Everything

Second City by Rachel Turney

Tired and nauseous by the early hour we throw our bags into the trunk. Speeding past the streetlamps and whirling by the cars I shutter. I can see my breath as we wait for the shuttle. Theterminal lights burn my eyeballs. We stand in line with the others and inch through security andthen down the […]

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Everything, issue 100, Issue 98, Now Read This

Now Read This: October 2024

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators No One Knows Their Blood Type by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat (Translated by Hazem Jamjoum) No One Knows Their Blood Type is a novel of identity, belonging, and conflicting truths—of stories, secrets, songs, rumors, and lies. On the day that her father dies, Jumana makes a discovery […]

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Everything, issue 100

In Review: Chronicles of a Village by Nguyễn Thanh Hiên, translated by Quyên Nguyễn-Hoàng

In the Translator’s Afterword to Nguyễn Thanh Hiện’s Chronicles of a Village, QuyênNguyễn-Hoàng describes the role of the translator as “someone trying to grasp not only therhythm or tone, but the scent of the text” (131). The scent of these words lingers with me afterreading Nguyễn-Hoàng’s translation of Nguyễn’s “timely and timeless” novel (130). Chroniclesof […]

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Everything, issue 100

An Interview with Abby Richardson

Abby Richardson’s approach to photography focuses on documenting “the unnoticed, untouched moments.” Drawing influence from haiku poetry and the slow, steady harmony of nature, Richardson finds joy in the profound, meditative aspects of art. Tell us about yourself; How did you get your start in photography? I have always liked photography, but I got my […]

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Everything, Issue 98, Now Read This

Now Read This: September 2024

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators DEED by torrin a. greathouse DEED, the follow-up to torrin a. greathouse’s 2022 Kate Tufts Discovery Award winning debut, Wound from the Mouth of a Wound, is a formally and lyrically innovative exploration of queer sex and desire, and what it can cost. Sprawling across art, eros, […]

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Everything, issue 99, Reviews + Interviews

In Review: Asterism by Ae Hee Lee

Twice in my life, I’ve felt the embrace of Trujillan sun warmed-sky: first, upon my return to my home country after many years away and, most recently, through Ae Hee Lee’s gorgeously bewildering debut.  Asterism opens with an epigraph from Italo Calvino’s The Invisible Cities, setting the stage for an exploration of the human condition […]

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Everything, Issue 98, Now Read This

Now Read This: August 2024

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators You Could Be That Kind of Girl: stories by Téa Franco Frida Kahlo resurrects as a social media influencer, a girl feeds all of her food to a bloom of angry ladybugs, a skunk funeral makes a young woman contemplate her life and more in Téa […]

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Everything, Issue 97, Now Read This

Now Read This: July 2024

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Sex Goblin by Lauren Cook As if hauled up squirming from the bowels of the internet, Sex Goblin metabolizes sex writing, popular culture, and autofiction to present the real and the imagined as equally surreal possibilities. In the narrator’s childlike voice, all things become both mundane […]

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Art, Everything, Issue 97

An Interview with Lucy Liu

This month’s artist, Lucy Liu, captures a tender and powerful moment between a mother and daughter with her piece, Holding On. Liu shares her artistic journey and gives us insight as to how she uses painting and drawing to explore her imagination and express her emotions. You’ve mentioned you started learning art at a very young age, […]

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Everything

Join the Vagabond City Team — Call for CNF Edtior

We have a new opening for one volunteer position: CNF Editor. See below for application details. Please note: all staff positions are volunteer and are thus unpaid. All positions are also virtual/remote. CNF Editor (Posted June 17, applications will be accepted until position is filled) Each month, VC features one CNF author as a part […]

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Everything, Issue 96, Now Read This

Now Read This | June 2024

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Discovery by Dee Allen In New York City during the Truman years, two photographers met and worked with their greatest discovery – a blue-eyed, fresh-faced brunette from Nashville who stepped before their cameras, bound to change the game. The poems in Discovery – Oakland performance poet […]

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Issue 96, Reviews + Interviews

In Review: Synthetic Jungle by Michael Chang

If I had to describe Michael Chang’s Synthetic Jungle, I might point to the opening line of“白球鞋 WHITE TENNIS SHOES,” “‘poetry of the everyday’ means boring poetry.” It’s funny,pointed, and true, the type of highly quotable line you want to share with all your friends and allyour enemies. It’s also fascinating because Synthetic Jungle feels […]

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Everything, Issue 95, Now Read This

Now Read This | May 2024

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators NDA by Lily Lady NDA by poet and filmmaker Lily Lady is an intimate and opaque poetry collection about [REDACTED] and [REDACTED]. Spiral upward, downward, and side to side. From the safe words of New York to the alleys of Los Angeles….and all the flights in […]

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Everything

July Cornfields by R. Gerry Fabian

To do it again,I’d go stream rock rural.and walk the vast county fields. I’d look at trash.The useless itemsthat people throw from cars.And I’d be happy about it.A slow country happy.One withoutthe fear of carelessness. I’d stop for a diner lunchand a filling station sodastraight from the ice chest. Most of all,I’d listen to the […]

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Everything, Issue 95, Reviews + Interviews

In Review: A Long Walk by John Drudge

A first impression: the poems seem so impersonal as to be deeply personal. Words that resonate:  sun, meadow, redemption, tomorrow, promise and…what else?  Wandering and moon. A Long Walk is birth and death, fate and will, time and love. Spare, essential, intimate, each poem takes on a personality. Picture a human figure crossing an inner landscape. One thing common […]

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Everything, Issue 94, Opportunities for Artists & Writers, vagabond city

Opportunities for Artists and Writers | April 2024

Brooklyn Poets Poetry Festival Fellowships is currently accepting registration fellowship applications from people who are not enrolled in a degree program with access to creative writing instruction or have had a book of poems published or accepted for publication by a United States press for their second annual poetry festival. To apply, submit 4–5 poems […]

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Everything, Issue 94, Now Read This, vagabond city

Now Read This | April 2024

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Crimson Stain: Poems Inspired by King’s letter from jail, Real Life & a Facet of Blood Diamond Culture by Dee Allen In Winter 2007, a full-time college student broke 7 years of writer’s block by writing a new poem, generated while reading Martin Luther King’s Letter […]

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Everything, Issue 93, Now Read This

Now Read This | March 2024

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators The Sadness of Shadows by Lola Ancira (translated by Juana Adcock) Lola Ancira’s third short story collection, and the first to be translated into English, gives voice to those who have been marginalised and condemned to live life in the shadows of lunacy, nostalgia, loss and […]

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Everything, Issue 93, review

In Review: Periodic Boyfriends by Drew Pisarra

The sonnet, as a traditional poetic form, has often been used by writers as a means for depicting and paying homage to a beloved. And, given the enduring presence of the sonnet within poetry, it should be no surprise then that many (from Renaissance writers to the Romantics to our contemporaries) have used, broken, and […]

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Now Read This

Now Read This: February 2024

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Alt-Nature by Saretta Morgan Alt-Nature moves in the desert dreams and riverbeds, an emergent chorus feeling toward languages of connection of the American Southwest. These poems open to the desert as a practice of sensuality. Landscapes and Black queer social ecologies illuminate an anti-map of interior […]

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Issue 92, review, Reviews + Interviews

In Review: Universal Red by Maria Gray

Sharp and utterly human, Maria Gray’s debut chapbook “Universal Red” (Ghost City Press, 2023) is a blade to the heart that seeks to turn a personal story of grief into a history of survival. As a survivor and victim of sexual assault, I shed tears reading these visually enticing poems. Beginning with a poem that […]

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Everything, Issue 91, Now Read This

Now Read This | January 2024

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Yaguareté White by Diego Báez In Diego Báez’s debut collection, Yaguareté White, English, Spanish, and Guaraní encounter each other through the elusive yet potent figure of the jaguar. The son of a Paraguayan father and a mother from Pennsylvania, Baéz grew up in central Illinois as […]

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Issue 90, Now Read This

Now Read This | December 2023

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators One Impossible Step by Orides Fontela (translated by Chris Daniels) In her lifetime, Orides Fontela resisted all labels, all attempts to situate her work in a particular movement, school, tendency, or tradition. Here, in her first ever English-language collection, Fontela’s poetry continues to defy easy categorization. […]

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Everything, Issue 89, Opportunities for Artists & Writers

Opportunities for Artists and Writers: November 2023

Pepper Coast Lit is currently accepting poetry and prose submissions from Africans, people of color, those in the diaspora, descendants, and affiliates of the aforementioned. Send double/single-spaced work in 12-point Times New Roman and/or Palatino Linotype font as either .doc/.docx to peppercoastlitsubmissions@gmail.com. Do not include your name and email address anywhere in the document except in […]

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Everything, Issue 87, Now Read This

Now Read This: September 2023

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Black Joy Unbound: An Anthology Inspired by a deep longing for writing that embodies the vivacity of Blackness and Black life, Black Joy Unbound is a multi-genre collection that encompasses a broad spectrum of literary writing on Black joy. Maps You Can’t Make by Mariella Saavedra […]

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Everything, issue 86, Now Read This

Now Read This: August 2023

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators As If She Had a Say by Jennifer Fliss Who has a right to tell us how to experience our grief? How to perform—or not perform—the roles society prescribes to us based on our various points of identity? As If She Had a Say, the second story […]

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Everything, issue 86, review

In Review: When Ilium Burns by Tiffany Troy

While reading Tiffany Troy’s When Ilium Burns the line “brain to dissociate, / and to upgrade itself into running faster and harder” jumped off the page for aren’t we all in a semi-constant state of dissociation? Multitasking at breakneck speed, instant messaging and downloads, always becoming more efficient and readily accessible. Within this constant state […]

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Everything, Issue 85

Our 2023 Best of the Net Nominees

Art “Pillar of Perspective” by Paris Jessie (Issue 80) Peach Hell by Jacelyn Yap (Issue 84) this is me trying by Yuyang Zhang (Issue 74) CNF How to Make Chicken Hekka by Jessica Bakar (Issue 82) (Up)Rising by Denise R. Ervin (Issue 80) Fiction “The Botanist, the Dwarf Peach Tree, and the Marigold Flower” by Brooke Henzell (Issue 82) “Sprout” by Morgan […]

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Everything, Issue 85, Now Read This

Now Read This: July 2023

Teeter by Kimberly Alidio Comprised of three long poems, Teeter knows experimental forms can be as intimate as mothering; knows we can understand languages we do not speak. From “Hearing”s intensities of attention, to “Ambient Mom”’s familial Filipino immigrant soundscapes, to “Histories”s careful scrutiny of the socially-sanctioned narratives and trajectories to which we are meant […]

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Everything, Issue 84, Opportunities for Artists & Writers, vagabond city

Opportunities for Artists and Writers | June 2023

Epiphany Lit is currently open for art, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry submissions for their Fall/Winter 2023 issue. For poetry submissions, submit up to five poems in 12-point font. For prose submissions, submit one piece at a time, double-spaced, in 12-point font. For all submissions: only previously unpublished work considered, all work considered for online publication, […]

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Everything, Issue 84, Now Read This, vagabond city

Now Read This: June 2023

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Sex With My Family by Jessica Anne Musings on infertility, cows, longing & freedom by an anemic woman in the winter of her 41st year. Glass Essays by J. A. Bernstein Glass Essays juxtapose the miracles of parenting and birth with the mysteries of death and […]

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Everything, Issue 83, Now Read This, vagabond city

Now Read This: May 2023

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators This Conversation Is Being Recorded by Hannah Kezema Hannah Kezema’s hybrid debut, This Conversation Is Being Recorded, is a vibrant collection of poems and erasures of painted, dirtied, and flora-filled legal documents and interview notes from her experiences as an investigator and editor in the insurance […]

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