In the Autumn issue of Contrary: There’s barely room to breathe. Her knees pressed to the rear of the machine, chest pressed to her knees, back to the wall. Grime and furred dust coats the floor beneath her, sticky on the skin. Clumping to her hands as she pushes further into the corner. Her heartbeat skitters along [...]
Contrary Magazine
The Summer Contrary is published and we have an early deadline for Autumn. The details: “Vaucluse” by Laura Elizabeth Woollett is one of the finest pieces of very short fiction we’ve ever received. Laura Elizabeth Woollett is an undergraduate student and writer from Melbourne, Australia. Set your sidereal drive on her now and watch her star [...]
Rebecca Lehmann’s first book of poetry, Between The Crackups, has won the Salt Cr ash aw Prize, and will be published by Salt Publishing this fall. The book includes “The Factory,” which was first published in Contrary and subsequently was included in the Best New Poets 2010 anthology. Rebecca is also a regular author here, on [...]
Steve Mitchell’s “Above the Rooftop” has been named a 2010 Notable Story in StorySouth’s Million Writers Award competition. This puts Steve’s story in the running for the top ten—which will be announced May 20—and then a public vote for best story of the year. A quick excerpt from “Above the Rooftop”— Sometimes, I place my [...]
Cynthia Newberry Martin is most recently famous as the Contrary blogger who set the internet afire when she challenged the LA Times coverage of the National Book Critics Circle awards. But Cynthia excels at many things. She has written some of the most powerful and most popular fiction we’ve published. This story made people cry. [...]
Our much loved celebrity poetry editor, Shaindel Beers, gave birth this afternoon to Liam Eliot Pennington. Mother, child and father are well, healthy, and exceedingly happy, according to all reports arriving steadily from Contrary’s Pacific Northwest bureaus. Shaindel was not to be outdone by Fiction Editor Frances Badgett, who gave birth to Cora Cuornoyer in [...]
The dazzling poet Kiki Petrosino, who sent Contrary a series of gorgeous conversations between Dante and God (installments one, two and three), has launched a new journal, Transom, with her friend and fellow poet Dan Rosenberg. Petrosino teaches at the University of Louisville, Rosenberg is a PhD student at the University of Georgia, and some years [...]
Grace Wells, a frequent contributor of poems and book reviews to Contrary, has been awarded the Rupert and Eithne Strong Award, which goes to the best first book of poetry by an Irish poet. And in a land of poets, that’s no easy feat. Wells won for When God Has Been Called Away to Greater [...]
Now and then, Shaindel falls in love. Sometimes years will pass without an episode, but when it happens, it’s a blazing passion. When a new flame flares up, I’ve learned, it’s best for me to stop what I’ m doing and read. Last week in the midst of a downpour of sorrows—which she se nt [...]
All of us at Contrary would like to welcome to earth Cora Cournoyer, who chose to be born to Fiction Editor Frances Badgett and her fellow, Kevin Cournoyer, on Dec. 7, 2010, while Frances was reading submissions.