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Volume 15

November 12, 2022 By The Editorial Team

Published November 2022

DR-V15-ebook-Cover
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Contributors

What's Inside

THROUGH THE AUTHOR’S VOICE, we discover qualities and truths about ourselves. Perhaps more than anything else this describes the strength of our connections with literature.

Welcome to the Delmarva Review’s 15th anniversary edition. Writing from 60 authors was selected from thousands of submissions during the year. This issue includes 78 poems, 11 short stories, and 12 nonfiction essays. In all, the writers come from 18 states, the District of Columbia, and 6 foreign countries. The review welcomes the best new writing in English from all writers regardless of borders.

This year’s cover photograph of an osprey, The Fisherman, tells its own story. The osprey, with wings spread exhibiting his power, has positioned himself high above the water on a storm-broken tree trunk, his talons clutching a partially devoured fish. The osprey’s purpose is not so much the fish as it is his desire to lure a suitable mate for the season’s nest. Thematically, the image exhibits the territorial imperative shared by most animals, including humans.

Each story or poem in this issue has its own message. No singular theme was selected for the edition. As a literary collection, we focus on the most compelling new writing and what is at stake or at risk emotionally or intellectually in the author’s work.

Popular topics include grief, death, pain, love, living, place, acceptance, freedom, aging, and the uncertainty of life, among others. They have one quality in common—change—and the uncomfortable challenges of dealing with change.

Filed Under: Issues, Uncategorized Tagged With: Essays, Fiction, Poetry, Prose, Reviews

Spy Reprints “In the Sea God’s Cave” by Craig Dobson

October 6, 2022 By The Editorial Team

Craig Dobson

Author’s Note: Still coming to terms with his failed marriage and estrangement from his son, a middle-aged man finds a small cave on a beach while staying nearby. Its secluded, shrine-like quality ...[Continue Story]

Craig Dobson - Sea God Cave

Filed Under: Feature, News, Uncategorized Tagged With: Fiction, Spy, Talbot Spy

Spy Reprints “A Convocation of Eagles” by Marlene Olin

October 2, 2022 By The Editorial Team

MarleneOlin-F-Eagles

Author’s Note: I wrote (this story) during the peak of the Covid epidemic. Everyone was baking bread. At the same time, I read two newspaper articles which intrigued me. One was about a “starter” museum that housed old sourdough starters. Another article suggested that some of these starters contained the DNA of the original bakers. I spent a few days researching the Gold Rush, Theodore Roosevelt, and the history of women’s rights in Wyoming. Then I was off and running…...[Continue Story]

Marlene Olin - Convocation of Eagles

Filed Under: Feature, News, Uncategorized Tagged With: Fiction, Spy, Talbot Spy

Spy Reprints “Criers” by Joe Baumann

October 1, 2022 By The Editorial Team

JoeBaumann

Author’s Note: I spend a great deal of my writing wondering about and exploring masculinity; here, I wanted to look at the idea that “men don’t cry” and really twist that around to ask questions about the value of emoting.  As a queer writer, I’m also always trying to examine what it’s like to feel islanded outside of the world of heteronormativity, and when those two things came together, this story emerged...[Continue Story]

Joe Baumann - Criers

Filed Under: Feature, News, Uncategorized Tagged With: Fiction, Spy, Talbot Spy

Spy Reprints “Garden” by Michael Gazda

September 30, 2022 By The Editorial Team

MichaelGazda

Author’s Note: “Garden” began with the woeful state of my yard which I knew needed tending. The thought occurred to me that while my yard was in a poor state to my mind, it was becoming a paradise to the various residents who inhabited it. I tried to capture a heightened description of an idealized garden that had been left untended. I wanted to contemplate that both value judgments and drama are a matter of perspective. ...[Continue Story]

Michael Gazda - Garden

Filed Under: Feature, News, Uncategorized Tagged With: Fiction, Spy, Talbot Spy

Spy Reprints “Coffee from Arabia” by Abby Provenzano

September 30, 2022 By The Editorial Team

AbigailProvenzano-F-CoffeeFrArabia

Author’s Note: My experience in the ballet world, and the close friendships and sisterhood cultivated among us dancers, provided inspiration for this story: “Coffee From Arabia” follows a young up-and-coming ballerina as she navigates growing up, identity, and desire both on and off the stage. In writing, it has been enchanting to peek behind the curtain at this life again! [Continue Story]

Abby Provenzano - Coffee from Arabia

Filed Under: Feature, News, Uncategorized Tagged With: Fiction, Spy, Talbot Spy

Spy Reprints “Something, Somehow, Somewhere” by Alexa Weik von Mossner

September 27, 2022 By The Editorial Team

Alexa Weik von Mossner

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]

Alexa Weik von Mossner - Something

Filed Under: Feature, News, Uncategorized Tagged With: Fiction, Prose, Spy, Talbot Spy

2021 Writers Center Reading: Featuring 10 Contributors

December 27, 2021 By The Editorial Team

Reader Collage - Best

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...


Podcast Link

 

Filed Under: Feature, News, Podcast Tagged With: Contributors, Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, Podcast, Poetry, Readings, Volume 14, Writers Center

Spy Reprints “Welcome Day” by Ronan J. Keenan

December 26, 2021 By The Editorial Team

RonanKeenan

Author’s Note: “Welcome Day is about a parent’s angst of how a combination of flawed genetics and a murky past will impact her child. The central character, Maria, is a single parent trying to distance her young son from her history of involvement in Irish paramilitary activity. In the story Maria watches her son begin life in a new school and worries how the ‘nature versus nurture’ dynamic will impact his development.”

Welcome Day

YOU’D SWEAR THERE’S A PIPE BOMB INSIDE, the way Maria holds the envelope at arm’s length. “The strain of fear’s gotten into ya,” Jimmy would say if he could see her now, panicked about opening a letter. This is the same Maria who’d hardly break stride when planting loaded packages near the Belfast barracks, years ago. Back then, she could create thick barriers in her mind, making it easy to categorize the soldiers as a faceless enemy from across the water rather than young lads barely out of school, homesick and frightened in strange borderlands. These days, Maria’s barriers are low and permeable, allowing fear to seep through whenever it wants. Today, it has come through her letterbox.

Sure enough, this envelope contains what she dreaded…(story continued in Spy)

Fiction

Filed Under: Feature, News, Uncategorized Tagged With: Fiction, Spy, Talbot Spy

Volume 14

November 4, 2021 By The Editorial Team

Published November 2021

DR V14 Cover - Front
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Contributors

What's Inside

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.

Filed Under: Issues, Uncategorized Tagged With: Essays, Fiction, Poetry, Prose, Reviews

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