2024 in (The Florida) Review
Closing the book on 2024
Dear readers, as the year comes to a close, The Florida Review is looking back at 2024. So sit back, drink a mug of hot cocoa, and catch up with us.
TL;DR:
Submit your chapbook to the 2024-2025 Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook Award before submissions close on January 7th!
Take a walk down memory lane with some year-end highlights.
See what you missed in Aquifer: The Florida Review Online
As always, we are open for submissions!
Keep reading for more details!
Our Chapbook Contest Closes in Two Weeks!
This is your last reminder to submit your prose or graphic narrative chapbook to our 2024-2025 Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook award. The winner of the award receives chapbook publication, 50 copies of the winning chapbook, and $1,000 upon publication.
The contest closes January 7th!
So, what did we get up to in 2024?
It’s been a great year at The Florida Review, so in addition to our Aquifer roundup, we’re looking back at some end-of-year highlights!
In February, we launched our Spring issue, 47.2.
In May, we announced the 2023-2024 Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook winner, Kate Osana Simonian. Her chapbook, The Screw, will be published and available to purchase in March 2025.
Also in May, we welcomed our nonfiction editor Brendan Stephens.
In July, our Fall issue, 48.1 launched, and we released the winning 2022-2023 chapbook Blue Lion Days by CB Anderson. Issues of the print magazine and Anderson’s chapbook are available to purchase on our website.
In August, we announced a bevy of contest winners and nominees, including…
Our 2024 Editor’s Prize winners: Sophia Shealy’s “Paradise,” Sienna Zeilinger’s “Sorry About the Raccoons,” and A. E. Wynter’s “Inflatable Boys”
Best Small Fictions anthology selection: Matt Leibel’s story “The Wedding Photographer Photographer”
2024 Best of the Net finalists: Andreas Trolf’s “75 Simple Steps to Positive, Growing Change” and Catherine-Esther Cowie’s “Heirloom” and selections: Anney Bolgiano’s “Junior Steaks” and Sihle Ntuli’s “Blues for King Kong.”
Finally, in October and November, we announced our 2025 Best of the Net and 2024 Pushcart Prize nominations!
Our 2025 Best of the Net anthology nominations are:
Art: Modern Ancestors by Anne McGrath
Graphic Narrative: “Soft Eyes” by Robert James Russell and “Standard Pest Control” by Jake Goldwasser
Fiction: “The Star Buyer” by Will Musgrove and “When There’s No One Left to Point At” by Eric Scot Tryon
Nonfiction: “On Love and Duty” by Joyce Dehli and “My Mother’s Museum” by Mark Brazaitis
Poetry: “Missing the Farm” by Travis Mossotti, “Captive” by Nicole Santalucia, “A Moment of Tenderness” by Vincent Antonio Rendoni, “I Wanna Be Wrong” by Michael Chang, “I Woke Up Eating Donuts in the Rain” by Jarrett Moseley, and “From the Jeopardy! category SPOILER ALERTS” by Julie Marie Wade
Our 2024 Pushcart Prize nominations:
Fiction: “OWLS,” by Kathryn Campo Bowen, “In the 301,” by Matthew Neill Null, and “Pool Season,” by Susan Perabo
Nonfiction: “Lost Uncle,” by Naomi Gordon-Loebl
Poetry: “Tongue Mother,” by Bertha Crombet and “The Bird,” by Morgan Hamill
Now it’s time for your monthly Aquifer Round Up…
Ygor Noblott, “101 Steps to Becoming an American” (nonfiction)
Ygor Noblott is a Venezuelan-American writer with too many words and not enough pages. He has a B.A. in Writing & Rhetoric Studies from The University of Utah and a small assortment of poems and essays scattered across the literary world. He’s also self-published two poetry collections with more in the works. He lives in Salt Lake City with his two wonderful children.
Naomi Gordon-Loebl, “Lost Uncle” (nonfiction)
Naomi Gordon-Loebl is a writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s, Esquire, Complex, Out, The Nation, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of residencies and fellowships from the Puffin Foundation, the International Women’s Media Foundation, Lambda Literary, Monson Arts, the Studios at Key West, and the Vermont Studio Center, and holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Washington University in St. Louis. She was born, raised, and still lives in Brooklyn, where she is the deputy publisher of Jewish Currents magazine.
Terry Godbey, “UPON GOOGLING AN OLD BOYFRIEND AND FINDING HIS OBITUARY” (poetry)
Terry Godbey is the author of Hold Still, Beauty Lessons, Flame, and Behind Every Door. Her fifth poetry collection, Tango, **will be published in 2025 by Kelsay Books. **A winner of the Rita Dove Poetry Award, judged by Naomi Shihab Nye, Terry has published widely in literary magazines including Rattle, Poet Lore, Crab Creek Review, Slipstream, Passages North and Dogwood. She works as a writer at Marriott Vacations Worldwide in Orlando. Learn more at terrygodbey.com
Joe Wilkins, “Elegy Ending with a Slice of Sour-Cream-and-Raisin Pie” (poetry)
Joe Wilkins is the author of the novels The Entire Sky and Fall Back Down When I Die, both of which have garnered wide critical acclaim. He is also the author of a memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers, and four collections of poetry, including Thieve and When We Were Birds, winner of the Oregon Book Award. Born and raised on a sheep and hay ranch north of the Bull Mountains of eastern Montana, Wilkins lives with his family in the foothills of the Coast Range of Oregon, where he directs the creative writing program at Linfield University. His latest collection of poems, Pastoral, 1994, is forthcoming from River River Books in January 2025.
Nick Mandernach, “Tiniest Champagne ” (fiction)
Nick Mandernach is a fiction and TV writer based in Los Angeles. His work has appeared in Split Lip Magazine and The Forge, and is forthcoming in EPOCH. He currently writes on The Great North.
Jacqueline Doyle, “That Boy When You Were Sixteen” (nonfiction)
In addition to her flash fiction chapbook The Missing Girl(Black Lawrence Press), Jacqueline Doyle has published flash fiction in Wigleaf, CRAFT, and trampset, and flash nonfiction in F(r)iction, The Collagist, and matchbook, among others. Her flash nonfiction has been featured in Creative Nonfiction’s “Sunday Short Reads” and has been widely anthologized. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Find her online at www.jacquelinedoyle.com and on twitter @doylejacq.
We’re wishing you all a happy holiday season and a wonderful new year! See ya in 2025.
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