The Robert Watson Literary Prize Poem LOVE AND BEAUTY
My mother loved my breasts, comparing them
to those of Aphrodite
in the painting The Birth of Venus.
She loved them so much we traveled
to the Uffizi…
Publishing the best poetry and fiction from emerging and established voices since 1966
Featuring the Robert Watson Literary Prize winners, Mai Mageed’s “Signs of Intelligent Life” for fiction and Anne Shafmaster’s “Love and Beauty” for poetry, as well as new work by Marcie Alexander, Taylor Byas, Michael Chang, Alex Chertok, Kennedy Coyne, Anna Egeland, Desmond Everest Fuller, Lyn Butler Gray, Tammy C. Greenwood, Julia Kolchinsky, Suphil Lee Park, K. A. Polzin, Alison Powell, Rick Rohdenburg, Jordan Roubion, Rob Magnuson Smith, Kate Welsh, Caroline White, Avra Wing, and Corey Zeller.
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The Robert Watson Literary Prize Story SIGNS OF INTELLIGENT LIFE
CASE STUDY 1: MOO
It was unfortunate that they didn’t make new science anymore. I could only imagine how thrilling it must have been to discover heliocentrism, or DNA, or orgasms. Galileo, I realized, died so that one day Moo could fart on the great man’s picture in my textbook…
Featuring the Amon Liner Poetry Prize winner, Eliana Franklin’s “The Bridge in Summer,” along with new poetry and fiction from K.C. Allison, Jackson Benson, Tara Bray, Sarah Brockhaus, Lucas Dean Clark, Marylou Fusco, Kari Gunter-Seymour, Sophia Huneycutt, Anna Lewis, Becka Mara McKay, K.S.M., Alicia Rebecca Myers, Callie Plaxco, Matt Poindexter, Michelle Ross, Suqi Karen Sims, Adam Tavel, Glenn Taylor, and Emma Cairns Watson. This issue is dedicated to Christopher Swensen (1985 – 2025), Fiction Editor from 2020-2021.
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Featuring the Robert Watson Literary Prize winners, Jeni O’Neal’s “Loving a Man and His Kids and His House” in poetry and Emily Harper Ellis’s “The Fairy Swap” in fiction, as well as new work by Miriam Akervall, Megan Blankenship, Alex Bullock, Flora Field, Abigail Ham, Max Kruger-Dull, Seth Leeper, Angela Ma, Elisabeth Murawski, Michael O’Ryan, Leslie Pietrzyk, Caroline Porter, Lindsay Stewart, Zach Swiss, David Thoreen, Amber Train, and Andy Young.
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Featuring the Amon Liner Poetry Prize winner, James Daniels’s “We Are All Starved for Touch,” an Editor’s Note by Terry L. Kennedy, and new poetry, stories, and flash from Sean Cho A., Jake Bauer, Nathaniel Bellows, Mark Brazaitis, Sébastien Luc Butler, Lucas Cardona, Adrienne Celt, K.S. Dyal, Jason Gray, Mickie Kennedy, Sally Rosen Kindred, Kip Knott, Alejandro Lucero, Jennie Malboeuf, Cori McKenzie, Eric Paul, Lizzy Ke Polishan, Bryan D. Price, Colleen Kearney Rich, Flannery Maeve Rollins, Anna Sheffer, Hannah Treasure, Alex Tretbar, Audrey Toth, Ross White, Christopher Stetson Wilson, and Haolun Xu.
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The journal’s inaugural issue featured work from students in the first years of the MFA Writing Program at Greensboro, including Kelly Cherry, Harry Humes, Thomas W. Molyneux, and Angela Davis. Students and faculty members printed the issue in the campus duplicating shop, then collated it by hand. Greensboro painter Betty Watson designed the logo that is still in use today.
View » Read selected highlights from previous issues