Fiction Criteria for Bacopa Literary Review 2025

By Bacopa Literary Review 2025 Fiction Editor Wendy Thornton

For this genre, it’s important for stores to be self-contained, not part of a larger piece. Please try to write clearly, using proper grammar, unless you are subverting conventions for deliberate emphasis. The language you use should pull the reader in, so try to use interesting literary descriptions, but beware of going on too long. Try to use creative language without overcomplicating it—take a look at the writings of Ernest Hemingway.  Simple but powerful. 

Your characters should be complicated, but their stories should be told in the text by dialogue and action, not solely by descriptions. Their stories should encourage the reader to get involved in the story. In other words, don’t say the protagonist “was strong”—describe how they were strong.  Great authors to read in this genre include Alice Monroe, Joyce Carol Oates, Raymond Carver or James Baldwin.

Works that are racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise bigoted towards marginalized groups will not be accepted. Works that critique these structures of oppression and depict their impact on characters are welcomed. Finally, try to craft a thoughtful, intentional ending for a story that is, as a whole, concise and complete. 

Fiction Editor Wendy Thornton has been published in Riverteeth, Epiphany, MacGuffin and many other literary journals and books. Her latest books, Arrested Motion and Hanging On, were published in 2023 and 2024 respectively.  She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, has won many literary awards, and started the Writers Alliance (www.writersalliance.org).

Playing Tennis Without a Net: The Formless Form of Free Verse

By Bacopa Literary Review 2025 Poetry Co-Editor Grayson May

What is free verse? Certainly, free verse does not mean "without structure or meaning." Nor is free verse glorified prose. It is not a lesser, easier or even lazier form of poetry. Rather, it is the daring to build a poem differently, with great passion, boldness, intention, and—of course—freedom. 

There is freedom in formlessness. There is form in formlessness. Free verse means that the poet is an entrepreneur, empowered with the ability to stake their own claim in rhythm, meter, rhyme, and original or avant garde form. It is a rejection of the formal or the regular. Free verse is anarchical. T. S. Eliot says: "No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job." This is less indictment of free verse than it is of the misinterpretation of what free verse really is. The true free verse poet breaks from traditional formatting, pushing the limits of what free verse and free form can do: and be. 

For free verse poems are living things. They are things to be held and handled. They speak like creatures, not like poems. Robert Frost once wrote to Carl Sandburg that writing free verse is like "playing tennis without a net." Sandburg famously replied: "There have been poets who [played] more than one game of tennis with unseen racquets, volleying airy and fantastic balls over an insubstantial net, on a frail moonlight fabric of a court." The free verse poet must be courageous in bringing such fantastical things to life.

 
And in order to create such life, the free verse poet must have deep knowledge, insight and understanding of what poetry is and has been. Free verse poets must have deep comprehension of what past poets and present poets have done in order to determine what makes a future poet. This insight may translate as allusion to traditional poetic verse. It also might translate as an intentional breaking of and from the poetic canon. Picasso said that in early years he mastered the skill and comprehension of traditional drawing and painting; yet, it took a lifetime for him to learn to make art from a place of limitless, childlike freedom. So must a free verse poet first understand how to be a formal, traditional poet before they can fully, tenderly, and rapturously embrace their free-verse-ness.

Finally, free verse poems must actualize their very name by creating shockwaves that reverberate in the reader. We've spoken of the boldness, the courage, the distinction and the comprehension demonstrated by the free verse poet. Now we must address the impact that a free verse poet makes in the reader and/or listener. It is a physical reverberation, one that may render gasps, tears, ecstatic shakes and/or earthquakes. Because free verse is synonymous with tremendous innovation, uniqueness, originality, eccentricity and authenticity, its impact is one that stuns or profoundly moves any who encounter it. Both figurative and literal movement! Free verse is a rapture, a reckoning, a revelation, an event, an apocalypse, a disruption. 

For those free verse poets or free-verse-poets-to-be searching for inspiration, look to Whitman, Ginsberg, Angelo, Hirschfield, Hughes, H.D., Eliot, Rich, as well as earlier examples, like Gustave Kahn, Rimbaud and Mallarme who originated the vers libre movement in late 19th century France, or the London-based Poet's Club, or even Goethe and Milton who played with free verse long before it had a name. Today, free verse has become an over-diluted, waterlogged term, because it is the norm. It has lost its spark. It has become an excuse not to rhyme. Even so, there are still free verse poets out there today making living creatures that will punch the breath out of you. Give yourself the freedom to be one of them. To be new. To eschew. It's never too late to make something terrifically, terrifyingly you. 

About the editor: Poetry Co-Editor Grayson May is a poet, playwright, writer, artist and actor. Their work has been published in Colorado Review, Cleveland Book Review, Ponder Review and Z Publishing House, among others. Their lyric play Scripture was recently featured in the Actors Studio Drama School's Repertory Season in NYC. They have a MFA in Playwriting from Pace University and a BFA in Creative Writing, with poetry concentration, from the University of the Arts.

On Disguising Distress

By Bacopa Literary Review 2024 Flash Fiction Honorable Mention Mandira Pattnaik

I think it is easy to imagine violence these days, tougher to forecast lasting peace and general contentment in life. “Revolver Rita First Look”, my piece that secured an Honorable Mention in Bacopa Literary Review’s 2024 Contest in the Flash Fiction category, opens with such a theme. Latching onto the reader with immediacy and intensity, it shows a mother and her two daughters enacting a turbulent scene: 

Our mother’s 22 caliber is slung at her waist. She shoots at random, the revolver in axis to the forearm, index finger at the trigger. We’re the showgirls who hide, emerge from behind faux velvet curtains when the shots go bang-bang-bang out loud and there are screams, glass shattering and brassware flung from one end of the room to another. We meet the audience — there are none, except a part of our crumbling ceiling fallen on the floor, taking down with it an enormous dusty spider’s web and dead insects.

The fun part is whether this scene would be an enactment or for real—I wasn’t sure at the outset. I was stuck with this dilemma for a while when I was writing this story. It was clear to me that the once-wealthy family (they had glass and brassware) had now slid into poverty, and the choice of violence as an emotional outlet was not hard to extrapolate. As a person from the global south, around me, I see this sort of newly jobless, recently disadvantaged people, and I’ve felt their pain. To be historically disadvantaged is one thing, to have your livelihood taken away bit by bit and your life diminished over a period of time, quite another. But whether such a family would really shoot each other in a moment of extreme frustration and fatigue, was a rare, though historically possible, outcome. In the end, I opted for the enactment, balancing the probable violence-venting with the plight of the suddenly out-of-work actress mother.

The resolution of this short piece posed another challenge. I honestly didn’t know what or how it should be done. In my mind, the situation is irresolvable. I don’t think we, as a society, know how hunger, homelessness or joblessness should end, do we? I think that is where fiction comes handy—I had the tool of surrealism—and the family had an escape route that real life wouldn’t allow them. 

About the contributor: Mandira Pattnaik is a former contributor to Bacopa Literary Review. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in IHLR, Emerson Review, The Rumpus and SAND Journal, among others. Visit her at mandirapattnaik.com.

Reflections behind "Sunrise in Future Goma Without Roaming Bullets"

By Bacopa Literary Review 2024 Free Verse Poetry Honorable Mention Eniola Abdulroqeeb Arowolo 

Over the last few years, the world has been riddled with a significant number of tremendous disasters emanating from sociological or political events. One of those challenges that continues to threaten the survival of human beings is war. And war, as Soyinka said, is a human problem. It is in this feeling as a human I have shared in the despair of those who have been displaced by war.

Some of the countries that felt the intensity of civil unrest, war, and genocide last year were Ukraine, Palestine, and Congo. There were various reports and videos that came out on the ongoing war in Goma, Congo. Reading some of this horrendous news, I was unnerved and disheveled to see people lose friends, family, and properties, thereby prompting me to write the poem, Sunrise in Future Goma without Roaming Bullets. As captured in the work, I was yearning for hope in Congo where there's peace, restoration, and ebullience; hence, lines like: “the first sun that cascades upon a dark horizon / is a sign that a meadow awaits at the root of elegy”. 

If there's one thing I have failed to understand, it is man's propensity for destruction. It hurts to see that our divide in the world will outlive us all, but it hurts me more to acknowledge that I cannot grant freedom to people like me, so I am often reduced to hope. I wonder how much beauty that love could have fashioned out of this world if lust for violence never stumbled mankind. Yet, as one who leads an artistic life, I must keep hoping. 

About the contributor: Eniola Abdulroqeeb Arowolo is a poet and essayist. He won the 1st Edition of Wanjohi Prize for African Poetry, received a honourable mention in 2024 Bacopa Literary Review Poetry Contest, and was a finalist for Folorunsho Editor's Poetry Prize. His works have appeared in 2024 Small Fictions anthology, Bacopa Literary Review, Weganda Review, The Republic, ANMLY, Nigeria Review, and elsewhere. He currently serves as a Poetry Reader for Chestnut Review.

Learning to Slow Down

By Bacopa Literary Review 2024 Creative Nonfiction Contributor Joanna Baxter

I move through life like I’m driving on the freeway. I trail run and race my road bike, and in the Winter I’m flying down the slopes. I zip through my chores and my chopping and my talking and my thinking and my household is busy with kids and the dog. But when it comes to writing, my usual “harder, better, faster, stronger” mantra does not apply. Sitting at my writing desk, my speedometer lags and sometimes I flood the choke—stalling out slower than a snail’s pace. 

For years, the act of writing came with the paralyzing pressure of “compare and despair” as I watched those around me get published and win awards. The creeping pace of my writing didn’t match the rest of my life and, as I muscled through my pages I began to think, the next person who tells me to “trust the process” is getting a punch in the nose!

It took years of self-flagellation to come to terms with the undeniable speed of my writing, to accept it as part of my unique process that cannot be rushed. My writing process, it seemed, had its own mantra, something like, “softer, honest-er, slower, real-er”. The realization not only rang true, but felt kind, and the kindness was a nurturing new angle. 

Writing is Life, and this appreciation of my own process has helped me turn from my work inwards, towards myself and deep into my sense of well-being. It’s shown me how hard I can be on myself and how having made so much of my life into a sort of race made many things harder too. Softening my pace to smell the flowers and touch the grasses enriches my life, just as it makes my writing richer on the page. As I learn to slow down, I’m surprised and delighted to find myself closer to winning a completely different type of race, one that is intensely personal, with no finish line in sight.

About the contributor: Joanna Baxter is a graduate of The Writing Studio at Simon Fraser University. Her work is published in “Better Next Year” (Tidewater Press) and other anthologies. She founded a reading event and podcast called SPiEL and is writing her memoir about sailing. She lives in Vancouver, BC.

Sowing the Hills with Bones

By Bacopa Literary Review 2022 & 2024 Contributor Marisca Pichette

I’ll be the first to admit that my writing doesn’t like to behave. Often, when I begin working on a piece, I’ve got no clear sense of what it will be. Is it a poem or an essay? A short story or a novel? Is it literary or dwelling in the shadowy in-between? Creativity is a wild thing, and I am merely a collector of curiosities.

While my publication record is as varied as the sun-dappled forest floor, my two Bacopa Literary Review essays are kin. 2022’s “The Taste of Hundred-Leaved Grass” touches on memory and nostalgia, planted in the bedrock of a constantly shifting landscape of birth and heritage. At the heart of the essay is a meditation on whether land can ever be truly understood: And because it doesn’t belong so much, it has always belonged. It is there to be the thing that doesn’t fit, the reminder of how this landscape has been altered, tinkered with, held.

These themes continue in 2024’s “Bones Within and Without: An Ode to the Wild Dead.” But where the first essay tracks the living, the second catalogues the dead. Beginning in childhood, it recounts the story of a strange little girl obsessed with remains. Again, the question of understanding–and connection across realms of being–is raised: A skeleton is a memory. It doesn’t belong to me; its owner has fled with the flesh. All I can offer is a home, and care for every piece.

These two essays attempt to catch that elusive feeling that insinuates itself into all my writing regardless of genre: Where is my place? Is it the hills and forests that raised me, growing for ages before I was born on the cusp of their diminishment? Is it my passion–writing the wilderness, seeking to capture the magic of nature in words? Or have I already failed before I’ve begun, and there is no place that can wholly hold a person?

Humans have tried over millennia to mold the landscape to suit our needs. Now it is withdrawing from our grasp. Ice caps and topsoil trickle through fickle fingers, retreating until the horizon is bare. I write with both reverence and fear. And I wonder–does that not also apply to looking inward? Seeking to understand the external is often easier than examining the cluttered dimensions of self.

So if there is a place of belonging, let it be this: uncertainty and desire interlaced. Here writing and wondering are one. My place is me–wherever I find myself today. My voice is whatever it wishes to be when I look out the kitchen window and catch a glimpse of some ancient, wild thing, silhouetted between naked trees. And in my work and my life, let this be both a promise and a spell:

Their thoughts are not available to me. I watch them as I watch the stars—at a distance I can little comprehend, and know I’ll never narrow.

About the contributor: Marisca Pichette is a queer author based in Massachusetts. More of her work has appeared in The Razor, Door is a Jar, Room Magazine, Flash Fiction Online, Necessary Fiction, and Plenitude Magazine, among others. Her debut collection, Rivers in Your Skin, Sirens in Your Hair, was a finalist for the Bram Stoker and Elgin Awards. Her first novella, Every Dark Cloud, is forthcoming in March 2025 from Ghost Orchid Press. 

An Overview of the Submissions Process

By Bacopa Literary Review Managing Editor T. Walters

At Bacopa Literary Review, we strive to include as many voices from as many different backgrounds as possible. One way we try to achieve this is by having our Genre Editors read each submission blind: the only information they have about a piece is the title, word count, and submission itself. We do this in the interest of fairness. 

How it works: the Genre Editors review each submitted piece. As they find pieces they want to accept, the Genre Editors run it by both myself and our Editor in Chief, J. N. Fishhawk. Either I or J.N. will review the piece, ensure the author hasn’t submitted to our other categories, and check whether or not they’ve contributed a piece in our past editions. Note: We only allow submitters to contribute to one out of our six categories in order to have more diversity among contributions. When we see that the potential contributor hasn’t submitted to other categories and is not a previous contributor, we tell the Genre Editor they’re all set to accept the piece! 

Once the Genre Editors have accepted or declined all the pieces, we move forward with picking prize winners, copyediting, organizing contributor information, and assembling the journal. We normally receive over 1,200 submissions each contest. In an effort to keep the total number of pages to under 200, we are usually only able to accept about 50-70 contributors. So, try and keep your spirits up even if your work is declined because we often have to turn away pieces that have merit simply due to monetary and page number constraints.

Journal assembly is my and J. N.’s responsibility. We ask our Genre Editors to place works from their categories into the order in which they’d like the pieces to appear, with the acknowledgement that we might not stay totally true to it. Then, we begin the weaving process, alternating prose and poetry pieces to balance the journal. We assemble it in the manner that someone would read through it from start to finish, though of course people have their own style of reading an anthology. As a team, we also decide on the cover art after soliciting work from local artists. After journal assembly, we send it in to be printed and celebrate its yearly release at a Reading event, usually in November, at our local library. We also send out a copy of the journal to each domestic contributor (or two copies for prize winning pieces). We send a USD $10 eGift card to international contributors so that they can buy a copy through their local Amazon affiliate. 

It is very fulfilling to be a part of this publication process from start to finish. Reading through each piece as we assemble the journal is my favorite part, and something I look forward to every year. Our submissions period will be open from March 3, 2025 to May 5, 2025 and I am so excited for the contributions we will receive this year. 

About the editor: Managing Editor T. Walters is a writer, artist, musician, and cannabis worker living among the orange trees. Their work appears in Nymeria Publishing’s Descendants of Medusa. Tea lives to connect, create, and marvel at nature’s many wonders. 

Our 2025 Editorial Team

We at Bacopa Literary Review are excited to introduce a talented and varied team

Editor in Chief J.N. Fishhawk is a poet and freelance writer. He is the author of three poetry chapbooks and Postcards from the Darklands, ekphrastic poems accompanying artwork by artist Jorge Ibanez. The second book in his and illustrator Johnny Rocket Ibanez’s ongoing World of Whim Sea children’s series is out now. Info at fishhawkandrocket.com.

Managing Editor T. Walters is a writer, artist, and musician worker living among the orange trees. Their work appears in The Sapphic Sun and Nymeria Publishing’s Descendants of Medusa. They are Managing Editor for Bacopa Literary Review. Tea lives to connect, create, and marvel at nature’s many wonders. 

Creative Nonfiction Editor Stephanie Seguin studied English Literature and French at the University of Florida. She has published humor, short fiction, and personal memoir and spent over 15 years as a freelance editor and teacher of languages.

Fiction Editor Wendy Thornton has been published in Riverteeth, Epiphany, MacGuffin and many other literary journals and books. Her latest books, Arrested Motion and Hanging On, were published in 2023 and 2024 respectively.  She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, has won many literary awards, and started the Writers Alliance (www.writersalliance.org).

Poetry Co-Editor Oliver Keyhani is a visual and performance artist, poet and writer. He is a member of the Gainesville Fine Arts Association and a founding member of the Carousel of Souls Curiosities Circus Troupe (CoSCCT). His short experimental poem-play “Children of Gaia” has been produced at the Tank Theater in NYC. His hybrid visual-poetry works the “dada manuscripts”: thé avec dada and the book of dada dandies have received international acclaim.

Poetry Co-Editor Grayson May is a poet, playwright, writer, artist and actor. Their work has been published in Colorado Review, Cleveland Book Review, Ponder Review and Z Publishing House, among others. Their lyric play Scripture was recently featured in the Actors Studio Drama School's Repertory Season in NYC. They have a MFA in Playwriting from Pace University and a BFA in Creative Writing with poetry concentration from the University of the Arts.

Poetry Co-Editor Susan Ward Mickelberry is a writer, editor, poet, and long-time yoga teacher. Her poetry collection And Blackberries Grew Wild was published by Roadside Press in 2024. She is a 2024 Pushcart nominee. Poems appear in many publications including This is Poetry: Volume IV: Poets of the South. She participates in regional poetry readings and events, most recently at the Lynx Bookstore and at Civic Media Center’s Poetry Jam.

2024 Bacopa Literary Review Letter From the Editor

By Bacopa Literary Review Editor in Chief J. N. Fishhawk

Our lives flower and pass. Only robust
works of the imagination live in eternity,
Tlaloc, Apollo,
dug out alive from dead cities.

--Denise Levertov, Art (after Gautier)

Liminal spaces, lines of demarcation crossed, boundaries blurred, distinct and sometimes even radically different elements mixed—whether blended consciously and voluntarily or not--to form something new. These are the types of places many of this year’s contributors take us. Bacopa Literary Review 2024 is a creature of its place and time. Like many journals, its “place” is manifold and multi-faceted. Though we are based in North Central Florida as a project of the Writers Alliance of Gainesville, Bacopa contains multitudes. Our contributors hail from all across the United States and all around the world. For many of us in 2024 the times are volatile, to say the least. 

As we assemble this year’s journal we are navigating our way through the murk of a chaotic and uncertain national election, here in the United States. The infinitely worse chaos and uncertainty of war afflicts the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Northeast Africa. Rumors and threats of war well up elsewhere across the globe. Whether we are trying to cross lines of politics and culture, or the shifting, blood-bought, invisible lines of borders on a map, it seems we have no choice but to heed the warning of Hardy Coleman: Whatever else you do, keep moving/ for the placement of stones/ is not set in stone/ ...the current runs swiftly/ and the eddies have teeth.

Amidst all of this uncertainty, these edges colliding--too often brutally--creating shifting, crossover spaces that tend to disappear all too quickly, we may feel with Amanda Faye Martin that nothing is known/ not ourselves/ not the world/ not each other. Whether we are struggling to move through political chaos and economic instability, the immediate mortal threat of existing in a warzone, or merely one more awkward social occasion with people whose politics set our teeth on edge, we may find ourselves tempted to cross our own inner boundaries and engage in the masking and suppression of our true selves to appeal to the expectations and desires of others. 

We see the peril of doing so through the eyes of Wilson Taylor’s masked protagonist as she navigates a simultaneously literal and metaphorical masquerade: He hands me champagne, and the glass feels nice in my hand. So easy to shatter...I feel completely absent, anonymous. Cameron Edrich’s protagonist runs her life aground on the rocks of similar contradictions as she buries her true cultural and personal identity in the name of what passes for love: Of course, change is only possible if there is something worth changing for. Of course, something worth changing for must be either extremely amazing or deeply horrific, and there is never any in-between. The reality, for this character and for so many of us, is that much of the time the world seems to be little more than a jumble of in-betweens.

It’s easy to get lost in liminal spaces. Water, earth, and sky may commingle, become confused as in the fraught winter landscape Christine Pennylegion’s anonymous woman struggles through, trudging steps into whiteness under the answering grey-whiteness above. Richard Laurberg expresses the way the boundaryless spaces of the natural world reflect the perilous crossings of our own inner bogs and fens as the coiled verse of his recipe commands its reader to compound corruptions that/ you make (part, land; part lake). Stefan Malizia reminds us that removed, above, and in control though we may pretend to be, we humans are part and parcel of these melanges, animals commingled among animals as [w]e secret species,/ Dancing, stir the dark and light. Likewise, Marisca Pichette presses us to lift ourselves up and through the mirage of a wall between humans and other beings: Holding a sliver of wilderness doesn't offer me ownership...What I was searching for then is the same thing I look for now: kinship.

It is the task of the artist to attempt to pierce the veils of deception and denial, to deliberately and boldly cross imposed borders of authoritarian dictates in politics, culture, and economy, to try to see around the curves and corners of ever-moving history. Against relentless tides of cynicism, confusion, and despair, to seek, magnify, and give wildly away to whomever come who may the joy of embodied existence, no matter how rare and precious it feels against the profusion of shifting, razor-bound borders. Angela Townsend reminds us: Innocence is a mountain range, and love is a guard dog against the impossible. Though we spend whole calendars’ worth of time and gallons of ink writing out all the ways in which the liminal, the commingled, the unclear edges of reality confuse and scare us, life demands that we face those boundaries. 

Finding our way through the world so often involves either stumbling or being shoved through shadowed margins. The choice to make art, to act on the upwelling wisdom behind the urge to create, can limn those edges golden, no matter how hardened, how knife-edged they may feel. Sarah Salvia shines that light into one of the darkest places a human being can enter, the loss of a child. Remembering watching the waves wash away her dead son’s name where she’d scrawled it in beach sand, she writes: The image of his name being erased so quickly, so completely, makes me realize that a real goodbye will never be possible. I will carry him within me until I, myself, am erased.

Reader, cross this threshold. Turn these pages. Catch the spark. Carry the fire.

~

This is the introductory letter from the Editor in Chief that appeared in the 2024 edition of Bacopa Literary Review. If you would like to purchase this edition, it is available on Amazon in print or Ebook and you can find it here.

About the Editor: Editor in Chief J.N. Fishhawk is a poet and freelance writer. He is the author of three poetry chapbooks and Postcards from the Darklands, ekphrastic poems accompanying artwork by artist Jorge Ibanez. The second book in his and illustrator Johnny Rocket Ibanez’s ongoing World of Whim Sea children’s series is out now. Info at fishhawkandrocket.com.

Bacopa Literary Review 2024 Contest Prizewinners

FICTION

AWARD: “Museum of Lota Smith” by Wilson R. M. Taylor

Wilson R. M. Taylor is a poet and writer. His work appears in Every Day Fiction, an anthology from Wising Up Press, and a few other journals and magazines. He is on the shortlist for the 2024 Alpine Fellowship Poetry Prize. He is currently seeking representation for his first novel.

HONORABLE MENTION: “Waking the Legend” by K. S. Dearsley 

K. S. Dearsley has had numerous stories published on both sides of the Atlantic. Her novel, Discord's Shadow, the third in the fantasy series The Exiles of Ondd, is available on Amazon at http://www.tinyurl.com/exiles-of-ondd.  Find out more at http://www.ksdearsley.com.

FLASH FICTION

AWARD: “Cowgirl's Calling” by Cameron Edrich 

Cameron Edrich is a poet and writer currently living in Austin, Texas. They write on topics such as love, family, and identity. When not writing, you can find them swimming in a lake or eating dry cereal.

HONORABLE MENTION: “Revolver Rita First Look” by Mandira Pattnaik 

Mandira Pattnaik is a former contributor to Bacopa Literary Review. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in IHLR, Emerson Review, The Rumpus and SAND Journal, among others. Visit her at mandirapattnaik.com.

CREATIVE NONFICTION

AWARD: “Reenchanted” by Angela Townsend

Angela Townsend is the Development Director at Tabby’s Place: a Cat Sanctuary. She graduated from Princeton Seminary and Vassar College. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Chautauqua, Pleiades, Terrain.org, and The Westchester Review, among others. She is a Best Spiritual Literature nominee.

HONORABLE MENTION: “Bones Within and Without: An Ode to the Wild Dead” by Marisca Pichette

Marisca Pichette is a queer author based in Massachusetts. Find more of her work in The Razor, Door is a Jar, Room Magazine, and others. Her Bram Stoker and Elgin Award-nominated poetry collection, Rivers in Your Skin, Sirens in Your Hair, is out now from Android Press.

FORMAL POETRY

AWARD: "Nothing Else Matters" by Sherre Vernon

Sherre Vernon is the award-winning author of Green Ink Wings, The Name is Perilous, and Flame Nebula, Bright Nova. Sherre has been nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, and anthologized in Fat & Queer and Best Small Fictions. She teaches creative writing and composition.

HONORABLE MENTION: "Let Your Shadows Lengthen on the Sundials" by Andrew Alexander Mobbs

Andrew Alexander Mobbs (he/him/his) is the author of the chapbook, Strangers and Pilgrims (Six Gallery Press, 2013). A Pushcart Prize nominee, his poems have appeared/are forthcoming in Terrain.org, Frontier Poetry, Arkansas Review, and other solid publications. He's the co-founding editor of Nude Bruce Review.

FREE VERSE POETRY

AWARD: "Things that Remind Me of Birds" by Desiree Remick

Desiree Remick (she/her) is a creative writing student at Southern Oregon University and the fiction editor of Nude Bruce Review. Her debut short story was the runner-up for the 2020 Chester B. Himes Memorial Short Fiction Prize. Her work has also appeared in Unlost, the Ekphrastic Review, and MockingHeart Review.

HONORABLE MENTION: “Sunrise in Future Goma without Roaming Bullets” by Eniola Arowolo

Eniola Arowolo is a writer from Nigeria. A Pushcart and BoTN nominee, he was shortlisted for the Inaugural Chukwuemeka Akachi Prize, and currently serves as a Poetry Contributing Editor for Barren Magazine. His works have appeared in 2024 Small Fictions anthology, The Republic, 4faced Liar, Temz Review, ANMLY, and elsewhere.

VISUAL POETRY

AWARD: "The Liberator" by Rebecca Loggia

Rebecca Loggia’s work has appeared in the Santa Clara Review, Allegory Ridge, and elsewhere. Her poem "Infirmary" placed third in the Phoenix Sister Cities 2017 Writers with Disabilities Competition. She is a reader for CRAFT and a Teaching Artist for the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing.

HONORABLE MENTION: "The Breakup" by C. Maris Bounds

C. Maris Bounds is an English PhD student at the University of Southern Mississippi with a focus on creative writing. She enjoys reading Jane Austen, writing out her feelings, and grading papers.

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Thank you to everyone who submitted to this year's contest. Stay tuned for our upcoming journal release reading!

A Reflection on Haley Winan's "Burning Haibun at The Creek"

By Bacopa Literary Review Poetry Co-Editor Oliver Keyhani

To walk through your dead self is no easy feat. Haley Winans gives us a personal epic, something dark and yearning, something burning. Every line takes us into a fractured landscape, a mind with all its tangles; the direction is never decided. Sometimes it winds back upon itself, sometimes it skips into another dimension, but always there is the strange and unfathomable-- the self--that watches, experiences, and cracks like leaves.

The Haibun consists of one or more paragraphs of prose—imagistic, hallucinatory, and/or story-like, sometimes referred to as prose in a haikai style, coupled to one or more haiku. The form is exceedingly versatile, but both elements must complement each other. In Winans’ haibun, there is the self, but also the other, a “he”, defined by wants, a heart “covered in antlers”, and a tongue that moves as a “loaded gun”. The imagery is provocative, but not sentimental or maudlin.

It’s always difficult to tell submitting poets what it is we look for. We do want variety: of forms/styles, of voices, of tenor. But formal poetry also involves a significant amount of craft—how the story evolves, its meter, rhyme, and flow, a surprising comparison or juxtaposition, a message, meaning, or emotion, that can be deeply personal, but must also be able to touch a universal aspect in us all. Winans succeeds in this, evoking an imaginative experience in the reader. Such an arrangement of sense, rhythm, and sound is a prime example of the type of work Bacopa encourages.

Haley Winan's piece "Burning Haibun at The Creek" was Bacopa Literary Review 2023's Formal Poetry Award.

About the contributor: Haley Winans is a garden-lover and bunny mom from Annapolis, Maryland. She has poetry published in Slipstream, The Shore Poetry, and elsewhere. She's in the University of Memphis MFA Creative Writing program. She's a founding co-editor of Beaver Magazine. During undergrad, she studied Environmental Studies and Creative Writing, with a focus on environmental justice, sustainable agriculture, and poetry. Find her on Twitter @winans_haley.

An Interview with Bacopa 2023 Fiction Honorable Mention Emilee Prado

By Bacopa Literary Review Fiction Editor Alec Kissoondyal

Emilee Prado's brilliant use of contrast is immediately evident in her story, "Red Yucca," a prose piece that takes place on a film set. Beyond using prose to tell a story set in the world of filmmaking, Prado contrasts the "real" locations in the story with their use in the context of the film and even the protagonists, Chico and Nina, play the role of extras even though their bittersweet love story is the central focus of the story. In the following interview, Prado discusses the characters in "Red Yucca," how her educational background in Film Studies factored into the narrative's authenticity, and her upcoming projects.

Q: The element that drew me into the story was the juxtaposition of issues in the characters’ “real lives” being dealt with on film sets. Where did this idea come from, and how did it develop over the course of writing the story?

A: As I developed Chico and Nina, I was thinking about downbeat characters who might feel as if they’ve been cast as extras in their lives in the same way they are cast in the film. For instance, the love story between the unnamed leads is captured perfectly by the camera, but Chico and Nina’s love story drifts, somewhat inconclusive, off-screen. This idea wasn’t specifically plotted, but sort of emerged organically as I began sculpting an ill-defined gritty and fragile love story. The use of film set as setting, however, came from my preoccupation with movies and my educational background (I have a BA in Film Studies). I love to explore fiction as if an omniscient narrator is also the eye of a camera.

Q: Speaking of film sets, the locations in the story are almost a character in and of themselves—the backdoor of a non-profit that is used as a club entrance in the film, the burned building, the alley with something rotting in the dumpster, etc. How did you decide on the setting?

A: The visual details I used in “Red Yucca” are loosely extrapolated from where I live in downtown Tucson, Arizona. I do a lot of commuting on foot and I often notice the dissonance between the appearance of alleys and how they function. I wanted to link this idea with how Chico and Nina feel misunderstood. I also wanted to communicate the film director’s naïve generalizations about a place he isn’t familiar with and how he shapes the set to fit his notions rather than adapting the script to the reality around him. (E.g. he has graffiti painted specifically for the film set, he asks Nina to change her appearance, and the club/non-profit disconnect).

Q: Are there any projects you are currently working on/forthcoming publications that you want to mention?

A: I have a few stories/essays slotted for upcoming literary journal publication and I have several larger projects that I’m slowly chipping away at. One of my projects continues my preoccupation with merging the real world with film and might eventually take the form of an essay collection that blends memoir with film criticism. 

About the contributor: Emilee Prado is a fiction writer and essayist whose work appears in Cincinnati Review, Wigleaf, Fractured Lit, and elsewhere. Emilee was raised in a working-class family. She has lived in Asia and South America and currently resides in Tucson, Arizona. Find out more at emileepradoauthor.com or on social media: @_emilee_prado_.

A Reflection on an Editor's Preferences

By Bacopa Literary Review Creative Nonfiction Editor Stephanie Seguin

For this editor, there are very few things that are “automatic no’s”

Sue Hann’s “Portrait and Punctum” was the honorable mention for Creative Nonfiction in the Bacopa 2023 edition. In the piece, Hann deftly describes three snapshots from different periods of her life. In just these three snapshots and a brief 1000 or so words, Hann gives us such a depth of insight into her relationship (or rather lack thereof) with her father. I love a piece of writing where I can sink into someone’s skin for a bit. I felt the coldness and distance of the author’s father, and later, the overwhelming love that flowed watching her husband with their own baby.

But there’s something else I itch to tell you about this piece, because maybe it will be helpful to potential submitters. I want to tell you that normally I am not a fan of starting with a quote. After reading hundreds of submissions, I have become fairly adept at knowing quickly which pieces will probably not be for me. Pieces that start with quotes, or have footnotes, are normally not what I choose.  Neither of those things are wrong of course, just usually a signal that a submission will not be my cup of tea. But upon reading Portrait and Punctum, I could see the quote was needed to provide the framework for understanding this piece. And I loved the writing that followed. I sunk in. I related. I was charmed.

I suppose I tell you this as a reminder that of course we as readers (and editors) have preferences, things we normally dislike, but if something works, it works. So if something works in your writing, do it.  There’s really not anything that’s an automatic “no” (maybe with the exception of sexism or racism, start with a sexist joke and I cannot wait to hit that thumbs down button!)

From Sue Hann’s “Portrait and Punctum”:

“A photograph’s punctum is that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me)” Roland Barthes

In the photograph, my father stands straight and stiff backed beside me as if facing a firing squad and not a camera lens. The corners of his mouth are stretched into a minus sign of forbearance. His brown suit is pressed and clean but his hair has grown out so it hangs over the collar of his white shirt. I can almost hear my mother’s voice chiding him about it. I am twelve years old and it is my Confirmation day. In contrast to my father, I am smiling but my smile for the camera looks polite, a reflex rather than a mood.

About the contributor: Sue Hann’s debut memoir in essays is forthcoming with Neem Tree Press. You can find her at suehannwrites.com and on Instagram @SueHannwrites.

A meditation on Sara Adams’s “1040A”

By Bacopa Literary Review 2023 Poetry Co-Editor Reinfred Addo

This piece, “1040A” by Sara Adams, is very understated. It’s not very ‘artsy’-looking, in the most obvious perception of what an artsy piece ought to look like. However, there is a certain X factor in its non-artsiness that makes it very artistic. The subject itself, IRS form 1040A, was a form used (prior to tax year 2018) by people in the USA to file their income taxes manually/on paper. True, taxes don’t exactly inspire artistic rapture, yet, Sara Adams somehow turns this bureaucratic, boring item into a thought-provoking visual statement. Taxes, money, and bureaucracy, seem to find themselves in every facet of our modern lives. If art is meant to shed light on the human condition, then what better subject than that which affects us all? Adams uses erasure to remove most of the text that would be found on a 1040A form, and leaves only a few words that, when combined, perhaps reveal the frustrations brewing in a person’s life. 

The lines of the form are very straight and clean, implying orderliness and high functioning-ness, much like the outward appearance that humans in a capitalistic world are taught to project. However, the form’s words themselves speak to the messy and complicated nature by which we often actually exist. Adams creates the statement “check here if you or your spouse will not change”, followed by a check box for You and a check box for Spouse. Is this form perhaps giving us a glimpse into a difficult romantic relationship as it’s being experienced by the tax filer? Does “will not change” suggest that finances are causing strife and magnifying a personality trait that is causing a strain in the couple’s relationship? There is also a section that reads “head of household is a child”. This may suggest that either the head of household acts like a child even though they are an adult (another personality trait straining the relationship), or that there is an actual child in the home and most of the financial, emotional, and time resources go towards raising that child (I’ve often heard the saying that one’s time and money are no longer theirs once they have a child).

Sara Adams’s excellent use of erasure reveals that not all may be as sanitized and organized as the straight lines and neatly stacked spaces of our lives would suggest. “1040A”, then, perhaps, is a warning that the paper that is our outward façade may look crisp, but the ink that writes our stories may fade and run when exposed intensely enough to the pressures of life.

About the contributor: Sara Adams’ chapbooks include Poems for Ivan (Porkbelly Press), Western Diseases (dancing girl press), Think Like a B (Trump erasure poems; SOd press; free to download!). and six Ghost City Press Summer Series Micro-chaps (also free to download). Check out more of Sara’s work, including chapbook links, at kartoshkaaaaa.com.

Sara Adams was awarded with an Honorable Mention for Visual Poetry in our 2023 edition.

Love, Laughs and Pastries: A Reflection on the 2023 Humor Prizewinner

By 2023 Bacopa Creative Nonfiction Editor Stephanie Seguin

The other day I was in Trader Joe’s. Part of the feature display was a neat stack of Kringles and I literally squealed with delight when I saw them. (Thank god my kids weren’t with me or they would have fainted, literally died of embarrassment mom!)

The cause of my excitement was that I had never tasted or seen one before, but a Kringle was the featured pastry in the winner I chose for Bacopa’s 2023 Humor category.

2023 was our third time including Humor as a category in the annual contest. The gold standard, for me, is a David Sedaris type of humor writing. I am always looking for a writer who can achieve that delicate balance of tender and funny, with maybe a little edge of sarcasm. It’s tough to get it right. (I’ve tried!)

So when I read Mary Liza Hartong’s Kringle my heart squealed like a middle aged woman who just saw a giant pastry in a grocery store.  In Kringle, Hartong’s mother has cancer, her relatives have irritating habits, yet the piece still oozes warm sweetness. I couldn’t even tell you how, the same way I can’t tell you how a lump of gooey ingredients turns into a flaky puff of pastry. But it does.

I’ll be microwaving popcorn and catch her in the act of writing the email, hair swept back in a clip, reconstructed breasts in a tennis tank. When she was diagnosed, I was fourteen. I thought, if my mother dies I will never know how to make a grilled cheese sandwich. Against the pop-pop-popping of the kernels, I attempt to dissuade her from sending this aggressive missive. What if Nancy is sicker than you were? What if she never cared for jogging in the first place? What if she needs someone to say, “there, there” and not, “show me some hustle”? Despite my pleas, my mother inevitably hits send.

Starting in on the popcorn, I’ll wonder why my uncle can’t just dole out gift cards, my mother, casseroles. It’s the sort of familial algebra we all do, especially around the holidays. Add some common sense, subtract the urge to talk about tennis, take the square root of good intentions, and maybe I could end up with a normal family.

And yet, by the time I finish the popcorn, Nancy will return the email.

“Thank you, Mary,” she’ll say, “This is exactly what I needed to hear!” 

No matter the category, I am always looking to feel something when I read submissions. There’s more to good writing than including all the right ingredients. When I read Kringle, I felt tenderness, love, a dash of sadness and the need to roll my eyes at people I love dearly.  Most importantly (this won the humor category after all) I laughed at a story about someone’s mom having cancer, and that is writing magic.

(In case you are wondering, the Trader Joe’s Kringle was delicious! Bigger than I expected. It’s pizza sized, so you can share it with your whole irritating but lovable family.)

About the contributor: Mary Liza Hartong lives and writes in her hometown of Nashville, Tennessee. She's a Dartmouth grad, a Fulbright Scholar, and a proud aunt. You can read more of her writing and buy her novel "Love and Hot Chicken" here.