Delmarva Review - Chestertown Spy

Delmarva Review Publishes 15th Anniversary Literary Journal

November 15, 2022 by Delmarva Review

Delmarva Review announced publication of its 15th anniversary literary journal presenting new poetry, short stories, and creative nonfiction from 60 authors in 18 states, the District of Columbia, and six foreign countries. The review selects the most compelling new writing from thousands of submissions during the year.

“Through the author’s voice, we discover qualities and truths about ourselves,” said Wilson Wyatt, executive editor. “Perhaps more than anything else this describes the strength of our connections with literature.”

Since its beginning in 2008, Delmarva Review has published new poetry and prose from 490 authors from 42 states, the District of Columbia, and 16 foreign countries. Forty-six percent are from the Chesapeake and Delmarva region. Eighty-four have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Some have attained notable attention in “best of” anthologies or received public acclaim from other literary critics and editors.

As a literary collection, the focus is on outstanding new writing. This year’s topics deal with grief, sickness, death, love, human freedoms, aging, and the uncertainty of life, among others. They have one quality in common—change—and the uncomfortable challenges of dealing with change.

This year’s cover photograph, The Fisherman, by Wyatt, tells a visual story. An osprey spreads its wings to exhibit his power, while positioned high above the water on a storm-broken tree. His talons are clutching a partially devoured fish.

“The osprey’s purpose is not so much the fish,” Wyatt said, “as it is his desire to lure a suitable mate for the season’s nest. Thematically, the image exhibits the territorial imperative shared throughout the animal kingdom, including humans.”

Delmarva Review was created to offer authors a valued home to publish their best writing at a time when many commercial publications were reducing literary content or closing their doors.

The review focuses on new writers, as well. This year’s fiction includes writing from the first recipient of the Delmarva Review Talbot County Youth Writing Scholarship award. In partnership with Talbot County Schools and supported by a grant from Talbot Arts, the review selected “E Duo Unum” from Maxine Poe-Jensen, a high school senior at St. Michaels High School.

While favoring the permanence of the printed word, the review publishes electronic versions to meet the digital preferences of readers. Both paperback and electronic editions are immediately available from Amazon.com and other online booksellers. The print edition is also available at regional specialty bookstores.

In addition to Wyatt, the journal’s editorial staff for this edition includes Bill Gourgey, the managing editor who designs and publishes the review, poetry editor Anne Colwell, poetry assistant editor Katherine Gekker, fiction senior editor Harold O. Wilson, fiction coeditors Lee Slater and Judy Reveal, and nonfiction editor Ellen Brown.

The submission period for the 16th edition is open to all writers now through March 31, 2023. Delmarva Review does not charge any submission or reading fees. Writers’ guidelines are posted on the website.

Published by the Delmarva Review Literary Fund, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in St. Michaels, the journal receives financial support from individual tax-deductible contributions and a public grant from Talbot Arts, with revenues from the Maryland State Arts Council. For more information, see the website DelmarvaReview.org.

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Delmarva Review Announces Six Pushcart Prize Nominations In Prose and Poetry

December 3, 2020 by Delmarva Review

The Delmarva Review announced six Pushcart Prize nominations for nonfiction memoir, poetry, and fiction selections in the review’s 13th annual edition, published on November 1, 2020.

The first nomination is for “When Friendship Dies,” a memoir by Maryland author Sue Ellen Thompson, of Oxford. She is one of three featured writers in the new edition.

Four poetry nominations are for “Eyes of the Crab,” by Ann LoLordo, of Crownsville, Maryland, “Leaving Spain,” by David Salner, of Millsboro, Delaware, “The Way Her Lover’s Fingers,” by Doris L. Ferleger, of Wyncote, Pennsylvania, and “Franklin Roosevelt’s Hand-controlled Car vs. Eleanor,” by Douglas Collura, of New York City.

“Impulse Control,” a short story by Patrick J. Murphy, of Tallahassee, Florida, was nominated for a fiction award.

Pushcart editors will select the final winners to publish in an anthology, The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, due in the fall of 2021.

The prestigious literary prize will honor writing published in 2020 by small presses “dedicated to exciting, innovative and eclectic prose and poetry.”

Delmarva Review was created in 2008 to encourage writers to pursue writing excellence. Publication in the Review, while competitive, offers authors a valued publishing opportunity for their best writing in print at a time when many commercial publications are reducing literary content or going out of business.

Since its first annual issue, the Delmarva Review has selected the new work of 390 writers. In all, authors have come from 42 states and 14 foreign countries. About half are from the tri-state Delmarva Peninsula and Chesapeake Bay region of the Mid-Atlantic. Seventy-two have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Some have received notable mention in “Best of” anthologies or achieved notice from other critics and editors. For many, this was the first public recognition of their literary accomplishments.

The submission period for DelmarvaReview’s 14theditionis open now through March 31, 2020. Editors read all submissions and do not charge reading fees. A submission link is on the guidelines page of the website: www.DelmarvaReview.org.

Delmarva Review is an independent, 501(c)(3) nonprofit literary journal published by the Delmarva Review Literary Fund Inc, in Talbot County. Partial financial support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from the Talbot County Arts Council, with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council.

The journal is available to readers worldwide from Amazon.com and other major online booksellers, as well as some regional specialty book shops, like Mystery Loves Company, in Oxford.

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Delmarva Review Announces New Cover

July 21, 2020 by Delmarva Review

Delmarva Review, Volume 13 Image: “Cedar Island Watch House” by Jay P. Fleming

Delmarva Review literary journal unveiled the cover for its thirteenth annual edition, to be published in the fall. The publication’s editorial board unanimously selected “Cedar Island Watch House” by photographer Jay P. Fleming for the new edition. The selection is from an open competition of photographers and artists from the Chesapeake region.

“Jay Fleming’s striking image conjures up stories visually that complement the review’s compelling prose and poetry, writing that will live beyond our lifetimes,” said Wilson Wyatt, executive editor. “We’re pleased to be able to select our cover art from the substantial work of regional artists.”

The image reveals a seaman’s watch house on wooden pilings raised above the Atlantic’s surf on Cedar Island, near Wachapreague, Virginia. The scene reflects the sunset and a rising sea. The house has since fallen to nature’s strength, swallowed by the sea.

This is Fleming’s third cover for the Delmarva Review. Other outstanding covers in the last five years have been created by regional photographers Cal Jackson and George Merrill.

Fleming is a professional fine art photographer who credits learning his craft from three key sources, his dogged self-persistence, a strong interest in environmental conservatism, and the tutelage of his photographer father, Kevin Fleming, another highly skilled professional artist and former National Geographic photographer.

With a studio in Annapolis, Jay Fleming’s images have been featured in magazines, books, and exhibited in fine art galleries throughout the Chesapeake Bay region. His first book of photography Working the Water (2016) is in its third printing. A second book, Island Life, is scheduled for 2021. He graduated from St. Mary’s College majoring in economics.

The thirteenth edition of Delmarva Review, about 300 pages, will feature original new fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction by more sixty authors from across the United States and several other countries. Many are from the tri-state region of Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia.

Delmarva Review is published in print and digital editions by the Delmarva Review Literary Fund, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization encouraging writers of outstanding new literary work at a time when many commercial publications are closing their doors. The journal is supported by individual contributions, sales, and a grant from the Talbot County Arts Council with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council.

The review welcomes compelling new literary submissions from all writers. The submission period is open from November 1 to March 31. Cover art entries can be sent at that time, as well. Please see the website for guidelines and subscriptions: www.DelmarvaReview.org.

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Delmarva Review: Was There Ever A Moment of Recognition by Holly Karapetkova

June 16, 2020 by Delmarva Review

Author’s Note: This poem, as the epigraph indicates, explores the relationship between a mistress and her slaves. Primary source documents indicate that slave-owning women showed little compassion for their female slaves and were often extremely cruel, in spite of their shared plight as women and mothers. However, they lived on intimate terms with their slaves and must have been aware on some level of their common humanity. In the space of this poem I imagine a moment of human recognition, fleeting as it may have been.

While legalized slavery ended 155 years ago, the racist ideas used to justify the violence and cruelty of slavery are still very much with us. I believe that by trying to understand our past we can better equip ourselves to fight contemporary racism and build a more equitable future.

Was There Ever A Moment of Recognition by Holly Karapetkova

Holly Karapetkova’s poems and translations from the Bulgarian have appeared in The Southern Review, RINO, Prairie Schooner, Alaska Quarterly Review, Poetry Northwest, as well as the Delmarva Review, and others. Her second book, Towline, won the Vern Rutsala Poetry Contest and was published by Cloudbank Books. She is chair of the Literature and Languages Department at Marymount University, in Arlington, Virginia.

Delmarva Review publishes the best of new poetry, short stories, and creative nonfiction from thousands of submissions annually. The independent literary journal is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit supported by tax-free contributions and a grant from the Talbot County Arts Council with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Print and digital editions are available from Amazon and local bookstores.

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Delmarva Review: My Mother’s Voice by Christine Higgins

May 1, 2020 by Delmarva Review

Celebrating National Poetry Month, which ended yesterday, the Delmarva Review joins with the Spy and poets from across the land to present outstanding poems from the review weekly, during April, with the poet’s notes for Spy’s discerning readers.

Author’s Note: There are three voices in the poem. First, the child who needs her mother’s tenderness. She imagines her mother’s singing voice must be from another time when she was happier. Then, the mother, who on rare occasions makes her voice an instrument. Then, the adult daughter recognizing her mother’s depression, reaching for a better understanding.

My Mother’s Voice
By Christine Higgins

Oh, Mr. Moon, Moon,
Pretty silvery moon,
hiding behind that tree.

I don’t know if she sang it once
and I remember it well, or
if the child I was
begged her to sing it again and again.

It was the soprano voice
I only heard in church, never
as she cleaned house or
cooked dinner or folded laundry.

Oh, bright and silvery moon, hiding
behind that tree. My life’s in danger
And I’m on the run, there’s a man out
there with a Gatling gun.

The danger was depression
that wouldn’t quit, inherited
from her drunk father,
though probably not his alone to give.

I see her profile in the darkness
dependent on the full moon’s electric light.
She’s singing, so no threats to beat me
with a brush. No blood rushing
to my forearm where she would
pinch me with her thumb, desperate
for some peace. My father driving,
always driving, for she was too scared
to navigate alone.

Her voice silvery like the song,
notes strung like a pearl necklace.
White against black, the soprano
voice piercing the dark.

Christine Higgins is the recipient of two Maryland State Arts Council Awards for both poetry and non-fiction. She is the author of the full-length collection, Hallow (Cherry Grove, 2020). Her latest chapbook, Hello Darling, was the second-place winner in the 2019 Poetry Box competition. Her work has also appeared in Pequod, America, Windhover, Nagautuck River Review, and PMS (poemmemoirstory). Higgins is a McDowell Colony Fellow and a graduate of The Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. Website: www.christinehigginswriter.com.

Delmarva Review publishes the best of poetry, creative nonfiction, and short fiction selected from thousands of submissions annually from authors in the region, across the United States, and beyond. The independent literary journal is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit supported by individual contributions and a grant from the Talbot County Arts Council with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Print and digital editions are available at Amazon and other major online bookstores. Website: DelmarvaReview.org.

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Delmarva Review: What We Keep by Terence Young

April 22, 2020 by Delmarva Review

From the Editor: Celebrating National Poetry Month, the Delmarva Review joins with Spy and poets from across the land to present an outstanding poem each week. This is the fourth poem from the review, with the poet’s comment for Spy’s discerning readers.

Author’s Note: While I was teaching writing, I would encourage my students to love language and to explore words for their numerous nuances and applications, particularly in idiom. In “What We Keep,” I look at a relatively uninteresting verb and follow it in its many uses in regular conversation, and the result is not just a litany, but also a kind of narrative that compelled me to see the word differently.

What We Keep

The beat,
the faith,
the home fires burning.

The people down,
the good work up,
the undesirables out,
the grass off,
the straight and narrow path to,
all of it under wraps.

The books,
the peace,
the house,
the goal,
certain fish,
bad company,
our heads
when all about us
are losing theirs.

The change, we say,
generous over nothing.

Promises, sometimes, and
secrets even when they no longer matter.

Our opinions to ourselves.
Time, if we understand music,
quiet, if we don’t.

Our children safe,
our hands off the money,
our friends close etc.,
a little something on the side.

An eye out for strangers,
a copy for our files,
our shirt on and
our big mouth shut.

Fit, if we can,
our fingers crossed.

Our cards to our chest,
a straight face
when it all goes sideways.

Our cool,
our lips sealed,
an open mind
and our nose
to the grindstone.

The ball rolling,
the wolf from the door.
our powder dry.

Terence Young is an author, former editor and teacher from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. He co-founded and edited The Claremont Review, a literary magazine for young writers, and he was a teacher of English and creative writing at St. Michaels University School, in Victoria. His most recent book is a collection of short fiction, The End of the Ice Age (Biblioasis, 2010).

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Delmarva Review: The View From Heaven by David Salner

April 15, 2020 by Delmarva Review

From the Editor: Celebrating National Poetry Month in April, the Delmarva Review joins with Spy and poets from across the land to present an outstanding poem each week during April. This is the third poem, with commentary from the poet for Spy’s discerning readers.

Author’s Note: In this poem I invent a heaven detached from what we do and feel on earth. Earth, where the good stuff happens. To be trapped far from earth would be a worse fate than coronavirus quarantine. What we do with others, what we have done, have been counted on for, is what lingers on, our trace, our soulful artifact.

The View From Heaven
By David Salner

where the floors are made of a glass so clear
when I stare through them I seem to float, and it’s breathtaking
and dizzying to hover like this, as on the top floor of a skyscraper,

looking into the dark cleft between buildings, slipping into the shadows
where everything seems to be happening, where the walls pulse with music, throb
like the chambers of a child’s heart, and the streets fill with drunks and flowers,

and the nights are alive with voices that brawl with anger or whisper
hurt phrases of longing, and throaty laughter beckons the lively
through a network of tracts and hidden arteries, and there

in the depths by a flight of stone steps where I left it,
my soulful artifact, which lends meaning
to everything I can never have back

David Salner lives on the Delmarva Peninsula. His writing appears in recent issues of Threepenny Review, Ploughshares, Salmagundi, Beloit Poetry Journal, Prairie Schooner, North American Review, and previously in Delmarva Review. His fourth book, The Stillness of Certain Valleys (2019, Broadstone Books), includes two poems first published in Delmarva Review. His third book is Blue Morning Light (2016, Pond Road Press). Salner has worked as an iron ore miner, steelworker, machinist, and longshoreman. He has an MFA from the University of Iowa and is working on a novel about the sandhogs who built the Holland Tunnel. His website is www.DSalner.wix.com/salner.

Delmarva Review publishes the best of poetry, creative nonfiction, and short fiction selected from thousands of submissions annually from authors in the region, across the United States, and beyond. The independent literary journal is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit supported by individual contributions and a grant from the Talbot County Arts Council with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Print and digital editions are available at Amazon and other major online bookstores. Website: DelmarvaReview.org.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Delmarva Review: Grandmother by Kristina Morgan

April 8, 2020 by Delmarva Review

From the Editor: Celebrating April as National Poetry Month, the Delmarva Review joins with Spy and poets from across the land to present an outstanding poem each week during April. This is the second poem, with commentary from the poet for Spy’s discerning readers.

Author’s Note: I wrote “Grandmother” while my grandmother was still living, and then read it at her memorial service. She was my best friend. I was told I shouldn’t write a grandmother poem because it would be too sentimental. I’m glad I didn’t follow that advice. I will always remember waking in the hospital after a suicide attempt to my grandmother’s eyes. They were filled with compassion. She truly taught me how to treat other people with kindness and love. We were connected; soul to soul. I miss her daily. – Kristina Morgan

Grandmother By Kristina Morgan

The shopkeeper tells me elephants symbolize infinity
as he bags the wooden calf. You dislike fresh flowers,
say they hold death in their stalks. I offer you this calf;
it holds the heat of my palm in its belly. You take it.
You set it on the end table next to your recliner
where you spend most of your time.

I am hoping to collect you from the afterlife.
You say to bury the calf with you.
Let it be your guide back to me,
to the place on my shoulder where the soft weight of you
will sit. Do you know weight can whisper? you ask.
If you say so, I answer.

You make certain I know where the hair clip is
that you gave me when I was three,
a gift from your mother.

We have agreed I will serve marshmallows at your memorial,
keeping the day light, allowing children to play jacks. I don’t know
how I will keep flowers away, imagine calla lilies walking on toe.

We spend Thursday noon at the grocery store, pause in the cookie aisle
to look at all the Oreos. Red stuffed. Green stuffed. Double stuffed.
You think you keep me too long this time.
How can I assure you my time is never better spent?
You are an alarm. You wake me to what is important.

I see your shoulders now slope forward. They have borne the tugging
of people who depended on you. You kept shoes on feet
and offered houses that sheltered.

You show me the spots on your hands. I think of the beauty of bark.
I know you are tired of being an old woman. If I could pull age
from your hair, I would. I, like you, have grayed. I use color; you
leave things white.

You walk before me, turn to see why I have stopped. The light of the low sun
envelops you. It is hard for me to see. Will I still be kind in your absence?
You have shown me how to extend my hand and sense the spiritual
deep within others. I see the lily pads supporting frogs as they settle
on the pond. Life can be like this.

It will be hard not to miss you. Have you ever tried to move an arm after it has fallen asleep? It takes another arm to wake it up.
I will remember the way the sun lit you from behind,
how your smile strengthened mine
that Thursday noon.

You have been nine months dead. I hear you in the evenings. The sky
is not crowded. I say moon, you say yes. I say galaxies, you say roam.
I say star, you say plenty. I say I miss you, and you say
I’m not gone.

Kristina Morgan’s creative nonfiction essay “Hospital Visit Number 19” appeared in Delmarva Review in 2017 and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her book-length memoir “Mind Without a Home: A Memoir of Schizophrenia” was published by Hazelden in 2013. Her poetry has appeared in LocustPoint, Open Minds, and The Awakening Review. She received an MFA in creative writing and poetry from Arizona State University. She lives in Scottsdale with her two cats, Grams and Annie.

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Delmarva Review: “On A Broad Reach They Are Magnificent Craft” by Meredith Davies Hadaway

April 1, 2020 by Delmarva Review

From the Editor: Delmarva Review joins with Spy and poets from across the land to celebrate April as National Poetry Month. Spy will highlight one new poem each week in April with commentary from the poet or Delmarva Review editors especially for Spy’s discerning readers. The Review’s editors read 2,500 to 3,000 poetry submissions a year. The best 50 to 70 are selected for publication in the annual literary journal.

Author’s Note: This poem was inspired by the wind-filled sail of “Broad Reach,” a beautiful sculpture in Chestertown’s Wilmer Park. The title quote is meant to refer to sailing but spoke to me of another magnificent craft with a different sort of broad reach: poetry. – Meredith Davies Hadaway

“On a Broad Reach
They Are Magnificent Craft”
(for Alex Castro)

Every poem begins as a blink
in the sky, a slight turn of the

earth. It stretches the length of the
sun to where a cardinal perches, chipping

away at the morning. It gathers the leaves,
arranging them in riddles of rust and

gold, rubs each stone in its path.

Now it is midday and centuries lie
behind us, a litter of bones and

promise beneath the slurry of sand as we
stroll to the river.

Every poem is a long walk, the resurrection
of all the meters that brought us here, past

windows ablaze with sun. Every hand that
twirled a brush or twisted a knot to tether

us to something that lives on wind, bellows
in the breath of the water.

_____

Meredith Davies Hadaway was selected as the Featured Writer in the 12th annual edition of the Delmarva Review. She is the author of three poetry collections: Fishing Secrets of the Dead, The River is a Reason, and At The Narrows (winner of the 2015 Delmarva Book Prize for Creative Writing). She holds an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Hadaway is a former Rose O’Neill Writer-in-Residence who previously served as chief marketing officer for Washington College, in Chestertown, Maryland.

The Delmarva Review publishes the best of original new poetry, short stories, and creative nonfiction selected from thousands of submissions annually. The independent literary journal is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit supported by individual tax-free contributions and a grant from the Talbot County Arts Council with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Print and digital editions are available from Amazon and local bookstores. Website: DelmarvaReview.org.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Delmarva Review: The Man Who Turned Himself into a Gun by James Norcliffe

March 18, 2020 by Delmarva Review

Editor’s Note: From halfway around the world, the poet presented this poem to Delmarva Review, Volume 12, from an event that shook the planet.

Author’s Note: While it does not directly reference the event, “The Man Who Turned Himself into a Gun” was prompted by the unconscionable slaughter of fifty-one worshipers at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 15, 2019. In fact, the poem was written a few days later. I grew up in Christchurch, and still live nearby. The gunman did not. He was from Australia, and brought with him to our country a vile set of beliefs that have some currency throughout the world including some disaffected of our own citizens. It is just over a year since the massacre and feelings are still, of course, raw. New Zealand is a peaceable country and such events are quite alien. While prompted by this specific event, however, I do trust the poem has a more general application. – JN

The Man Who Turned Himself into a Gun

At first he thought bullets;
then he expressed them.

He became gun-metal gray,
cold to the touch.

He wanted to press himself
into evil’s shoulder, be cradled there.

He wanted to be trained in evil’s grip,
evil’s telescopic sight in his sight.

Above all he longed for evil’s finger feeling for,
feathering, depressing his progressive trigger.

He was sleek, he was balanced:
no longer flesh, no longer sentiment,

weighted,
then weightless

mechanically perfect,
perfectly mechanical.

James Norcliffe, of Christchurch, New Zealand, has published nine collections of poetry including Shadow Play (2013) and Dark Days at the Oxygen Café (VUP, 2016). Recent work has appeared in Landfall, Spillway, The Cincinnati Review, Salamander, Gargoyle, Flash Fiction International (Norton, 2015), and a new collection, Deadpan (Otago University Press).

Delmarva Review publishes the best of new poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction, selected from thousands of submissions annually by authors in the region, across the United States, and beyond. The independent literary journal is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit supported by individual contributions and a grant from the Talbot County Arts Council with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Print and digital editions are available at Amazon and other major online bookstores. Website: DelmarvaReview.org.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

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