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Growing the Longridge Review family of writers, editors, readers, and artists is a perpetual joy, and it is truly with joy that we welcome Thea and Semein as 2021 readers (they will be joining, not replacing, our current band of five editors) for The Anne C. Barnhill Prize for Creative Nonfiction. Check them out, and consider submitting your work beginning June 1.

— EDG

Thea Princewill is a writer for magazines, newspapers, television, advertising agencies, and corporations. In fact, when she isn’t writing, she is usually reading. Or copy-editing. Or proofreading. Thea lives in South Florida and is currently working to improve her French language skills.

Thea Princewill

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Semein Washington is a poet whose published work can be found in Light, Eye to the Telescope, Sijo: An International Journal of Poetry and Song, Sonder Midwest, and is forthcoming in Hawai’i Review. Semein’s work is ecstatic poetry discussing topics of nature, science, religion, music, comic books, and human experience. He currently lives in Richmond, Virginia, and teaches as an adjunct professor of English at John Tyler Community College.

Semein Washington

***

If you’re new here: In 2010, a little idea for sharing essays on childhood got a big boost when Anne Clinard Barnhill submitted “Winter Solstice” to an unknown fellow West Virginian. I wanted to pursue the idea there is a lot to say about how our early experiences shape the world. Anne later sent “Melungeons and Mystery,” as well as “Staying.” It is because of Anne’s belief in Essays on a West Virginia Childhood that the project became something so much bigger, an online literary journal that publishes writers from coast to coast in the USA, and beyond.

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Untitled © Sharon Lyn Stackpole

Creative Nonfiction, #19, Spring 2021

d. e. fulford, 1992-1996
Diane Gottlieb, Deadman's Float
Linda Jordan, Boyhood in 3 Parts
Marie Manilla, Sasquatch
Anna Oberg, Thundersnow
Virginia Watts, Sleds

Featured Artist

Sharon Lyn Stackpole

Submissions open soon for our next issue: #BarnhillPrize, June 1-July 31.

Here are links to jump right to what’s in our latest issue! Rather than writing summaries of each piece, we are trying something new with #19. Using Facebook and Twitter, we will post pull lines from each essay throughout the coming week, paired with links to the writing.

There’s an impressive blend of craft styles in this issue: flash, braid, lyric, bespoke structure. It’s gratifying to attract and publish such quality work. Dive right in, or follow us on the socials and let your mind dine with leisure as we serve up the good stuff all week.

Thank you for your support.

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Miriam Glassman, The Bibliosquatter
Therése Halscheid, Incident
Kent Jacobson, What She Didn’t Say
Janine Kovac, Breaking Character
Sharon Waters, Straight Hair Be Damned
Hannah Williams, Ring and Rabbit

Featured Artist

Chloe W.

My World © Chloe W.

This issue has a bully thread running through it; the essays range from humorous to painful, and remind the reader that childhood is often a rollercoaster of dodged threats, unwanted pursuits, emotional crises, and coming to terms with how to best situate what other people put us through so we can move on with our whole lives.

Childhood can be funny, heartbreaking, and dangerous; and some parts of it are unforgettable.

In The Bibliosquatter, Glassman confesses her childhood secret life at the library; and by secret we mean secret. You can’t help but be impressed and awed by the lengths she goes to while escaping her personal bully. What were 1970s parents doing again?

Halscheid’s flash piece recalls the meanness of boys who waited for her daily, harassing her and mocking her appearance as she tried to best cover her starving body during her father’s illness. The narrator’s loneliness becomes something we can’t un-feel.

Jacobson’s haunting memories of a girl he loved and her unexplained disappearance from his life linger like salty air or soft flowers; the entire narrative feels like something evoked from a mysterious scent, something that triggers a sense of loss but exchanges what it takes for something beautiful.

In Breaking Character, Kovac’s childhood ballet takes a Lord of The Flies turn that, while bringing a laugh, also owns up to how we feel deep desires and rages even when very young — emotions and wants on a level that feel familiar from an adult perspective. (Her recounting of a teacher’s memories of winters in Germany is not to be missed. You’ll appreciate The Nutcracker on a new level.)

Waters tries to make peace with her mother’s obsessions with what other people think of her and her family. Many readers will recognize the experience of trying to please a parent who cannot be satisfied, and spending years seeking the best way to accept that parent and to love oneself.

Finally, Williams explores a relationship that spans childhood to adulthood, and that reveals some uncomfortable truths about competition, judgement, and control in unexpected places. Readers no doubt will recognize some version of this evolution in their own lives. The reappearance of the rabbit (What is the rabbit, in fact?) towards the end of the essay is a brilliant touch.

Come read and enjoy!

The writers have worked hard to bring you their experience, wisdom, and places for empathy and understanding. Our team of readers and editors are privileged to assist.

P.S. Submissions open soon for our next issue: February 1, 2021-April 2, 2021.

Thank you for your support.

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Creative Nonfiction, #13 Winter 2018-19 

John Jacobson, Eight-Millimeter Film

Tracy Line, Traversing Icy Roads

Stephen Lottridge, What’s the Point of Rabbits?

Virginia Petrucci, Who Is Ben?

Dana VanderLugt, The Orchard

And other wonderful things…..come see!

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The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses series, published every year since 1976, is the most honored literary project in America.

Since 1976, hundreds of presses and thousands of writers of short stories, poetry and essays have been represented in annual collections. Each year most of the writers and many of the presses are new to the series. Every volume contains an index of past selections, plus lists of outstanding presses with addresses.

The Pushcart Prize has been a labor of love and independent spirits since its founding. It is one of the last surviving literary co-ops from the 60’s and 70’s. Its legacy is assured by donations to its Fellowships endowment.

Longridge Review is pleased announce our 2018 nominees:

  • Nora Seilheimer, Back into Movement

(published Winter 2018-February, Longridge Review, https://longridgereview.com/nora-seilheimer/)

  • Luanne Castle, The Secret Kotex Club  

(published Spring 2018-May, Longridge Review, https://longridgereview.com/luanne-castle/)

  • Risa Nye, Visions of LaDonna                                                                                                          

(published Spring 2018-May, Longridge Review, https://longridgereview.com/risa-nye/)

  • David McVey, On the Wonder of the World

(published Fall 2018-November, Longridge Review, https://longridgereview.com/david-mcvey/)

  • Aliza Dube, Loved to Death

(published Fall 2018-November, Longridge Review, https://longridgereview.com/aliza-dube/)

  • Nikki Sambitsky, Penny Drop

(published Fall 2018-November, Longridge Review, https://longridgereview.com/nikki-sambitsky/)

 

Congratulations to each of these wonderful writers, and thank you to everyone who found a forever home for his or her essay with us in 2018!

 

Header art by Sharon Lyn Stackpole, “Conversation with Annie,” ink and coffee on cold press.

 

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Creative Nonfiction, #12 Fall 2018

Christopher Cascio, Kid
Heidi Davidson-Drexel, Your Boss
Aliza Dube, Loved to Death
Anne Noonan, Stink Tree
Lisa Rizzo, Snowsuit Prisoners

Nikki Sambitsky, Penny Drop

Featured Artist

Peter Tavernise

NEWS:

We will open submissions again from December 14, 2018 – January 15, 2019.

  • Our guest blogger in Issue 12 is essayist Heidi Davidson-Drexel. Read thoughts on how she developed the narrator voice in “Your Boss.”
  • Suzanne Farrell Smith’s essay, “The Helping Man,” is nominated by Pembroke Magazine for Pushcart Prize. Congratulations and good luck! This fall Suzanne also had an essay published in Brevity, “If You Find a Mouse in a Glue Trap.” Finally, her essay “Work and Love” is published in Issue 8 of Adanna. Way to go, SFS!
  • Read our editor Mary Heather Noble’s blog post, On Writer’s Block: Notes from the Kitchen Island. “I’ve tried all kinds of ways to avoid doing this work. I tried moving far away, and when that didn’t help, I wrote and published a few scenes from that childhood path and then suffered the consequences. I’ve tried writing about other things. I’ve tried literally running away.” This is a gorgeous and vulnerable self-examination of, among other things, the mountain climbing we do as children and as adults.
  • Our former guest editor for Peter Tavernise is this issue’s Featured Artist — check out his gorgeous digitally created work!
  • Do you have a question for us? Write to us at Ask the Editor. In December, we will tackle the question, “What qualifies as childhood for your mission?” Read Heidi’s blog post about her authorial choices in her essay, Your Boss.
  • We ask you to follow our blog! We don’t post there often, but when we do it’s focused information you can use about writing and writers, as well as updates about our journal.
  • We are on Twitter and Facebook: Follow/Like us to stay in the loop on all things Longridge: @LongridgeReview and Longridge Editors LLC.

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by Essayist and Guest Blogger Heidi Davidson-Drexel

I was not officially a child when I was violated by my boss, a reality which further muddied the mess of emotions I felt about it.  I used to struggle with what to call the experience.  I was enough of a child at the time to feel molested, but couldn’t reconcile that term with my age.  For awhile I referred to it as a controlling relationship- a title modification that allowed me to skim past essential details.  But it wasn’t a relationship.  It seemed there were no accurate descriptions, words or phrases that fit.

To write about it, I had to allow myself to peer into my inner state at the time it all happened.  It wasn’t an easy place to go.  But when I finally got up the courage, the overwhelming feeling I had was one of sympathy for my younger self.  The internalized guilt and self-hatred had dissipated with the years and I could see the confused young person I was, grabbing onto anything she could find.

This feeling of understanding grew as I worked on it.  The barrier between adolescence and adulthood is like a line of buoys separating the shallow end of the pool from the deep end.  It’s flexible- easy to cross back and forth.  In all of the outer ways, I was like an adult.  I started working at 14 and was supporting myself while in college. I studied hard and did well in school. But emotionally, I was still splashing around in the shallows.

When I started out writing this piece, I thought if it as an explanation to some nameless person, some naïve reader who might not understand how such a thing could happen.  I wanted to show how easy it is to lose the ground under your feet, how it could happen to anyone.  By the time I finished the essay and reread it, it was clear.  I had written it, not for some nameless bystander, but for my younger self.  For the part of me that still didn’t understand what had gone wrong, and for the parts of me that still felt I had done something to cause it.  I wrote this for the child I was, in the hopes that she can begin to move on.

Read the essay here.

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More details are on the way, but right now you can be one of the first to read and share 6 new essays from this talented group of writers:

Creative Nonfiction, #11 Spring/Summer 2018

 

Featured Artist

Jon Tarleton

Enjoy!

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Greetings, Writers:

We have developed a gift for launching our calls for submission during the CRWROPPS hiatus (no new announcements until after March 12).

Our submission period will be extended to May 1.

CRWROPPS is the Creative Writers Opportunities List moderated by Allison Joseph. It is a public Yahoo group with over 14,000 members that posts calls for submissions and contest information for writers of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. It is an important resource for writers as well as for publishers.

If you are not already connected to this group to receive calls for submission, check out the details here for how to join: CRWROPPS-B.

We encourage established, unpublished, or emerging writers to submit their best work to Longridge Review.

Visit our full submission guidelines here: https://longridgereview.com/submit/

We look forward to reading your work!

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Our emphasis is on literature that explores the mysteries of childhood experience, the wonder of adult reflection, and how the two connect over a lifespan. Take look through some of our online essays to get a feel for what we publish.

We are committed to publishing narratives steeped in reverence for childhood experience and perceptions, but we seek essays that stretch beyond the clichés of childhood as simple, angelic, or easy. We want to feature writing that layers the events of the writer’s early years with a sense of wisdom or learning accumulated in adult life.

We welcome diverse creative nonfiction pieces that demonstrate perceptive and revealing moments about the human condition.

We will not consider trite, light narratives; genre nonfiction; critical analyses; inspirational or motivational advice; erotica or pornography; or any writing that purposefully exploits or demeans.

We encourage established, unpublished, or emerging writers to submit their best work to Longridge Review.

We will consider one creative nonfiction piece (up to 3,500 words) per submission period. Please do not submit more than once during the reading period. Individual authors will not be published more than once per calendar year. The deadline is midnight EST April 1, and there is a $3.00 fee.

Visit our full submission guidelines here: https://longridgereview.com/submit/