IN THIS ISSUE

The abundance of submissions we’ve received dealing with AI tells us something about what people are thinking — and worrying — about these days. In this issue, we publish a story that addresses the subject with gentle humor, presenting an AI presence with a distinct personality. The other stories in this issue deal with more conventional sentient creatures (i.e., human beings) and explore family histories, parent/child relationships, the dynamics of friendship, and the attempt to understand oneself in relation to the world.

Our poetry selections for this issue delve into the hazards of aging and the realities of relationships. We have woodland animals, flying monkeys, and Cecil the lion. Poems include allusions to ancient Troy and Biblical stories, as well as dream travel and border crossing. We were pleased to choose several lists, a few sonnets, and a footnote among the impressive poems for Fall 2024.

Finally, a word about Stephanie Kaplan Cohen, our founding poetry editor, who passed away this summer. Stephanie, herself a widely published poet, was a sensitive editor and generous reader of our poetry contributions, who perceived the heart and core of every submission. She was an inspiring presence at our meetings and in our lives, and she will be sorely missed.

From the Publisher:

Our new website signals big changes for The Westchester Review, not the least of which is that I have been given the privilege to take over as publisher. I’ve been involved with the journal almost since its founding in 2007, have served as Editor-in-Chief for the past five years, and am committed to continuing our mission of publishing high-quality stories, creative non-fiction, poetry, and short plays from established, emerging, and historically under-represented authors.

We would not be here today but for the vision, generosity, and enthusiasm of JoAnn Duncan Terdiman, our founder and former publisher. JoAnn launched The Westchester Review as an annual print journal in 2007, publishing writers with connections to Westchester County. Ever-responsive to the changing times and needs of the literary community, she oversaw the expansion of our catchment area and, responding to the obstacles presented by the pandemic, led us into the world of online publications. We are now an eighteen-year-old international online journal, quite a feat for a small literary press!

The number of submissions we receive continues to soar so we are implementing regular submissions periods. Our poetry and prose portals will be open twice a year: March — June and September — December. This will enable our staff of editors and readers, who work year-round, to give each submission the thoughtful consideration it deserves.

I am determined to keep The Westchester Review a free-access publication with no submission fees, but even though all our editors and readers are volunteers, it takes money to put out a literary journal. In order to keep us independent and viable, we’ve added a “tip jar” to our website — an entirely optional way of supporting our publication if you like what you see. Please note that contributions will have no effect on the status or consideration of submissions.

Given the tremendous reception to our recent All-Poetry Spring issue, we plan to offer it annually to coincide with National Poetry month in April. We hope to again include interviews with poets in these issues.

We hope you enjoy the Summer Issue, which features, as always, original cover artwork. A grateful shout-out to Peep Space Gallery in Tarrytown, New York, through which I’ve found many of the artists represented in our journal.

Thanks for reading!

Amy Ralston Seife
Publisher & Editor-in-Chief

Welcome to the first all-poetry issue of The Westchester Review! When this fell into our laps, we’d already begun to fill spring 2024 and had a portal full of possibilities. This gave us an opportunity to expand the number of poets from our usual 14 to 20 and add two featured poets, Iain Haley Pollock and Sumita Chakraborty, in interviews and with selected poems. The in-depth interviews were conducted by our poetry readers Michael Quattrone and Jay Ward, whose compelling questions elicited thoughtful responses on process and revision.

While we didn’t intend to curate a themed issue, threads emerged from the poems we selected. As we edit and get ready for any issue’s release, we notice connections, relationships, and correlations linking what we have chosen for publication to create a unique poetic conversation. The Spring 2024 poems observe nature, institutions, art, artists, work, and places, drawing from experience and imagination.

Four poets, Ace Boggess, Brent Amenreyo, Henry Mills, and James Reidel, use aspects of construction, building, and carpentry in varied forms and perspectives, using language that is humorous, sensual, and philosophical.

Poets have mined their lives and come up with gold—or even the color yellow, which we noticed popping up in poems by Janée J. Baugher, Babo Kamel, Susan Barry-Schulz, and Michael T. Young.

We have a poet who writes about imprisonment, one who is confined by a limited future and a fear of falling by the wayside, one who extols the virtues of a polyester shirt, and another who excavates the contents of a CARE package.

There are more poems that explore the personal and the universal, and we hope that you will share your favorites in conversations and on social media platforms.

Anne Graue and Amy Holman

Poetry Editors

March 2024

June 2023

Note from the Editors for Summer 2023 issue

Parent–child relationships, or the lack thereof, feature prominently in the prose we are presenting in our Summer issue. They are central to Other People’s Pain, Silence Is All I Dread, and Praying Mantis, and provide significant background to both Dirt and Catire, where parental absence propels the narratives. In Territorial Claims, a child’s near-drowning binds family members together. In our play, which is a ballet in verse, we track a young girl and her grieving mother as the girl transitions from death through the stages of the afterlife.

The poets in this issue are concerned about survival and certain about connection. Some herald seasonal expectations, fruitful or subverted, that remind us of the transitory nature of existence. We have a sestina and four sonnets, as well as two poems referencing the poet James Wright. We visit a chick condo in Martin’s Ferry, the cobbled streets of Berlin, the Italian Renaissance, a nature preserve, a music rehearsal room, Route 49, and the Mark Twain National Forest. We appreciate the imagination of the poets who wonder what would have happened if Socrates learned a new song before his execution, how the Messiah must long for a passed love, and whether listening to a Joni Mitchell song is enough time for a sewist to complete a zippered pouch.

To enhance your experience of the work in this issue, we are presenting, for the first time, audio accompaniment by our contributors, as they read from their stories, poems, and play. We hope you enjoy this newest addition to our website.

March 2023

Once again, we bring you a range of literary voices and characters, among them an errant young man revisiting his past, a lonely widower, and a root doctor in South Carolina. While we do not seek to publish themed issues, we also include here three remarkable pieces of prose about the Vietnam War and another about a former Ukrainian soldier finding peace in an American hospital. We were fascinated to see how each addresses war in a different way, but with one conclusion: War is hell.

Among our poems in this issue, we found unexpected perspectives that seem familiar, as with the actions of a cnidarian, the fear of a young girl at a public swimming pool, the interpretation of real estate as specific bird nests, and the orphaned raccoon that personifies heartbreak. The poets transport us to the Metro in Beijing, a brother’s Grand Prix in Indiana, and a commuter train in New York, as well as to the frozen lake of approaching dementia, the monkey business of hunter-gatherers, and the balding of Cate Blanchett’s Queen Elizabeth. There are references and projections to the protected past and uncertain future in poems that reflect on the self and consider alternate views of complicated histories.

Finally, we’re always pleased to share news of the publishing/prizes successes of our contributors. George Choundas has a first book of essays just out in February that won the EastOver Prize for Nonfiction. His collection is titled Until All You See Is Sky.

The Editors

December 2022

Dear Readers,

In this issue we present six stories. As dark as some of these pieces are, touching on themes of addiction, abandonment, and betrayal, a light is cast on the strains and responsibilities of supportive relationships, including friendships and father/son connections.

This issue’s play is a lovely example of what we are looking for: conflict that takes place in only ten pages and, in this case, one character struggling to achieve something the other character finds distressing.

We also present poems by fourteen poets who write about tragedy, fear and melancholy, as well as solace, hope, and sustenance, most often giving voice to the ineffable. Some of the poets play with form and text, with a few offering titles that resist separation from the body of the poem. We have ekphrasis, sonnets, a cento, and prose poems. We can count on a few things: a sonnet has fourteen lines, wind is a source of power, and poets know how to engage us even when they don’t have all the answers.

The Editors

September 2022

Dear Readers,

We present our Fall issue with 20 poems by 13 poets. Along with our readers, Michael Quattrone and Junious Ward, we’ve selected poems that engage with nature, art, relationships, and moments of contemplation. The poets closely observe their surroundings and reveal meaning through simile and metaphor that illuminates, delivering lasting lines and stanzas in lyric and narrative gems.

A number of the poems in this issue embrace formal structures, using them as containers for language that conveys crucial shifts in perception and understanding. We have two insect haiku by Ellen Peckham, three prose poems, and a sonnet by Richard Levine, as well as a few poems by Donna Vorreyer, Michael T. Young, Spencer Silverthorne, and Sunni Wilkinson. The poets of these and the rest of the poems in the issue find greater purpose and meaning in the relationships their speakers have with others and with their environments.

Finally, we are pleased to share that one third of Kissing Dynamite’s 2022 Micro-chapbook winners are TWR poets. We congratulate Jared Beloff, author of This is how we say “I love you” including the poem “How do you close out a life?” from our Spring 2021 issue; and M.A. Scott, author of Hunger, little sister, including this issue’s “Hope, little sister” and “Solitude, little sister.” Their chapbooks will be out this fall.

We appreciate the hard work of our contributors and hope that you love these poems as much as we do.

Anne Graue and Amy Holman

Poetry Editors

Congratulations to this year's TWR nominees for the "Best of the Net" Anthology, an annual acknowledgement of literary excellence in online publishing. We had so many outstanding pieces of prose and poetry this past year that it was tough to choose the nominations, but we're delighted to share this list of those we found especially strong.

POETRY

Sara Ryan — “Verge” (Fall 2023)
https://www.westchesterreview.com/sara-ryan-1

Tom Carrigan — “Swagger” (Winter 2023)
https://www.westchesterreview.com/tom-carrigan

Susan Barry-Schulz — “By the Wayside/Public Health update September 2023” (Spring 2024)
https://www.westchesterreview.com/susan-barry-schulz

James Penha — “Stitches in Time” (Spring 2024)
https://www.westchesterreview.com/james-penha

Amy Bagwell — “but you can’t give me any positive information?” (Summer 2024)
https://www.westchesterreview.com/amy-bagwell

Greg McBride — “Language of Love” (Summer 2024)
https://www.westchesterreview.com/greg-mcbride

FICTION

Jessica Fordham Kidd — “George’s Teeth” (Summer 2024)
https://www.westchesterreview.com/jessica-fordham-kidd

J.G. Jesman — “Hyenas from Ntcheu” (Fall 2023)
https://www.westchesterreview.com/jg-jesman

Westchester-based writer M.A. Scott has a chapbook published by Ghost City Press that includes two poems published in TWR!

Check it out, and in a cool format: this collection is part of the 2024 Ghost City Press Summer Micro-Chapbook Series, and all donations made for this title will go directly to the author.description

Check out the new story collection by our former contributor Kate Segriff. ANIMALS IN CAPTIVITY contains the remarkable story “Class Party” that was first published in The Westchester Review! It’s available at major booksellers now (her Canadian publisher linked here) and is a wild ride of gritty and humorous Canadian realism.

From JoeAnn Hart, once featured in our Volume 10 print issue, with a new novel forthcoming in October:

"I am so pleased to announce the release of my novel Arroyo Circle, in which hoarding and homelessness are depicted through the dark marriage of environmental degradation and rampant capitalism. It will be released by Green Writers Press in October, 2024.

Your publication was instrumental in furthering my writing life, and with this, the publication of my fifth book, I want to thank you for the faith that the literary community has had in my work over the years."

https://joeannhart.com