Nightingale & Sparrow

Author: juliette

  • 2020 Chapbook Shortlist

    Back in 2020 (one of the most hectic years many of us have experienced), N&S opened for our second chapbook submissions period. Between the global chaos and issues that hit closer to home, our decisions for these and other pending submissions have been a long time coming.

    We are so grateful to each and every author who sent in their work—compiling this list was made incredibly difficult by the quality of each and every manuscript. With every batch of submissions we receive, we’re faced with the inevitable heartbreak of having to turn away work that speaks to us. We truly wish we could accept all of the below titles and more!

    As always, manuscripts were reviewed without identifying information, so it was especially exciting to find that a few of our former contributors were the authors behind these works—and even more so to discover several names that are entirely new to us here at N&S!

    From the following manuscripts, we’ll make our final selections, which will be published by Nightingale & Sparrow Press.

    • Aquarius Rising – Bernadette R. Giacomazzo
    • BEHIND THE GHOST METROPOLIS – Asper Blurry
    • Bough Break – Jessica Hudson
    • inside the pale – Christine Brooks
    • knick-knacks/ things no one is saying – Sarah Jean Valiquette
    • Melodies of the Oppressed – Chris L. Butler
    • A Moon in Gemini – Rachel Boury Baxter
    • The Moon is never as bright as it appears – Marchell Dyon
    • Myalgic Encephalomyelitis – Miriam Hilmi
    • Relapses of spiny desires – Eleni Cay
    • A Sorrow of Ghosts – Amanda Crum
    • The Unaccounted for Circles of Hell – Lynne Schmidt
    • Water Damage – M.E. Gallucci
    • We Could Be Free – Mollie Williamson

  • Author Statement: River Ghosts

    Dear Reader,

    I compiled River Ghosts in the summer after my mother, Sylvia L. Schreiber, died from Covid-19. She died in April two years ago in a terrible week that began with the death of one of our two cats on a Monday and ended with hers on Saturday. We were able to be with our Mickey, but not with my mom, as the world was shuttering and shuddering, and we were closed in our bubbles of grief and mourning.

    However, River Ghosts is not a collection of sad poems about death and dying. Oh, there are some, of course, but there are also poems that celebrate life, our Earth, the stars, family, and love. I imagine that’s the way my mom would have wanted it.

    I feel like I should tell you a bit about my mom—not just howshe died, but how she lived. She was the daughter of immigrant parents who both worked in their small grocery store in Philadelphia while she was growing up. My mom and dad married during WWII, and by the end of the 1950s, they owned a large, wholesale antique store in Dallas, Texas. After they divorced, my mom worked in retail, and opened a series of stores that sold jewelry and clothing. She had wanted to go to college for art or design when she was young, and in her seventies, she began painting again. She loved color and flowers; she had a sweet tooth and loved chocolate. She loved her children and grandchildren. Perhaps its’s that love that explains how she could see a short skirt or uncombed hair even when she was nearly blind.

    I think it’s important for you to know that my mom had a laugh that made everyone around her laugh. And that though they ended up unable to live together, my father was the love of her life, and I think she was his. He died over two decades ago, but before she died, my mom thought he was there with her. I hope he was.

    Even before my mother’s death, I had enjoyed walking by the Delaware River. Afterwards, I walked there nearly every morning. I think of all the river has seen in its existence. Perhaps there are ghosts who walk along its banks, but right now, I also see flowers and nests, and the promise of new life. I hope you will see these things, too, in this collection.

    Cherish the people you love and who love you.

    Love,

    Merril

  • River Ghosts by Merril D. Smith

    River Ghosts River Ghosts
    by Merril D. Smith

    Publication Date: 12 April 2021
    Nightingale & Sparrow Press

    Genre: Poetry

    River Ghosts is about love, loss, the natural world, and the passage of time. It explores family and memory, the ghosts that dance through our minds, and the ghosts that whisper from cobblestones, rivers, and houses. It is a book birthed in the grief for a parent and the world during COVID-19. Nevertheless, it also celebrates joy and laughter, and recognizes that though nature’s beauty is transitory, it recurs again and again. Spring follows winter, and new flowers
    bloom. We see the light of long-dead stars, even as new stars are born.

    This book was compiled after the author’s mother died of COVID-19 in April 2020, although some of the poems were written before pandemic and lockdown. The compilation is a tribute to life and love, and an exploration of mourning and remembrance.

    Print | Kindle | PDF

    About the Author

    Merril D. Smith

    Merril D. Smith lives near the Delaware River in southern New Jersey with her husband and cat. She has a doctorate in American history from Temple University in Philadelphia. Her nonfiction books focus on history, gender, and sexuality. She turned to poetry as a creative outlet several years ago, and her poetry has been published in a variety of literary magazines. River Ghosts is her first full-length poetry book.

    Website | Twitter | Instagram

  • 2020 Chapbook Longlist

    Back in 2020 (one of the most hectic years many of us have experienced), N&S opened for our second chapbook submissions period. Between the global chaos and issues that hit closer to home, our decisions for these and other pending submissions have been a long time coming.

    We are so grateful to each and every author who sent in their work—compiling this list was made incredibly difficult by the quality of each and every manuscript. With every batch of submissions we receive, we’re faced with the inevitable heartbreak of having to turn away work that speaks to us. We truly wish we could accept all of the below titles and more!

    As always, manuscripts were reviewed without identifying information, so it was especially exciting to find that a few of our former contributors were the authors behind these works—and even more so to discover several names that are entirely new to us here at N&S!

    From the following manuscripts, we’ll create our shortlist of chapbooks before choosing our final selections, which will be published by Nightingale & Sparrow Press.

    • apparitions of you and me – jessie caitlin bullard
    • Aquarius Rising – Bernadette R. Giacomazzo
    • Ave Mater Militantis – Sarra Culleno
    • BEHIND THE GHOST METROPOLIS – Asper Blurry
    • Bone Memory, Moon Tissue, Blood Medicine – C.T. McClintock
    • Bough Break – Jessica Hudson
    • Built on Broken Bedrock – Wendy Humphries
    • Days Disowned by Memory – Israel Bonilla
    • inside the pale – Christine Brooks
    • JOAN:ARC – Preston Smith
    • just a few words – Jim Young
    • knick-knacks/ things no one is saying – Sarah Jean Valiquette
    • La Revedere – Adela Sinclair
    • Melodies of the Oppressed – Chris L. Butler
    • A Moon in Gemini – Rachel Boury Baxter
    • The Moon is never as bright as it appears – Marchell Dyon
    • The Morning After – Diane Payne
    • Myalgic Encephalomyelitis – Miriam Hilmi
    • Postcolonial Memory – Nibras Malik
    • Pout – Aishwarya Javalgekar
    • Relapses of spiny desires – Eleni Cay
    • ROCD Around the Clock – Rota
    • A Sorrow of Ghosts – Amanda Crum
    • Sunbath – Amara George Parker
    • TACTICS OF A SHORELINE – Avleen K Mokha
    • Terrestrial Songs – Peggy Landsman
    • The Unaccounted for Circles of Hell – Lynne Schmidt
    • Water Damage – M.E. Gallucci
    • We Could Be Free – Mollie Williamson
    • When the floods came – alison armstrong
    • A Year After the Divorce – AE Hines

  • harmony – micropoems

    In the leadup to our tenth issue, harmony, we shared a series of micropoems from some talented submitters:

  • Pandora by Mollie Williamson

    Pandora
    by Mollie Williamson

    Publication Date: 20 April 2021
    Nightingale & Sparrow Press

    Genre: Fiction

    Pandora explores the background and reasoning for Pandora’s infamous action of opening the dreaded box of fears. History has not looked kindly at this woman and the hope of my story is to give her a voice, a sense of humanity. Women are often blamed for all the faults in the world, but they are hardly blamed for being ambitious and that’s exactly what I wanted to give Pandora.

    Print | PDF | Kindle

    About the Author

    mollie-williamson

    Mollie Williamson attended Saint Mary’s College of California double majoring in Art History and Women’s Studies in 2013. She then received her master’s in Women’s Studies from the University of Alabama in 2014. She has since moved back to California where she lives with her husband and their dog. Mollie enjoys writing stories based on fairy tales and mythology. Her work has been featured in The Pinkley Press, Toho Journal, Nightingale & Sparrow, and White Wall Review.

    Website | Twitter | Instagram

  • A Quick Update

    Hello, friends!

    For those who may not follow our Twitter/social media feeds, we wanted to note here on the website, too, that we’re currently behind on many of our efforts. Unfortunately, our EIC has been dealing with severe health issues, sidetracking many N&S tasks, particularly with the Press (while our lit mag has a wonderful team of volunteers behind it, our Press and its imprints are primarily a one-woman show).

    Behind the scenes, we’re working to heal, as well as catch up on pending submissions, queries, projects, etc. We’re also working to strengthen and build the N&S team to ensure there’s always someone available to keep us moving forward, regardless of any illness or other obstacles.

    In the meantime, please bear with us as we get back on track. We may not be able to respond to individual inquiries very speedily, but know that we see your messages and are doing everything in our power to get N&S flying once more.

  • Update: Reproductive Rights Anthology

    Hello from Vociferous Press!

    As you may know, we’ve had a reproductive rights anthology planned for quite some time. Some wonderful submitters have trusted us with their work and we’ve truly loved considering each piece.

    Like so many, though, 2020 hit us pretty hard. For our team, it’s been largely a struggle to stay afloat personally, much less in volunteer endeavours like this. As a result, the project’s largely gotten pushed to the backburner—and for that, we apologise.

    We’re incredibly passionate about this cause and excited to share that we’re finally getting back on track with the anthology. We are currently finalising decisions with responses heading to our submitters as soon as possible. From there, we’ll be preparing a proof copy of the book for contributors to review in early May, with the final anthology launching on 26 July.

    We can’t know what’s still to come in 2021, but we fully intend to prioritise this project as much as possible. We’re so grateful to the submitters who’ve been so incredibly patient with us over the past months and are excited to showcase some incredible work this summer!

    As always, thank you. We couldn’t do the work we do without submitters/contributors, readers, and others supporting us and N&S as a whole.

    Project Curators: Juliette Sebock and Lynne Schmidt

    reproductive rights anthology

  • Unbroken

    Unbroken

    Cory Funk

    Cory Funk

  • blizzard

    blizzard

    Contents

    ISSN 2642-0104 (print)
    ISSN 2641-7693 (online)

    Print Edition

    Online Edition

    add-to-goodreads

    Editor’s Letter

    Founding Editor, Juliette Sebock

    Poetry

    First Snow     Stefanie Kirby
    Snow is a Blanket Fort My Children Built     Matthew Miller
    Solution     Maia Joy
    False Narrative     Elizabeth Joy Levinson
    Iced     Ann Howells
    always winter     Kim Backalenick Escobar
    Snowstorm Overdose     Naoise Gale
    Not Everything About Winter is Winter     Peter Stewart O’Grady
    in a dream i kiss my father’s dead mouth     Karson
    The Hibernation    Anna Lindsay
    Descending melody     Emily Ford
    Moods of Falling     Joanna Friedman
    Yule Known      Kate Gough
    Breaking Story     Karla Linn Merrifield
    Whenever it snows.     John C. Polles
    The Blizzard of ‘96     Merril D. Smith
    Snow     Kathryn de Leon
    Intimations of Death, Passing through Connecticut     James Dowthwaite
    All That is Solid      Lynn White
    A Cycle of Endings      Amanda Crum

    Nonfiction

    Snowsquall      Jasmine Kuzner

    Fiction

    Vulpes lagopus     Matthew Pinkney
    Night Walks – Part II     Penny Pennell
    Dagger      Andrea Lynn Koohi
    Weathering the Storm     Kristina Saccone
    Followed?     Nicola Ashbrook
    A Midwinter Night’s Dream     Fija Callaghan

    Photography

    As Eyelashes in Winter     Cory Funk
    Copse     Dane Hamann
    Limestone     Dane Hamann
    The Popples are Sleeping      Kimberly Wolkens
    Rime and Veins      Cory Funk
    Into the Unknown      Kimberly Wolkens
    Barbs     Cory Funk
    Tracks     Dane Hamann
    distant light     Sarah Leavesley
    from “The Enduring Chill of a Long Ago Blizzard”     Jeffrey Yamaguchi
    Snow Tail     Michael Nelson

    Cover Image

    Unbroken     Cory Funk

    Micropoems

    In the leadup to blizzard, we shared a series of micropoems across social media: 

    blizzard micropoems