[{"id":275531,"date":"2026-08-11T09:04:54","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T13:04:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=275531"},"modified":"2026-08-11T09:05:37","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T13:05:37","slug":"amy-bonnaffons-on-the-georgia-reviewsspring-2024-issue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/amy-bonnaffons-on-the-georgia-reviewsspring-2024-issue\/","title":{"rendered":"Amy Bonnaffons on the Georgia Review<\/em>‘s Spring 2024 Issue"},"content":{"rendered":"

October 2025<\/p>\n

Dear Chillsubs writers,<\/p>\n

I hope you enjoyed your first back issue! This time we\u2019re sharing our issue from Spring 2024, which features fiction by Munachim Amah, Ren\u00e9e Hayek, Lilia Shrayfer, Nicole Haroutunian, and Kathy Chao\u2014as well as a special comic feature and some fantastic poetry, essays, and reviews.<\/p>\n

Shrayfer\u2019s story, \u201cA Man Without a Burial,\u201d is a debut publication\u2014something we get very excited about here at GR<\/em>. We take seriously our mission to \u201csupport writers at every stage of their careers\u201d; while we are highly selective (we get about 10,000 submissions a year and can only publish a handful of those), many stories we pull out of the Submittable queue to discuss in our editorial meetings are by emerging or even debut authors. About 25% of the stories I\u2019ve advocated for in acquisition meetings have been debuts, several of those by writers without MFAs. This is partly possible because most of the work we publish goes through at least one round of editorial exchange; this means we often work with the writer on revisions (sometimes quite significant ones) before publication. We believe our writers deserve the gift of a careful reader who pays serious attention to their work and helps them realize its full potential. We\u2019re able to engage in this kind of old-fashioned editorial practice because we are well supported by the University of Georgia (many lit mags are staffed by volunteers engaged in labors of love; we do love our labor but we also, blessedly, earn salaries.) I often tell potential submitters to keep this in mind: if we love a piece, we\u2019re willing to work with the author to get it just right. So while we do want your best and most polished work, we\u2019re especially excited by work that takes big swings, that feels alive and full of potential.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t at GR<\/em> when Shrayfer\u2019s story was acquired, but reading it, I\u2019m entranced not only by the window it provides into the Bukharan Jewish community and the provocative way it deals with identity and gender, but also by the aesthetic risks it takes. The plot\u2019s dreamlike logic would confound many a workshop\u2014yet somehow this craft choice enables Shrayfer to elegantly capture the way in which memory and desire collapse into each other.<\/p>\n

Chao\u2019s story, \u201cOne of You Will Betray Me,\u201d has such wonderful humor and specificity; it went through the editorial exchange process here and went on to win a Pushcart. I also appreciate the heartbreaking lyricism of Amah\u2019s story, the skillful illumination of family dynamics in Hayek\u2019s, and the way Haroutunian\u2019s dramatizes a young woman\u2019s consciousness coming into focus. This issue makes clear just how diverse GR<\/em> stories can be\u2014aesthetically, geographically, and in many other ways. Each one speaks with precision from its own specific context, while also offering something valuable to the general reader.<\/p>\n

Happy reading!<\/p>\n

Warmly,<\/p>\n

Amy Bonnaffons
\nInterim Fiction Editor<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

October 2025 Dear Chillsubs writers, I hope you enjoyed your first back issue! This time we\u2019re sharing our issue from Spring 2024, which features fiction by Munachim Amah, Ren\u00e9e Hayek, Lilia Shrayfer, Nicole Haroutunian, and Kathy Chao\u2014as well as a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-275531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19G3","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275531\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":275529,"date":"2026-08-11T09:03:58","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T13:03:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=275529"},"modified":"2026-08-11T09:03:58","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T13:03:58","slug":"noah-baldino-on-the-georgia-reviews-spring-2024-issue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/noah-baldino-on-the-georgia-reviews-spring-2024-issue\/","title":{"rendered":"Noah Baldino on the Georgia Review<\/em>‘s Spring 2024 Issue"},"content":{"rendered":"

October 2025<\/p>\n

Dear Chill Subs Writers\u2014<\/p>\n

To be a magazine that truly represents the full stock of literary imagination means valuing emerging writers as much as established ones. The Georgia Review<\/em> takes this stewardship seriously: in the Spring 2024 issue, for example, emerging poets account for nearly half of the poetry section. As an editor, the only thing more thrilling than scrolling the submission queue and spotting the name of a known literary titan is opening a submission by an unfamiliar name and encountering a literary future.<\/p>\n

How, though, amidst thousands of submissions, can an emerging writer catch an editor\u2019s attention? Having worked for over a decade in different queues, I\u2019ve found that emerging writers most distinguish themselves not through novelty or trendiness but through trust. Emerging poet Jim Whiteside\u2019s \u201cLa Dame Bleue,\u201d found in this back issue, is a meaningful example. While ekphrasis is exciting, what actually draws me to the poem is what it withholds\u2014what it trusts its reader to comprehend.<\/p>\n

\u201cLa Dame Bleue\u201d makes two invocations: to Alexander McQueen\u2019s 2008 runway show, and to the speaker\u2019s relationship with his mother. But it notably does not explicate either context. Instead, it trusts the reader, staying as understated as its ending\u2019s \u201csimple, gray dress.\u201d A less confident poet might follow the urge to make more explicit the emotional dynamic between mother and child; instead, Whiteside only suggests. The mother delivers her cancer diagnosis not face-to-face or via call, but through text. The speaker cannot restate the technical name for the mother\u2019s cancer but knows to call a high-fashion headpiece a \u201cfascinator.\u201d To an attentive reader, that\u2019s plenty to work with. Likewise, a less trusting writer might let the poem be dominated by the McQueen show\u2019s lore: it was a tribute to Isabella Blow, the woman who discovered him and who, finding herself eventually alienated from McQueen and the fashion community at-large, took her own life. She was buried in his clothes. As with the best ekphrasis, one can import meaning without knowing these details. But for those who do know, the poem becomes suffused with tension, McQueen and Blow urgent foils to speaker and mother. Then, the restraint that clothes the poem comes into clarity: what Whiteside has made is not a poem about McQueen\u2019s show, nor a poem about his mother\u2019s cancer, but a poem about detachment and its consequence. By resisting the impulse to make the poem\u2019s contexts its content, Whiteside releases the poem, and its reader, to discovery.<\/p>\n

Across this issue\u2019s emerging and established poets, you\u2019ll find various approaches to contextual restraint as a kind of trust. Arro Mandell uses the context of eviction to explore ecological intimacy; in deciding not to detail her uncle\u2019s titular suffering, Marianne Boruch makes a poem that can instead hold the complexity of legacy. What\u2019s kept on a poem\u2019s edge speaks, I think, to discernment\u2014a quality crucial to both a writer and editor.<\/p>\n

\u2014Noah Baldino
\nEditor, Poetry and Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

October 2025 Dear Chill Subs Writers\u2014 To be a magazine that truly represents the full stock of literary imagination means valuing emerging writers as much as established ones. The Georgia Review takes this stewardship seriously: in the Spring 2024 issue,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-275529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19G1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275529\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":275498,"date":"2026-08-11T06:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T10:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=275498"},"modified":"2026-08-10T16:28:52","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T20:28:52","slug":"lit-hub-daily-august-11-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/lit-hub-daily-august-11-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Lit Hub Daily: August 11, 2026"},"content":{"rendered":" TODAY: In 1937, Edith Wharton dies. <\/span>\n