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Midwestern Gothic #12
Midwestern Gothic: Winter 2014 - Issue 12
Featuring fiction from Jack Austin, Jessica Fokken, Kate Graham, Rachel Hall, Timston Johnston, Jessica Kirkland, Becky Mandelbaum, Raul Palma, Stefan Schriver, Darci Schummer, Addie Schweiss, Cote Smith, Mary Stone Dockery, Max Vande Vaarst, Carson Vaughan, Alexander Weinstein. Poetry from Leah Angstman, Anne Brettell, Julie Brooks Barbour, Milton J. Bates, Marcus Cafagña, Jim Daniels, Jennifer M. Dean, August Donovan, David Faldet, Gerry LaFemina, Katherine MacCue, John McCarthy, Matt Mason, Dale Patterson, Erin Rodoni, Elizabeth Schmuhl, Amanda Williamsen. Midwestern Gothic is a quarterly print literary journal out of Ann Arbor, Michigan, dedicated to featuring work about or inspired by the Midwest, by writers who live or have lived here. Midwestern Gothic aims to collect the very best in writing inspired by the Midwest.
194 pages, Paperback
First published December 20, 2013
106 people want to read
About the author
Midwestern Gothic
22 books3 followersMidwestern Gothic (ISSN 2159-8827) is a quarterly print literary journal out of Ann Arbor, Michigan, dedicated to featuring work about or inspired by the Midwest, by writers who live or have lived here. Midwestern Gothic aims to collect the very best in Midwestern writing in a way that has never been done before, cataloging the oeuvre of an often-overlooked region of the United States ripe with its own mythologies and tall tales. Don’t be fooled by our name. Gothic fiction is often defined as the inclusion of deeply flawed, often “grotesque” characters in realistic (and, oftentimes unpleasant) settings/situations. At Midwestern Gothic, we take to heart the realistic aspects of Gothic fiction. Not every piece needs to be dark or twisted or full of despair, but we are looking for real life, inspired by the region, good, bad, or ugly. Ultimately, we’re striving to catalog the best of Midwestern writers, and whether it be pieces physically set in the Midwest, or work inspired by your time living here, we want it.
Source: About Midwester Gothic
Source: About Midwester Gothic
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 27, 2016
Picked this up shortly after it was released, but finally finished it this month. Mostly because there are lot of winter stories for the winter issue and I was reading it in warmer weather. Didn't quite fit, ya know.
Favorites include my friend Raul Palma's "Amaranthus," Darci Schummer's "Pretty as a Penny," and Timston Johnson's "Falling Up."
Favorites include my friend Raul Palma's "Amaranthus," Darci Schummer's "Pretty as a Penny," and Timston Johnson's "Falling Up."
July 23, 2014
*** EDITORS COMMENTARY AND REVIEW ***
The Winter Issue of Midwestern Gothic is always a solid way to ring in the new year. Getting the issue out is a little more challenging with the holidays and all the other activities falling around the launch date, but always well worth it. It was great getting back into our usual fiction / poetry groove with this issue, after taking a full four months to read all Ceative nonfiction submissions. And that photo for the cover! As I sit here writing this with the temps at subzero outside, I have a new appreciation, not just for the folks who are stuck outside living or working, but also for wild animals who really have no defense other than the clothes on their backs.
This time around, my favorite in the issue wasn’t humorous or light-hearted, as was the case with the past few issues. Nope, this one was all about losing a baby, and finding a way to move on. The exploration of how a person deals with a devastating loss while the friends and family who support them continue to live their lives was pitch perfect in this story. One one hand, you’ve got a mother who lost a child, and on the other her friend who is about to have one. While understandably tragic for one, how does the one who has the child not be affected similarly by the tragedy? All the joy of sharing the pregnancy with her friend has been sucked out, and my guess is that she’ll never be able to look at her own child without thinking of her friend’s depression. Here’s a short excerpt:
"Two months after she put Baby Boy in the ground, Janice received the invitation for Anne’s baby shower. The front cover was a picture of Noah’s ark with all the animals two by two poking their heads through various windows. Some of them stood on the deck. Inside, “It’s a Girl!” was handwritten in Anne’s mother’s cursive above the date, time, and location. In the blank after “RSVP,” Anne’s mother had added, “Just come if you can, dear. We’re all praying for you.”
Janice put the invitation on the refrigerator backwards so that all she saw was the logo of the card company, Biblical Greetings. When her husband Hal came home from work that night, he slammed the refrigerator door taking out two cans of root beer, and the card fluttered to the ground and slid beneath the oven.
Shortly after the funeral, Hal decided to become a Big Brother. He sprang the idea on Janice, and before she’s had time to consider what it meant, Joli, an eleven-year-old boy with a Haitian mother, arrived at their home carrying a baseball glove. Three nights a week, when Joli’s mother worked second shift as a cashier, Hal picked the boy up from school and watched him until her mother came at 8:30 p.m. Hal and Joli would spend the time playing, drink exactly one can of root beer each with whatever dinner Janice made, and even brush their teeth for a full and proper two-minute interval, their grins winking at each other in the wide downstairs bathroom mirror.
At first, Janice liked the idea of the good her husband could do, but as weeks passed, she realized that Hal’s big-brothering was less about Joli and more about filling a Baby-Boy-sized hole and, what’s more, about avoiding Janice’s existence whenever possible. When Joli wasn’t there, Hal ate dinner in front of the television to watch hockey. His family’s genes had killed their son. Sometimes she blamed him for that too, but mostly, she was angry at his distance. He never touched her now. Instead he stayed up late, and when there was no hockey, he watched Toledo’s local high school sports channel or Sports Network News. He watched bowling. He watched poker."
The Winter Issue of Midwestern Gothic is always a solid way to ring in the new year. Getting the issue out is a little more challenging with the holidays and all the other activities falling around the launch date, but always well worth it. It was great getting back into our usual fiction / poetry groove with this issue, after taking a full four months to read all Ceative nonfiction submissions. And that photo for the cover! As I sit here writing this with the temps at subzero outside, I have a new appreciation, not just for the folks who are stuck outside living or working, but also for wild animals who really have no defense other than the clothes on their backs.
This time around, my favorite in the issue wasn’t humorous or light-hearted, as was the case with the past few issues. Nope, this one was all about losing a baby, and finding a way to move on. The exploration of how a person deals with a devastating loss while the friends and family who support them continue to live their lives was pitch perfect in this story. One one hand, you’ve got a mother who lost a child, and on the other her friend who is about to have one. While understandably tragic for one, how does the one who has the child not be affected similarly by the tragedy? All the joy of sharing the pregnancy with her friend has been sucked out, and my guess is that she’ll never be able to look at her own child without thinking of her friend’s depression. Here’s a short excerpt:
"Two months after she put Baby Boy in the ground, Janice received the invitation for Anne’s baby shower. The front cover was a picture of Noah’s ark with all the animals two by two poking their heads through various windows. Some of them stood on the deck. Inside, “It’s a Girl!” was handwritten in Anne’s mother’s cursive above the date, time, and location. In the blank after “RSVP,” Anne’s mother had added, “Just come if you can, dear. We’re all praying for you.”
Janice put the invitation on the refrigerator backwards so that all she saw was the logo of the card company, Biblical Greetings. When her husband Hal came home from work that night, he slammed the refrigerator door taking out two cans of root beer, and the card fluttered to the ground and slid beneath the oven.
Shortly after the funeral, Hal decided to become a Big Brother. He sprang the idea on Janice, and before she’s had time to consider what it meant, Joli, an eleven-year-old boy with a Haitian mother, arrived at their home carrying a baseball glove. Three nights a week, when Joli’s mother worked second shift as a cashier, Hal picked the boy up from school and watched him until her mother came at 8:30 p.m. Hal and Joli would spend the time playing, drink exactly one can of root beer each with whatever dinner Janice made, and even brush their teeth for a full and proper two-minute interval, their grins winking at each other in the wide downstairs bathroom mirror.
At first, Janice liked the idea of the good her husband could do, but as weeks passed, she realized that Hal’s big-brothering was less about Joli and more about filling a Baby-Boy-sized hole and, what’s more, about avoiding Janice’s existence whenever possible. When Joli wasn’t there, Hal ate dinner in front of the television to watch hockey. His family’s genes had killed their son. Sometimes she blamed him for that too, but mostly, she was angry at his distance. He never touched her now. Instead he stayed up late, and when there was no hockey, he watched Toledo’s local high school sports channel or Sports Network News. He watched bowling. He watched poker."
April 3, 2014
Goodreads First Reads Winner!
I enjoyed the stories and poems. I usually don't read those particular items, but I'm glad I took a risk and read the publication. I like the way the stories are mixed in with the poems. It provides a nice variety. The journal is well bound, the cover is comfortable to hold, and the pages are a soft color on the eyes. I would read more of their publications in the future. I gave it 3 Stars due to the typos, missing punctuation, pages printed crooked, and one line of text on one page. When I was a typesetter, that was all taboo. Maybe it doesn't bug others, but I believe in taking pride in what we do. But, overall, a good read!
I enjoyed the stories and poems. I usually don't read those particular items, but I'm glad I took a risk and read the publication. I like the way the stories are mixed in with the poems. It provides a nice variety. The journal is well bound, the cover is comfortable to hold, and the pages are a soft color on the eyes. I would read more of their publications in the future. I gave it 3 Stars due to the typos, missing punctuation, pages printed crooked, and one line of text on one page. When I was a typesetter, that was all taboo. Maybe it doesn't bug others, but I believe in taking pride in what we do. But, overall, a good read!
August 3, 2016
The whole issue was great, but I was blown away by The Axeman's House by Cote Smith. Chilling, affecting.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews