Issue: Volume 33, #3, Winter 2017

In this issue:

Art & Resistance Amid Turmoil

Criticism:

Troy Jollimore on how Wallace Shawn’s plays and his latest book, Night Thoughts, illuminate our predicament

Robin Romm on what Imre Kertész can teach us about art as resistance

Nonfiction:

T.J. Stiles on the road we travelled to arrive at this precarious moment

Andrew Tonkovich on “free persons,” and the risks writers must take

Fiction:

Dana Johnson’s “Like Other People”: In desperate need of a job, a graduate student takes a job cleaning cable boxes, working with folks also hard up for work.

Kristopher Jansma’s “The Corps of Discovery”: On a long road trip with his father, a middle-school history teacher considers Lewis & Clark, loss, and how no matter how much you prepare, “there were things you couldn’t reasonably expect to be prepared for.”

Krys Lee’s “The Jungle”: The trees and the vines have long received the terrified and the wretched; their plight does not go unnoticed.

Mackenzie Evan Smith’s “The Wet Continent”: “I have not set toe on a sailboat in more than a decade. I don’t know the last time I touched the ocean. … I think I am happier now. Am I really?”

Plus an excerpt from Dorthe Nors’s upcoming novel, Mirror, Shoulder, Signal

Poetry:

Victoria Chang, David Hernandez, Ruth Madievsky and Dean Rader on the topic of resistance; plus new poems from Judy Halebsky, Auzelle Epeneter, Bino A. Realuyo, Noah Warren, Christina Olson, and Jenny Xie

Interview:

Over a home-cooked meal, a boisterous conversation between Matt Sumell and Michelle Latiolais about mentoring, anger, rescue dogs, and what it means to write for a living.

Art:

Jenny Sampson’s tintypes of California skaters
Custom cover design & illustration by Josh Korwin

You can purchase a copy of No. 111 here, or order a subscription to ZYZZYVA now and we’ll start you off by shipping you the Fall issue.

‘What If My Mother’ by Victoria Chang: ZYZZYVA No. 111, Winter Issue

by Victoria Chang

Posted on by editor

What if my mother never protested was never pro anything never probed beyond the small yard where the bees lived with their constant buzzing what if my mother matched the bees in their compliant striped dresses minding their own business afraid to wander too far from the work that paid honey afraid to wander too far from the one queen they served but maybe the bees are not just working maybe the bees make all that noise because they are hiding things because they don’t like where they live are really livid not timid not just little serfs in striped […]

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Letter From The Editor

by

Posted on by ZYZZYVA

“Literature is the question minus the answer.” —Roland Barthes “To learn which questions are unanswerable and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.” —Ursula K. LeGuin, from The Left Hand of Darkness Dear Reader, Perhaps you, like me, find yourself asking a lot from literature these days: greater solace, finer insight, deeper resonance. For me that’s led to thinking more pointedly about such expectations, and I’ve found it is useful to ask not only what literature can do to respond to current events, but also how; not just what meaning literature can […]

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In the Winter Issue

by ZYZZYVA

Posted on by ZYZZYVA

In this issue: Art & Resistance Amid Turmoil Criticism: Troy Jollimore on how Wallace Shawn’s plays and his latest book, Night Thoughts, illuminate our predicament Robin Romm on what Imre Kertész can teach us about art as resistance Nonfiction: T.J. Stiles on the road we travelled to arrive at this precarious moment Andrew Tonkovich on “free persons,” and the risks writers must take Fiction: Dana Johnson’s “Like Other People”: In desperate need of a job, a graduate student takes a job cleaning cable boxes, working with folks also hard up for work. Kristopher Jansma’s “The Corps of Discovery”: On a long […]

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