Mason's Road - An Online Literary and Arts Journal

07/19/2017

Hi Mason's Road fans - just stopping by to share that there's a new online literary journal that just launched today with some familiar names, including Kim Bridgford, Pete Duval, Baron Wormser, and Lisa Calderone (myself!).

Please check out for your summer reading pleasure and follow Facebook.com/icomefromtheworld for updates on the next open reading period.

Enjoy!

https://icomefromtheworld.org

03/13/2017

To all fans of Mason's Road -

While Fairfield University and all MR editors have moved on to other projects, you now have two archival sites you can visit for your favorite MR issues, authors, and literature: Causeway Lit & Mason's Road. Go to causewaylit.com for the University's set of MR issues and to submit to Fairfield's new MFA graduate student online journal, or go to masonsroad.com to check out all the issues and literature in their original form.

Many thanks to all who contributed to this very special community! We continue to get new views and "likes" every week, and welcome your voices and presence here any time.

For those still interested, check out the feature author slideshow on the redesigned masonsroad.com and come back here to "vote" for your favorite Mason's Road writer! (If s/he is missing from the slideshow, please share below.)

May the roads ahead always be more promising than the ones we've traveled on...

An online literary journal sponsored by Fairfield University's MFA in Creative Writing Program, from 2010-2015

08/10/2015

"I wrote a short essay for Glimmer Train once about how much of my writing process comes directly from my gut; that is, I know what I know about what the story needs, about the way it wants to be told, but I have no idea why I know it. I read a lot—A LOT—and I read pretty closely, trying to figure out how an author I admire goes about doing the thing I admire them for, and reading like this, year after year, I think you can’t help but develop a mindful instinct of how stories are told."

Check out our Q&A with author Lance Weller in the current issue! http://www.masonsroad.com/?page_id=9563

In Wilderness, there is a certain poetic elegance to the prose. Is this a conscious decision? Do you ever think poetically about the words on the page? I think this is a question of style and not something you can be overly conscious of without it coming off sounding false on the page. Or overly-co…

08/03/2015

"An elephant’s honed instincts
congealed
in the finger pads
of your ivory-slippered
keys.
You stand,
a grove of stately trees."

Read Lucia Galloway's full poem "Ode to My Piano" in our current issue!
http://www.masonsroad.com/?page_id=9664

by Lucia Galloway Aristocrat out of forests, savannahs, semi-tropic jungles: sunlight and rain wove the grain of your impeccable case. An elephant’s honed instincts congealed in the finger pads of your ivory-slippered keys. You stand, a grove of stately trees. Like opening an atlas, I lift your…

07/29/2015

"I can’t say that writing the memoir was something that I consciously planned. As with most writers, I became obsessed with a subject, and I just kept writing about home. Whenever I finished a piece, I’d tell myself, 'no one will want to read this stuff.' Then I would send out the essay to a journal or to a competition, and it would get selected and published. As this happened over and over, and the work was taken by journals not just from the Midwest but from very different parts of the country—the south, the east coast, the northwest, etc.—I became more emboldened and convinced that I was telling a story that was interesting to many readers."

Read more about the fabulous Debra Marquart in our Issue 11 interview!
http://www.masonsroad.com/?page_id=9580

They say, “you can never go home again”, but what if you could, just not in the physical sense? Award winning author Debra Marquart left her North Dakota farm town when she was seventeen and visited only sporadically, but she could never quite let go of it or escape the hold it seemed to have over h…

07/22/2015

"This—at the cross-stitch, I must be reminded—
is where I place my right foot. Here,
at the tops of the lines—I need no
coaching now—is where I place my hands.
Here, the feet planted roughly in ballet’s
third position, the hips canted slightly out,
is how I pit my weight against the envelope’s
billowing mass."

Read Marta Ferguson's poem "The Season's First Balloon Launch" in our current issue!
http://www.masonsroad.com/?page_id=9670

by Marta Ferguson This—at the cross-stitch, I must be reminded— is where I place my right foot. Here, at the tops of the lines—I need no coaching now—is where I place my hands. Here, the feet planted roughly in ballet’s third position, the hips canted slightly out, is how I pit my weight against t…

07/18/2015

"No one sees the axle snap; they only see the precarious tilt of the camper as it droops suddenly on one side. It had four rear wheels and now it has two. Just like that, the pair is gone from the vehicle, bouncing away on its own. Across the lanes of traffic it goes, before disappearing down the slight slope on the side of the highway. Yet still the crippled camper continues its forward surge, now with flashes of fire flying from the side that dropped— sprays and sprays of fire, like a fistful of sparklers."

Check out our contest winner Margaret Goerig's piece "Can't Breathe, Laughing".
http://www.masonsroad.com/?page_id=9590

by Margaret Goerig No one sees the axle snap; they only see the precarious tilt of the camper as it droops suddenly on one side. It had four rear wheels and now it has two. Just like that, the pair is gone from the vehicle, bouncing away on its own. Across the lanes of traffic it goes, before disa…

06/03/2015

The editors are working hard reading all of these fabulous submissions. They deserve a virtual pat on the back! Thank you to all who contributed to this upcoming Issue!

05/15/2015

Last day to submit to Mason's Road!
http://www.masonsroad.com/?page_id=154

We are accepting your best Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, Poetry, Drama, and Craft Essays. The theme for Issue #11 is “Joy,” and we are looking for unique and arresting takes on this topic. Our submissions period runs for three months: February 15 – May 15, 2015. NEW THIS YEAR: In order to keep Mason…

05/03/2015

Good news! We've finally got Issue 10 back up, as well as the submissions manager for Issue 11. There's still time to submit! Reading period closes May 15. Thank you for your patience and continued support!