Poetry by Jeffrey Skinner and Julia Story. Interviews with T.C. Boyle, Bob Hicok, and Jean Valentine.
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Telling Stories Talking Craft
Sycamore Review's collection of interviews with contemporary fiction writers, including Michael Chabon, Richard Ford, Jane Hamilon, and many more, is now available from our publishing partner, Parlor Press.
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NEWS by Corey Van Landingham Poetry Co-Editor
It’s been an exciting year for former Sycamore Review contributors, and we’re sure that more good news will continue to roll in.
First off, a belated congratulations to Issue 23.1 contributor Adam Day, whose chapbook, Badger, Apocrypha, was chosen by James Tate as a winner of a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. We were lucky enough to be able to publish two of his poems, “A Polite History” and “To Rights, the Abattoir.” Congratulations, Adam!
Secondly, Ryan Teitman, whose haunting poem “Ode To a Hawk with Wings Burning” was featured in Issue 22.2, was a 2011 Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship Nominee. What an honor–congratulations, Ryan!
Remember, our lovely contributors, we’re watching you.
EVENTS by Joshua Diamond, Nonfiction Co-Editor
Sunday afternoon in August. Pleasantly temperate for Indiana this time of year. And 5,500 undergraduates—most of them first-year students at Purdue University—are funneling into Elliot Hall of Music. No, this is not the rescheduled Lady Gaga concert. They’re here to see Rebecca Skloot, whose wildly successful book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, has spent 29 weeks on the New York Times Best Sellers list with no signs of slowing down.
All first-year students at Purdue received Skloot’s book over the summer, free of charge, as part of the University’s Common Reading Program, which offers a different book each year in order to provide “a common first-year experience for Purdue’s newest students.”
For the uninitiated, Skloot’s book puts a face to the first immortal cell line. In 1951, doctors took cells from Henrietta Lacks’ cervical tumor without asking, and …MORE
NEWS  by Conor Broughan, Fiction Editor
Congratulations to Jim Ray Daniels, contributor in the 23.1 Winter/Spring issue, for his new book Trigger Man: More Tales of the Motor City published by Michigan State University Press.
The editors at Sycamore Review have been longtime fans of Mr. Daniels poetry and fiction.You can read an excerpt from “Candy Necklace,” which is one of many great stories in the new collection, and a short interview with Jim Ray Daniels here. Next, be sure to order your own copy issue 23.1 before you go pick up Trigger Man. Easy enough, right?
CONVERSATIONS Conor Broughan, Fiction Editor
 The editors at Sycamore Review were thrilled when judge Antonya Nelson chose Joe B. Sills story “The Duck” as the 2011 Wabash Fiction prize winner. Nelson said of the story, “This story stands out for being both entirely original, and entirely paying homage to the father of short story writers, Anton Chekhov. It looks backward, it looks forward. It is spare, clever, elusive, and utterly satisfying.” We couldn’t agree more. We wanted to catch up with Joe and ask him a few questions about his story, Chekhov, and the relationship between medicine and writing. Read an excerpt of the Wabash prize winning story here.
Sycamore Review: One thing that became quite clear after reading your Wabash Fiction Contest-winning story “The Duck” and taking a look at Contributor’s Note is that you have a …MORE
FICTION by Joe B. Sills
Little by little I am entering into a fantastic world.
-Chekhov
The first snow of winter falls on The Taganrog Gymnasium for Boys. Students exit from a wide doorway, each of them uniformed in a dark blue tunic with a long row of copper buttons. A first-grader removes his cloak and sits on it, then demands that someone pull him. An icicle is plucked from the corner of a windowsill, is sucked on, stolen, and hurled at a sparrow. The Greek instructor removes half a sausage from his pocket and inspects it. He gives it a nibble and walks homeward, weaving through a row of skeletal elms.
Anton waits until there is no one left to follow him. He shapes snow into five tiny spheres and assembles them along a low railing. Once he has eaten them, he makes five more. …MORE
CONVERSATIONS  Conor Broughan, Fiction Editor
Many readers of Sycamore Review are also writers. So we wanted to pose a few craft questions to contributor Naomi Williams that might illuminate her process and techniques when writing “Items for Exchange” which can be read in its entirety in Issue 23.2-Summer/Fall 2011.
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by Naomi J. Williams
PLAUSIBILITY
He always forgets how unpleasant the crossing from Calais is. He has never once made the trip that there wasn’t inclement weather, contrary winds and tides, unexplained delays, seasick fellow-travelers, surly packet captains, or dishonest boatmen waiting to extort the passengers ashore. This time it is all of the above, and by the time he reaches Dover, he has, of course, missed the stagecoach to London. He spends the night at the Ship Hotel, where he endures a hard, …MORE
REVIEWS by Patricia Henley
Many years ago when I had completed my first year of teaching fiction-writing, I had a drink with Leonard Robinson, former editor at Esquire, on his lovely front porch in Missoula, Montana. We got to talking about teaching. Leonard told me a very simple way to present the idea of tension to students. He said, “Imagine there’s a guy in an elevator at the top of a very tall building. The elevator breaks down and suddenly he’s plunged downward. There are at least two possible outcomes. And you might be rooting for one or the other.” This notion is at the heart of the story in Robert Olen Butler’s new novel, A Small Hotel. It is a textbook example of such tension — a real page-turner.
But it’s so much more than that.
Michael and Kelly …MORE
NEWS By Jessica Jacobs, Editor-in-Chief
If there is a verbal equivalent of a beaming smile, then consider me doing that here. A high bar has been set by former Editor-in-Chief Anthony Cook (thank you, Tony, for all of your amazing work these last two years!), and I am thrilled and honored to be continuing the Sycamore Review legacy.
In the time leading up to our next issue, we have some exciting changes in store. Online, in addition to site design upgrades made by Webmaster Ehren Pflugfelder, second-year fiction writer Natalie van Hoose will be bringing you an audio archive in which all Sycamore contributors, past and present, will be invited to share recordings of themselves reading their work, helping us to provide a more immersive environment and letting our writers’ voices truly be heard. Book Review & Blog Editor Rebecah Pulsifer will be guiding our staffers …MORE
NEWS After its annual summer sabbatical, Sycamore Review’s submissions manager is tan, well-rested, back online, and eager for you to stop by and say hello. Updated submissions guidelines can be found here.
We are also still accepting submissions for the 2011 Wabash Prize for Poetry, which will be judged by former United States Poet Laureate Louise Glück. The winner will receive $1,000 and publication in our Winter/Spring issue. All entries will be read by no less than two Sycamore staffers and considered for publication.
NEWS By Shavonne Clarke, Nonfiction Co-Editor
Hi all. I’m Shavonne Clarke, now working with Josh Diamond as one half of the nonfiction contingent here. I grew up in Great Falls, Virginia and received a BA from Sweet Briar College and an MA from Texas A&M University, both in English. Currently I live in Lafayette, Indiana as an MFA student in fiction at Purdue University.
I’m very excited to be reading and helping to select this year’s nonfiction pieces. As a fiction reader, I was frequently impressed by the caliber of writing submitted to Sycamore. In this case, I also have the honor of “induction,” in some sense, into other lives and experiences. Because creative nonfiction seems such an expansive genre, I look forward to seeing how those truths find their own expression.
If you’d like to read more on the preferred aesthetics of each submission, …MORE
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