Jennifer Givhan
Jennifer Givhan, a Mexican-American poet and novelist, has earned an NEA and a PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices fellowship. Her books include Landscape with Headless Mama (2015 Pleiades Editors’ Prize), Protection Spell (2016 Miller Williams Poetry Prize Series), Girl with Death Mask (2017 Blue Light Books Prize), Rosa’s Einstein (2019 Camino Del Sol Poetry Series), and two novels, Trinity Sight and Jubilee (Blackstone Publishing). Her honors include the Frost Place Latinx Scholarship, a National Latinx Writers’ Conference Scholarship, the Lascaux Review Poetry Prize, Phoebe Journal’s Greg Grummer Poetry Prize, The Pinch Poetry Prize, the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize 2nd place, and fifteen Pushcart nominations. Her work has appeared in Best of the Net, Best New Poets, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Ploughshares, POETRY, TriQuarterly, Boston Review, AGNI, Crazyhorse, Witness, Southern Humanities Review, Missouri Review, and The Kenyon Review. She lives near the Sleeping Sister volcanoes in New Mexico with her family, and can be found discussing feminist motherhood at jennifergivhan.com, Facebook, & Twitter @JennGivhan. We recently sat down with her to discuss her writing habits:
Good Poetry as “A Gut Punch”: A Conversation with Kate Gaskin
Kate Gaskin is the author of Forever War (YesYes Books 2020), which won the Pamet River Prize. Her poems have appeared in Guernica, Pleiades, Passages North, 32 Poems, Cherry Tree, and Blackbird, among others. She is a recipient of a Tennessee Williams Scholarship to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, as well as the winner of The Pinch’s 2017 Literary Award in Poetry. She grew up in a small town in central Alabama and currently lives in Omaha, Nebraska.
Marina Petrova
Marina Petrova’s stories have appeared in The Conium Review, Catapult, and the Empty Mirror. Her writing also has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, LARB, the Late Night Library, and Sugared Water. She holds an MFA from The New School and received fellowship from The MacDowell Colony and from The Mineral School. Although she did not place in the 2018 Pinch Literary Awards, her fiction story “Monkey” was still selected for publication in issue 38.2 of The Pinch due to the quality of the piece.
Lela Tredwell
Contest participants can be selected for publication even if they don’t win the contest. Check out this interview with Lela Tredwell to learn how this contest participant caught the attention of editors and got her piece published! “My Eye Eye” was published in issue 38.2 of The Pinch, which is available for order.
Amy Bonnaffons
Amy Bonnaffons is the judge of the 2019 Pinch Literary Award for Fiction. Her debut story collection The Wrong Heaven was published in July 2018 by Little, Brown. It will be followed in early 2020 by The Regrets, a novel about the afterlife. Amy is a founding editor of 7x7.la, a literary journal devoted to collaborations between writers and visual artists. Born in New York City, she now lives in Athens, GA, where she is working on a Ph.D. at the University of Georgia.
Sarah Viren
After last week’s conversation with current Pinch Literary Awards nonfiction judge Elissa Washuta, The Pinch staff decided to reach out to past contestant Sarah Viren. Sarah was the nonfiction winner of The 2014 Pinch Literary Awards with her Nonfiction essay “My Murderer’s Futon” which was featured in The Pinch 35.1.
Self-Reflection
“I want to throw the bear in the garbage. But I consult my parenting book to make sure. The book says that under no circumstance am I to throw the bear in the garbage. Children, it says, must learn to appreciate the gifts they are given. “Living with the bear will teach your child habits of gratitude and self-reflection.”
FALL 2018 (38.2)
Poetry: Casey Patrick, Karyna McGlynn, Abigail Chabitnoy, Luiza Flynn-Goodlett, Marlin M. Jenkins, Ruth Williams, Jenny Molberg, Margaret Cipriano, Alicia Marie Brandewie, Travis Truax, J. Stephen Rhodes, Ceridwen Hall, Ting Gou, E. Kristin Anderson. John Sibley Williams, Rebekah Denison Hewitt, Rebecca Hazelton
Fiction: Lela Tredwell, Adam Byko, Daisy Hernandez, Lawrence Lenhart, Marina Petrova, Samantha Edmonds, Sheldon Costa
Creative Nonfiction: Jaimie Eubanks, Maya Jewell Zeller, Stephanie Anderson, Lee Hutner, Jacob Little
Visual Art: Stev’nn Hall, Jordie Oetken, Max Gomez Canle, Birdcap, Andrea Morales, Leanna Hicks, Faig Ahmed
Erin Hoover
Pinch contributor Erin Hoover (35.2) has a book releasing today, October 01, 2018. We were able to catch up with her and get some insights on the life of a very busy poet.
Walking With Momma: A Micro Collection
“Mom and I walk through the door of the tattoo parlor. We don’t have an appointment or a care. It’s her forty-sixth birthday, twenty years since she fell into a coma with her brain tumor, twenty years since it crushed her optic nerves, and we’re dead-set on celebrating in a semi-rebellious way. “
The Aftermath
“The limited news footage on our black and white TV portrays a nation struck with grief, a feeling of betrayal hanging darkly over it. There are women on TV, wailing loudly, beating their chests, mourning the loss of Indira, their guardian angel. There are angry men filling the air with cries of “Khoon ka badla khoon” – Blood will avenge blood. “
“A Wrong Turning in American _____:” An Essay in Parts
“I am sick of the I that seeks, that asked if I should find a new audience, and when you didn’t respond, I knew you:
a) weren’t sure,
b) won’t try,
c) will never see me.
d) all of the above.”
Frankenpoetics with MayaStein: Ugly Verse as Wunderkammer (A Classroom Visit)
“This is about juxtaposition. Juxtaposition is like when two people care about each other but it doesn’t work out. It’s about when a cacophonous word comes up against another word. An apology to your shadow self. It’s about resistance art.”
Nine Letters
“When my husband and I met, he worked the graveyard shift at a Shell gas station. I’d drop in before I went to bed with a thick letter I’d written. Sometimes I’d include a mix tape, mostly Ani Difranco. Once it was a copy of The Bell Jar, tucked into a manila envelope. I didn’t want him to see the cover, in case his face fell—a book?”
Martin Ott
Former contributor Martin Ott (32.1) has a new book of poetry coming out this week. In our latest interview, we talked with him about the collection's inspiration, his other new projects, and what's next on his writing journey.
Gone Goldfish
“But when I woke up the next morning there was only one left, his rounded fishhook eyes blinking, his terrifyingly translucent body pulsing as if the whole thing were his heart. I convinced myself that there had only ever been one goldfish, that it was perfectly normal for two separate but similar beings to melt into each other and become one without either having died.”
Caroline Sutton
We talked to Caroline Sutton, whose new book, Don’t Mind Me, I Just Died: On Time, Tennis, and Unforgiving Mothers, was published in December of 2017.
SPRING 2018 (38.1)
Issue 38.1 includes Whitney Collins’ “The Entertainer” which was selected for the 2020 edition of Pushcart Prize XLIV: Best of the Small Presses.
The journal also includes the winners of the 2017 Pinch Literary Awards. Kate Gaskin’s “What the War Was Not” won the Pinch Literary Poetry Contest (judge: Amorak Huey), Blair Hurley’s “The Replacement Wife” won the Pinch Literary Fiction Contest (judge: Caitlin Horrocks), and Eliza Smith’s “All These Apocalypses” won the Pinch Literary Creative Nonfiction Contest (judge: Jill Talbot).
What the War Was Not
“Letters, weeks filing past / between them, long-necked like vees / of geese. Which outpost? / Which outpost? You pouring sand”