See You in Seattle

See You in Seattle

March 04, 2023

Atticus Review is Going to AWP!

Breaking Convention in the Best of the Net

Please join us in congratulating our creative nonfiction co-editor Lucy Wilde for her inclusion in the Best of the Net 2023 Anthology! Her essay "Release and Hold Harmless" was originally published in Waterwheel Review last February. I highly recommend giving it a read.But wait, there's more! We also have the honor of congratulating contributor Tanya E. Friedman, whose essay "Freckled" was a finalist for this year's Best of the Net. Atticus Review published "Freckled" way back at the tail end of 2021.It's an honor to have both an editor and a contributor share a common award, but it's also an excuse to consider them together. Both are structurally experimental, one a hermit crab essay and the other a numbered collage. Together, they showcase the enormous dexterity of creative nonfiction as a genre. Confined to the truth, unlike fiction and much of poetry, CNF takes its creative cues from its capacity to resist convention, to push the boundaries of form and structure and agreement.As Margot Singer writes in her craft essay "On Convention" in Bending Genre, by "breaking with convention, innovative works of creative nonfiction get at 'reality' in powerful, new ways" by "shattering the illusion of journalistic objectivity" (146). In Wilde's essay, the objective pretenses of a legal document are superseded by the author's highly specific, emotionally fraught memories of cohabitation and caregiving. Friedman's essay, on the other hand, is ostensibly an exploration of freckles but, under the surface, is a carefully crafted memoir about self-perception. What matters in both is the delicacy of experience framed within the conventions of other means of storytelling.Creative nonfiction, at its best, accomplishes what Wild and Friedman manage so well: To arrive at an understanding of the truth through whatever means necessary, no matter how tricky or veiled that truth may initially seem. 

We'll See You in Seattle

It's the most wonderful time of the year! No, not Spring Break or state legislative sessions, but AWP!You can find us at the bookfair at table 1340, AND at our shared reading with Barzakh Lit Mag at The Grumpy Bean in downtown Seattle on March 10, 6:30-8:30 PM. Join us for a live, in-person reading!  The Grumpy Bean is also offering a 10% discount on beverages.

In the meantime, I hope you keep writing. The world needs it.Peace,Keene ShortEditor-in-Chief

THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

BOOK REVIEW

BEWARE BIG KITSCH: HERNAN DIAZ'S TRUST

a book review by

SAM DOWNS

"Trust revisits an American archetype by charting a new route across familiar terrain. But whereas In the Distance produces a better myth, a myth revealing the flaws of its precursor, Trust examines the mythmaking process itself."

THE COLEUS ON GOOD FRIDAYbyJennifer Martelli

NEW FROM THE ATTIC

Michelle Ross interviews Grant Faulkner about his new book THE ART OF BREVITY

"I wanted a reading experience that was one part puzzle, or that encouraged piecing things together instead of being led by the hand of an author."

SUBMISSIONS

We are

for submissions in poetry and CNF! We closed early for fiction submissions.We will close for poetry and CNF submissions on March 15 and reopen for Issue Five submissions sometime in April after that.We are also open for book reviews, interviews, and mixed media.

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Our Reading List is updated each week. Go check it out!Are you a contributor to Atticus Review who'd like your book featured in the reading list? Send us an email at [email protected]. 

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