Image by Joelle Chmiel

Dear writers, readers and friends,

Welcome to September, and as the seasons turn we offer you a fitting visual by Joelle Chmiel, who captures both a sense of stillness and of bustle at a transitional time of year.

This month’s issue is guest-curated by our own Luke Larkin, who also edits Unstamatic (https://www.unstamatic.info/) , an online magazine of small prose and poetry. The artist and lead writers for this month are all tapped from Unstamatic’s family of contributors.

Joelle Chmiel (https://www.artlimited.net/m79d5144a%20or%20https:/lensculture.com/joelle-chmiel) was born in 1982 in Zürich, Switzerland, where she graduated medical and dental school, before working as a physician in maxillofacial surgery and dentistry. Since 2018, she dedicates herself full-time to photography and was winner of the StreetProjections 2018 contest from PhotoWerkBerlin, and second-place winner of Monochrome Awards 2018.

Carol McMahon’s bittersweet poem kicks off this month’s writing. Carol is a teacher whose work has been published in various journals (The Wild Word (https://thewildword.com/poetry-carol-mcmahon/) , Painted Bride Quarterly (http://pbqmag.org/carol-mcmahon-profit-margin/) , Mom Egg Review, Stone Canoe, Poet Lore) and has a chapbook, On Any Given Day, published by FootHills Press (2006). McMahon received an MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop and when she is not with 11-year-olds spends her time either running or rowing.

Page two hosts Jen Schneider, who is an educator, attorney, and writer. Her work appears in The Coil, The Write Launch, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Popular Culture Studies Journal, Unstamatic, otoliths, Zingara Poetry Review, 42 Stories Anthology (forthcoming), Voices on the Move (forthcoming), One Sentence Stories, and other literary and scholarly journals.

Michelle Brooks’ poetry appears on page three. Michelle has published a collection of poetry, Make Yourself Small, (Backwaters Press), and a novella, Dead Girl, Live Boy, (Storylandia Press). Her poetry collection, Pretty in A Hard Way, will be published by Finishing Line Press in September 2019. Her work has appeared in the Iowa Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. A native Texan, she has spent much of her adult life in Detroit, her favorite city.

And rounding us out, Scott Russell Duncan, a.k.a. Scott Duncan-Fernandez. Scott recently completed The Ramona Diary of SRD, a memoir of growing up Native/Chicano-Anglo and a fantastical tour reclaiming the myths of Spanish California. Scott’s fiction involves the mythic, the surreal, the abstract, in other words, the weird. Scott received his MFA from Mills College in Oakland, California where he now lives and writes. He is an assistant editor at Somos en escrito. In 2016 he won San Francisco Litquake’s Short Story Contest. His piece “Mexican American Psycho is in Your Dreams” won first place in the 2019 Solstice Literary Magazine Annual Literary Contest. See more about his work and publications on Scott’s website (http://scottrussellduncan.com) .

So, take a peek through these windows and tell us what you find. You know the rules: 50-500 words, one hour. Subs close on 15 September. The image is the starting point, the text is up to you.

Luke, Kristen, Lucie and Preti

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@unstamaticmag (https://twitter.com/unstamaticmag)

PS. When you’ve finished your Visual Verse submission for this month, head over to Unstamatic to read more great writing, enjoy more great art and submit your work. https://www.unstamatic.info/

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