New Staff Member! Emily Blair, Associate Editor

We are excited to announce that Emily Blair has joined cahoodaloodaling as an  Associate Editor!

Emily is a queer Appalachian poet and blue-collar scholar. Originally from Fort Chiswell, Virginia (you may have stopped there for gas once), she now lives in central North Carolina, where she teaches first-year writing, literature, and creative writing at a community college. She earned a BA in Creative Writing and Literature from Virginia Tech and an MA in English from the University of Louisville before settling in the Tar Heel State, where she lives with her perfect precious baby cat Plum and all the houseplants that Plum has not yet managed to eat.

Emily’s first published chapbook, WE ARE BIRDS, explored queer relationships and intimacy. She is currently working on a collection of prose poems about queerness, Appalachia, body horror, and her family, all of which have more in common than she originally anticipated. She also writes a monthly column for Boshemia Magazine. More of her published works and information about her can be found on her website, emilyblairpoet.com.

When she isn’t teaching, reading, or writing, she enjoys cooking, exploring North Carolina with her partner and their dog, and trying to find the best lox bagel in the south. She’s always up for recommendations on the bagel part.

 

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2019 Best of the Net Nominations

Congratulations this year’s Best of the Net nominations!

 

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Kookaburra” by Melinda Jane – The Poet MJ

Trading Beads” by Yvonne

Vulnerability Study” by Ashley Hajimirsadeghi

Tasha Yar At Her Best” by Shanti Weiland

Your Addiction Has Affected Me in the Following Ways” by L Mari Harris

I Blues tha Rain, 40 Days & 40 Nights” by henry 7. reneau, jr.

On the Way To and Mostly After a Car Wreck” by Marvin Shackelford

Reeducated in a Rural Village in Beijing” by Xiaoly Li

 

For information on the Best of the Net anthology, visit Sundress Publications.
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Issue #28 – Witness

When I started thinking about the theme for this issue of the journal, I couldn’t get my mind off “witnessing.” Maybe because sometimes I feel like all I can do is witness and witness and witness the things this country is doing, has done, and will do to my people and all people.

Read the full guest editor letter from Ashley M. Jones

Guest Editor’s Spotlight:
On Time by Xavier Burgin

Trading Beads by Yvonne

Vulnerability Study by Ashley Hajimirsadeghi

A Lashing by Laura Secord

Reeducated in a Rural Village in Beijing by Xiaoly Li

Urban Pastoral in Stereo: 3 Audio Pieces by Saleem [h.u.e.] Penny

Your Addiction Has Affected Me in the Following Ways by L Mari Harris

Family Matter by Ellen Stone

I Blues tha Rain, 40 Days & 40 Nights by henry 7. reneau, jr.

Selections from Kwoya Fagin Maples’ Mend

Cookie by Cover Artist Amoxes

Review: The Typists Play Monopoly by Kathleen McClung

Rachel Nix Interviews Samantha Lamph/Len and Kevin D. Woodall of Memoir Mixtapes

Rachel Nix Interviews Ashley M. Jones


About Our Guest Editor
Ashley M. Jones is a poet, organizer, and educator from Birmingham, Alabama. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University, and she is the author of Magic City Gospel (Hub City Press, 2017) and dark / / thing (Pleiades Press, 2019). Her poetry has earned local and national awards, including the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, the Silver Medal in the Independent Publishers Book Awards, the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry, a Literature Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize, and the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award. Her poems and essays appear in or are forthcoming at CNN, The Oxford American, Origins Journal, The Quarry by Split This Rock, Obsidian, and many others. She teaches at the Alabama School of Fine Arts and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and she is the founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival in Birmingham, Alabama.

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XLIV Pushcart Prize & 2019 Best Small Fictions Nominations

Congratulations to our XLIV Pushcart
and 2019 Best Small Fictions nominations!

Pushcart

Only the Gentle, Only the Strong” by Samuel J Fox
Fernweh” by Tamzin Mitchell
Don’t Feed the Yao Guai!” by Colee Wong
Queynte” by John Repp
Tasha Yar At Her Best” by Shanti Weiland
Instructions for Those Who Have Learned Not to Cry” by Alex Vigue

 

BSF

Bad Trip” by Meg Tuite
‘Monolith, the Face of Half Dome, Yosemite Valley, 1927’ by Ansel Adams” by Eric Dean Wilson
Good Guess” by Kristine Langley Mahler
Variables” by Nora Bonner
On Your Way to and Mostly After a Car Wreck” by Marvin Shackelford

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Issue #27 – Joy Sticks

During Stalin’s rule, poet Anna Akhmatova memorized her poems because she was afraid to commit them to paper. The written poem was evidence of a crime—the insistence on thinking and feeling for herself. To write joy in a time of fear is an act of resistance and repudiation.

Read the full guest editor letter from Alina Stefanescu

Guest Editor’s Spotlight:
Impressionable by Norah Priest

Mushrooms and Dew by Anastasia Cojocaru

Birth Night Pantoum by Jeanie Thompson

Bad Trip by Meg Tuite

Trail: Easter’s Eve, 2015 by Heidi Lynn Staples

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Kookaburra by Melinda Jane – The Poet Mj

Queynte by John Repp

Divorcees by Jasmine Don

Tasha Yar At Her Best by Shanti Weiland

I Want To Be a Drag Queen Diva by Steven A. Gillis

On Your Way to and Mostly After a Car Wreck by Marvin Shackelford

In Death They Bloom by Cover Artist Sarah Shields

This Is How Two Women Have Sex [2] by Emily Blair

Encircled by Meg Drummond-Wilson

The Girl in the Boat by Larry Blazek

Rachel Nix Interviews Jeanie Thompson of Alabama Writers’ Forum

Rachel Nix Interviews Alina Stefanescu


About Our Guest Editor
Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Alabama with four incredible mammals. Find her poems and prose in recent issues of Juked, DIAGRAM, New South, Mantis, VOLT, Cloudbank, New Orleans Review Online, and others. Her debut fiction collection, Every Mask I Tried On, won the Brighthorse Books Prize in Short Fiction. She serves as Poetry Editor for Pidgeonholes and President of the Alabama State Poetry Society. More arcana online at www.alinastefanescuwriter.com or @aliner.

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2018 Best of the Net Nominations

Congratulations to our nominations for this year’s
Best of the Net!

Lineage” by Jay Douglas

Only the Gentle, Only the Strong” by Samuel J Fox

Neo” by Tyrek Greene

Peter Discovers Wrinkles in His Shadow” by Shahé Mankerian

(of use)” by Megan Merchant

Fernweh” by Tamzin Mitchell

Two Eggs” by Rebecca Schumejda

Rapture of the Deep” by CJ Spataro

The Immigrant, 1909” by Kenneth Wolman

Don’t Feed the Yao Guai!” by Colee Wong

For information on the Best of the Net anthology, visit Sundress Publications.
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cahoodaloodaling Turns Six!

cat birthdaycahoodaloodaling turned six this May and I can hardly believe it. We’ve been incredibly lucky, both with who has volunteered time on staff and the amazing submissions we’ve received for our themed calls. With 26 issues under our belt, we’re excited to move into our 7th year!

We’ve had some recent staff additions I’d love to take a second to brag about. Sam Singleton, our Assistant Poetry Editor, is pretty fantastic, but you don’t need to take my word on it. Rachel Nix, la capitana of the poetry team, interviewed Sam for our Queer Spaces issue this winter.

Then we snagged Tara Wood, who has been working furiously in the background reading prose submissions. Besides being a great reader, she’s a badass researcher working on Huntington’s Disease.

Wes Jamison, who guest edited our most recent issue on lyric essays, has decided to stay on and we’re quite tickled about having our very own Nonfiction Guru on staff. Rachel also recently interviewed him.

Chainsaw and Noodle

Chainsaw protects the apartment from wayward lizards under the steady guidance of his overseer, Noodle.

And finally, we scored Ann Bowler, who has helped behind the scenes with covers in the past and not only designed The Lyric Essay cover, but also supplied the artwork. She’s also my roommate in Baton Rouge, LA, and while I’m back in Santa Rosa, CA for the summer, she’s keeping me supplied with darling photos of her cats, who I have decided are the official mascots of cahoodaloodaling.

Another change is underway! Because so many of us are tied to the academic calendar, and because we have been so wonderfully fortunate to receive large numbers of submissions, we’ve decided to cut back to three themed issues a year: October 31st, February 28/9th, and June 30th. We’re already open for our 27th issue, Joy Sticks, guest edited by the phenomenal Alina Stefanescu. Slated for October 31st, we think an issue on Joy is the proper way to begin what promises to be a magical year. So here’s to seven! We hope you join us.

—Raquel Thorne

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Issue #26 – The Lyric Essay

That which at first appears to be a lyric essay may be something else, just as the converse may also be true. And that which at first appears real, under scrutiny, demonstrates a deficit of reality. So writers use language to shore up cordons around the insufficiently-real object or phrase or event precisely so that she may vivisect it into a desired product, torture it into manageability.

Read the full guest editor letter from Wes Jamison

The Lyric Essay Cover Final small

Guest Editor’s Spotlight:
Only the Gentle, Only the Strong by Samuel J Fox

A Brief History of Women and Failure by Kristen Holt-Browning

A Wish You Must Cultivate by Bill Wolak

Good Guess by Kristine Langley Mahler

A Requirement Unrequited by Emily Townsend

3. I Forgot the Stance of Cliffs Meeting Water by Anne Gorrick

Variables by Nora Bonner

Don’t Feed the Yao Guai! by Colee Wong

Rorschach Research by Ivars Balkits

“Monolith, the Face of Half Dome, Yosemite Valley, 1927” by Ansel Adams by Eric Dean Wilson

Dissonance by Cover Artist Ann Bowler

That Thing That You Don’t Talk About by Dennis Humphrey

Rachel Nix Interviews Samuel J Fox of Bending Genres

Rachel Nix Interviews Wes Jamison


About Our Guest Editor

 

Wes Jamison Editor PicWes Jamison’s work appears or is forthcoming in 1913, Diagram, Fifth Wednesday, Essay Press, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.

 

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2017 Bettering American Poetry and 2018 Best New Poets Nominations

Congratulations to our 2017 Bettering American Poetry
and 2018 Best New Poets nominations!

BAP

When I Bite My Tongue I Think of the Year I Was Addicted to Xanax” by Siaara Freeman
She Called Me a Dirty Jew” by Phyllis Wax
This Is a Serious Consideration” by Megan Merchant

BNP

Lineage” by Jay Douglas
All-American Roommate” by M. Wright

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Issue #25 – Queer Spaces

It means so many things to be a part of the queer community. By some, we are feared for the way we experience love and rarely celebrated for our expressions of it—oftentimes forcing us to keep so much of who we are to ourselves. One of my favorite lines of poetry states that “it is the voices that make me pull at / my skin this way already stretched / and scarred too many voices on the / inside trying to get out and only / one mouth.”* To me, this is what it feels like to be queer within too many of our communities. It is therefore vital for us to encourage acts of creative expression, so that our mouths become only one of many vehicles used to communicate with the world outside of our bodies.

Read the full guest editor letter from Alesha J Dawson

 

Queer Spaces Cover Final smallGuest Editor’s Spotlight:
Lineage by Jay Douglas

And Then With a Spin I Am Boy Again by Ari Burford

Neo by Tyrek Greene

The Endless, Pressing Night by Holden Wright

Instructions for Those Who have Learned Not to Cry by Alex Vigue

Fernweh by Tamzin Mitchell

Aubade with Pin by Robert Carr

Lesser Erotic Incantations by Ava Hofmann

My Sweet Little Friends by Cover Artist David Andersson

Rachel Nix Interviews Sam Singleton

Rachel Nix Interviews Alesha J Dawson


About Our Guest Editor
Alesha Dawson
Alesha J Dawson
is the editor-in-chief of Screen Door Review—Literary Voices of the Queer South. She has a Master’s in English Literature from the University of Edinburgh and has worked as an adjunct English professor at the University of Montevallo and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She currently works as a case manager at a life insurance company during the day to allow for her editing and writing by night. She currently lives in Birmingham, Alabama with her two cats, Pushkin and Bede.

 

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