WHLReview

145 Foster Street
Littleton MA 01460

The Wilderness House Literary Review is a publication devoted to excellence in literature and the arts.

To contact an editor simply click on a name below. To submit work to us please see "Submissions" below:

Editor & Publisher

    Steve Glines 

Editor-at-Large

  John Hanson Mitchell

Poetry Editor

   Irene Koronas

Fiction Editor

  Prema Bangera

Assistant Fiction Editor

  Teisha Twomey

Nonfiction Editor

   Steve Glines

Book Reviews Editor

   Doug Holder

Arts Editor/Curator

  Pam Rosenblatt

Poet in Residence

  Tomas O’Leary

 Submissions

Deadlines are as follows
March 1 – Spring
June 1 – Summer
September 1 – Autumn
December 1 – Winter

Please read this section before submitting work.

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 system below.

By submitting work to us you grant us a non-exclusive licence to publish your work in any form we see fit. You may withdraw a submission up until the issue deadline (see above).

We don't pay so you retain all copyrights. If we publish your work online we may include it in a printed edition.

Poetry may be submitted in any length. Please don't submit 100 poems and ask us to pick 3.

Fiction may be submitted in three formats:

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.

Please submit all works electronically. Click here to submit to Wilderness House Literary Review

Welcome to the 35th issue (Volume 9, no 3) 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 keep publishing their anthologies).

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. These files are large and we hope you will be patient when downloading then, however we think the beauty of the words deserves a beautiful presentation.

Wilderness House Press has a Twitter feed and you can find us on Facebook or read about us on Wikipedia.

It costs quite a bit of money to keep publishing WHLR - Please help us out if you can as every little bit helps.

Our ISSN number is 2156-0153.

Let us know what you think in our Letters to the Editor.

Table of Contents

Opine

Autumn has many beginnings. The traditional start date is the Autumnal Equinox, the date where darkness first overwhelms the light. This year it was September 22. TV weathermen call September 1st their Meteorological start to Fall. At Wilderness House Literary Review the autumn season begins around October 1st when we typically launch our fall issue.

There is another beginning of Autumn that we have observed here, around Bumblebee Farm. We’ll call it the beginning of Biological Fall. It’s the date that both plants and animals begin to prepare for winter. It’s a subtle event, observable only to those who are looking for it and often only observed in hindsight. Around Bumblebee Farm it was August 20th this year. I’m not sure if the date changes year to year but if it does it’s not my much. We’ll let you know next year.

On our daily ambulation with Pepper (that’s a word she still doesn’t know, the words ride, out, and walk will generate an unbridled enthusiasm that will only be abated with an actual walk) we noticed the slightest things. The first red leaf on the Swamp Maple at the edge of the yard, the first red leaf on a Sumac bush and the first time, this year, a flock of geese practiced formation flying, not that they will actually go anywhere but they love to practice this time of year anyway. In retrospect, the Humming Birds have already left and there is a new set of birds at the feeder.

By August 22 it was more obvious, The summer perennial flowers have done their work and now pack away the food they will need next spring. The autumnal flowering plants have stopped growing and now put their energy into flying their colors. The back yard is slowly transforming itself from the brilliant colors of Summer to the muted, earthy, pastels of Autumn.

By August 25th the last of the native corn had matured and was being harvested: Kandy Korn and Sugar Queen. We’ll be eating Sugar Queen all fall but the harvest is too small to last the winter. Kandy Korn was gone overnight.

By September 1st the deer had gone into rut. Only Pepper with her finely tuned nose knows this for sure but her instinct to hunt has kicked in and we wander off our normal paths looking for fresh deer tracks until one of us gets tired.

There is something about the fall that’s invigorating. It could be the fresh harvest, the brisk morning air or the promise of another new beginning engrained in our psyche from years at school. The days are waning quickly. Sunset is now before 7 P.M. and receding quickly to be redeemed only at the deep and darkest hour of the Winter Solstice.

Search the house

Art

Reporting by Pam Rosenblatt

• Jewelry artist Bethany Ericson: doing what she loves
• The “futuristic” style of artist Crystal Berche
• Somerville artist Jane Sherrill and her seascapes
• Cambridge’s Susan Cheever: a weaver in the Swedish tradition

Essays

Fiction

Our fiction editor loves Anton Chekhov and despairs the notion that there are no latter day Chekhov's submitting works for her consideration. This is not to say that the work she 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:

Poetry

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.

We have a remarkable lineup of poets, so enjoy.

Reviews

WHLReview is brought to you by:

An exciting travelog:

Seven Days in Fiji
by Steve Glines

Dosha, flight of the Russian Gypsies
by Sonia Meyer

by Dennis Daly
From Ibbetson Street Press


The Last of the Bird People
a novel by John Hanson Mitchell


Sophocles' Ajax
translated by Dennis Daly

Ibbetson Street Press

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 nineth anthology. You may purchase them here: