First, I’m happy to welcome Chauna Craig to the Atticus Review Editorial team as the new Creative Nonfiction Editor. I think she’s going to bring a great eye to the work we publish at Atticus Review and I feel very fortunate to have her on-board. Here’s more on Chauna:
Chauna Craig is the author of the story collection THE WIDOW’S GUIDE TO EDIBLE MUSHROOMS (Press 53, 2017). A Montana native, she now lives and teaches near Pittsburgh and goes back home whenever possible. Her creative nonfiction has been published in Fourth Genre, Ploughshares, Superstition Review, Terrain, and elsewhere. She loves essays with a strong sense of voice and respects the power of language to transform lives. Her website is www.chaunacraig.com.
Second, I’m equally happy to announce that our previous CNF Editor, Dorothy Bendel, has become our Managing Editor! Dorothy has been the CNF Editor here at Atticus Review for the past year and has done an amazing job. Recently, she has helped bring to fruition our monthly Author News column. Here’s more on Dorothy:
Dorothy Bendel is the author of Expatriate (Finishing Line Press). Her fiction and nonfiction can be found in publications such as The Rumpus, Connotation Press, Green Mountains Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Atticus Review, and Microchondria II: 42 More Short-Short Stories Collected by Harvard Book Store. She currently lives in Washington, DC where she writes, teaches, and ingests alarming amounts of caffeine. Find her on Twitter @DorothyBendel.
I’ll also mention one more bragging point for Dorothy: she had this great piece published in Catapult this week called “Body Wash: Instructions on Surviving Homelessness.” Go read it!
Finally, I’d like to just say that it’s been just over six months since we launched the new Atticus Review, and I want to thank the people who have reached out to me and said they liked the changes. I feel very lucky to be doing this and I’m grateful to all the people who send us their work and make this possible. Also, a BIG THANK YOU to all the writers who have left us voluntary contributions as they submit. Your tips will help us pay the bills and we appreciate that very much.
The response we’ve had to our current Flash Fiction contest has been wonderful and there is still another two weeks left to submit! SO GO DO THAT NOW!! Unlike what you might be used to with other magazines, we will NOT extend our deadline.
So, in drafting this update and thinking of it as a “letter from the editor” (which is always weird for me) I thought about what kind of feature image I could use for that (because I am always thinking about things like “feature images”) and of course, the first thing that sprung to mind was a nice, neat image of a pad and pen, or a pristine desktop with a lonely and moody laptop, shadows, lighting. This is the way letters are meant to be drafted by editors, right? But all that is bullshit. Because I don’t write from that type of situation. I’m sure some people do, but my guess (my hope?) is most people don’t. I write among coffee cups and cans of La Croix. I write with opened and unopened mail in stacks on my desk. I write among life objects that are not put away. I write with my weekly pill boxes next to me, an MTA subway card, a headlamp. And dogs, of course—I write with dogs next to me. Always. I have no choice in that. So here’s what that looks like right now, Saturday, 9 am:
The world is weird and distracting. Keep writing good stuff. Begin anyway.
-David
