Take a Vacation with Us (Chauna Intro) (08/03/2019)

This letter is a recap of the week at

Atticus Review

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August is the last blazing gasp of summer, the month when middle-class families squeeze in one last escape before Labor Day, before kids buckle into another academic year, before the fall equinox, when day and night pause in their twelve-hour balance before tipping in favor of darkness. The word vacation comes to us from the Latin root vacare, which means to be unoccupied. Right now, when I think of all that occupies my time and mind, my list includes: my paid job and all the responsibilities, negotiations, deadlines and drama of that; the many extra obligations I’ve agreed to and my despair over how my mouth conspires against me, unable to wrangle out a simple “no”; my house and all the attention it needs, including the as-yet-unrealized dream of central air conditioning, which may do more for my mood than any vacation getaway; fears of the state of global politics and global warming; fury at daily abuses of power; fatigue over the endless cycle of laundry, meal planning, emails, appointments and meetings.I’m even fretting over what to do on vacation this year! And writing? What writing? No surprise that I feel like an occupied territory, my sense of self seized by sometimes hostile armies. I am a person, like so many of you, in need of vacation. Maybe part of our collective problem is limiting ideas of vacation around that fixed number of days we’re “allowed” to take away from home and work, especially when such allowances are often quite meager. Many countries around the world mandate minimum days of paid vacation for employees, in both public and private sectors, and some offer no fewer than thirty days paid vacation plus paid public holidays. But the United States has no federally mandated minimum vacation. One to two weeks’ vacation is fairly standard for full-time employment, but often only after a full year on the job. In other words, if you want to stay healthy, relaxed, and personally productive as an American, you can’t wait for an employer to release you. You have to release yourself.Consider this week’s newsletter your vacation message from Atticus Review: first, this is notification that we’re off for the rest of the month. Submissions are temporarily closed, and new content will resume in September, including the winners of our creative nonfiction contest. In addition to providing our regular daily rotation of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, interviews, and reviews, we’ve just sorted through over two hundred contest entries with great care (every piece was read at least twice). We’re excited about the work we read and eager to find out which pieces our judge Ira Sukrungruang selects. We’re also a little tired.So we’re taking a break and we encourage you to do the same. Take a vacation from whatever’s been occupying you, especially if your soul feels tired. That vacation can be as simple and refreshing as watching a hummingbird at the feeder or spending an hour in a favorite coffee shop with a book that celebrates everyday escapes into joy and beauty (I’d recommend Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights).We’ll see you in September! Thanks for reading. We’re glad you’re here. Chauna CraigCreative Nonfiction Editor

ATTICUS NEWS

HAVE YOU SEEN OUR READING LIST?PICK UP ONE OF THESE BOOKSTO ROUND OUT YOUR SUMMER 

THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

Today, don't try to fix stupid, just bask in your smartness ...because you're reading Feral Town by Adam Gustavson... LUDWIG

BOOK REVIEWLOVE: COMPLEX, INCOMPLETE, REALA Review Of THIS. THIS. THIS. IS. LOVE. LOVE. LOVE.by Jennifer Wortman and from Split Lip PressReview by Yousef Allouzi"...an adept sense of pacing..."GET THE BOOKREAD THE REVIEW

FICTIONLITTLE DUCKIESby Meg Pokrass"On difficult days, she wanders in circles around the dining room, a loose little raincloud waiting for a push."READ ON

POETRYDEAR MR. SOMEONE SOMETHINGby Kelly R. Samuels"...And then: you rummaged aroundto pay, dropping scraps of paper with indecipherablehandwriting on them from your pockets, and I was justsmall enough to not bend quick enough to retrieve themfor you...."READ ON

CREATIVE NONFICTIONTHE GREATEST OF FEARSby Victoria Sottosanti"We’d play Jaws on the floating sun mat, my brother’s head bumping my tiny bottom until he knocked me off the mat-boat into the chlorinated sea."READ ON

MIXED MEDIAVARIATIONSA videopoem by Martín Klein"VARIATIONS emerged due to the need to know if it is possible to face the deepest pains, those that invade a person's whole life and perspective, and to realize that it is possible to carry on."READ ON

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