OPENING LETTERS > FROM THE EDITORS
I have a complicated relationship with routines. At times, I love my routines. With them comes discipline, efficiency, and accomplishment. I'm a dog owner, so the set schedule for their meal times and exercise is essential, and those long walks in the neighborhood are good for my head and my heart in many ways. I recently had knee surgery, so sticking with the detailed postoperative plan for my recovery has resulted in tremendous gains for my long-term health. Over the past three months, Jason and I received more submissions for Issue 13 of Sky Island Journal than we ever have for any other issue. In fact, we received over 10 times as many submissions as our first issue; so, having a disciplined schedule to read deeply and respond meaningfully to every piece made all the difference.
On the other hand, there are times when I want and even need to break the routines in my life. Doing so can lead to discovery, innovation, and well-earned perspective. When we are courageous enough to break from our comfortable and customary perspectives, there is potential for critical analysis, true discourse, and positive change. Similarly, getting out of the monotony of a rigid schedule can be exhilarating and challenge me to become a better version of myself as I continue to learn and grow each day. All 32 featured writers and poets in this issue do just that: they challenge me to see the world in new ways and open my heart to feelings I've never felt before or emotions that are latent in my being, but I had somehow forgotten are a part of me. I firmly believe they can do the same for you.
A new venture with its own new set of routines that has challenged and fulfilled me the past few months is the development of our companion podcast, Voices from the Sky. In the program, I meet with writers of some of our favorite pieces since our inception in 2017, and take listeners into their heads and hearts as they offer insights into their writing process and enhance the experience of reading their outstanding works. It has been a true joy to create and make meaningful connections with writers and people that we admire. The first episode will be available for you to listen for free on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play, later this month. I sincerely hope you get as much out of the conversations as I did while participating in them!
Finally, I'm so glad you are here. Hopefully visiting Sky Island Journal becomes one of your cherished routines. Every quarter, we will continue to offer you the finest poetry, flash fiction, and creative nonfiction the world has to offer. You can always count on us to be free-access for you as readers, with an advertising-free reading experience that allows you to fully enter the literary worlds these world-class writers have created. Break free, explore, and be transformed.
Respectfully,
Jeff Sommerfeld, Co-Founder, Co-Editor-in-Chief, and Host of Voices from the Sky
It’s June—almost monsoon season—in Luna County, New Mexico: Sky Island Journal’s birthplace and spiritual home. This time of year, the mountains and deserts thirst for rain. Their inhabitants grow lean in the sweltering heat of the day and drink the cool night air with relish. In July, lightning will crack the sky like an eggshell. Arroyos and flats will become lakes. Draws and washes will become rivers—veins of water, pulsing at treacherous speeds. There will be destruction and creation. There will be renewal and transformation.
The parallel between the turbulence of our summer landscape and the turbulence of our collective human experience in these unprecedented times, is striking.
Our species stands on the knife edge of its own future, in so many ways. With so much at stake every single day, it’s easy to overlook the beauty our world offers so freely. Our cortisol levels rise; our vision narrows; we start to feel numb; we begin to lose hope. Jeff and I believe that literature can provide the hope that our world so desperately needs right now. We believe that resistance, renewal, and resilience—all made possible by this hope—will ultimately become the keys to our survival.
Surviving New Mexico’s summer landscape connects us to the living and the dead in ways that force us to expand our understanding of “what is possible.” It remains the source of our positive energy, our rugged independence, and our relentless tenacity as an independent, international literary journal. It helps ensure that every step we take is made with kindness and humility. Reading and responding to every submission—then being able to share the work of writers from around the world, with readers from around the world—are privileges beyond the telling. We're grateful for our contributors and our readers. Whether you're new to Sky Island Journal, or you're already one of our over 70,000 readers in 145 countries, we're confident the new writing in our stunning thirteenth issue will find a home in your heart.
We've elected to leave the "scroll-through experience" and pop-up ads to other literary platforms. By design, each published piece of writing in Sky Island Journal opens as a protected Word document for an authentic, focused, and immersive experience that encourages a close, intimate, distraction-free reading of the work. Readers, we want your experience with each of our contributor's work to be singular: just as it would be on the printed page, with crisp white paper between your collective fingertips. With no advertising on our website, you can fully engage with the works our contributors have so carefully created for you. With no subscription fees, you are welcome to read and enjoy whenever you like. We understand this is a radical departure from how many literary journals present writing to their readers online, but we think it's a refreshing change for the better. It's okay to slow down. It's okay to take your time. It’s okay to simply be present—to savor, to reflect, and to gather strength.
Of the 2,066 individual pieces that we received from around the world for Issue 13, we found these 33 to be the finest. Welcome to Sky Island. Welcome home.
Respectfully,
Jason Splichal, Co-Founder and Co-Editor-in-Chief
Amanda Leal > Poetry > Florida, USA
Amanda Leal is a poet from South Florida. She is a Registered Nurse by day and a poetry fanatic by night. She runs on caffeine, and you'll find her most days chasing her toddler and pitbull around.
Andrea Livingston > Poetry > California, USA
Andrea Livingston's poems have appeared in Rust + Moth, the Rise Up Review, Milvia Street Art and Literary Journal, and elsewhere. Her poem, “Paper Cranes,” received honorable mention in the 2017 Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Barbara Mandigo Kelly Poetry Contest. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she works as a public policy editor and writer and has three adult sons.
B. Tyler Lee > Creative Nonfiction > Indiana, USA
B. Tyler Lee is the author of one poetry collection, With Our Lungs in Our Hands (Redbird Chapbooks, 2016). Her nonfiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in 32 Poems, Crab Orchard Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Puerto del Sol, Spectrum Literary Journal, and elsewhere. Her essay “Sex and the Single Eight-Year-Old” was named an honorable mention in the Best American Essays series. She teaches English in the Midwest.
Chitra Gopalakrishnan > Creative Nonfiction > India
Chitra Gopalakrishnan uses her ardor for writing, wing to wing, to break firewalls between nonfiction and fiction, narratology and psychoanalysis, and marginalia and manuscript. As a New Delhi-based journalist and a social development communicator, she enjoys her career trying to figure out issues of social development and its impact—or the lack of it—on people. Her fiction has appeared in the Celestial Echo Press, Black Hare Press, Fantasia Divinity, Breaking Rules Publishing, Me First Magazine, Reedsy, Terror House Magazine, Unpublished Platform, Literary Yard, Truancy, eShe, Literati Magazine, Spillwords, Fleas on the Dog, Twist and Twain, Velvet Illusion, CafeLit and Runcible Spoon.
Christien Gholson > Poetry > New Mexico, USA
Christien Gholson is the author of two books of poetry, On the Side of the Crow (Hanging Loose Press) and All the Beautiful Dead (Bitter Oleander Press); along with a magical realist novel, A Fish Trapped Inside the Wind (Parthian Books). A long eco-catastrophe/earth-praise ceremony poem, Tidal Flats, can be found as a chapbook at Mudlark (online). He lives in New Mexico, among the living and the dead—and the coyotes (who move back and forth between both realms).
Christopher Buckley > Poetry > California, USA
Christopher Buckley’s recent books of poetry are Star Journal: Selected Poems, University of Pittsburgh Press; CHAOS THEORY, Plume Editions; &, AGNOSTIC, Lynx House Press, 2019. The Pre-Eternity of the World, is due from Stephen F. Austin State University Press January 2021. He has recently edited: The Long Embrace: 21 Contemporary Poets on the Long Poems of Philip Levine, Lynx House Press; and NAMING THE LOST: THE FRESNO POETS—Interviews & Essays, Stephen F. Austin State University Press—both due Fall 2020. He lives in Santa Barbara, CA, where he grew up.
Ellen Wieland > Creative Nonfiction > Wisconsin, USA
Ellen Wieland is a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison pursuing a degree in statistics. When not in class, she reads, writes, dabbles in tarot, and dodges the question: “Are you sure you don’t want to be an English major?” Sky Island Journal hosts her first publication, though hopefully not her last.
Emma Moran > Creative Nonfiction > United Kingdom
Emma Moran writes mainly short fiction but dips an occasional toe into drama and creative non-fiction. She is also working on her first novel - unless you count the one she sent to Ladybird Books when she was nine years old because it was ‘at least as good as The Garden Gang.’ She has an MSt. in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford and is a previous winner of the ‘aka Catherine Howard’ short story competition. Her work has appeared in print in The Lamp literary journal and Cooldog magazine and has been broadcast in podcasts including Still Listening and Radiation World. She is based in the New Forest and spends her time there writing, walking, gazing at ponies, drinking coffee, and occasionally attending her day job at the University of Southampton.
Feiya Zhang > Poetry > Australia
Feiya Zhang is a writer based in Melbourne, Australia. She is a science graduate, a past recipient of the Lane Cove Literary Award and an avid backpack traveller. Her works have appeared in Hermes, Poetry d’Amour, SWAMP, and elsewhere. She spends her daylight hours working for a nonprofit, teaching creative writing to kids and, of course, writing.
Fred White > Flash Fiction > California, USA
Fred White's fiction and humor have appeared most recently in Better than Starbucks, Deep Overstock, The Citron Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, The Clockwise Cat, and Fiction Southeast. He is the author of The Writer's Idea Thesaurus, Writing Flash, and several other books on writing. A professor of English, emeritus, he lives in Folsom, California.
Gavin Van Horn > Poetry > Illinois, USA
Gavin Van Horn is the Creative Director and Executive Editor for the Center for Humans and Nature. Gavin’s writing is tangled up in the ongoing conversation between humans, our nonhuman kin, and the animate landscape. He is the author of The Way of Coyote: Shared Journeys in the Urban Wilds, and co-editor of Wildness: Relations of People and Place and City Creatures: Animal Encounters in the Chicago Wilderness. He hopes to meet Joy Harjo someday and thank her.
Hiya Chowdhury > Creative Nonfiction > India
Hiya Chowdhury is an 18-year old student and aspiring writer from New Delhi, India. She was named the Senior Runner-Up at the Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition in 2017, authored a children’s fiction novel in 2018, has been the only Asian writer shortlisted in the International H.G Wells Short Story Competition in 2019 and her short story has been published in an anthology for the same. She has also won and placed in a number of national writing contests for young writers. Her work has appeared in both national publications such as The Hindu, Blink, and The Print, as well as international forums like Laura Thomas Communications, BBC 500 Words and Blue Marble Review, among others. She is currently on the Editorial Team of the international student-run literary journal, Polyphony Lit. She hopes to keep writing and sharing her work with the world in the future.
Isaac Rankin > Poetry > North Carolina, USA
Isaac Rankin lives just outside Asheville, North Carolina, where he works at an all-boys boarding school, Christ School. Isaac currently serves as Associate Director of Advancement and has worn many hats in education, including administrator, teacher, coach, and bus driver. He and his wife, Rebecca, have a son, James Isaac. Working in schools is Isaac's calling, but he also enjoys traveling near and far, following sports obsessively, reading and writing across genres, and chasing his son in the backyard. His poetry also recently appeared in Apeiron Review.
Jackie McManus > Poetry > Washington, USA + Wisconsin, USA
Jackie McManus is the author of The Earthmover’s Daughter and two forthcoming chapbooks: Curses & Delights and Related to Loon which is about teaching in an Eskimo village in bush Alaska of which “Church on the Kuskokwim” is a part. She is at work on a memoir with her daughter, Blindfolded in Priest Canyon. She is published in various places including Cathexis Northwest, VoiceCatcher, Barstow & Grand, and The Oregon Poetry Association. In conjunction with The Dalles Art Center, in The Dalles, Oregon, she hosts a monthly Writer’s Talk to promote local poets. She divides her time between Wisconsin and Washington.
Jose Oseguera > Poetry > California, USA
Jose Oseguera is a Los Angeles-based writer of poetry, short fiction and literary nonfiction. His writing has been featured in Emrys Journal, The Hiram Poetry Review, Inlandia, The Literarian, and Sky Island Journal. He was named one of the Sixty Four Best Poets of 2019 by the Black Mountain Press. His work has also been nominated for the Best of the Net award (2018, twice in 2019) as well as the Pushcart (2018 and 2019) and Forward (2020) Prizes. He is the author of the poetry collection, The Milk of Your Blood (available through Kelsay Books and Amazon).
Joseph Dante La Rocca > Flash Fiction > New York, USA
Joseph Dante La Rocca is a writer currently living out of New York who has studied with creative writing professors from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and New York University. Through his writing, he hopes to create a sensory and universal experience for people of all different creeds. When he is not writing, he can often be found reading in New York’s East Village or working with technology.
Kira Preneta > Poetry > Ohio, USA
Kira Preneta currently resides in the suburban/rural wilds of the North American Rust Belt. Born just west of gichi-gami (Lake Superior), Kira feels most at home near big water. As a mother to 4 children, claiming time for her voice to meet the page is a lesson in inhabiting liminal space and time. Her writing is often referred to as a gift, a gift she is happy to give and receive. Sky Island Journal is her first literary publication.
Leanne Ogasawara > Flash Fiction > California, USA
Leanne Ogasawara has worked as a translator from the Japanese for over twenty years. Her translation work has included academic translation, poetry, philosophy, and documentary film. Her writing has appeared in Hedgehog Review, Kyoto Journal, River Teeth/Beautiful Things, the Dublin Review of Books, and the Pasadena Star newspaper. She also has a monthly column at the science and arts blog 3 Quarks Daily.
Leonore Hildebrandt > Poetry > Maine, USA + New Mexico, USA
Leonore Hildebrandt is the author of the poetry collections Where You Happen to Be, The Work at Hand, and The Next Unknown. Her poems and translations have appeared in the Cafe Review, Cerise Press, the Cimarron Review, Denver Quarterly, The Fiddlehead, Harpur Palate, Poetry Daily, the Sugar House Review, and Sky Island Journal among other journals. Winner of the 2013 Gemini Poetry Contest, she received fellowships from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Maine Community Foundation, and the Maine Arts Commission. She was nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize. A native of Germany, Leonore lives “off the grid” in Harrington, Maine, spending the winter in Silver City, New Mexico. She teaches writing at the University of Maine and serves on the editorial board of the Beloit Poetry Journal.
Lindsey Warren > Flash Fiction > Delaware, USA
Lindsey Warren is a graduate of Cornell University’s MFA program. She has been published in Rabid Oak, Josephine Quarterly, American Literary Review and Hobart, among others. Her poetry manuscript Unfinished Child is out from Spuyten Duyvil, and her second entitled Archangel & the Overlooked is forthcoming. The first chapter from her novel-in-progress will be published by Litbreak Magazine in September.
Lorrie Ness > Poetry > Virginia, USA
Lorrie Ness lives in Virginia. On weekends she can be found hiking through Shenandoah National Park, birding and writing outdoors. Nature is a refuge and source of inspiration for her. She has past or forthcoming publications in Sky Island Journal, THRUSH Poetry Journal, Barren Magazine, FRiGG, Crack the Spine, SOFTBLOW, The Maryland Literary Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Rosebud, and others.
Lovely Man > Creative Nonfiction > United Kingdom
Lovely Man is a writer and artist from West Yorkshire, United Kingdom. He is, above all, a really nice individual. His essays and various other forms of creative nonfiction are shot through with a genuine fascination for everyday phenomena and a commitment to those he dares to call ordinary people living ordinary lives.
M.B. McLatchey > Poetry > Florida, USA
M.B. McLatchey is the author of two books of poems, The Lame God, for which she won the 2013 May Swenson Award (Utah State Univ. Press) and Advantages of Believing (Finishing Line Press). She is also the author of a recently completed educational memoir, Beginner’s Mind, forthcoming with Regal House Publishing (2021). She is the recipient of several literary awards, including the American Poet Prize from the American Poetry Journal and the Annie Finch Prize from the National Poetry Review. Currently serving as Florida’s Poet Laureate for Volusia County, she is Associate Professor of Humanities at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
Madelyne Jacks > Creative Nonfiction > Indiana, USA
Madelyne Jacks is a recent graduate of Asbury University. Raised in rural Indiana, she credits growing up along the banks of the White River with the environmental focus of her writing. “A Study in Water” is her first piece to find a literary home.
Marla Lepore > Creative Nonfiction > Tennessee, USA
Marla Lepore was born in Texas, grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana, and received a BA in English from Tulane University in New Orleans. Now based out of Nashville, her writing has appeared in Hippocampus Magazine, Points in Case, Atlas and Alice, and elsewhere. She also writes the Muck Rack Daily newsletter, a daily digest of journalism and the stories journalists are sharing. She continues to study the craft, as a past participant in the Colgate Writers Conference and the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and as a longtime member of The Porch, Nashville's independent center for writing.
Michael Walker > Poetry > Ohio, USA
Michael Walker is a writer living in Newark, Ohio. He is the author of two novels: 7-22, a young adult fantasy novel, and The Vampire Henry, a "literary" horror novel. He has also seen his stories and poems published in numerous magazines including Adelaide Literary, PIF, and Fiction Southeast.
Nova Loverro > Flash Fiction > Colorado, USA
Nova Loverro is a yoga retreat leader, who grew up dancing and dreamt of writing. She has been a highly successful grant writer, has been published in The Elephant Journal, and, following her divorce, she began writing non-fiction. Her first essay, Yellow, won first prize in the Denver Women’s Press Club non-fiction category. Warm Buns is her first work of flash fiction, and she is delighted to have it published by Sky Island Journal.
Preeti Vangani > Poetry > California, USA
Preeti Vangani is an Indian poet & personal essayist. She is the author of Mother Tongue Apologize (RLFPA Editions), winner of the RL India Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in Buzzfeed, BOAAT, Gulf Coast, and Threepenny Review among other journals. She is the Asst. Poetry Editor for Glass Journal and works as a Poet Mentor with Youth Speaks in San Francisco.
Sareh Donaher > Poetry > Canada
Sareh Donaher is a published poet and recent graduate of SFU’s The Writing Studio currently working on her first poetry manuscript which tells the story of her family’s escape from Iran during the Iranian Revolution and their immigration to Canada. Sareh holds two bachelor’s degrees in International Relations and Education and is the co-founder of The Wordshop Collective, a boutique writing and editing firm. She is also a contributing writer in charge of the English section of Pelak52 magazine, an online Persian magazine. When Sareh is not writing, she can be found cultivating other creative pursuits and dragging her family and friends up mountains and down coastlines in search of debauchery. You can find her musings on everything from writing and the arts to casting spells and adventures on Instagram @thewritersway or on Twitter @tweetsarehd.
Sophie Scolnik-Brower > Creative Nonfiction > Massachusetts, USA
Sophie Scolnik-Brower is a professional pianist in the Boston area with a longtime passion for writing poetry and creative nonfiction. An active participant in writing workshops throughout the city, she is drawn to prose that sounds like music.
Valentina Bulava > Flash Fiction > Russian Federation
Valentina Bulava is an aspiring writer and poet. She holds a Journalism degree from University of the Arts London and has experience working in publishing and marketing. People, emotions, and music are her main sources of inspiration.
Virginia Watts > Creative Nonfiction > Pennsylvania, USA
Virginia Watts is the author of poetry and stories found or upcoming in Illuminations, The Florida Review, The Blue Mountain Review, The Moon City Review, Permafrost Magazine, Palooka Magazine, and Streetlight Magazine among others. Finalist in 2020 Philadelphia Stories Sandy Crimmins Poetry Contest, Winner of the 2019 Florida Review Meek Award in nonfiction and nominee for Best of the Net 2019 in nonfiction, Virginia resides near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.