Submitted by Prairie Schooner on Fri, 03/20/2015 - 14:56
by Dan Froid
Yesterday I ate some chocolate, Dove-brand dark chocolate with almonds. I opened the purple foil and popped it into my mouth; beneath the chocolate lay a secret inscription. “Feed your sense of anticipation,” it read. What? Feed my what? Feed my sense of anticipation. Presumably the chocolate wrapper urges me to give myself something exciting, or, better, something both exciting and vaguely luxurious to which to look forward, like, presumably, more Dove chocolate. Or feed, indeed, my already anxiety-prone mind with…more anxiety? Sounds terrific. I’ll accidentally send a gossipy message to the subject of the gossip. I’ll delay working on a paper until the night before it’s due. I’ll take the wrong exit off the highway a half-hour before I’m due to arrive somewhere. And then I’ll think: How do I get out of this mess? I’ll certainly anticipate something.
Submitted by Prairie Schooner on Thu, 03/19/2015 - 14:58
by Viola Allo
This post is part of an ongoing series of blog posts on the theme of Women and the Global Imagination. In our Winter 2014 issue Alicia Ostriker curated a poetry portfolio on this theme, and we were so struck by its contents that we wanted to keep the dialog surronding this theme going on our blog. Viola Allo's essay considers the power of a global imagination, our collective ability to better care for women, to build a world where women and girls matter. We hope her words resonate with you.
The Chibok Girls as Our Imaginary Sisters and Daughters
On the night of April 14th of 2014, a government boarding school in the town of Chibok in northeastern Nigeria was attacked by members of the Islamic fundamentalist (terrorist) group Boko Haram.
Submitted by Prairie Schooner on Wed, 03/18/2015 - 21:40
by Brita Thielen
The novel featured this week, Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (2003; McClelland and Stewart), is unique in that it is part of a trilogy: the MaddAddam Trilogy. The sequels are The Year of the Flood (2009) and MaddAddam (2013). I have not yet had a chance to read these sequels, but Oryx and Crake definitely left me hungry for more, and I can’t wait to devote time to them over the summer. Also, rumor has it that the books are being adapted into an HBO television series by Darren Aronofsky.
Submitted by Prairie Schooner on Tue, 03/17/2015 - 15:32
by Allison Williams
In our Winter 2014 issue Alicia Ostriker curated a poetry portfolio on Women and the Global Imagination, and we were so struck by its contents that we wanted to keep the dialog surronding this theme going on our blog. In her essay, Allison Williams explores cross-cultural difference and its effects on both creativity and productivity. We hope you enjoy reading. To read more on this theme, visit our store and buy or Winter 2014 issue (print or ebook), or become a subscriber to Prairie Schooner today.
Submitted by Prairie Schooner on Tue, 03/17/2015 - 14:47
On March 17, 1988—a fairly warm day for Lincoln, NE reaching a high of 43 degrees—Carolyn Kreiter-Kurylo published her first poem in the Prairie Schooner Spring issue titled “Dream: Catching the Air.” In a poem of memories revived while dreaming, Kreiter-Kurylo fondly recalls how “Always before bed, / you read Light In August/ or Les Miserables.”
It was on this same day over in Europe that the world-renowned Les Miserables premiered its first full West End/ Broadway production at the Det Norske Teatret in Oslo, Norway. A production based on the novel written by French poet and novelist Victor Hugo, the play focuses on several characters’ lives, including Jean Valijean, a man working for redemption.
What a stirring, haunting bed-time story!—Alexandria Douglas
Submitted by Prairie Schooner on Mon, 03/16/2015 - 10:56
by Dan Froid
This year’s Book Prize closed at midnight yesterday. Did you submit your manuscript? In this week’s Contributor Spotlight, we take a look at another of our past winners.
What does Cortney Davis have in common with Walt Whitman, Louisa May Alcott, Mary Renault, and Theresa Brown? All of these writers have, like Davis, also worked as nurses. Davis is a nurse-practitioner and the winner, in 2003, of the inaugural Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry for her collection Leopold’s Maneuvers.
Submitted by Prairie Schooner on Fri, 03/13/2015 - 11:40
by Dan Froid
This week, I'm thinking about translation. Translation is conversion—and not just from one language to another. I’ve been reading about the word’s usage in other disciplines: how it’s been translated. I did not know, for example, that when a holy relic is moved to a different site that process is called translation. Nor did I know, or at least I forgot what I learned in high-school math, that in geometry a translation is the shifting of all points of a figure in the same direction. That’s a useful image. So translation is a wholesale shift: mark all the points of a figure and push them onward, elsewhere: map them onto someplace new.
Submitted by Prairie Schooner on Wed, 03/11/2015 - 17:41
LaSelle Gilman
by Dani Kerr
This is the first installment of Lost Writer Wednesdays blog series, an eight-week series and companion to NETNebraska’s Lost Writers of the Plains radio programming. Each week, we’ll spotlight long-forgotten writers once published in the early days of Prairie Schooner. For the full multi-media experience, download the iBook in the iTunes store.
Submitted by Prairie Schooner on Wed, 03/11/2015 - 12:05
Quick-to-Read Reviews
Monthly book reviews in brief from the staff of Prairie Schooner and associates.
Vol. 4 Issue 1. March 11, 2015. Ed. Paul Clark.
Unaccompanied Minors by Alden Jones | Reviewed by David Weinstein
Beastings by Benjamin Myers | Reviewed by Armel Dagorn
Harm by Hillary Gravendyk | Reviewed by Maureen Alsop
Submitted by Prairie Schooner on Wed, 03/11/2015 - 08:41
by Karen Ackland
This post is part of an ongoing series of blog posts on the theme of Women and the Global Imagination. In our Winter 2014 issue Alicia Ostriker curated a poetry portfolio on this theme, and we were so struck by its contents that we wanted to keep the dialog surronding this theme going on our blog. Here, Karen Ackland's essay details her own changing understanding of the role of poise in defining womanhood. We hope you enjoy reading.
Award-winning writer Jaylan Salah is a poet, translator, content expert, and film critic.Workstation Bluesis a collection from the cubicle for white-collar workers worldwide passing the ti
