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NEWS
Winner of the Bakeless Prize for the story collection American Masculine
Story The Great Divide selected for anthology The Better of McSweeney's, Volume 2
Ruminate Short Story Prize for The Miracles of Vincent van Gogh
Subterrain Poetry Prize for poetry cycle The Suicide Elegies
Crab Creek Review Fiction Prize for the story Rodin's the Hand of God
Pushcart nomination, McSweeney’s, Dave Eggers and Eli Horowitz, Editors
Best New American Voices nomination, The Inland Northwest Center for Writers
Fulbright Scholar, Leadership and Forgiveness Studies, South Africa
Visiting Scholar, Ninoy & Cory Aquino Center for Leadership, Manila, Philippines
Best New Poets selection, Open Competition Winner
GOOD WORDS ON THE STORIES
Personal note: I want to thank the fine editors (and their editorial teams) who have given kind responses to my work, sometimes in accepting a story for publication, sometimes in rejecting a story. Their heart for their work sustains the literary arts. I am grateful to the following editors, among the many over the years who have been important voices of clarity: Megan Ault Regnerus, Big Sky Journal and Montana Quarterly; M.M.M. Hayes, StoryQuarterly; Scott Peterson, Aethlon; Tom Jenks, Narrative Magazine; Brian Bedard, South Dakota Review; and Eli Horowitz, McSweeney’s.
I also want to honor the authors who have given of their care and discernment in helping me toward greater understandings of love for art, beauty, and life: Jonathan Johnson, Jess Walter, Claire Davis, Sherman Alexie, Peter Orner, Peter Rock, and Stephen Elliott.
Below, please find good words from authors and editors.
“elevated, …prophetic voice …epic, mythic …a remarkable piece—strange and beautiful and new. …lyrical and dreamlike …utterly convincing setting and character.”
—Eli Horowitz, Managing Editor, McSweeney’s
“This is a fine story… complicated, very sad, sometimes funny, beautifully written. Most of all, it’s a story… and it moves. It’s full of tension and drama and action. …I’m completely hooked—the story is both wonderfully suspenseful and completely sad. [The small man]… purely breaks my heart, as does the accused man. [Zion], too, is a wonderful character, and what you’re getting at here—an educated man who can’t transcend his physical self is pulled into an ugly mob and changed by it—is strange and lovely and frightening. You love language, clearly, and much of your writing is gorgeous. You’re a stylist …[and] write very beautifully about landscape, and one of the things I admire about this story is the pressure of the outside world upon the train.”
—Elizabeth McCracken, National Book Award finalist for The Giant’s House and author of Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry
“We are delighted to have your story, “Before He Sleeps,” for Northwest Review. Many thanks.” —John Witte, Editor, Northwest Review
“Thanks for a great story. Your prose is amazing, so different and new. Different from other writers. You have a unique, powerful voice. …lyrical prose …the entire piece is lyrical—which draws us to it. …the end line …does its work by resonating, creating a satisfying ending…”
—Jan MacRae, Fiction Editor, Northwest Review
“…wonderful… powerful, touching without being sentimental or maudlin, lovely.” —Claire Davis, author of Winter Range
“You write extremely well. …the description of landscape, and the atmosphere you evoke, and how this atmosphere seems to at once resonate in this landscape and also internally, within the characters—that’s all quite wonderful. I get an extraordinary sense of the family history, the complicated relationships, the long silences. The level of complexity that you manage, the many layers of injury and the way that questions of blame eventually become quite beside the point. I found this… moving, believable and right.”
—Peter Rock, author of Carnival Wolves and The Unsettling
“We get a lot of father-son stories, but this is much better than the rest. Thank you.”
—Eldy Schultz, Editor, Talking River Review
“…a beautiful story, measured and sensitive.”
—EC, Esquire
- on Triptych on Rodin’s The Hand of God
“…poetic language… a smooth and chilling read.”
—Liz Tingue, Zoetrope: All-Story
- on City of Hunger and Light
“I found the chase sequence particularly well-written—genuinely suspenseful, and full of nicely observed details. The entire piece has an eerie, nightmarish feel, blurring the boundary between the external action and the workings of Jakob’s mind.”
—Kathryn French, Zoetrope: All-Story
“This is great fun, full of telling detail, rife with stereotypes that all remind us of people we know. We like your touch, your good eye for detail and brush-stroke ability with character. …it was warmly admired. ..beautiful, loving piece. …A highlight of our reading …as it has such heart.”
—M.M.M. Hayes, Editor, StoryQuarterly
“I really enjoyed American Masculine (great title). The prose [is] never choppy—always fluid with a confident grace to it. Particularly, some of the descriptions [are] wonderful—the one about his ‘big boned’ hands comes to mind. …it’s a story that should be heard.”
—JB, Esquire
“We love the story… the bones, the heart of the story… powerful.”
—M.M.M. Hayes, Editor, StoryQuarterly
“Fine writing, challenging structure, interesting milieu. …touching and poetic. The incantory language… is fine and well done. The ending surprised me and drove me back through the story, which is an achievement for a piece of work. Very strong, original, powerful story. Absorbing and moving. Original and powerful.” —Editorial Team, StoryQuarterly
“…an elegant, evenly written piece.”
—JW, Esquire
“I have read your story and enjoyed it a great deal. It’s an ambitious piece—a kind of opus, and it displays the advancement of your work, your thoughts, your gifts. The piece addresses important issues and does so, with grace.”
—Tom Jenks, author, with Raymond Carver, of American Short Story Masterpieces, and Editor, Narrative Magazine
“Refreshing to see a story explore strength rather than submission when it comes to alcoholism.”
—Harris R. Levinson, Editor, Crab Creek Review
- on How Much Forgiveness Does A Man Need?
“We are grateful for the opportunity to read your work. …we receive a large number of manuscripts, several hundred for every one that we end up publishing. We have read your story, “How Much Forgiveness…” very carefully and decided not to publish it. Nevertheless, we were impressed with several aspects fo it. This piece has a number of virtues. The parallel construction of having “Stop” before every sentence in Part 1 is used quite effectively. …best of luck in your writing. …[We] would like to see more of your work.
—Editorial Team, The Missouri Review
“In Mrs. Secrest Shann Ray illuminates a marriage in its middle years, showing with indifferent sympathy the lure of betrayal and a search for renewal. When even nostalgia for early love fails, what are a man and a woman to do?”
—Tom Jenks, author, with Raymond Carver, of American Short Story Masterpieces, and Editor, Narrative Magazine
“The movement and meditative quality of this reminds me …of Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony. And it gave me a frame of reference. The names of all the players. Who they all married. These things really create a tapestry. And within that tapestry, are mini stories—the brother and the dent in his shoulder blade, Honey’s beaded basketball. I also really like the Spokane details—the Rite-Aid parking lot. And these details are juxtaposed with these …romantic, dreamy snow scenes. All very complex and interesting.”
—Polly Buckingham, Editor, StringTown
- on The World Clean and Bright
“Thank you for sending us the superb “The World Clean and Bright,” sorry that we can’t use it just now… best of luck in placing this myth elsewhere.”
—JW McCormack, Associate Editor, Conjunctions
GOOD WORDS ON THE POETRY
“Thank you for your fine poetic sequence. So sad for the being who exists within the poem—so much aloneness sits in the center.”
—Sandra Alcosser, Poet Laureate of Montana and author of Except by Nature and A Fish to Feed All Hunger
“So much echo from the language in the power of sensual tendencies. All the more resonant and haunting… A Cormac McCarthy-esque scene and language. Returns again to the tenderness, and hope. Great haunting place to end.”
—Jonathan Johnson, author of In the Wilderness We Imagined Ourselves, Mastodon 80% Complete, and Hannah and the Mountain
- on Going-to-the-Sun Road…
“The 50th anniversary issue of the Portland Review features fiction by up-and-coming writers Matt Williamson, Matthew M. Quick, and Beth Kafka, as well as stunning new work by poets Sean Thomas Dougherty, Shann Ray, and Yvonne Murphy.”
—Portland Review, Publisher’s Description, Spring 2006 issue
- on Best New Poets, and A Quiet Poem About Marital Sex
“Congratulations. George Garrett (Poet Laureate of Virginia and author of Days of our Lives Lie in Fragments: New and Old Poems, 1957-1997), the editor for Best New Poets, has selected your poem, A Quiet Poem About Marital Sex, for inclusion in the anthology. We received over 1,100 poems total. Once again, congratulations. It’s been a joy to read your work.”
—Jeb Livingood, Series Editor, Best New Poets
“You use understatement or the quieter tone as a brilliant balance for hyperbole. You’ve made this ...precise. It has an interesting effect, links the sex metaphor (in more balance) with the precision about the ordinary.”
—Jonathan Johnson, author of In the Wilderness We Imagined Ourselves, Mastodon 80% Complete, and Hannah and the Mountain
“At a time when some argue the influence of poetry is in decline, there are, in fact, more books of poetry published today than ever before. While many large publishing houses and media outlets no longer feature poetry, a growing number of small presses and magazines still believe in its power—and its necessity. Count us among them. We’re proud to bring you fifty poets whose work makes that belief easy to come by.”
—Jeb Livingood, Series Editor, Best New Poets
“This anthology of poems by emerging poets deserves and demands our attention. The poems attract us with direct, intense, and formal authority.”
—Erik Pankey, author of Cenotaph
“An aesthetically diverse anthology of new work that radiates, by turns, with lyric depth, narrative complexity, cultural savvy, and a prodigious range of human emotion and linguistic experimentation. I am heartened by the poetic future embodied and promised by this breakthrough, necessary series.”
—Lisa Russ Spaar, Director of the University of Virginia’s Graduate Creative Writing Program
“It's a nervy thing for an anthology to label itself Best New Poets, but once again the collection lives up to its name. It's a rich and readable selection, reflecting no party-line aesthetic, and attesting to the formidable promise of the emerging generation.” —David Wojahn, author of Spirit Cabinet
* The Charlottesville Daily Progress *
on Best New Poets, and A Quiet Poem About Marital Sex
“Best New Poets… is an anthology of the work of 50 men and women emerging into an arena of writing that’s as demanding as it is enriching. The magic of poetry, and those who create it, is one of transformation—turning words into lines of intricate emotion and ideas. It is, therefore, a form of writing both revealing and powerful, depending on the former to evoke the latter. The poems in Best New Poets are as varied as the poets who wrote them. They are fanciful, mordant, self-revelatory, wildly imaginative. …the range of talent is impressive and gives a sense of encouragement to those who value this most difficult, concise writing form.
“Shann Ray’s “A Quiet Poem About Marital Sex” is an ode to the blessed distraction named in the title. “…we’re not worried anymore/about the bills, the yard, the work, the mess—/we’re facing what’s more pressing…/we’ve blown the doors off the house.”
“There are poems about guilt and love and longing.
“The prevailing wisdom is that while novels allow for much latitude through the luxury of length, each word in a short story must “tell.” Just think how much each word must convey in order for the poem to be a vital force.
“The poets in “Best New Poets” have taken on a most exacting, descriptive task, and they are all, in essence, winners. Not just by virtue of having won through either open competition, or being nominated by a particular publication, but because they have accepted a daunting challenge. The challenge of making us see their vision through their own eyes. And through carefully—painstakingly—chosen words.
“Let us never forget the words.”
—from The Charlottesville Daily Progress, an article entitled ’Best New Poets’ Showcases Fresh Talent, by Barbara Rich
“Exquisite. …there’s an urgency. …role of the common in finding both truth and wonder. Domestic relationships in context of wilderness. So telling and accurate that there is really no distinction! Love the sense of wonder. I love the [work] for its large-heartedness, its unabashed exuberance, a la Hikmet! I’m noticing how often your poems end in openness. The precision reflects the love of the observer… throughout. You allow yourself so much rhetorical authority, but ground it in the visceral and allow for contradiction. Excellent! Reminds me of Harrison in the way you know what you’re talking about and thus seem at home in the natural world! Emotionally articulate. …wildness in love set in wildness of landscape. …so much great sex throughout. Electric! …just stunningly good writing. …wonderfully large-hearted! Literature, life of the imagination and life of entropy vs. the life of creation. I love how the autobiographical interweaves with the history of the soul. Mytho-autobiographical …engages the lyric and the imagistic of the moment by moment. The exclamation, the expansiveness of voice! The blurring of boundary between self and world, between human and nature and cause and effect, between art and wild. Music. Wow! Yes! Precision of description as a counterweight for exuberance and praise. The blurring of boundary between self and world, between human and nature and cause and effect, between art and wild. The “she”, the domestic, music, wilderness, sex, self and other, singleness and multiplicity, crossing between to show the world is one. Exquisite.”
—Jonathan Johnson, author of In the Wilderness We Imagined Ourselves, Mastodon 80% Complete, and Hannah and the Mountain
GOOD WORDS ON THE NOVEL:
FIRES OF THE FALLEN WORLD
“Powerful. Original. Stunning… so unique… remarkable. The twin ideas of violence and forgiveness are wonderfully entwined …lovely.”
—Jess Walter, National Book Award finalist for The Zero, and author of Edgar Allen Poe Award winning Citizen Vince
“Wonderful. Lovely. A singing in all of this… The focus, concentration, language, art, and knowing you bring… is impressive! …another reversal in a reciprocal pattern …among the fated tribes of man at war and peace. …the sense of witnessing. Very strong! Light and life.”
—Tom Jenks, author, with Raymond Carver, of American Short Story Masterpieces, and Editor, Narrative Magazine
GOOD WORDS
“Like a well-constructed poem, Shann’s [work] is characterized by kindness, intensity and grace.”
—20 Under 40 Rising Stars, Catalyst Magazine, by Amy McCaffree |
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