Announcing Our New Issue
This is no April Fools' joke
Welcome to spring, readers, from everyone at The Florida Review. We’re thrilled to announce our new issue and our new chapbook. Keep reading for all the details.
TL;DR:
Issue 48.2, Spring 2025 is out now! As is The Screw by Kate Osana Simonian, the winning chapbook from our recent chapbook contest.
Submissions for our Editor’s Prizes in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry close April 15th.
As always, see what you missed in Aquifer: The Florida Review Online.
Issue 48.2 Is Out Now!
[God will save me] is a game my brother and his friends played / growing up—bodies loose, they would run out into the street, / having half-looked, quickly glanced, kind of, but not really, / checked for traffic.
- A. E. Wynter, “Inflatable Boys”
Later, I’d understand that no boy under the age of eighteen should be given a pair of binoculars.
- George Singleton, “Field Glasses”
The Cherokee word for black snake translates to one who is climbing continuously.
- Rose McLarney, “Without Conclusion”
These are the first sentences of some of the poetry, nonfiction, and fiction you can find in our latest issue, available for purchase now. The Spring 2025 issue features work from an array of exciting authors.
You can purchase your copy of the issue on our website for $12.50.
Pick Up Your Copy of The Screw
Our newest chapbook The Screw by Kate Osana Simonian is available for purchase now. You can order a copy of The Screw on our website for $10. Keep reading to learn more about the chapbook and the author.
“The Screw is a super tight, dazzling novella about a young woman lured into an abusive relationship with a common monster of a boyfriend. The protagonist—a second-person ‘You’—seems to be following instructions from an internal authority that dictates how to succeed at failure. But this real-life horror story of insidious psychological abuse is told with stunning wit and innovation. This novella evokes Ann Beattie and Ottessa Moshfegh, but the writing has a velocity all its own.”
-Mark Polanzak, Author of POP! and The OK End of Funny Town, contest judge
Kate Osana Simonian is an Armenian-Australian writer and assistant professor at California State University–San Bernardino. Texas Tech University conferred her English doctorate in 2020. Her stories have been published in the Pushcart Anthology, Chicago Tribune, Iowa Review, and Best Australian Stories, and she’s received various honors, including the Nelson Algren Award, a John Steinbeck Fellowship, and a California Arts Council Emerging Writer Grant. Kate served as a fiction editor for the Pushcart anthology in 2023 and she’s currently faculty editor for the undergraduate literary magazine of CSUSB, The Pacific Review. She’s finishing up her debut novel, Singleton, of which “The Screw” is a chapter. Find her at her outdated website (katesimonian.com), or with her partner and two cats in the garden, reading under the orange trees of SoCal.
Submissions for Our Editor’s Prizes Close Soon!
You have two weeks to submit to our annual Editor’s Prizes in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry. Submissions close April 15th.
Each winner receives publication in The Florida Review and $1,000 upon publication. The entry fee of $25 includes a one-year subscription to The Florida Review.
You can find further guidelines and submit your work on our Submittable page.
We can’t wait to read your work!
Aquifer Round Up
Kim Magowan, “Ontkommer” (fiction)
Kim Magowan lives in San Francisco and teaches in the English Department of Mills College at Northeastern University. She is the author of the short story collection Don't Take This the Wrong Way, co-authored with Michelle Ross, from EastOver Press; the short story collection How Far I've Come (2022), published by Gold Wake Press; the novel The Light Source (2019), published by 7.13 Books; and the short story collection Undoing (2018), which won the 2017 Moon City Press Fiction Award. Her fiction has been published in Colorado Review, The Gettysburg Review, Smokelong Quarterly, Wigleaf, and many other journals. Her stories have been selected for Best Small Fictions and Wigleaf's Top 50. She is the Editor-in-Chief and Fiction Editor of Pithead Chapel.
Anne Panning, “Russian Roulette” (nonfiction)
Anne Panning’s debut poetry collection, Spit & Glitter, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press. She has published a memoir, Dragonfly Notes: On Distance and Loss, as well as a novel, Butter. Her short story collection, Super America, won The Flannery O’Connor Award and was a New York Times Editor's Choice. She teaches creative writing at SUNY-Brockport and is working on her next book, Bootleg Barber: A Daughter’s Memoir.
Juliana Gray, “The Art of Murder” (nonfiction)
Juliana Gray's most recent poetry collection is Honeymoon Palsy (Measure Press, 2017). Her essays have appeared in West Branch, The Hopkins Review, CutBank, and elsewhere. An Alabama native, she lives in western New York and teaches at Alfred University.
National Poetry Month on Aquifer
We’re celebrating National Poetry Month on Aquifer. We’ll be publishing new poetry every Tuesday and Thursday in April. Look forward to a month of amazing poetry, and follow us on social media to stay updated.
Submit Your Work!
The Florida Review wants you! Our Submittable awaits your poetry, creative nonfiction, fiction, graphic narratives, book reviews, and interviews.
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