Issue 120: Spring 2023

With exciting new short fiction, literary and musical criticism, and a curated collection of fine art, the spring issue dives into themes of darkness but still searches, always, for the light.  In Issue 120, contributors interrogate the gothic essence of the American and global South in new and unexpected ways. Pulitzer Center journalist Tom Hundley covers a horrific tale of police brutality that was one of the first to make front-page news. Miles Davis makes a surreal appearance as the “Prince of Darkness” in new fiction from Jeffery Renard Allen’s forthcoming collection Fat Time. Justin Nobel catalogs the destruction and aftermath of Hurricane Irma in Barbuda. Other pieces delve into mysterious former tenants, the environmental inbetweens of West Texas, the dystopian rhymes of billy woods, and the haunted inner landscapes of Cormac McCarthy’s characters. Ultimately though, we find the light: in North Carolina emerging writer Isaac Hughes Green’s short fiction starring a pair of size fifteen basketball shoes. Contributors new and old return to our pages with fresh new takes on land, history, violence, and change.