Posts Tagged ‘February’

Game of the Month: February Is Like…

Monday, February 11th, 2013

So: February. Did you know that this month’s observances include American Crossword Puzzle Week and National Fettuccine Alfredo Day? Until a few minutes ago, neither did we, because the miseries of February have blinded us to its less horrendous aspects. But we’re trying to make it more bearable by having a bit of fun with February in our new game of the month (our last one, unfortunately, was lame, or dull, or something that resulted in no one even trying). To make up for it, we’re going to award five prizes this time out. We want you to win. Really.

How to play? Tell us what February’s like. Come at us with your best metaphors and other literary lampoonings. Here are a few examples to get you started:

Short and brutal—a Napoleon of a month. —Alli Hammond

February makes a bridge, and March breaks it. —George Herbert

Kath says February is always like eating a raw egg;
Peter says it’s like wearing a bandage on your head;
Mary says it’s like a pack of wild dogs who have gotten into medical waste
and smiles because she clearly is the winner.

—Tony Hoagland

Submit your entry by commenting on this post (click the title) by Friday, February 15. Writers of the five best similes win their choice of thermos, slingpack, or CR back issue (2.2 excluded). Good luck!

The Good News Continues

Friday, February 3rd, 2012

February is beginning well for The Cincinnati Review. Our new issue is out in the mail, the AWP conference is on the horizon, and it’s 57 degrees today. Who cares if Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow? His prediction is fixed by the mysterious Inner Circle, after all, and trees are beginning to bud already.

Another reason February makes us happy: great news for the CR family!

Frequent contributor Edith Pearlman’s short-story collection Binocular Vision (Lookout Books, 2011) was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle awards! Pearlman was also a nominee for the National Book Award and won the Pen/Malamud prize for short fiction this year. Her work has appeared in our humble mag five times, most recently in our new issue. We posted a sneak preview of that story, “Life Lessons,” here, and you can see her comments on it here .  The NBCC awards will be announced on March 8.

Contributor Kathleen Winter (whose poems have appeared in Issues 4.1, 5.2, and 7.2) won the Elixir Press’s 2011 Antivenom Poetry Prize for her first full-length poetry collection, Nostalgia for the Criminal Past, which will be available soon. We’re honored that five of the poems from the book appeared first in CR, more than any other journal.

And one of our trusty volunteers, Luke Geddes, a fiction student in the Ph.D. program here at the University of Cincinnati, has had a short-story collection accepted by Chômu Press.  I Am a Magical Teenage Princess will be released later this year.  Luke’s stories have appeared in journals including Mid-American Review, Washington Square Review, Conjunctions, and Hayden’s Ferry Review.

Congratulations to Edith, Kathleen, and Luke!