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Spy Reprints “Butchery” by Josh Trapani

February 8, 2023 By The Editorial Team

Editor’s Note: “Butchery,” from the 15th edition of the Delmarva Review, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in fiction.

Author’s Note: “When you’re a scientist doing fieldwork in another part of the world, uncertainty comes with the territory. That includes the other scientists on your team. How will they act, especially if things go wrong? I set out intending to tell the tale of a field season soured by recklessness. Instead, “Butchery” reveals how misplaced priorities can destroy careers . . . and even cost lives.”... [Continue Story]

Spy Reprints “I Want to Order a Man from the Sweets Catalog” by Fran Abrams

February 7, 2023 By The Editorial Team

Author’s Note: “I wrote this poem after taking a class on how to write a cento. Looking for a source of words, I thought of the Sweets Construction Catalogue I had used when I worked in an architect’s office after college. ‘Sweets’ then was a large collection of three-ring binders but is now online. As I dipped into its pages, the poem began to form in my mind, moving readily from concept to completion.”... [Continue Story]

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Spy Reprints “Authors” by King Grossman

February 6, 2023 By The Editorial Team

Author’s Note: “This poem virtually wrote itself when I was hole up writing in Marfa, Texas, a thin place, as in hardly separated from the source. One afternoon outside my back door I espied through the coke-bottle glass, a young girl who sat at a card table on her porch across the street happy as you please writing in that red bird notebook. I simply stood there in solidarity with another non-civilian.”... [Continue Story]

Spy Reprints “Goodbye Mr. Kamali” by Sepideh Zamani

February 5, 2023 By The Editorial Team

Editor’s Note: “Goodbye Mr. Kamali,” from the review’s 15th anniversary edition, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in fiction.

Author’s Note: “Growing up in a country under theocratic rule, I witnessed most Iranians suffering from religious and cultural cleansing, the root of Iranians’ ongoing uprisings today. Minorities, especially Jews and Baha’is, are in constant danger still. Here, I am a young girl hiding in a cupboard, listening. I discover the crime of my father’s friend: his refusal to convert to Islam, and the fate he will suffer for it.”... [Continue Story]

Spy Reprints “Now Only in Part” by Marda Messick

December 18, 2022 By The Editorial Team

Author’s Note: Since I first looked into a kaleidoscope as a young child, I’ve been fascinated by and deeply curious about perception. How do we perceive the world and apprehend mystery? How do we know what we know about anything? Our limitations and the possibility of enlightenment always are juxtaposed, as they are in the poem. I’ve come to rely on poetry itself as a way of perceiving and knowing the world, other people, and the divine.... [Continue Story]

Spy Reprints “Lemon Ginger Tea” by Robin Gow

December 11, 2022 By The Editorial Team

Author’s Note: I wrote “Lemon Ginger Tea” after spending a winter afternoon with my brother. We are both at really transitory moments in our lives and this felt especially true that day. Both our conversation and where we sat felt so indicative to me of both being in a liminal space together. In a lot of ways, I see the poem as being about brotherhood and being able to know someone’s life from that perspective. I use the “you” to try to convey that closeness to the reader so hopefully they can feel it too... [Continue Story]

Spy Reprints “Rescue” by Jessica Claire Haney

December 4, 2022 By The Editorial Team

Author’s Note: “Rescue” was my first attempt at writing flash fiction when I craved something immediate and stark in between revisions of a novel. That initial dabble with flash years ago spawned a series of stories about women who reluctantly come to care for dogs. While most of the other pieces—flash fiction, short stories, and a novella—deal with connections between people or with nature, and some even have hopeful notes, my firstborn remains my favorite... [Continue Story]

Spy Reprints “The Entropy of Little Things” by Martina Kado

December 4, 2022 By The Editorial Team

Author’s Note: I live just outside of Baltimore, in a historically blue-collar neighborhood surrounded by water and wildlife. Sometimes it feels like living in a novel Gabriel Garcia Márquez and Kurt Vonnegut could have written together: filled with the magic and tragicomedy of the universe. As people and animals were dying around me, I wrote this narrative meditation on the disheartening matter-of-factness of transience and finding comfort in tiny acts of kindness and each new day... [Continue Story]

Delmarva Review Announces New Pushcart Prize Nominations for Poetry and Prose

December 4, 2022 By The Editorial Team

Six Authors Nominated

Delmarva Review announced six Pushcart Prize nominations for poetry, fiction, and nonfiction from the literary journal’s 15th anniversary edition, released in November.

Poetry nominations are “Red Beans,” By Catherine Carter, of North Carolina, “Now Only in Part,” by Marda Messick, of Florida, and “Learning to Swim,” by Ellen Sazzman, of Maryland.

Fiction nominations include “Goodbye Mr. Kamali,” by Sepideh Zamani, and “Butchery,” by Josh Trapani, both from Maryland.

A personal essay, “The Entropy of Little Things,” by Martina Kado, from Maryland, was nominated for nonfiction.

The Pushcart Prize honors outstanding writing published during the year by small presses “dedicated to exciting, innovative and eclectic prose and poetry.”

Delmarva Review was created to encourage authors to pursue their best writing. While publication is competitive, the review offers writers a valued publishing home in print for their most compelling writing at a time when many commercial publications are reducing literary content or going out of business.

Since its first issue in 2008, the Delmarva Review has published the new literary work of 490 writers. They have come from 42 states, the District of Columbia, and 16 foreign countries. Forty-six percent are from the tri-state Delmarva Peninsula and Chesapeake Bay region of the Mid-Atlantic. Eighty-four have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Some have received notable mention in “best of” anthologies or achieved recognition from literary critics and editors. For some, publication has been the first public recognition of their literary accomplishments.

The submission period for Delmarva Review’s 16th annual edition is open now through March 31, 2023. Editors read all submissions and do not charge reading fees. A submission link is on the guidelines page of the website at delmarvareview.org.

Delmarva Review is an independent, 501(c)(3) nonprofit literary publication produced by the Delmarva Review Literary Fund Inc, in Talbot County, Maryland. Financial support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts, with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council.

The journal is available worldwide in print and electronic editions from Amazon.com and other online booksellers. Print editions are also available from regional specialty book shops.

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Spy Reprints “A Room Too Small for Sunsets” by Sayan Aich Bhowmik

December 4, 2022 By The Editorial Team

Author’s Note: The poem tries to uncover the gnawing sense of loneliness and alienation that has become a characteristic feature of life in the cities. With every passing day, no matter how well we remain connected to the outside world through social media, there is always this sense of emptiness that devours us. This poem tries to capture that sense of angst and the problematics of belonging... [Continue Story]

Six Authors Nominated

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