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Is poetry a pool filter that needs to be cleaned out? How can we transmute our day-to-day detritus into poetry? Two of our contributors from 13.1 grapple with how to explore and write about experiences both external and internal. Catherine Staples, in detailing the events and images that resulted in “Like a Sleeve of Arctic Air,” …

Unveiling . . . our YouTube channel! If you were one of those folks who attended the launch of Acre Books at Books by the Banks this past weekend, you saw an extended trailer that included a snippet of an author interview, a visualized poem (voem? pideo?), insight into our process of submission assessment, and …

Join us for the launch of Acre Books—UC’s new small literary press—at the annual Books by the Banks festival, which takes place at Duke Energy Convention Center this Saturday. Doors open at 10 a.m., and panels and other book-tastic events run until 4 p.m. Our 45-minute program begins at 2:30 in room 209. Nicola Mason, …

On Our Poetry Winner, “Very Many Hands” by Aaron Coleman Poetry Editor Don Bogen: “Very Many Hands” stood out among this year’s strong field of contest entries for, among other things, its overall ambition: It’s the first multi-unit poem to win the award, and it more than meets the challenges that a longer work entails. I …

Our conscious minds notice only the tiniest fraction of all the stimuli in our environment: car horns, baking bread, ants on the sidewalk, a gust of wind, a buzzing phone. Sometimes, it seems easier to put in our headphones, tune everything out, and get through the day. Thankfully, our issue 13.1 contributors are on high …

Winners of the Seventh Annual Robert and Adele Schiff Awards in Poetry and Prose Aaron Coleman for his poem “Very Many Hands” Maureen McGranaghan for her story “Stylites Anonymous”   First off, a big thank you to all who submitted! It was a pleasure to read such a rich variety of poetry. From the formal …

James Ellenberger: The Settlers of Catan is a resource-management game that requires each player to stake out territory on a lovely, numbered hexagonal landscape. As the game progresses, the players rely on dice rolls (both their own and those of their competitors) to restock their coffers with wool, ore, lumber, grain, and brick so they can …

Chris Collins: Susann Cokal seized me with her first sentence: “The first one is not so bad, hurts, grinding on the sticky floor with the others watching.” And what proceeds is the story of a character known to us only as “Fourteen”—a girl who’s “been a teenager for a year already”—and her brutal night of being …