Issue 25 Contributors

Perigee is excited about our upcoming 25th issue—which will include work selected by our new Poetry Editor, Steve Kowit, as well as the 2009 Fiction Contest winners—and is pleased to announce the contributors for our July 15th, 2009 issue.

POETRY
“Wigs Galore,” by Claire Hsu Accomando
“Manuscript Found by Natasha Rostova During the Fire,” by Polina Barskova (tr. Ilya Kaminsky)
“A Still Life,” by Polina Barskova (tr. Ilya Kaminsky)
“The Blur,” by J. Mark Beaver
“Someone I Hardly Knew,” by Peter Bolland
“Boxes of Photographs,” by Peter Bolland
“It Doesn’t Have to Be Much,” by Peter Bolland
“Fishing the Backwash,” by Jack Driscoll
“Elegy: Charles Atlas,” by Jack Driscoll
“Victims,” by Andrei Guruianu
“On the 10th Anniversary of My Divorce,” by Terry Hertzler
“Visiting Detroit,” by Terry Hertzler
“A Taste for Falling,” by Judy Jordan
“Shedding,” by Nancy Lemke
“Done,” by Tamara Madison
“The Beautiful Hidden,” by Jack Marshall
“Swimming,” by Carolyn Miller
“Driving with Robert,” by Carolyn Miller
“Note to the Near World,” by Carolyn Miller
“baptize,” by Anis Mojgani
“Publishing,” by Miguel Murillo
“Exaltation in Starbucks,” by Michael Nieman
“Shoes,” by Michael Nieman
“A Tribute to Everyday,” by Dan Turéll (tr. Thomas E. Kennedy)
“The Interruption,” by Al Zolynas
“Trying to Save an Insect,” by Al Zolynas


FICTION
“A Modest Appetite,” by Ellen Akins
"Auscultating in the Fourth Dimension," by Jacob M. Appel (1st Place contest winner)
“The Rabbit Keeper,” by Luba Burtyk
“Shotgun Levine,” by Hesh Kestin
"Camping," by Sarah Lynn Knowles (3rd Place contest winner)
“The Snow Fort,” by Mary Ann McGuigan
"Equinox,” by Deanna Northrup
“On the Up and Up,” by Katey Schultz
"It Happened to River," by Rachel Allyson Stone (2nd Place contest winner)

NON-FICTION
“Paralyzed,” by Kim M. Anderson
“Books Everywhere,” by Walter Cummins
“Oddfathers,” by Mike Finley
“The Impulsion of Spontaneity: Allowing Chance Occurrence its Creative Influence on a Story,” by Thomas E. Kennedy
“Prelude at McKenzie Beach,” by D.C. Lynn
“Raked Stages: A Twelve Step Program,” by Renée K. Nicholson
“A Conversation with Linda Lappin,” interviewed by R.A. Rycraft
“The House No One Lived In,” by Tom Sheehan
“A Literary Agent Reads the Reviews,” by Nat Sobel

25th Issue Submission Period Closes Soon!

The submission period for Perigee's 25th issue, due out this July 15th, closes on May 31st. If you have writing to submit you'll want to do so soon. You can submit online through our re-designed web site.

The newest member of our editorial staff, multiple award-winning poet Steve Kowit, wants to read your sharpest poems. Novelist Duff Brenna, our fiction editor, is seeking memorable fiction. And our non-fiction editor R.A. Rycraft, is on the look out for carefully crafted memoirs and essays.

By submitting now, you will also receive our fastest response. You'll hear from us in only 7 weeks. Submit online now to be considered for inclusion in our summer issue.

Steve Kowit Joins Perigee as Poetry Editor!

Perigee is pleased and excited to announce that award winning poet Steve Kowit has joined our editorial team as Poetry Editor.

Native New Yorker Steve Kowit was born in Brooklyn in 1938 and moved to San Diego over twenty-five years ago, where he teaches at Southwestern College and regularly tours with his popular poetry workshops. Kowit earned his B.A. from Brooklyn College, his M.A. from San Francisco State College, and his M.F.A. in writing from Warren Wilson College. He studied with Robert Lowell and Stanley Kunitz during his early, New York life.

In addition to authoring several books of his own poetry, Kowit has edited a poetry anthology, The Maverick Poets; written several works on the subject of writing poetry, including the highly praised In the Palm Of Your Hand: The Poet's Portable Workshop; and has had poetry in a wide range of respected journals, magazines and newspapers such as The Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, The Yoga Journal and The Sun. Kowit's verse is occasionally read by Garrison Keillor on NPR. His work has appeared in many anthologies including ones edited by Edward Field, Garrison Keillor, Billy Collins, and Czeslaw Milosz.

Kowit is distinguished by his many awards for poetry, some of which include the National Endowment Fellowship in Poetry, two Pushcart Prizes, the Atlanta Review Poetry Prize, the Ouroboros Book Award, the 2006 Tampa Review Poetry Prize, and most
recently the San Diego Theodore Geisel Award. His collection of poems, The Dumbbell Nebula, was a San Francisco Chronicle's Notable Book of the Year, and his most recent books of poems, Gods of Rapture and The First Noble Truth have attracted rapt attention and praise from reviewers.

Influenced by the 19th century American prophetic genius Walt Whitman, as well as politically prescient and thoroughly accessible 20th century poets Allen Ginsberg and Robinson Jeffers, Kowit takes his aesthetic motto "No tricks" from another poet he loves, Ray Carver, and is much taken as well by Mary Oliver's remark that "My work is to love the world." His willingness to engage in the questions of political oppression, colonial aggression and tribal self-deception is aptly captured in poems like "Intifada" and in articles such as the one published in Skeptic magazine examining genocidal colonialism and the South Africa Xhosa mass "suicide."

Novelist Duff Brenna calls Steve Kowit "a major figure in poetry in America today. He is also the best lecturer and commentator on the craft of creative writing that I've ever seen in action." Poet Thomas Lux states, "I love Kowit's poems--he has more energy, more passion, more fire and more humor in his left little fingernail than most poets have in their whole bodies." Perigee heralded Kowit for his Tampa Review Poetry Prize in 2007: "His spirit, intelligence, and humanity never cease to amaze us. Not to mention his particular talent for poetry which is both profound and accessible"

Please join us in welcoming Steve Kowit by submitting your best poems directly through our 24th issue, online now. We will also be making an announcement in the near future about Perigee's next poetry competition.