Grey Babies
Adam Simon is a painter living and working in Brooklyn, New York. He is also known for projects relating to art distribution and reception, most notably Four Walls and the Fine Art Adoption Network. “For the last 20 years or so the artist Adam Simon and I have been having a wide-ranging conversation that has [...]
Irene Zion: Margot’s Voice Burned Away in the Fire
My daughter Margot died at birth. Her identical twin survived. Margot comes to me in my dreams, growing older along with her sister. Margot’s Voice Burned Away in the Fire Oil on Canvas *** Irene Zion has had no formal training in painting. She has been in a show of Outsiders at the University of [...]
Jim Fuess: Flowers
Abstract Painting 20″ x 6″ pencil, watercolor, photography and photoshop *** Jim Fuess works with liquid acrylic paint on canvas. Most of his paintings are abstract, but there are recognizable forms and faces in a number of the abstract paintings. He is striving for grace and fluidity, movement and balance. He likes color and believes that beauty [...]
Eleanor Bennett: Flames & Cobwebs
Photography *** Eleanor Leonne Bennett is a teenage amateur photographer and award winning mixed media artist from Stockport, England. Her work has been exhibited in Ireland, Canada, Paris, London, Hamburg, and Madrid. The winner of the National Geographic UK kids photography competition (“See The Bigger Picture”) and also of the World Photography Organisation’s Photomonth youth award, [...]
Ernest Williamson III: Somebody Watches Over Me
20″ x 20″, acrylics, white out, oils, and ink. *** Ernest Williamson III has published poetry and visual art in over 250 online and print journals. He is a professor at Essex County College and ABD at Seton Hall University. Visit his gallery at http://www.yessy.com/budicegenius/
Andrew Abbott: A Medication I Could Take
Acrylic paint on brown craft paper, size is 12″ x 4.5″ *** Andrew Abbott lives on the “fringes” of society at the age of 31. “Fringes” meaning mostly his parents’ house. When he has money saved up, he moves somewhere interesting for about six months and paints a lot of pictures. His paintings are affordable. [...]
Alex Alderete: Eileen
8.5″ x 12″ pencil, watercolor, photography and photoshop *** “My approach to art is more sculptural than anything else; I really try to carve the image out of the page. Another very important part of my work is line quality, with every curve of the pencil or brush I demand life in the subject matter.” [...]
RANDOM NONFICTION: SKIN
"What we have loved Others will love." Wordsworth My first kisses of a romantic nature transpired in the fourth grade near the backstop at North Star Elementary with LaRae, a spritely blonde girl who, at nineteen, graced the cover of several important fashion magazines and, at twenty five, revealed years of abuse at the hands of her uncle and entered rehab. She never returned to modeling. The backstop swelled above us like a chain-link cape; a short fence encased the baseball diamond, and a larger fence surrounded the two acres set aside for recreation. At the backstop, at the center … [Read More...]
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