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Featured Writer #113: Katherine Vaz


 

 

Read an excerpt from Katherine Vaz's new novel Above the Salt plus an exclusive interview with the author.

 

Above the Salt (Flatiron Books/Macmillan, 2023) is based on the true story of the converts to Presbyterianism on the Portuguese island of Madeira who were violently driven into the sea. John Alves grew up in jail with his mother, Serafina, condemned to die for heresy (and later granted a reprieve). The following excerpt covers John’s passage from Trinidad to New York to the haven of Jacksonville and Springfield, Illinois, where he and his fellow exiles were adopted. John will court a fellow Madeiran, Mary Freitas, at the Lincoln household before betrayals and the Civil War upend the rest of their lives. Read the full excerpt and interview here!


 

An Interview with Anders Carlson-Wee


 

 

Tyler Robert Sheldon talks with Anders Carlson-Wee about Disease of Kings (October 2023). 

Read more...


 

Order Latest in Print: Spring/Summer 2023

Journal – No. 21

Spring/Summer 2014 – Vol. 11, No. 1

preview

Contributors

Fiction

Nick Francis Potter, "Irregular Limbs"
Adam McOmber, "Metempsychosis"
Rachel Cantor, "Everyone's a Poet"
Andrew McKernan, "Water"
Jac Jemc, "Strange loop" 
Pablo Piñero Stillmann, "Letter to a Young Performer"
Brian Allen Carr, "We All Become Something"

Nonfiction

Barrett Swanson, "This Swift and Violent Forgetting" 
Jen Hirt, "Not Less than 1000 Bottles for Horseradish"
Matthew Gavin Frank, "Cincinnati Chili Reincarnate"

Poetry

Lauren Clark, "Kim Kardashian & Ray J Sex Tape"
Christopher Citro, "The Nearness of You"
Jamaal May, "On Reading the 154th Instance of Nigger in Absalom, Absalom! on a Train Through Mississippi," "Sugar," "from The Big Book of Exit Strategies"
Dan Kaplan, "Kansas City," "Someone Dropped a Baby"
G. B. Ryan, "Redeye Window Seat," "Orbit," "Twos and Threes"
Chloe Krug Benjamin, "Paleontology with Partner"
Eileen G'Sell, "Fourth of July"
David Wyatt, "Dark Night," "Middle Voice," "Repeating the Lord"
Kathy Fagan, "Ode to Julia Morgan," "Sycamore, Wick & Flame"
Ladan Osman, "You Return with the Water," "Catastrophic Breakdown"

Interviews

Katherine Vaz, interviewed by Amy Sayre Baptista
Brian Allen Carr, interviewed by Jensen Beach

Design Features

Adam Setala

Zut Alors!

Studio Set

Where We’re @

Steve Davenport "Forgottonia: An Interview with Jane Carlson"
Caleb Curtiss, "The Spell of Weather"

Editorial Staff

Editor: Jodee Stanley

Creative Nonfiction Editors: Janice N. Harrington

Poetry Editor: Michael Madonick

Art Directors: Brian Wiley and Maurice Meilleur

Designers: Carolina Bolaño, Taylor Carlson, Chelsea Choi, Siobhan Cooney, Andrew Fishel, Yoojin Hong, Kiki Kolakowski, Bryan Lorenz, Jillian Martin, Kelly Pisanko, Stacie Sansone, Courtney Smith, Ellen Winston

Assistant Editors: Roya Khatiblou, Sean MacIntyre, Lucilena Williams

Editorial Assistants: John Dudek, Sara Fan, Khaleel Gheba, Nolan Grieve, Ceridwen Hall, Avery Irons, Calgary Martin, Yael Massen, Zachariah McVicker, Natalie Mesnard, Katherine Scott Nelson, Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Kristin Walters

Special thanks [UIUC Meat Lab], Robert

Support at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

College of Fine and Applied Arts
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Department of English
Krannert Center for the Performing Arts
LAS Humanities Council
Office of the Chancellor
Office of the Provost
School of Art and Design

Individual Sponsors

Publisher
Robert Skiba

Friend
Joan Golder 
Kathleen Harleman
Robert and Allison Mesnard

This project is partially supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council.

Information about supporting Ninth Letter can be found at www.ninthletter.com. All donations and gifts to Ninth Letter are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.

Featured Writer #112: Michele Morano


Fuori di Testa

A crush starts in the back of the throat, at the edge of a swallow, attraction meeting a hint of repulsion like a wave rolling forward even as it pulls back, like “uh-oh” and “here we go again,” again being the operative word. Crushes are iterative: with each new one, you’ve been here before, never mind that you’re forty, then fifty, then fifty-five years old and happily partnered; the crushes keep coming on people you know and people you don’t. Read more...


 

2023 Regeneration Contest Winners


 

Ninth Letter is excited to announce the winner, honorable mention, and finalist of our 2023 Regeneration Literary Contest. Special thanks to contest sponsor, the Illinois Regenerative Agriculture Initiative, and to our guest judge Dr. Craig Santos Perez. The winning story will be published in print and online in December 2023, and the honorable mention essay will appear online. Thank you to all of our submitters, finalists, and readers.  

 

  © Ninth Letter, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.