Author’s Note: I’ve long loved Walt Whitman’s work for many reasons, and this piece—“Walt Whitman at the Playground”—echoes one of them: his enthusiastic joy at everyday moments, a joy that often strikes me as augmented by an ever-present thought for mortality. I wrote the poem at the playground in question, watching my daughters at play and the people around me, grateful that we were all alive together at this one moment... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: The unseen forces that surround us and shape our lives are so fascinating—and I mean the literal ones, like magnetism or gravity, not just the metaphysical ones, though I also have doubts about how different those really are. If the spiritual and metaphysical are anywhere, then they’re here, they’re now, they’re ordinary and constant. They’re in humankind and they’re also in the magnetic doorstop... [Continue Story]
Editor’s Note: “Querencia,” from the Delmarva Review’s 14th annual edition, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in nonfiction.
Author’s Note: When I first began writing memoir, I wrote a lot ... [Continue Story]
Author's Note: "Sometimes poets have epiphanies—sometimes we simply turn on the radio. I was listening to NPR when I heard the delightful tidbit that inspired this poem. I took words cut from magazines ... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “Something, Somehow, Somewhere” tells the story of a young Brooklyn farmer who travels across the country to meet her estranged father and his seemingly perfect family while a hurricane ... [Continue Story]
Delmarva Public Radio produces the program Delmarva Today hosted by Delmarva Review's very own Fiction Editor, Hal Wilson.
This edition features Delmarva Review, Volume 14 with guests Wilson Wyatt, Jr., Executive Editor of the Review, poetry editors Anne Colwell and Katherine Gekker, nonfiction editor Ellen Brown, and fiction submitter Ronan Keenan. Each read a short selection from the Review.
Anne Colwell is a professor of English at the University of Delaware, Katherine Gekker's poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, Ellen Brown is a nature and environmental writer, and Ronan Keenan’s fiction and nonfiction writings have appeared in a number of well-known magazines including The Atlantic.
Please note, the submission period for volume 15 is also open and submissions are being received in poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction.
Click below to begin the show...
Delmarva Review's Executive Editor Wilson Wyatt emcees the brilliant performance of ten contributing writers (Volume 14), sponsored by The Writers Center in Bethesda, MD (many thanks) on November 20, 2021.
Our featured writers include (with approximate start times):
Caroline Bock [7:27]
Holly Karapetkova [14:40]
Irene Hoge Smith [17:06]
Jona Colson [22:29]
Susan Land [27:33]
Judith McCombs [35:00]
Sue Eisenfeld [38:38]
Katherine Williams [49:02]
Ronan Keenan [53:08]
Adam Tamashasky [59:15]
Listen now...
Click below for a transcribed edition...
George R. Merrill is the featured nonfiction writer in Volume 14 of Delmarva Review. He is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. Merrill is a writer, photographer, and former nonfiction editor of the Delmarva Review. He has authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. A native New Yorker, he provided counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and Baltimore before moving to Maryland’s Eastern Shore. His essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.
Delmarva Review's Fiction Editor and host of the radio show Delmarva Today, Hal Wilson, probes the meaning and purpose of the popular nonfiction personal essay form with George Merrill in the following Delmarva Today radio podcast.
Click below to tune in. This is a fascinating and timely discussion.
Delmarva Review announced publication of its 14th annual literary journal presenting new poetry, short stories, and creative nonfiction from seventy authors in twenty-five states, the District of Columbia and four other countries.
“The fourteenth issue is our largest, with over four hundred pages of exceptional new poetry and prose selected from thousands of submissions during the year,” said Wilson Wyatt, executive editor.
The review also announced a writers’ submission period for the 15th anniversary issue, open now through March 31, 2022. It does not charge submission or reading fees. Writers’ guidelines are posted on the website: DelmarvaReview.org.
The cover of the 14th issue is “Tangier Island Light,” by contributing photographer Jay P. Fleming, of Annapolis, from his new book, Island Life.
As a literary collection, the focus is on outstanding new writing. Topics for this issue open with an essay about dealing with death over a lifetime. They continue with subjects about desire, loss, aging, bullying, equality, beliefs, the pandemic, and many others. “Ultimately, all of the themes revolve around change,” Wyatt said. “It’s through human change that we face the truths that guide us on our journeys or help us make sense of where we’ve been.”
The journal is divided into three major sections: poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Each is an impressive collection of literary work. The sections open with an editor’s interview of a featured author, giving more in-depth perspective of the writing that follows. The book ends with seven reviews of recent books, and biographies of the writers.
Delmarva Review was created to offer writers a valued home to publish their best writing at a time when many commercial publications were reducing literary content or closing their doors. The review makes room for new authors, as well, including a featured high school student.
While favoring the permanence of the printed word, the review also publishes electronic versions to meet the digital preferences of readers. Both paperback and electronic editions are immediately available at major online booksellers. It can also be purchased at regional specialty bookstores.
Since its origin in 2008, the Delmarva Review has published new poetry and prose by over 400 authors. They are from most of the United States and sixteen other countries. About forty percent are from the Delmarva and Chesapeake region of the Mid-Atlantic. Seventy-eight have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Some have attained notable attention in “best of” anthologies or received public acclaim from other literary critics and editors.
In addition to Wyatt, the journal’s staff for this edition includes Bill Gourgey, the managing editor who designs and publishes the review, poetry editor Anne Colwell, poetry assistant editors Katherine Gekker and Wendy Elizabeth Ingersoll, fiction senior editor Harold O. Wilson, fiction coeditors James O’Sullivan and Lee Slater, creative nonfiction editor Ellen Brown, book section editor Gerald Sweeney, treasurer Judy Reveal, and copyeditor Jodie Littleton.
Published by the Delmarva Review Literary Fund Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, the journal receives partial financial support from individual tax-deductible contributions and a public grant from Talbot Arts, with revenues from the Maryland State Arts Council. For more information, see the website DelmarvaReview.org.
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Welcome to the fourteenth edition of Delmarva Review, an annual, independent, nonprofit literary journal. In this, our largest edition, we selected the new writing of seventy authors that stood out from thousands of submissions during the year. Volume 14 includes ninety-eight poems, thirteen short stories, twelve creative nonfiction essays, and seven book reviews. In all, the writers come from twenty-five states, the District of Columbia, and four foreign countries. About forty percent are from the Delmarva and Chesapeake region, though the review welcomes the best new writing in English from all writers, regardless of borders.
The cover photograph, Tangier Island Light, taken at dusk is by contributing photographer Jay P. Fleming. It was taken as part of Fleming’s work for his wonderful new narrative photography book, Island Life, capturing “a pivotal moment in time for Smith and Tangier.” Life on these isolated islands in the Chesapeake Bay—the largest estuary in the United States—is often considered frozen in time, but Fleming has delved deeper, documenting work and life on the islands “as the very forces that sustain them also threaten to take them away.” While not the theme of the book, or of the Delmarva Review, climate change remains highly concerning. There is no preaching here—just the facts, images, and human stories—and you are likely to learn something new from the content (see the book review in this edition). The rest is up to you.
