Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Bacopa Literary Review 2016: From the Editor

What better way to evoke the quality of my experience as Editor in Chief than recalling a near delirium of top-quality submissions? Already infatuated with Bacopa Literary Review by the time submissions opened, within weeks I began receiving emails like these from the genre editors:
“I am so happy—receiving a flood of good poems!”
“Some fine nonfiction submissions coming in. Need more space.”
“I love the voice of this narrator, the rhythms of the sentences, her fine feel for the structure of a story.”
How lucky I feel to have embraced this opportunity—to help an established literary review of six years continue to thrive, in collaboration with a team of experienced writers eager to try new approaches. Thank you former editors for handing us this gift, and thank you Writers Alliance of Gainesville for supporting our vision and providing financial backing.

While we no doubt worried a few people with our changes, the new editorial board wanted to refresh Bacopa’s image in the eyes of the writing public. For example, Bacopa’s 2016 cover was the winning design from a cover art contest. The abstract Bacopa flower concept symbolizes our challenge to poets and writers for contemporary as well as traditional work. We shortened the submission period, eliminated fees, and committed to responding to all submissions within three months. In addition to the usual ads, we expanded our presence through social media, bumping up Bacopa’s Twitter account, adding a Facebook page, and posting frequently on our new Editors’ Blog—to promote contributors and demonstrate the quality of writing we seek.

We invited and, happily, received poetry that turns our world upside down, nonfiction that makes us laugh or cry, fiction that evokes Virginia Wolff, Vladimir Nabokov, Flannery O’Connor. Chosen from almost 1500 submissions, our 60 contributors across genres will transform the way you view the world. Their inspirations range from an ancient Persian stew to Chekhov to present-day piercings. The variety of work is as classical as the centuries-old haiku, as experimental as a bedroom that grows, as lyrical as the Joycean rush of a memoir in 1/60th-of-a-second sentence fragments.

Please join us in our adventure: Bacopa Literary Review 2016!

Mary Bast, Editor in Chief
Susie Baxter, Associate Editor
Mary Bridgman, Managing Editor
Kaye Linden, Poetry Editor
U.R. Bowie, Fiction Editor
Rick Sapp, Creative Nonfiction Editor

Friday, October 7, 2016

Our 2016 Pushcart Nominations

by Editor-in-Chief Mary Bast

Our Pushcart nominations are in the mail, so we can officially congratulate five contributors from our 2016 issue.

Bacopa Literary Review 2016 Pushcart Prize nominations:

"The Crooked Man" (fiction), by Afia Atakora:
Afia Atakora is currently earning her MFA at Columbia University. She lives in Avenel, New Jersey, where she is at work on a novel about a reconstruction-era midwife.
"Sestina: That mouth . . ." (poetry), by Carolyne Wright:
Carolyne Wright's most recent book is the anthology, Raising Lilly Ledbetter: Women Poets Occupy the Workspace (Lost Horse Press, 2015). This anthology is the recipient of ten Pushcart Prize nominations and is a finalist in The Foreword Review's Book of the Year Awards. Wright has nine other poetry volumes and five volumes of poetry in translation, and received a Pushcart Prize in 2010. Since 2005, when she returned to her native Seattle, she has taught for the Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA Program and for Richard Hugo House.
"Life of a Scion watched too tightly Against its nature" (poetry), by Lynn Geri:
Lynn Geri waited until she was into her seventh decade to take up the study of poetry. She has become deeply engaged with the beauty and romance of language. Lynn lives in a forest on Whidbey Island, in Washington State's Puget Sound. She is also to be published in the Sonora Review.
"--the Speed of Grass--the Speed of Us" (nonfiction), by Michael Farrell Smith:
Michael Farrell Smith's work has been published in Tin House, New Delta Review, Booth, and elsewhere. His nonfiction piece in Bacopa Literary Review 2016 is experimental nonfiction--a memoir of 1/60th of one second. A sentence fragment about a fragment of life. A memoir of the time it takes to snap a photo.
"A Clothesline Meditation" (nonfiction), by Debra Burks Hori:
Debra Burks Hori's work has been published or is forthcoming in This I Believe, Crack the Spine, The Penmen Review, Silver Birch Press, and The Los Angeles Times Health Section. When her husband was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, Debra wrote to comfort herself; she continues her writing to share our universal experience of grief. She is an Educational Therapist in private practice, a parent, and is owned by two cats.