Summer Reads: Issue 1 Contributors Jon Pineda & Barbara Jane Reyes

Welcome to our new Summer Reads blog series!  We recently asked our contributors from Issue 1 to share with us what they are reading  / what’s on their reading lists this summer, and we’ll be featuring their responses here throughout the months of June and July.  This first installment features reads from Jon Pineda & Barbara Jane Reyes.

Writes Jon,

“I just finished Yoko Ogawa’s beautiful novel The Housekeeper and the Professor.”

Barbara tells us,

“I am finishing up Miguel Syjuco’s debut novel Ilustrado. Otherwise, I’m supporting some of my favorite indie publishers —

Albert Saijo, Outspeaks: A Rhapsody (Bamboo Ridge Press)
Michelle Cruz Skinner, In the Company of Strangers (Bamboo Ridge Press)
Gizelle Gajelonia, Thirteen Ways of Looking at The Bus (Tinfish Press)
Elizabeth Soto, Eulogies (Tinfish Press)
Craig Santos Perez, from unincorporated territory [saina] (Omnidawn Press)
Lily Hoang, Changing (Fairy Tale Review Press)
Reginald Dwayne Betts, Shahid Reads His Own Palm (Alice James Books)
Olga García Echeverría, Falling Angels: Cuentos y Poemas (Calaca Press)
Eduardo Galeano, Soccer in Sun and Shadow (Verso Books)

I am also reading Evie Shockley’s manuscript of her forthcoming second poetry collection, the new black.”

Check out Jon’s poem, “[we left the camera]” and Barbara ‘s pieces, “13. Black Jesus” and “10. For Al Robles” in Lantern Review, Issue 1.  For more information on the poets themselves, visit them online at jonpineda.com and barbarajanereyes.com, respectively.

LR News: Issue One Is Now Live!

LR Issue 1

At long last, the inaugural issue of Lantern Review is now live on our web site!

We’re thrilled to be able to present a volume of more than 30 extraordinary pieces, in a wide range of styles, and by poets of multiple generations.  Contributors to this issue include Eileen Tabios, Jon Pineda, Barbara Jane Reyes, Luisa Igloria, Angela Veronica Wong, Changming Yuan, Melissa Roxas, Sankar Roy, Subhashini Kaligotla, Vanni Taing, Rachelle Cruz, Jai Arun Ravine, Craig Santos Perez, as well as many others.  The issue also includes a special feature devoted to work created in the context of Kundiman’s vibrant community, in the form of our Community Voices section.  Before entering the issue, you might want to take a moment to check out our recommendations for optimum viewing, located here.  If you want to proceed to the issue right away, click here or on the cover image at the top left of this post.

We are still very much learners when it comes to producing and supporting a web-hosted magazine, so we’d appreciate any feedback or questions you might have about readability and navigation issues. (Feel free to drop us a line via email).

Thank you so much to all of you for your continued support, enthusiasm, and patience as we’ve wrestled with the process of making our dream become a reality.  We are honored to have the opportunity to present such a stellar body of work in our very first issue, and hope that you will enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed putting it together.

Many thanks again,

Iris & Mia
LR Editorial Board

LR News: Sneak Preview of Issue One

Hello, all!  If you’ve noticed that the LR blog has been unusually quiet in the past couple of weeks, please accept our apologies.  We have been hard at work putting together Issue One and most of our energy as of late has been consumed with carefully laying out and coding each page.  We’re currently finishing up with inputting a few last poems and ironing out some bugs in the code, but should still — if everything goes smoothly from here on out — be on track to release on time on Monday.  In the meantime, please enjoy this exclusive sneak peek at our cover design:

Other features to look forward to include poetry by Luisa Igloria, Barbara Jane Reyes, Eileen Tabios, Jai Arun Ravine (as well as many, many more), a special feature highlighting collaborative work from Kundiman, and a book review by Craig Santos Perez.

LR News: May 2010 Updates

Happy APIA Heritage Month!  Here is our first of the month news update:

May Community Calendar is Now Live

We’ve updated our community calendar page for May.  As always, we’d love to have your input in making our event coverage more accurate and thorough: leave a comment to suggest any additions and/or corrections.

APIA History Month on the LR Blog

During May, we’ll be running two blog series to celebrate National APIA Heritage Month.  The first, “Poetry in History,” will appear each Friday in lieu of our regular Editors’ Picks / Weekly Prompt posts, and will feature poems written during and/or about a particular period in Asian American History and an accompanying (linked) prompt.  Our “Process Portraits” series will begin during the second week of May, and will spotlight the work being done – and the history being made right now – by six young contemporary Asian American poets.  Finally, we’ll also be running interviews, book reviews, and occasional editorial posts during May that have to do with questions of historicity and historical engagement in Asian American poetry.

Issue 1 Submissions Period Closed

Thank you so much to those of you who submitted work during our very first reading period!  The Editors are currently making final decisions about what will go into the magazine, and if you haven’t heard back from us already, you should within the next few weeks.  If all goes as planned, Issue 1 will launch in early June.  Look out for an announcement about the exact launch date later this month.

Thanks once again for all of your continued support in reading and helping to promote the content we put on the LR Blog.  We could not run this gig without you!

Sincerely,

Iris & Mia
LR Editorial Staff.

LR News: Submission Deadline for Issue 1 Extended

First of all, welcome to those of you who are just joining us post-AWP!   [For those of you who have been following us for a while, check out our updated links page to meet some of our new friends].

Thanks to the overwhelming amount of support and interest that people expressed last weekend in Denver, we’ve decided to extend our submissions deadline by a couple of weeks.  The new submissions deadline for Issue 1 is now Thursday, April 29th. The process (via our online form) will remain the same as before, and we will still respond to those of you who submit before April 15th within 6 weeks of your submission.  So if you are just joining us now or are (like me) someone who tends to pull things together at the last possible instant — here’s your chance!  (Click on the banner below to go to our submissions page).

Many, many thanks to those have already submitted, and good luck to all!  We can’t wait to read your work!

LR News: Submissions Period for Issue 1 Now Open

Dear LR Fans,

We know you’ve been anticipating this for a long, long time, and have endured many push-backs of the date, but we’re happy to announce that our very first reading period is finally, and officially, open!  You can link over to our submissions guidelines here, or by clicking on the image at the beginning of this post.

A gigantic thank you to our brilliant Technology Consultant, Brandon, for the many hours he spent programming, creating the nuts-and-bolts behind the whole operation.  The database that he’s built for us will allow us to gather, filter, and screen your submissions entirely online without the need for cumbersome reams of email attachments.

Here’s how our system will work:

  1. Carefully read the submissions guidelines that you’ll now find on the “Submissions” page of our main web site.
  2. Format your work as specified and prepare it for uploading (poetry & critical prose should be in a single MS word or .PDF document with a cover letter as the first page; images should be in .JPEG format and multiple images should be compressed into a .ZIP file prior to upload).
  3. Follow the link at the bottom of the guidelines page to access the submission form.
  4. Input required information (quick tip: you may find it helpful to have the submissions guidelines open in another window or tab while you do this), upload manuscript, confirm that your work is original and that if it’s a simultaneous submission, you’ll inform us immediately if it’s accepted elsewhere.
  5. Click “Submit”!

That’s it!  You’ll receive a confirmation email to let you know that your submission has been logged into our database.  In up to 4-6 weeks, we will reply with a decision (please don’t query about your submission’s status before then; but if we take too long, feel free to send us a gentle reminder).  In the meantime, feel free to email us at editors [at] gmail(dot) com with any questions or updates you may have. Our reading period will close on April 15th.

Please do consider sending some of your work our way.  We’d also appreciate it if you could help us spread the word  (the banner at the top of this post is free for “grabs” if you’d like to use it to link to us on your own blog or web site; we also have a smaller, button version, available here).  Finally, as we are still figuring things out for the first time, any feedback you might have about how to make this process more user-friendly in future reading periods would be much appreciated, so please feel free to drop us a line to that effect. Thank you for all of your patience with us while waiting for this long-overdue phase of our magazine’s development to come to fruition.  We look forward to reading your submissions!

Best,

Iris & Mia
LR Editorial Staff