Please include some form of identification in the work itself.
All submissions must be in electronic form. Our preference is an MS Word file uploaded through the form below.
We don't pay so you retain all copyrights. If we publish your work online we may include it in our print annual.
Poetry may be submitted in any length. Please don't submit 100 poems and ask us to pick 3.
Short fiction may be submitted in three formats:
very short stories less than 500 words in length
short stories less than 1000 words in length
Short stories that don’t fit the above should be less than 3000 words.
We also accept longer forms of fiction occasionally.
Non-Fiction is just that so lets see some
interesting footnotes. Non-fiction should be short, (a lot) less than 5000
words
Book Reviews should be positive unless the author
is a well-known blowhard. Our mission is to encourage literature not
discourage it..
Any form of art may be submitted with the constraint that
it must be something that can be published in 2 dimensions. It’s hard to
publish sculpture but illustrations together with some intelligent prose
count.
Published works are welcome with proper attribution.
Welcome to the twenty sixth issue (Volume 7, no 2) of the Wilderness
House Literary Review. WHLR is a result of the collaboration between a
group of poets and writers who call themselves the Bagel Bards (who have just published their latest anthology).
The stories, articles, poems and examples of art have
been presented as PDF files. This is a format that
allows for a much cleaner presentation than would otherwise be available on
the web. If you don’t have an Adobe Reader (used to read a PDF file) on your
computer you can download one from the Adobe website. The files are large and we hope you will be patient when downloading
but we think the beauty of the words deserves a beautiful presentation.
Finally, the
copyrights are owned by their respective authors whose opinions are theirs
alone and do not reflect the opinions of our sponsors or partners.
It's hard not to talk (or write) and not offend someone eventually, however unintentionally. This is specially true in this business of publishing the thoughts and letters of others where the editor is considered culpable for anything his authors write. For the most part that's silly of course. In the US libel must pass three tests:
First the subject cannot be a celebrity. Apparently if you are a public figure (and this has remained somewhat ambiguous) almost anything can be said of you without consequences. Just witness our current political climate where everyone from the extreme left to the extreme right and everyone in between is a [flaming, super, complete, ...] (insert your favorite explicative here). Other countries differ, of course. Winston Churchill made a better living suing people for slander in the 1920's and 1930's than he ever did from writing and he was considered the best paid writer of his day.
Second, whatever is said of a non-celebrity must be knowingly false. An accidental, incidental or inconsequential misstatement is not slander or libel.
Finally, the statement must also have been said with malice. You must knowingly make a false or misleading statement with the deliberate intention of doing harm to the offended person.
I, for one, would celebrate actionable slander as proof of having arrived. Others view petty offenses as slights on their personal image, rough spots on their public persona where the offended perceives nothing but perfection.
The first shot across the bow is always, "Do you check your facts?" Facts are often in the eye of the beholder. When I edited Hugh Fox's autobiography, Way, Way off the Road, I had no reason or means to check his facts. His description of the rowdy, sensuous life of the 1960 and 70's rang true. I was there and had no reason to think he described anything other than what he fondly remembered. However, one minor and not particularly memorable character in Fox's pantheon (now an apparently respected psychiatrist - so she says) whose current public persona is something like a Victorian virgin, took exception to what Fox said of her. She claimed not to have ever worn the sexy black lace clothing Fox attributes to her nor to have flirted, much less slept with anyone Fox knew. This was in the early 1970's? Come on.
The latest offense apparently is based on what one of our artists said about his own brother: "My youngest brother is an excellent illustrator of people and animals, which I’m sure lies in his studies at the Museum of Fine Arts. I am truly envious of artists with those talents."
This brother is not a celebrity, obviously, and I do not know if he is an excellent illustrator of people and animals. I must assume he is not if this is the libel. Nor do I know, or particularly care, if he went to Museum of Fine Arts school or any school for that mater. Perhaps that is the complaint, perhaps his alma mater has more prestige than the MFA. His complaint did not say. Perhaps our artist said that he is "truly envious of artists with those talent" with a heavy dose of sarcasm. It's hard to know from reading the page.
In any case the brother of our artist is suing us in small clams court for several thousand dollars for emotional duress. I am quite sure he will be mortally embarrassed when his complaint and his brothers statement are read in open court. He will, regrettably, become the laughing stock of Salem Massachusetts. Perhaps the allegedly deflowered Victorian Psychiatrist and our embittered would be artist can commiserate on the slights to their imagined persona.
Our fiction editor loves Anton Chekhov and despairs the notion that there are no latter day Chekhovs submitting works for her consideration. This is not to say that the work he receives isn’t excellent … it’s just not Chekhov. To that end WHLReview announces a new prize for fiction to be called “the Chekhov Prize.” A google search reveals several other Chekhov prizes with cash. Alas we’re not offering cash. We will look for a bearded bobble-head doll. In the mean time we have T-shirts with the Chekhov Prize logo available. Just click on Chekhov's head.
For your reading pleasure we offer an outstanding collection of short stories by:
Our poetry editor, not wanting to be outdone by our fiction editor is pleased to announce the Gertrude Stein "rose" prize for creativity in poetry. Anyone published in Volume 3 (and beyond) is eligible. We don't have any idea what the prize will consist of - a T-shirt for sure. Perhaps we can find a Plaster of Paris bust of Julius Caesar, put a rose in its mouth and decorate it to look like Gertrude Stein. In the mean time we have T-shirts with the our rose prize logo available. Just click on Gerturde's head.
Women on Poetry: Writing, Revising, Publishing and Teaching
edited by Carol Smallwood, Colleen S. Harris and Cynthia Brackett-Vincent Review by Ann McCauley
Compartments: Poems on Nature, Femininity and Other Realms
by Carol Smallwood Review by Carol Hawkins
As we said when we started this is a joint
production of Wilderness House Literary Retreat and the “bagel bards”.
The “Bagel Bards” have just published their seventh
anthology. You may purchase them here:
