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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. 16

Fall/Winter 2011-12 – Vol. 8, No. 2

Sample Spreads

 

 

Contributors

Nonfiction

Monica Berlin, "On Beds, Or Where We Sleep"
Michele Morano, "Crushed"
Jacqueline Saint-Pierre, "The Waiting Place"
Sue William Silverman, "Prepositioning John Travolta" 
Eric Dean Wilson, "Memphisto: Scenes from the End"

Fiction

Logan Adams, "Tethers"
Anya Groner, "Hop"
Theodore Kitaif, "Pictures"
Helen Rubinstein, "Essy, stepping into the water"
Joe B. Sills, "The Ascendants"
E. B. Vandiver, "Safelight"

Poetry

L. S. Asekoff, "Cicero"; "The Sleeping Disciples"
A. M. Brant, "To Notify in Case"
Jesse Damiani, Take Her to a Place She Knows"; "Joan of Arc Responds to Being Drunkenly Hit on at Poor Paul's Pourhouse""
Jehanne Dubrow, "Arranged Marriage, as Coffee Field"
Frank Giampietro, "Another To-Don't List"
Gina Keicher, "Labor Day '98"
Jill Osier, "Sand"
L. S. McKee, "The Anatomical Heart"; "Dead Giveaway"
Rebecca Gayle Howell, "How to Build Trust:"
Richard Pierce, "Penny Livingsto and the Red-Spotted Newt"
Roger Reeves, "Asylum"; "Self-Portrait as Love in Mississippi"; "Do Not Enter"
Michael Shea, "J. Robert Oppenheimer Meets Marilyn Monroe"
Laura Lee Washburn, "Ritual & Meditation""Penances or A List of Actions or States of Being and Corresponding, Often Unexpected, Penances"

Art Feature

Willis Guthrie, Book Alteration

Where We’re @

Michael Don, “Our Missouri Borders”
Kendra Chapman, “Negotiating the Labyrinth: Memory, Borges, and the Art Institute of Chicago”

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
Kai Haber
Robert and Kay Merrick
Richard Powers
Robert Skiba

Patron
Melvin A. Skvarla

Friend
Raina Bahns 
Joan Golder 
Robert Graves 
Lee Gurga 
Kathleen Harleman
Janice N. Harrington and Robert Dale Parker
Keri Kaeding and Steve Danzer
Benjamin C. Krause 
Audrey Niffenegger
Kai Pham
Marc Snir

This project is partially supported by a grant from 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.  

 

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