This volume includes: Poetry by Dan Jacoby, Philip St. Clair, Claudia Serea, Ashley M. Jones, Robert Okaji, Len Kuntz, Scott Howdeshell, Robert Lee Kendrick, Richard Weaver, David Tuvell, John Saad, Kevin Rabas, and Monika McGreal Viola Fiction by Wendy Thornton, Marley Simmons Abril, Tim Nalley, Regan Green, Ellen Perry, Diane Thomas-Plunk, Dan Leach, Heidi Espenscheid Nibbelink, David Brendan Hopes, Cathy Rose, and Jason R. Kesler Art by Colton Adrian, Stephen Smith, and Nolen Otts Cover Art by Kevin Van Hyning
This anthology features the best pieces from Steel Toe Review's first year online. Contributors include: Jennifer Blair Louis Bourgeois Zachary C. Bush Jim Butler William Childress Thomas N. Dennis Matthew Dexter Mario Duarte Murray Dunlap Sarah Fisch Kathy Gilbert Chris Hayes Peycho Kanev Len Kuntz Matt Layne Catfish McDaris Karla Linn Merrifield Corey Mesler Geoff Munsterman Leland Pitts-Gonzales Grantley Rushing Curtis Rutherford George Sawaya Brent Stauffer Melissa Studdard James Valvis Dale Wisely Illustrations by Stephen Smith and Justin Wayne Butts Cover design by Sean Hogan
The second annual anthology from Steel Toe Review, an online literary magazine based in Birmingham, AL. Steel Toe Review gives special attention to writers from the South and writing with Southern themes, but we publish quality writing on any topic from writers all over the world.
From the New York Times bestselling author of A Deadly Education comes the fourth volume of the Temeraire series, as the Napoleonic Wars bring Will Laurence and Temeraire to Africa in search of aid. “Temeraire is a dragon for the ages.”—Terry Brooks Tragedy has struck His Majesty's Aerial Corps, whose magnificent fleet of fighting dragons and their human captains valiantly defends England’s shores against the encroaching armies of Napoleon Bonaparte. An epidemic of unknown origin and no known cure is decimating the noble dragons’ ranks—forcing the hopelessly stricken into quarantine. Now only Temeraire and a pack of newly recruited dragons remain uninfected—and stand as the only means of an airborne defense against France's ever bolder sorties. Bonaparte’s dragons are already harrowing Britain’s ships at sea. Only one recourse remains: Temeraire and his captain, Will Laurence, must take wing to Africa, whose shores may hold the cure for the mysterious and deadly contagion. On this mission there is no time to waste, and no telling what Don’t miss any of Naomi Novik’s magical Temeraire series HIS MAJESTY’S DRAGON • THRONE OF JADE • BLACK POWDER WAR • EMPIRE OF IVORY • VICTORY OF EAGLES • TONGUES OF SERPENTS • CRUCIBLE OF GOLD • BLOOD OF TYRANTS • LEAGUE OF DRAGONS
Winner of the 2020 Steel Toe Books Poetry Award, Focal Point is a scientist's unofficial dissertation, a daughter's faithful correspondence, and a coming-of-age story. Written largely while Jenny Qi was a young Ph.D. student conducting cancer research after her beloved mother's death from cancer, the collection turns to "all the rituals of all the faiths," invoking Western and Eastern mythology and history, metaphors from cell biology, and even Jimi Hendrix, as Qi searches for a container to hold grief. The opening poem of this debut collection primes us to consider all definitions of the titular "focal point," as the speaker evaluates this moment of early loss beneath a literal and metaphoric microscope. Here, the past and future converge, but from here, what does divergence look like? What can a scientific mind do except interrogate and attempt to measure the unknown and immeasurable? These poems, at once tender and suffused with wry humor, diverse in form and scope, go on to navigate illness, early relationships, racism, climate change, mass shootings, and the COVID-19 pandemic, unflinching in the face of death and the darker side of human nature. At its core, Focal Point is an uncompromising interrogation of how to be alive in the world, always loving something that has been or is in the process of being lost.
This expanded edition adds sixteen new exercises designed to inspire creativity and help poets hone their skills. Each exercise includes a clearly-stated learning objective, historical background matter on the particular subgenre being explored, and an example written by undergraduates at Western Kentucky University. The text also analyzes work by leading American poets including Billy Collins, Denise Duhamel and Dean Young. The book's five chapters correspond with the five canons of classical rhetoric: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery.
