New Orleans artist and editor Nikki Ummel’s touching poem “It was night when you died” is a rumination on how death is “a strange thing” that can come at unexpected times. “Hug your loved ones,” the poem communicates—even if “the outcome” is the same. Check out the full piece in our summer ‘24 issue!
Korean American poet Elane Kim’s latest poem “Arrival” is a “golden shovel” that explores the complex and often difficult relationship between “creator and creation,” between “burning and quiet renewal.” The poem centers around the body, describing itself as “a story about hands.” Find the full piece in Chestnut Review’s summer 2024 issue!
Join us in Mérida, Mexico at Luz en Yucatán to enrich your writing in January, 2025.
Applications are open now through September 30th, 2024.
Reserve your spot and let’s enrich your writing together (and have some fun!).
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Vietnamese-American writer and The Rumpus fiction editor Katie Quach describes her nonfiction piece “Dreamy and Content” as a “double-take” or a “rumination on remembering.” Fans of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s work may resonate with Quach’s prose, which delves into the discrepancy between the parents we long for and the parents we have. Quach reflects on her mother’s deteriorating memory as a “perverse preservation” of a much younger and perhaps freer version of herself. Read more of “Dreamy and Content” in Chestnut Review’s Winter 2024 issue.
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“I spent my formative years as a Christian summer camp counselor, much like the narrator. In both of our cases, a two-pronged perception of gender ordered the surrounding world. As trans non-binary, I am, of course, suspicious of so-called natural binaries. I wrote this flash for anyone who flew through a similar upbringing while nursing a sparrow arm, feeling they could not celebrate their whole self within their cultural environment.” Erin says.
To read & listen to ‘Sparrow Arm’ by Erin Vachon(5:1) visit our website today.
“This was a joy to write. Who hasn’t imagined the perils of being doll-sized in a human-sized world? I don’t always know where I’m going when I write this short, but flash allows it, requests it, and I arrive at the center sideways. While Paul is tiny, his world—and his heart—remain immense” ~ Read Paul Finds Himself in Miniature by BETH HAHNin our summer 2023 Issue.
Visit our website to read. Listen to the full piece on our SoundCloud @chestnutreview 🌰
“This poem was inspired by a story my dad once told me about his young adulthood in Pakistan. It is part of a verse novel that examines—among other concerns—the proliferation and impact of gun violence in America” ~ Read Hiba Tahir’s Stolen in our Summer 2023 Issue.
‘’Three Nights’ is part of a greater collection of poetry that deals with memory in its many forms. When I was writing this poem in particular, I was thinking about historical and familial memory, and how these types of memory shape the inter and outer world on a cultural and personal level. There are memories that hold the feelings, losses, silence, and heartbeat of entire countries, and there are memories that hold us longer than we can hold them. There are memories inside us that are part of the fabric of our bodies as much as blood. It was my aim to let historical trauma speak through my family, through me.”
~ Tamara Panici
Visit our website to Read ‘Three Nights’ in our summer 2023. You can listen to the full audio on SoundCloud. 👏🌰
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"This poem was born out of all the emotions frontline health care workers learn to restrain when having to survive inside a dying system. Frontline workers know the diagnosis, and the inevitable outcome without proper treatment, but the body they operate in doesn’t listen. My piece expresses that tragedy." — Renee Cronley on A Chronically Unhealthy Health Care System in Winter 2023 issue.
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"This poem was sparked by my research into memory studies. I learned that the brain is designed not just to retain information but also to forget it. The natural erosion of memory over time can feel daunting because it is as if I am losing parts of my past and by extension parts of myself. Writing poetry, in many ways, is an impulse against forgetting." — Recurrence, Molly O'Leary in Winter 2023 issue.
