Notes from Crew Quarters: Writing We Love

This is an exciting week at Passages North. We've just opened two of our contests--the Waasnode Fiction contest, judged by Tiphanie Yanique, and the Neutrino Short-Short contest, judged by Lindsay Hunter, each with a prize of $1000. You can go here for more details about the contests.

In honor of these contests opening, we asked our editors about pieces they recently read that they couldn't stop thinking about.

Matt Weinkam, Managing Editor

I hate spiders but I loved "Man on the Bus with a Spider on His Back" by J. M. Tyree over at Guernica. Basically the literary equivalent of a hidden camera show but taken to surreal and existential levels.

Amy Hansen, Associate Poetry Editor

I can't stop reading "Corrective Measures" from Les Kay up at The Collagist.

Jason Teal, Associate Nonfiction Editor

"Goldbricks," a strange boating fiction by Robert Lopez that ran at AUTRE. It features the most subdued mutiny and the narrator is part of Lopez's new collection, GOOD PEOPLE, which I enjoyed a great deal.

Sara Ryan, Associate Poetry Editor

We recently read "The Christmas Miracle" in my EN111 class. It was out of the The Best American Non-Required Reading, but was originally published in The New Yorker.

Patricia Killelea, Poetry Editor

There's a great short story by Leanne Simpson titled "Selfie" in the most recent issue of As/Us: A Space for Women of the World, and it is so super good! She's one of the best Native American short fiction writers out there, I think.

Jen Howard, Editor-in-Chief 

I'm loving so many of the tiny stories and prose poems in New South's micro prose series, but I've gone back to this one from Amorak Huey over and over again.

Willow Grosz, Associate Fiction Editor

I keep coming back to this prose poem I read this summer by Matthew Olzmann titled "Fourteen Letters to a 52-Hertz Whale." It's over at Hobart.