THIS POST contains the secrets of life and love and eternal contentedness:

I received an intriguing text from my cousin at the beginning of this month. We’d recently been having deep conversations, from analyzing Oscar-winning movies to mulling over relationships that appear to be unfixable. It read:

“Oh wise cousin of mine, tell me the secrets of life and love and eternal contentedness…”

Rebecca Drake’s “Just Between Us” satisfies the need for a psychological thriller

How does one separate what is true from what is false? Given the subjective nature of reality, it can be very difficult for people to trust anyone, even those near and dear to them.

This famous theme has formed the basis of countless works of fiction and major motion pictures (just one example is the 1996 film “Secrets & Lies“). As the audience, we know that secrecy can create a compelling story filled with tension, drama, and suspense. In this tradition, Rebecca Drake’s “Just Between Us” (St. Martin’s Press, 2018) provides a fascinating examination of the limits of friendships, especially when close friends lose the trust that originally bonded them together.

Geoff Manaugh Reconstructs Our Minds in “A Burglar’s Guide to the City”

If you’ve ever gone through a parkour phase, you’ve probably looked at a building and thought, “I can climb that.” If you’ve ever seen “Ocean’s Eleven,” you’ve probably thought about how cool breaking into a bank vault would be. Geoff Manaugh argues that humans are addicted to parkour videos, heist movies and crime novels because the people who climb buildings, break into them, or destroy them are misusing the architecture that we see around us everyday.

Your New Favorite Book: Brandon Sanderson’s “Oathbringer”

“Gah!” I vented as I closed the book cover, the desire to read further and know more only relenting with the knowledge that there were no more words to read—at least, not yet. There would be, but only with the passing of time. Time I knew would be necessary for such a work, but that I resented nonetheless.

I have spent the last two months re-reading the first two books of the Stormlight Archive, the three-book (so far) series written by Brandon Sanderson that had me captivated from the first page. When the third book was published, I knew I had to buy it. I suppose it seems a bit silly, buying the third book of a series when you don’t already own the first two, but for someone who uses the public library more often than 2/3 of the population, waiting to get my hands on a copy seemed like torture.

Deconstruction and Rebirth in the Poetry of Caseyrenée Lopez

Debut poetry collection “the new gods” by Caseyrenée Lopez (Bottlecap Press, 2018) uses rich language to conduct an examination of the body: how bodies are placed within pop culture, how they are valued or derided in society, and how they are the vessels that lead us through love.

Multiple Perspectives in Matthew Pitt’s “These Are Our Demands”

What would you do if you could see three seconds into the future?

Matthew Pitt’s “These Are Our Demands” (Engine/Ferry Street Books, 2017) provides an answer. In one short story, Paul is a Polish “minute oracle,” and Maddy knows it. As his English tutor, she does her best to teach him the language, but of course there are always going to be certain things lost in translation. He knows she is pregnant, but does her man know she is carrying a baby boy?

Michalski’s “The Summer She Was Under Water,” a Refreshing Read

Reading “The Summer She Was Under Water” (reissued by Black Lawrence Press, 2017) by Jen Michalski has been truly refreshing. It is a fictional story with deep and complicated characters, while still managing to be easy to read. Like water, the language is clear and the flow of the story smooth.

You Don’t Understand Bruce Springsteen

I’ll be the first to admit: I grew up in New Jersey not understanding Bruce Springsteen. I heard his songs at home (first on vinyl, then on CD), in the car radio or at sporting events but I never quite understood the appeal. He was my first live concert experience, with my parents when I was 12. I attended dutifully, sang along, but didn’t feel real love in my heart while I chanted “BRUUUUUUCE!”

Only recently have I realized that Springsteen is often misunderstoodmost gravely by his loyal fan base.

Louise Erdrich Pens a Dystopia

We’ve come to know Louise Erdrich as an established writer thanks to novels like “Love Medicine,” so it may come as a surprise that her most recent work tackles broad and philosophical questions in a dystopian setting. Her latest novel, “Future Home of the Living God” (Harper, 2017), combines poetic prose with fantastical ideas to create a spellbinding reading experience.

The protagonist, 26-year-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker, is our guide into an America where a totalitarian state rules and babies are being born with animal traits.

“Lords of St. Thomas”: A Thrilling Novel of Family and Sacrifice

Jackson Ellis describes a tender, thought-provoking family legacy in “Lords of St. Thomas” (Green Writers Press, coming to paperback April 2018). The reader gets an account of the fictional Henry Lord and his family in St. Thomas, Nevada. Here the Lords struggle with family bonds, tragedy and fear of the inevitable. The book is also an important record of history, depicting the consequences of the building of the Hoover Dam in the 1930s.

“Portrait of a Body in Wreckages”: An Interview with Meghan McClure

It is a body, wrecked and then stitched together with words. Feel free to disassemble it, rearrange it, make it yours. – “Portrait of a Body in Wreckages”

Portrait of a Body in Wreckages” is much more than a silhouette of it’s author, more than the form and parts of a human specimen. It’s a graceful dissection of the experience of a body in the world. Winner of Newfound’s 2017 Prose Prize, Meghan McClure’s fragmented essay is a collection of autobiographical vignettes that offers readers intimate rumination, allowing us to feel our own bodily landmarks and signposts through its careful illumination of how the physical intertwines with the rest.

It’s a well-balanced piece; the meta sections are visceral and grounded in the sensory, but the anecdotal sections are especially powerful. It’s a chapbook in which you can easily be absorbed.

I had the honor of probing deeper into the chapbook and it’s author:

Delaney Kochan: “Portrait of a Body in Wreckages” is broken into four sections that appeared to me as two relationships between seemingly opposite ideas: place and white space or potential; communion and isolation in the body. How did the manuscript divide into these sections?

Meghan McClure: After a couple years of collecting the fragments and research that make up this book I started to see some threads running through, so I sort of teased them apart and grouped them to find the commonalities. Of course, these things are at the ends of a continuum and can overlap, but it was a way of sorting what felt chaotic to me. I find comfort in organizing things and writing is no different – it helped the enormity of writing about the body feel a little more manageable. Isn’t that what we do when we write? Try to boil it down?

James Joyce and the City of Dublin

There are two ways a writer can become synonymous with their city. (There are probably quite a few, but for the purposes of this post, there are two.)

One is to be so successful and/or talented, capturing your country’s truth with such style, that you make the city famous through the public’s interest in your life.

The second is to be from a city so small that they don’t have much choice but to invest in your name.

I think there is an element of both when it comes to James Joyce and Dublin.

Managing Time: Make the Most of It

Society grinds along by those who sacrifice themselves to the screaming of alarms, the constriction of schedules, the anxiety of due dates and deadlines, and the mocking tick of clocks. Time passes as humans rush through moments that will never again exist in the past, present, and futures we base our lives upon—entirely for a paycheck.

Anemochore: An Interview with Meredith Stricker

Meredith Stricker’s Anzaldúa Poetry Prize winning chapbook “Anemochore” is truly beautiful and inspiring. From her unique and layered title “Anemochore,” to her intricate design and use of space on each page, Stricker offers as much insight and perspective from their placement of her words as from their meaning.

“Anemochore” keeps no borders between visual art, poetry and even music. Stricker’s work here demonstrates a melding of ideas that flow naturally from page to page, evoking all of a reader’s senses.

Meredith Stricker fuses her work with her own experiences, including performances with musicians, her own work as an architect in Big Sur, California and her deep perspective into the value of poetry and imagery. The second part of the chapbook, The Be/s of the Invisible, was a collaboration with several other musicians that link the life of bees to the freedom in poetry.

Her chapbook “Anemochore” will be published by Newfound in spring of 2018.

Steve Mulero: When did you begin writing poetry and what were some of your influences on your early journey into poetry and art?

Meredith Stricker: Because my mother was a war refugee for whom English was a second language and my father’s family from Russia spoke in an archaic form of German, I grew up
in a household where several languages mingled in ways that were basically incomprehensible to me, except as a kind of music or rhythm that was deeply familiar, but also untranslatable.

Teaching and Learning Empathy

We all have that one teacher who played a strong role in our life. Maybe some of us had more than one—I was lucky to have a few. The ones who encouraged my creativity. There was one who helped break my public thumbsucking habit. (Thanks a lot, Ms. Loftstrum.)

The one who sticks out the most is someone who I had my senior year of high school, and it wasn’t the thumbsucking habit-breaker. Everyone who went to my Catholic high school had him senior year. It was technically called Morality.

The Prose Chapbook

We’re proud of our chapbooks. Each is the result of collaboration between the author, designer and the press. Quality papers, original design, hand binding and of course knockout content are our markers of excellence.

Today I want to share our process of making chapbooks that approach novella-length page counts, which we make for winners of our Newfound Prose Prize. Whether you’re a curious writer or a budding press, I hope you enjoy this look into our work.

OK, Google: What’s an “expert”?

You’ll find them in the court room, on TV, in magazines, and more often than not, on the receiving end of your (hefty) check. Some of them are pressed and polished, presenting a perfect picture of professionalism achieved only by those willing to spend the time, while others might be mistaken for an eccentric vagabond, mysterious and yet intriguing in their strange ways.

Did you say “experts”?

Yes, that’s who I’m talking about.

The Highs and Lows of Daily Life: Artist Interview with Sarah E. Swist and Kevin R. Mercer

Artists Sarah E. Swist and Kevin R. Mercer collaborate on the mixed-media project Bubblegum & Whiskey, featuring fragments from their lives and skills they’ve picked up throughout moves through different rural American communities. The slices of life collected in Bubblegum & Whiskey are always fresh and eye-catching. An interview with the artists follows.

Check out Bubblegum & Whiskey in the current issue of Newfound.

Laura Eppinger: First of all, I am enchanted and impressed by the range of materials and objects you incorporate. Woodwork! Embroidery! Metal! Paint! How do you decide what materials to use? Which artist brings which expertise to a piece?

Sarah E. Swist and Kevin R. Mercer: We’re glad you enjoy the wide variety of materials!  We definitely want to explore as many methods of creation as possible.  Our formal art studies were technically in the areas of drawing and painting.  We created this project knowing it would be based in mixed-media.

No Need to Fear Virginia Woolf

Ever had an existential crisis? Even William Shakespeare’s Macbeth spoke about one fundamental truth within the fifth act of the play: People wake up, live their lives, and then repeat this cycle until life ultimately ends. 

The cyclical nature life is one of the major themes of Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Hours,” a profoundly beautiful tour de force that led to the Academy Award-winning film adaptation in 2002.  Cunningham successfully explores fundamental themes while also making Virginia Woolf a very real person instead of a literary enigma. Woolf might have suffered from mental illness and tragically committed suicide in 1941, but she will remain one of the greatest authors of all time.