WHLReview

145 Foster Street
Littleton MA 01460

The Wilderness House Literary Review is a publication devoted to excellence in literature and the arts.

To contact an editor simply click on a name below. To submit work to us please see "Submissions" below:

Editor & Publisher

    Steve Glines 

Editor-at-Large

  John Hanson Mitchell

Poetry Editor

   Irene Koronas

Fiction Editor

  Prema Bangera

Assistant Fiction Editor

  Teisha Twomey

Nonfiction Editor

   Steve Glines

Book Reviews Editor

   Doug Holder

Arts Editor/Curator

  Pam Rosenblatt

Poet in Residence

  Tomas O’Leary

 Submissions

Deadlines are as follows
March 1 – Spring
June 1 – Summer
September 1 – Autumn
December 1 – Winter

Please read this section before submitting work.

Please include some form of identification in the work itself.

All submissions must be in electronic form. Our preference is an MS Word file uploaded through the system below.

By submitting work to us you grant us a non-exclusive license to publish your work in any form we see fit. You may withdraw a submission up until the issue deadline (see above).

We don't pay so you retain all copyrights. If we publish your work online we may include it in a printed edition.

Poetry may be submitted in any length. Please don't submit 100 poems and ask us to pick 3.

Fiction may be submitted in three formats:

We also accept longer forms of fiction occasionally.

Non-Fiction is just that so lets see some interesting footnotes. Non-fiction should be short, (a lot) less than 5000 words

Book Reviews should be positive unless the author is a well-known blowhard. Our mission is to encourage literature not discourage it..

Any form of art may be submitted with the constraint that it must be something that can be published in 2 dimensions. It’s hard to publish sculpture but illustrations together with some intelligent prose count.

Published works are welcome with proper attribution.

Please submit all works electronically. Click here to submit to Wilderness House Literary Review

Welcome to the 36th issue (Volume 9, no 4) of the Wilderness House Literary Review. WHLR is a result of the collaboration between a group of poets and writers who call themselves the Bagel Bards (who keep publishing their anthologies).

The stories, articles, poems and examples of art have been presented as PDF files. This is a format that allows for a much cleaner presentation than would otherwise be available on the web. If you don’t have an Adobe Reader (used to read a PDF file) on your computer you can download one from the Adobe website. These files are large and we hope you will be patient when downloading then, however we think the beauty of the words deserves a beautiful presentation.

Wilderness House Press has a Twitter feed and you can find us on Facebook or read about us on Wikipedia.

It costs quite a bit of money to keep publishing WHLR - Please help us out if you can as every little bit helps.

Our ISSN number is 2156-0153.

Let us know what you think in our Letters to the Editor.

Table of Contents

Opine

Don’t shoot, I can’t breathe.

Now is the winter of our discontent. We curse the darkness. Cold hard frosts bury, for now, the life we lead above ground. All who can, seek the solace of sleep, hibernation, and prolonged detachment from interactive life. Both grub and tree sleep peacefully next to each other and next to the lichen covered sandstone they will become eons from now.

It’s just a well. The fire, corruption, distrust and conflict of the past season grates on us all. We are citizens of our states and as such are ultimately responsible for what those states represent. Don’t shoot, I can’t breathe. Autumn is the season of decay and winter is the season of death. Those things that no longer matter pass on into memory, good or bad, while those things that offer hope and a future will bide their time, gestating, growing silently, hiding, morphing into the butterfly or moth of the next season.

Both good and bad will emerge from this darkness which is already lifting by one or two minutes each day. Things can change, sometimes, for the better. Don’t shoot, I can’t breathe. For the last few decades the police in the United States have developed the unpleasant habit of referring to the general public as civilians. They use the word as if it doesn't apply to them. The police are not the military, they are civilians too. They need to be reminded, occasionally, who they are, who they serve, and at who’s pleasure they are employed. Policing is by consent. It's an ugly job, but if they can't be civilians, they need to go be soldiers.

Search the house

Art

Reporting by Pam Rosenblatt

• Somerville artist Anya Malkina and her unwearable art
• "Youth Arts Arise” visual arts program
• War from the Victims’ Perspective: Photographs by Jean Mohr
• A conversation about his Don Quixotes and other artworks
  with Waltham Artist Michael B. Wilson

Fiction

Our fiction editor loves Anton Chekhov and despairs the notion that there are no latter day Chekhov's submitting works for her consideration. This is not to say that the work she receives isn’t excellent … it’s just not Chekhov. To that end WHLReview announces a new prize for fiction to be called “the Chekhov Prize.” A Google search reveals several other Chekhov prizes with cash. Alas we’re not offering cash. We will look for a bearded bobble-head doll. In the mean time we have T-shirts with the Chekhov Prize logo available. Just click on Chekhov's head.

For your reading pleasure we offer an outstanding collection of short stories by:

Poetry

Our poetry editor, not wanting to be outdone by our fiction editor is pleased to announce the Gertrude Stein "rose" prize for creativity in poetry. Anyone published in Volume 3 (and beyond) is eligible. We don't have any idea what the prize will consist of - a T-shirt for sure. Perhaps we can find a Plaster of Paris bust of Julius Caesar, put a rose in its mouth and decorate it to look like Gertrude Stein. In the mean time we have T-shirts with the our rose prize logo available. Just click on Gerturde's head.

We have a remarkable lineup of poets, so enjoy.

Reviews

WHLReview is brought to you by:

An exciting travelog:

Seven Days in Fiji
by Steve Glines

Dosha, flight of the Russian Gypsies
by Sonia Meyer

by Dennis Daly
From Ibbetson Street Press


The Last of the Bird People
a novel by John Hanson Mitchell


Sophocles' Ajax
translated by Dennis Daly

Ibbetson Street Press

As we said when we started this is a joint production of Wilderness House Literary Retreat and the “bagel bards”. The “Bagel Bards” have just published their nineth anthology. You may purchase them here: