Bellingham Review Publishes Issue 70
The Bellingham Review is pleased to announce the publication of Issue 70, which includes the winners of its annual literary contests. The 2014 winners are Michael William Palmer, Jackleen Holton, and Tom Howard.
Contest judge Joy Castro selected Palmer’s essay, “A Glossary of West Texas,” as the recipient of the Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction. Castro said, “This laconic, elegiac, obliquely self-probing essay tunnels into the ways landscape shapes our psychic experiences as well as the way our own filters let us see—and blind us to—people and place.”
Holton’s poem, “Goldfish,” earned the 49th Parallel Award for Poetry. Contest judge Kathleen Flenniken said of the poem, “Doubt gives way at just the right moment, convincingly, to awe. I know I’m in the hands of a craftsman: stanza by stanza we see evidence of an excellent ear, appreciation for language and line.”
Shawn Wong, contest judge for the Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction, described the pleasures of reading this year’s winner, “Tom Howard’s story, ‘Temple & Vine,’ needs to be read two or three times. It keeps inviting you back because you missed something the first or second time . . . Loyalty rewards the reader.”
In addition to the contest winners, this issue contains stories, poems, essays and artwork by 30 contributors, including a dynamic collaboration between poet Katrina Hays and photographer Steven McBurnett. They comment on their collaborative process in an interview by Rob Rich. Read the interview and listen to Hays perform several of her poems on the Review’s blog.
Finally, this beautiful issue marks the conclusion of editor-in-chief Brenda Miller’s leadership of the journal. Miller has edited the journal since 2001, guiding twenty-two issues to publication. During that time, the journal has received awards and recognition and published work that has been reprinted in Harper’s Magazine, Utne Reader and The Pushcart Prize Anthology.
Miller’s esteemed colleague and longtime editorial advisor for the Review, S. Paola Antonetta, will assume leadership of the journal. Atonetta worked with the faculty, including former editor-in-chief Robin Hemley, who helped acquire the Bellingham Review for Western Washington University’s English department many years ago. Antonetta said, “It feels like coming home, in many ways, to return to the editorship of the Bellingham Review.” Antonetta’s first issue as editor-in-chief is due out in the fall.
The Bellingham Review is the literary journal produced by Western Washington University’s MFA program. For more information about the multi-genre MFA program, click here.