T H E
H A M I L T O N S T O N E R E V I E W
Issue # 36 Spring 2017
Virgens de Guadalupe by Lynda
Schor
Issue # 36 Spring 2017
Table of Contents
(Below, click on writer's name in Table of Contents to go directly to the piece,
or click on the genre for that section of the issue)
Editors for this Issue
Many thanks to Lynda Schor for
more than a decade of
editing fiction
for this publication.
Barry Seiler
Pepper Trail
Ellen Alexander Conley
Troy Hill
Jane Stark
Nonfiction
Edward Myers
Contributors'
Notes
Chris Abbate’s short fiction and poetry has appeared in Main Street Rag, Timberline Review, Chagrin River Review, and Comstock Review among other journals. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net award. Chris received honorable mention in the 2015 Concrete Wolf Chapbook Competition and in the 2013 Nazim Hikmet poetry contest. He resides in Holly Springs, NC.
Michael Aird lives and works in Vancouver, Canada. His current musical obsession = Alexander Borodin: String Quartets. Current print diversion = Giovanni Arrighi: The Long Twentieth Century. Current YouTube distraction = Adam Curtis documentaries. He can be found on Twitter @aird_m.
Bruce Alford is a columnist, reviewer and creative writer. He has published fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry in journals such as the African American Review, Comstock Review, Imagination & Place Press and Louisiana Literature. His first collection, Terminal Switching was published in 2007 (Elk River Review Press). He received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Alabama and was an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of South Alabama from 2007-2011. He currently lives in Hammond, Louisiana. Before working in academia, he was an inner-city missionary and journalist. He currently lives in Hammond, Louisiana.
Lisa Bellamy studies poetry with Philip Schultz at The Writers Studio, where she also teaches. Her chapbook, Nectar, won The Aurorean Chapbook Prize in 2011. Her work has appeared in TriQuarterly, Massachusetts Review, New Ohio Review, The Sun, Hotel Amerika, Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Southampton Review, Cimarron Review, Chiron Review and Calyx, among other publications, and she won the Fugue Poetry Prize in 2008. She is working on her first full-length collection.
Tony Beyer is a New Zealander who has recent or forthcoming work in Atlanta Review, broadsheet, Landfall and Otoliths. His books include Dream Boat: selected poems (2007) and Great South Road and South Side, two longer poems (2013).
Ace Boggess is author of the novel A Song Without a Melody (Hyperborea Publishing, 2016) and two books of poetry, most recently, The Prisoners (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2014). Forthcoming is a third poetry collection: Ultra-Deep Field (Brick Road). His poems have appeared in Harvard Review, Rattle, and River Styx. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia.
Carrie Bond holds an MA in English and Adolescent Education from Brooklyn College. A former high school English teacher, she lives in North Bennington, VT and works from home as a freelance editor.
Michelle Brooks’ work has been published or is forthcoming in Threepenny Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Iowa Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Natural Bridge, and elsewhere. My poetry collection, Make Yourself Small, was published by Backwaters Press, and my novella, Dead Girl, Live Boy, was published by Storylandia Press.
Richard Cecil is the author of 4 books of poetry. He teaches Great Books in the Hutton Honors College at Indiana University.
Ellen Alexander Conley has published five books to national reviews, including Soho Madonna, Soon to Be Immortal, Bread and Stones, and The Chosen Shore. Queen Lear, published last year, is her most recent novel.
Natalie Crick, from the UK, has poetry published or forthcoming in a range of journals and magazines including Rust and Moth, The Chiron Review, Ink in Thirds, The Penwood Review and Interpreters House. Her work also features or is forthcoming in a number of anthologies, including Lehigh Valley Vanguard Collections 13. This year her poem, 'Sunday School' was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Norita Dittberner-Jax is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Stopping For Breath from Nodin Press. Nodin will publish Crossing The Water, poems about living with and loving a spouse with Lou Gehrig’s disease in 2017. Norita is one of the poetry editors for Red Bird Chapbooks.
William Doreski’s work has appeared in various e and print journals and in several collections, most recently The Suburbs of Atlantis (AA Press, 2013).
Pushcart Prize nominee (for her fiction Wash Away My Sins)
Abigail George is a South African writer of short stories, flash fiction, plays and a poet. She briefly studied film at the Newtown Film and Television School in Johannesburg. She is the recipient of two grants from the National Arts Council in Johannesburg, one from the Centre for the Book in Cape Town and another from ECPACC (Eastern Cape Provincial Arts and Culture Council) in East London. She is a regular contributor to Africanwriter.com, Bluepepper, Hackwriters.com, Modern Diplomacy, Ovi Magazine: Finland’s English Online Magazine, Praxis Mag Online and Sentinel Literary Quarterly. She blogs at https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5174716.Abigail_George/blog
Howie Good is the author of Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements, winner of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry. His other books include A Ghost Sings, a Door Opens from Another New Calligraphy and Robots vs. Kung Fu from AngelHouse Press (both 2016). He co-edits White Knuckle Press with Dale Wisely.
James Grabill’s recent work is online at the Caliban, Elohi Gadugi, Buddhist Poetry Review, Harvard Review, Terrain, Mobius, Calliope, The Toronto Quarterly, Mad Hatter’s Review, and others. His books include Poem Rising Out of the Earth (1994) and An Indigo Scent after the Rain (2003), both from Lynx House Press. Wordcraft of Oregon has published his new project of environmental prose poems, Sea-Level Nerve: Book One, 2014 (available online -http://www.0s-1s.com/poetry-shelves/sea-level-nerve), Book Two, 2015 (now available). A long-time Oregon resident, he teaches 'systems thinking' and global issues relative to sustainability.
Nels Hanson grew up on a small farm in the San Joaquin Valley of California and has
worked as a farmer, teacher and contract writer/editor. His fiction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award and Pushcart nominations in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016. Poems appeared in Word Riot, Oklahoma Review, Pacific Review and other magazines and received a 2014 Pushcart nomination, Sharkpack Review’s 2014 Prospero Prize, and 2015 and 2016 Best of the Net nominations.
Michael Hettich's most recent book of poetry, SYSTEMS OF VANISHING, won the 2013 Tampa Review Prize and was published by University of Tampa Press in 2014. A new book, THE FROZEN HARBOR, winner of the David Martinson/Meadowhawk Prize, is forthcoming from Red Dragonfly Press. He lives and teaches in Miami.
Originally from Pennsylvania, Alicia Hoffman lives, writes, and teaches in Rochester, New York. Her poems have appeared in a variety of publications, including Tar River Poetry, Word Riot, A-Minor Magazine, One Throne Magazine, Radar Poetry, Redactions, and elsewhere. Her latest collection is Railroad Phoenix (Kelsay Books, 2017). Find out more at http://www.aliciamariehoffman.com/.
Troy Hill has written fiction, plays, and poems, including the novel, Myxocene, and the novella “A Revelation.” “The Nose” is included in his recently published short-fiction collection, Whatever Makes You Happy. His work has appeared in Sobotka Literary Magazine, Underground Voices magazine, and The Circus Book. He is currently a student in the Creative Writing MFA program at The City College of New York and lives in New York City and the Catskills. Learn more and keep in touch at troyernesthill.com.
Halvard Johnson was born in Newburgh, New York, and grew up in New York City and the Hudson Valley. He has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Maryland State Arts Council, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Baltimore City Arts, the Ragdale Foundation, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. He has lived and taught in Chicago, Illinois; El Paso, Texas; Cayey, Puerto Rico; Washington, D.C.; Baltimore, Maryland; and New York City. For many years he taught overseas in the European and Far East divisions of the University of Maryland, mostly in Germany and Japan. He lives with his wife, the prize-winning writer and visual artist Lynda Schor in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico.
Clara B. Jones is a retired scientist, currently practicing poetry in Silver Spring, MD, USA. As a woman of color, she writes about the Arts, Science, Technology, and the Environment and conducts research on experimental poetry, as well as, radical publishing. Clara is author of three chapbooks, and her poems, reviews, essays, and interviews have appeared or are forthcoming in various venues, including, Matter, Berkeley Poetry Review, 34th Parallel, Cutbank, Transnational, Bluestem, Entropy, Yellow Chair Review, Otoliths, and The Ofi Press Magazine.
Sandra Kolakiewicz has recently had poems appear in London Magazine, New World Writing, Per Contra, Prairie Schooner, Impossible Voice, and Ithaca Lit.
Allie Long is an English major and Economics minor at the University of Virginia. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Vine Leaves Literary Journal, Words Dance, Bird's Thumb, as well as others. Read more of her work at http://www.thinkdissociatively.com
Kristin LaFollette is a PhD student at Bowling Green State University. Her poems have been featured in West Trade Review, Poetry Quarterly, and Lost Coast Review, among others. She also has artwork featured in Harbinger Asylum, Plath Profiles, Pretty Owl Poetry, and Spry Literary Journal. She lives in northwestern Ohio.
Edward Myers was born in Denver and grew up in Colorado, Mexico, and Peru. His work history includes employment as a bricklayer, EMT, cabinetmaker, and editor. He has published three novels, two works of nonfiction, and thirteen children’s books. In addition, Myers has co-written or ghostwritten fifteen books, mostly in the areas psychology, health, and business. He lives in rural Vermont.
Kevin J.B. O’Connor received his MFA from Old Dominion University and has published poems in Slant, Anderbo, Bluestem, Bayou, The Tulane Review, Flare, Midway Review, and Visions International, among other journals.
Al Ortolani’s poetry and reviews have appeared in journals such as Rattle, Prairie Schooner, and New Letters. He has published seven books of poetry. His newest collection, Paper Birds Don’t Fly, was released in 2016 from New York Quarterly Books. His poems been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and he has recently been featured on the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor. His book, Waving Mustard in Surrender was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award, awarded by Binghamton University. Ortolani serves on the Board of the Little Balkans Press and Woodley Press. He was also a member of the Board of Directors of the Writers Place in Kansas City.
A retired teacher of English and photography, Roger Pfingston is the recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and two PEN Syndicated Fiction Awards. He has poems in recent issues of Poet Lore, Spoon River Poetry Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, and U.S. 1 Worksheets. His chapbook, A Day Marked for Telling, is available from Finishing Line Press.
A native of Norfolk VA, Daniel Pravda earned his MFA from George Mason University. He has published in dozens of journals, most recently in American Dissident, Dead Mule, Solo Novo, Vine Leaves, Poetica, Asinine, and Virginia Literary Journal and is forthcoming in Aji and Cedar Creek Review. Pravda has published one book of poetry, A Bird in the Hand Is a Dumb Bird, in 2011. He also fronts a rock band called The Dunes (www.thedunes.us) which seeks gigs.
Zack Rogow is the author, editor, or translator of twenty books or plays. His eighth book of poems, Talking with the Radio: poems inspired by jazz and popular music, was published in 2015 by Kattywompus Press. He is also writing a series of plays about authors, incorporating their writing into the action. The most recent of these, Colette Uncensored, had its first staged reading at the Millennium Stage of the Kennedy Center in Washington DC in 2015 and had a five-month run at The Marsh in San Francisco and Berkeley in 2016. His blog, Advice for Writers, has 190 posts on topics of interest to writers. Currently he teaches in the low-residency MFA in writing program at the University of Alaska Anchorage and serves as a contributing editor of Catamaran Literary Reader. www.zackrogow.com
Beyond a previous appearance in HSR, more than three hundred and twenty-five of Terry Savoie’s poems have been published in literary journals over the past three decades. These include The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Black Warrior Review, Prairie Schooner, Great River Review, The Iowa Review and North American Review as well as recent or forthcoming issues of Tiferet, Tar River, Ascent, Borderlands, Poem, Spillway, North Dakota Quarterly, Clover, and America among others.
Lynda Schor has had 6 collections of short fiction published. Her stories and articles have been in many magazines and literary journals. Her latest short fiction collection, Sexual Harassment Rules, is published by Spuyten Duyvil Press. She taught creative writing at The New School for 26 years. She now lives, writes and paints in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
Barry Seiler has published four volumes of poems, the last three with University of Akron Press. He lives in Roxbury, NY, a small town in the Catskills, with his wife and three cats, surrounded by many watchful things.
“Lagoon Camp” is the fifth of D. E. Steward’s long poems in HSR (two in No 32, one each in Nos 33 and 35). Two more of these months are in press with Raritan and 72 of them in sequence are in press as Chroma Volume One at Archae Editions, 2017.
Jane Stark lives in Greenwich Village in New York City. Her short stories have appeared in SNReview, Hamilton Stone Review and the Serving House Journal. Jane has an MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific University. “The Junior Embalmer” received an honorable mention in the Walker Percy Prize Short Fiction contest.
Lynn Strongin’s work has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She is, as well, a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and was nominated this year for the Lambda award. One novel forthcoming WINTER PSALM, and one book of poetry POWER TO THE MEEK, spring 2017.
Tim Suermondt is the author of three full-length collections of poems: Trying To Help The Elephant Man Dance (The Backwaters Press, 2007), Just Beautiful (New York Quarterly Books, 2010) and Election Night And The Five Satins (Glass Lyre Press, 2016)—along with three chapbooks. He has poems published in Poetry, The Georgia Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Blackbird, Bellevue Literary Review, North Dakota Quarterly, december magazine, Plume Poetry Journal, Poetry East and Stand Magazine (England), among others. He is a book reviewer for Cervena Barva Press and a poetry reviewer for Bellevue Literary Review. He lives in Cambridge (MA) with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.
Ben Swimm is an MFA candidate in poetry at Oregon State University. When he is not writing, you can find him working on the vegetable farm he co-owns in Palmer, AK, or taking a break to get out on the trails. His work has previously been published in Cirque, JMWW, and Clapboard House, and is forthcoming in Salamander.
Pepper Trail's poems have appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Bird's Thumb, Pedestal, and other publications, and have been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net Awards. His collection, Cascade-Siskiyou: Poems, was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry. He lives in Ashland, Oregon, where he works as a biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Lisa Zimmerman’s poems and short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Apple Valley Review, The Florida Review, Gravel, Poet Lore, Cave Wall, Two Cities Review and other journals. Her latest poetry collection is The Hours I Keep (Main Street Rag, 2016).
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