The South Carolina Review

Inside SCR: Fiction Editors

Posted on by Kate

MIRIAM MCEWEN

I can’t pinpoint the exact moment I met fiction associate editor Miriam McEwen, but I do remember always feeling a little embarrassed, impressed and motivated by her intelligence and talent—and lucky to be around it. Even more than ten years later, I still remember her love of Flannery O’Connor, the mountains and her habit of stealing people’s cardigans in the middle of the night.

Today, Miriam writes about disability and bodily autonomy. Her work has appeared in Wigleaf, Best Small Fictions, HAD, Black Warrior Review, and other publications. She received her BA from Clemson University and her MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and she now lives in the foothills of South Carolina.

– SCR Social Media Advisor

  • What is one piece of art—music, literature, film, painting—that has spiritually, mentally and emotionally inspired you?
    • So many pieces of art, so little time! May I give you two? Because Joanna Hogg’s  The Souvenir, parts one and two, is foundational. Those films are my Godfather, really. You get to witness the very raw and grainy and romantic and desperately sad and hopeful becoming of an artist in what is essentially Hogg’s film-memoir. I’m never not moved by that work, always reminded in watching it that I don’t need to try and suffer because suffering will arrive no matter what. And all I can do is respond beautifully. Which is not to say cleanly or inspirationally.
  • What’s the strangest place an idea for a story has come from?
    • My life, she said drolly. No but, in earnest, I think I have a gift for strangeness. I have to check myself constantly, to not be too reckless, because I do have a mentality of, “Wow if I live through this, it has all the unrefined materials for compelling fiction.” Which is to say, stories come from anywhere and everywhere so long as you are looking for the story.
  • How has being a disabled author impacted/altered your work and what has it taught you about yourself?
    • Sometimes disability for me is like a gnat that insists on flying too close to my face. Sometimes disability is a bear. And I’m there wrestling with it, pleading for it to go elsewhere. More often, though, disability is revolutionary and darkly funny and intimate. I’ve had to be okay with so many different people touching my body. And then there are people you want to touch your body, yes? And people you don’t. So the writing I do becomes an expression of those multiplicities. The writing is a way of knowing the unknowable, embodying the ephemeral.
  • (Knowing the answer to this question,) What writer(s) do you return to when you feel stuck?
    • You know I love Flannery O’Connor! What a delightfully odd bird. Flawed. Gripping. Disabled writers so deep in the zeitgeist are hard to come by. I’ve been to her farm in Milledgeville, Georgia twice now. The house is not wheelchair accessible. That’s a fun fact. And you can feel the surreal irony in her work arising from that very real place. Her cadences are basically part of me at this point. But also Kendrick Lamar, Cormac McCarthy, Ross Gay, Donna Tartt, Eminem, Virginia Woolf, Sharon Olds, Bob Dylan, Joyce Carol Oates, Princess Nokia, Joan Didion, Tierra Whack, Johnny Cash, Langston Hughes, to name a few. The influence of rappers/emcees and country singers on whatever craft I have cannot be overstated.
  • Which of your stories would you like to see illustrated or filmed? 
    • I love this story that got picked up by Black Warrior Review a couple years ago, called “Internet Brain.” It’s set during the dissolution of a relationship, and you stay very tight with the narrator as they contend with AI and music culture and sex addiction and disability and loneliness. Cinematic. Essentially an erotic thriller. I think both Claire Denis and Lynne Ramsay could each make stunning adaptations of that piece. But I am currently playing hard to get with the film rights, thank you very much.
  • As someone who has known you for over a decade, how has your writing evolved over the years?
    • I love that we’ve known each other for over a decade, first of all, Kate. I treasure you. As for my writing, as in myself, I know I’ve improved. Everything I am as a person, I am as a writer, only more so. Being concise matters to me more now. Taking care not to waste the space but taking all the space I need to tell the story. I want the work to be air-tight. And timeless. And perhaps unlike ten years ago, I want to be humble, like my mother and Kendrick Lamar taught me.

    STEVE CALDES

    Steve Caldes, father, foodie, freelancer and our creative non-fiction editor teaches journalism at California State Univ,ersity, Chico, where his wife is also a professor. If you play your cards right, he might just tell you the secret to his famous BBQ sauce he learned while an undergraduate at Clemson University.

    • Tell us a little bit about you and your life right now.
      • Welp, I’m a father of two (six year old Elka and two year old Wells), a partner to one (Dr. Jenny Malkowski who teaches at the same university), and an Associate Professor in the Journalism Department at California State University, Chico (aka Chico State). Academically, I’ve been writing a bit lately about mis-/dis-information and how (in this post-truth, emotional-propaganda-laden world) well-told (often false) stories have become more powerful than facts, and how there’s now more than ever a need for increased literacy around how stories are told (sold) and function so we can stop being so easily manipulated by this form of compelling propaganda. Like, if we can get people to better see the gears at work they might not be so susceptible to the machine.) But I also write a lot about food for some local magazines. I’m sorta food obsessed – it’s history and influence on culture and politics, but also just like, how great cooking food for family and friends is and how cooking is the most delicious way of telling someone you love and care about them. The vinegar-based BBQ sauce my friends pine for regularly, I first learned (from my then girlfriend’s father) when I was at Clemson. 

    • How was your undergraduate experience as a Clemson student
      • Clemson holds very fond memories for me. I made friends there that I still talk to (well, text with) daily! And some of the professors I met there’s ones like Keith Lee Morris! – literally changed my life, and I’m proud to count them as friends, too. (I wrote a lot about how integral Clemson in general and the English Dept in particular were to me/my professional life in an old issue of the alumni magazine Clemson World. It was called “The Yes that Changed My LIfe” if you’re interested.
      • It was at Clemson where I learned I loved…learning. High school felt like a place where I had to memorize information regardless of if I was interested in it or not. But at Clemson, even in my GEs to some extent, I was encouraged to follow my curiosities. One of the reasons I graduated with two minors was simply because I just could not stop taking History classes. Every semester in the last few years I’d tack on a History class just because. I was never disappointed. And this mindset – be curious! Quench that curiosity with reading and class and more questions – helped me flourish as both a person (curiosity makes people more interesting!) and a student. In high school I was a “fine” student, but from Clemson on I always graduated with honors. There were people–friends and faculty–that believed in me at Clemson. They helped me believe more in myself, and any success I’ve had (which might seem miniature to most, but means a lot to me) stems from these integral years in western SC. 

    • How did you end up in the New Mexico State MFA program and how did that expand your craft?
      • I ended up at NMSU because – yup, you guessed it – because of Clemson. I believe it was fall of my senior year and the English Dept was hosting a writing series that brought the author Antonya Nelson to campus. Nelson was a big deal to me at the time; I was reading and writing and studying short stories and she was one of the top practitioners. I remember I was even doing a report on one of her short stories for a project in my Philosophy of Death and Dying class I was taking when I learned of her visit. I remember she gave a reading – that eentranced – came to our creative writing workshop–where knowledge was dropped – and   then a few of us got invited to have lunch with her. I was my usual energetic ball of joy and was just excited at how lucky I felt. This author I spent all year reading was suddenly, like, eating a sandwich with me! It just felt so…cool. Then, a few days or so later, either Keith or his former ENGL colleague Brock Clarke told me that Nelson suggested I apply to the NMSU MFA program. She hadn’t read my writing that weekend–not that I remember, anyway – but had (at least this is the story I got) mentioned that the faculty at NMSU was as interested in young writers’ motivation and attitude as much as they were writing chops. I guess she thought I might be a good person to have in a cohort. A year later, when I was applying for MFAs, I completed quick a few applications, but there was only one I was truly interested in: NMSU. 
      • NMSU was everything. The sheer talent at the time I was there: Nelson, Robert Boswell, Kevin McIlvoy, Chris Bachelder, and Connie Voisine to name a few. The effort they put into my work and writing instruction. I remember once I turned a ≈15-pg story in to a Robert Boswell workshop and received over 20-pgs in notes! And Nelson dropped so many little tips – one I still think about and “use” today. Chris Bachelder was a rising star at the time – his satire is on par with anyone working today, George Saunders included! – but what I got most from his was how personable and hard-working he was. In my mind he was who I wanted to be, but also someone I got to have a lunch burrito on campus with. It was also here that I started writing more creative nonfiction/literary journalism. Monica Torres taught a CNF course that opened my eyes to the power of true-story-telling. 
    • McSweeney’s was a big part of your start in getting your name out there, how was that experience?
      • Yeah, in the early 2000s, when the internet was mostly full of hope and connection, McSweeney’s were the funny, semi-dorks in the corner poking fun and punching up. At Clemson I read Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (which kinda blew my head off for a minute there; I believe he was also one of the original founders of McSweeney’s) and started going to the website daily. The way they messed with form, took big swings in the area of meta-fiction, and just wanted to make some high-minded cracks really spoke to my inner silliness. It was like a Harvard Lampoon, but for the whole world. Smart and funny, funny and smart…that was my wheelhouse. My first few publications with them felt like an airplane taking off. I’m sure a few beers were had in celebration
    • Switching topics to SCR, as our Creative Non-Fiction Editor, what makes a piece interesting for you? What current or older trends excite you in a non-fiction piece?
      • This is such a huge question. I’ve been thinking about…and writing about…this a lot these days. I think I’ve come up with something short that sums it up. At the SCR, we’re looking for CNF pieces OF CONSEQUENCE. I know, I know, super vague. (Isn’t all writing supposed to be important?) I guess I might venture to say that quality CNF pieces are equally of consequence to the writer AND the reader. To accomplish this, good CNF should be about TWO THINGS…the personal story, of course, but also something bigger, more universal, something connected to, er…humanity. It’s gotta SAY something bigger, something connected to the story but also outside of it. I don’t care about YOUR time at, say, cheerleading camp, UNLESS it’s teaching me about the world I live in also! If that makes sense. That said, I’m uninterested in being lectured to. I need room to breathe and make up my own mind – as any reader wants – but I need to believe that the author is USING this one story to tell us something that’s more…difficult, abstract, etc.
      • But also, sometimes, there’s just a voice or an energy that grabs me. We have a piece coming out next fall I think that, at first, read a bit like the blogging of a woman at the end of her rope, just barely hanging on to mind in this increasingly superficial world. There were so many times reading this where I was like, Where is this going? But I couldn’t put it down…the voice just kept me hooked. And soon enough, at about the 8,000 word mark, I started to see that more “universal theme” rise. I’m so happy I kept reading…
      • So yes, the story can be about you and your life, but it shouldn’t be FOR you. Write for the reader. Write to help them. Life is complex and lonely and so fully of the unknown. Try to give them some small sliver of truth they can hang their hat on.
    • Is there any advice you would give a creative fiction writer wanting to dip their toes into creative non-fiction?
      • I’m pretty sure everything in life is about DOING IT! I was someone–perhaps I still am – who is so busy figuring out why I’m NOT the guy, why this WON’T work, why I haven’t read enough, learned enough, done enough, etc. – that I talk myself (or at least did) so much. I watch my kids now…they complain about not being able to ride a bike. And I ask, Well, have you tried? “Not really,” they answer. Well then there’s your problem! 🙂 Seriously, though, just do it. And also read the stuff you want to write. I finally picked up the collected nonfiction of John Gregory Dunne and of all the things I like about it, the way it inspires me to write is perhaps my favorite!
    Posted in NewsTagged ,

    Kurt Olsson Poetry Reading – 11/22

    Posted on by Kate

    Kurt Olsson, who was featured in our Fall 2023 issue for his poems “Note to an Old Friend” and “Heart Like a Dog,” will be reading for an in-person and virtual audience at 2PM on November 22nd at Woodland Pattern in Milwaukee, WI. Kurt’s most recent book of poetry was released in September and is titled “The Unnumbered Anniversaries.”

    Click here for more information regarding this reading and how to join virtually.

    Posted in News

    Inside SCR: Poetry Editors

    Posted on by Kate

    CAROLINE RASH

    Writer, educator and quilter Caroline Rash was born and raised in Clemson, South Carolina but currently resides in New Jersey. She holds an MFA from Rutgers-Camden and serves as an associate editor at the South Carolina Review.

    Caroline’s work has been published most recently in North Carolina Literary Review, Fine Print, Connotation Press and Decider. Her creative nonfiction was selected as a finalist for the 2021 Alex Albright Prize. Find her at CarolineRash.com.

    • What does your writing process look like? My writing process is slow and steady with many, many drafts of each piece. As a new parent, I steal moments to write whenever I can, always keeping in mind to release my expectations for the first draft. Every wrong word and sloppy line is necessary to move towards the final piece. Editing and revision must be a separate process you worry about when the time comes—and you can’t revise a blank page. If I’m really stuck or unmotivated, I ask my friends to trade drafts and provide each other with accountability.
    • What do you hope readers take away from your work? I hope readers feel their own questions, moments of vulnerability, intimacy (with other people or the environment) and grief mirrored in my work. I hope my poems are a place of rest where the reader can sit with ambiguity and uncertainty.
    • Do you find your writing grows out of lived experience, research or imagination—or some blend of the three? My writing grows out of lived experience refracted through the imagination. I deeply admire the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca and the strangeness of his poetic imagery. My chapbook includes a series of sonnets where I imagine these birds—that were literally stealing our home’s window screens for their nests—eventually invade and take back our house as their own. Poetry is meant to elevate our experiences, even the mundane, and crystallize emotions in a way that echoes for the reader long after they’ve set the poem aside. In a good poem, you can create a kind of mythical sense that connects to a diverse audience, who have lived very different life experiences, by extending a moment through surprising images and thoughtful rhythms.
    • What authors/poets or books have inspired you the most throughout your journey? I deeply admire the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca and the strangeness of his poetic imagery. I reread Poet in New York when I’m stuck and my own writing feels stale. Likewise, Roberto Bolano creates haunting atmospheres that draw me back to reread his novels over and over again. Seamus Heaney wrote my favorite poem, “Postscript.” Marie Howe, Jack Gilbert, and Ai have been poets who have helped me write about grief. The list could go on. There’s a poem or poet for every stage of life, every moment.
    • We are so excited about your new collection of poetry Because the Bullet Arrives! Can you tell us a bit about the collection? My debut chapbook Because the bullet arrives reckons with suffering and uncertainty in an age of noise, grief and contradiction. What do we place our faith in? What does resilience (for humans and our planet) look like? What does survival cost? Written over the course of a decade, the poems are grounded in Southern/ Appalachian culture and ecology. 
    • Do you have any upcoming events (anything) we should be on the lookout for? Events in Philly and NYC to come! All upcoming events are linked at CarolineRash.com.
    • Literary fun fact? Both my dad, Ron Rash, and my partner, Joseph Turkot, are also published authors.  

    You can read Because the Bullet Arrives by purchasing the collection on Amazon or Redhawk Publications.

    STEVIE EDWARDS

    Stevie Edwards, PhD is the poetry editor of The South Carolina Review and an assistant professor in the Department of English at Clemson University, where she teaches creative writing, poetry, and women’s literature. She lives in South Carolina with her spouse and three rescue dogs: Tinkerbell, Peaches, and Rufus.

    Stevie received her PhD from the University of North Texas and MFA from Cornell. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, and The Southern Review among others. She is the author of the poetry books/chapbooks Quiet Armor, Sadness Workshop, Humanly, and Good Grief.

    • What are you currently reading and who is a favorite poet of yours? For the month of August, I read a poetry book a day as part of the #sealeychallenge. Today’s book is I Do Know Some Things by Richard Siken, one of my favorite poets. Some of my other favorite poets are Ada Limón, Natalie Diaz, Patricia Smith, Diane Seuss, and Marie Howe.
    • What motivates and inspires your poetry? I tend to use poetry to process and reflect on my life, its sadnesses, rages, joys, and boredoms. 
    • What are major themes that consistently come up in your work? My work often has feminist themes and explores the topics of trauma and mental health.
    • Do you have a few words to say to the next generation of poets? Don’t lose your voice to trends.
    • Do you have any upcoming publications we should look out for? My fourth book, The Weather Inside,is coming out in Spring 2026 from University of Arkansas Press as part of the Miller Williams Poetry Series and was selected by Patricia Smith (one of my favorite poets!) for publication.
    • That’s so exciting! What do you hope readers get out of The Weather Inside? One message the book carries is that it’s possible to start over, even when your life is in shambles. The poems in this collection hold space for discussing hard topics, like struggling with mental illness, alcoholism, and trauma. I hope I can make some people who are struggling feel a little less alone.
    • Literary fun fact? When I was twenty, I helped write part of a law for the European Union on insurance and reinsurance reform.

    Keep a look on our socials for the cover release and information on the publication of Stevie’s The Weather Inside!

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    Interview with 56.2 Ronald Moran Prizewinner in Poetry María Esquinca

    Posted on by Kate

    Each year, SCR presents the Ronald Moran Prize for the best fiction and poetry submissions of the year. This year’s poetry winner is María Esquinca for her poem “Dream In Which I Return Home,” published in SCR’s Spring 2024 56.2 Issue.

    One of our assistant editors, Sage Short, interviewed María Esquinca about dreams – worldly, metaphorical, and lyrical. The two also spoke (via email) about María’s new book of poems Where Heaven Sinks, which, in the words of University of Nevada Press, is “an experimental collection set against the backdrop of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, weaving fragmented verses, striking imagery and bold typography to confront the brutal realities of immigration and identity.”

    The interview had been lightly edited for clarity and consistency.

    SS – In “Dream In Which I Return Home” [the SCR prize-winning poem], we get so many literally dream-like images and language (the moon screeches / vomits indigo / you cup palmfuls of dirt / swallow grime and good earth / pink paisley curtains spill / out of your parents’ / bedroom window / like a butchered tongue). The poem spans only one sentence accompanied by fantastic punchy line breaks, often enjambed in a way that makes me believe in the double entendre (out of your parents’). How do you make decisions regarding form and language? Do ideas of borderlands surround language in your poems?

    ME – First of all, thank you for such a thoughtful question and for such an intentional reading of that poem. I think about form a lot, I often want the poem to augment the meaning of the poem. I’m a reader that gets excited by collections with poems that span various forms both traditional and experimental, and so I think that is reflected in my own choices. I came from a journalism background before studying poetry. Journalism is a form of writing bound by very specific stylistic rules. So, when I arrived at poetry I felt freed by the open page, the lack of rules was exciting to me. So I find freedom and play in form. It’s often the thing I struggle with the most as well, because sometimes I’m trying to fit the poem into different containers before I find the right one. In this poem in particular, I wanted the form to augment the surreal/dream aspect of this poem, I used it to help me enjamb the lines in surprising ways. In terms of the language, because this poem is set in a dream landscape, I wanted to use images and words that were both grounded in the real world, like a house, curtains, rooms, but then juxtaposed with the sorts of unexpected images that come out of a dream, so then for example the moon “vomits indigo.” I was thinking how can I use imagery/language to take this poem into a dream landscape? Lastly, because I am a person that grew up in a border town, bridges, walls, borders often are part of the poetry because they are a reflection of my experience. Both my literal experience, the place I am writing about, but also beyond that, in a more philosophical or fundamental way, as a fronteriza, it’s a part of experiencing the word that is inherently a part of me. And I’m often thinking of the ways in which I can also create those borders in my poems. The border is always informing my poetry.

    SS – As a Xicana fronteriza and abolitionist, what are your biggest concerns when you’re writing poems? Do you find these identity categories influencing your work always or often? Are dreamscapes or the denial of them (but this is not a dream) a way for you to discover or shape your poems?

    ME – As a Xicana, fronteriza, and abolitionist, my biggest concern is the liberation and freedom of Black, Brown and Indigenous people. I wrote this collection during Donald Trump’s first term, and it will come out during his second term, where we already have, within a few months of this administration, witnessed the further obliteration of human rights, the U.S. continuing to participate and facilitate the genocide of Palestinian people, the repression of student activists—just today, I read reports of ICE attempting to enter schools and arrest children as young as three. So yes, the categories I used to identify myself absolutely influence my work. People are dying every day in this country, and beyond, because of U.S. policy. I have a responsibility to use my art for the liberation of my people. Although not all my poems are explicitly political, my larger purpose will always be to be of service to my people. My biggest dream is that poetry can alchemize a reader for change. It is not enough, because the only thing that will save us is to organize, but poems are sparks. I believe in the transformative power of poetry.

    SS – Dreams are often depicted in a shining light, including the idea of the Americandream. What do you have to say about the concept of dreams in either of these ideas in poetry?

    ME – Dreams have always been something present in my life, and I’ve always been fascinated by the surreal aspect of dream, as well as being influenced by a long legacy of surrealism/magical realism in Latin America. I think dreams are like portals. They allow us to access the psyche and other wordly, I found myself visiting dreamscapes to explain the unexplainable. As I was writing this collection, dreams allowed me to put into language and image the horror of what I was seeing during Donald Trump’s first term. By entering the dream, we can also enter nightmares. They contain multitudes. The “American Dream” is like this too. As immigrant children, we’re told this is the country that our parents chose for us to have a better life, the land of opportunity, the melting pot, we get sold and told all these ideas about how welcoming this country is. But as we grow older, the American Dream distorts and becomes a nightmare. The same country that benefits from our labor, skills, life, is the same country that is perfectly okay with killing us.

    SS – What are you currently dreaming about?

    ME – I’m always dreaming of the worlds we will create when fascism is obliterated. I’m dreaming of a world with no borders, of no prisons, of free colleges and universities. I’m dreaming of my people dancing under the rain, drinking the sun, laughing like sparkles. I’m dreaming of Palestinian children going to a classroom that isn’t blown up.

    SS – Your book Where Heaven Sinks is forthcoming from the University of Nevada Press after winning the 2024 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. How would you describe the collection?

    ME – I would describe my forthcoming collection as a love letter to El Paso and my people. It took me about six years of applying to book contests to get this book out. I would have never imagined it would be chosen by Juan Felipe Herrera, for a prize to honor Andrés Montoya’s legacy. A poet who was my age when he passed away. A poet who also dearly loved his people, who is a poetic predecessor I am still learning from. I am so honored and full of gratitude. 

    Where Heaven Sinks is now available on the University of Nevada Press website and Amazon and is described as a tribute to those who have endured and a call to challenge the systems that oppress, a love letter, a memorial for those lost and a testament to the transformative power of language.

    Posted in News

    Reading events: SCR associate editor Caroline Rash

    Posted on by Kate

    LOCAL READING ALERT!

    In conversation with her father, Ron Rash, South Carolina Review associate editor Caroline Rash will be reading from and presenting her new book of poetry, Because the Bullet Arrives at Hub City Bookshop in Spartanburg and The Pendleton Bookshop in Pendelton next week. Both events will have book signing.

    Hub City Bookstore: Tuesday, July 15th at 6 pm at 186 W Main St, Spartanburg, SC 29306

    The Pendelton Bookshop: Thursday, July 17th at 6 pm at 125 E Queen St, Pendleton, SC 29670 (signing begins at 5:30pm)

    Posted in News

    57.2 Spring 2025 has arrived!

    Posted on by Kate
    Purchase Issue

    The South Carolina Review’s Spring 2025 57.2 Issue is completed and on its way to subscribers and ready for purchasing. Dive into bold poetry and cant-put-down fiction by writers like G.D. Holloway, Nate Marshall, Fara Abouzeid and Elizabeth Farren.

    Posted in News

    SCR Volume 57.2 Spring 2025

    Posted on by Kate

    CONTENTS

    Poetry

    FARAH ABOUZEID the dream hills; you cannot deny the authority of the mountains

    TARA BRAY American Dream; Winter Walk/Summer Walk

    JOSHUA MARTIN Ode to the Salmon That Didn’t Make It

    JAMES ENGLEHARDT Goldilocks Will Not Forget

    NATE MARSHALL in her last days my grandma worried about me; whichever singer or songwriter or old uncle who first came up with the phrase go half on a baby is terrible at math

    SIMON ANTON NIÑO DIEGO BAENA Ghost

    DAVID STARKEY Her Hand

    RACHEL HERSHON The Porn Actor’s Wife

    AMANDA ROTH Office of Childhood

    RAENA SHIRALI Turning Thirty on a Little Patch of Concrete, Not Alone

    EMILY ROSKO I Can Be Nice

    BELA KOSCHALK Would S&M Satisfy Octopus Under Duress/My Own Lachesisms

    GRACE GUY Eulogy for the Living

    JESSICA NIRVANA RAM Holy Ghazal

    CHIAGOZIEM JIDEOFOR this poem

    FRANCES KLIEM Funeral Procession Up Deer Mountain

    JOSHUA KULSETH My Father, the Wrestler

    JULIÁN DAVID BAÑUELOS La Casa en la Noche

    MICKIE KENNEDY No Leaks

    DOMINIQUE AHKONG When I Met You; A Man Who Looks Like Your Best Friend’s Father

    ELIZABETH CRANFORD GARCIA Anti-elegy on the way to work

    CD ESKILSON Distant Relations

    BRIAN CZYZYK Lafayette, Indiana

    CHARLES KELL Rhode Island

    KAILEY TEDESCO domestic horror/dog walk

    CELIA LAWREN Mesopic Vision

    VICTORIA JEAN REYNOLDS Nape

    JOSH LUCKENBACH Finally After So Much

    Fiction

    CYN NOONEY Sterling Recruit

    COLBY VARGAS Something Like a Year

    G.D. HOLLOWAY Spook Hill

    ANNA RIMOCH Little Bird

    KASEY PETERS Creep

    REBECCA BERNARD An Overwhelming Loneliness

    ELIZABETH FARREN Tattletale

    PATRICK J. ZHOU Nice-Ville Station

    KATHLEEN DONAHOO Storm Season

    VICTORIA MORSELL HEMINGSON Lava

    Creative Non-Fiction

    HARRIS WALKER The Matanza

    Book Reviews

    STEPHEN HUNDLEY We See You: A Review of Dustin M. Hoffman’s Such a Good Man: Stories

    CARSON COLENBAUGH Far From Silent, Far From Buried: Ben Kline’s It Was Never Supposed To Be

    MICIAH PENDARVIS helen of troy gets a five-star review: Maria Zoccola’s Helen of Troy 1993

    Posted in Recent Issues

    Meet the student staff

    Posted on by Kate

    Emma Grace Connelly

    Emma Grace Connelly is an architecture major that’s found herself immersed in English classes as well. When she’s not playing with 3D printers and Exacto knives, she’s typing away at a novel or posting about it on her writing page. She’ll start pursuing her Master’s in architecture at Clemson this fall.

    Tori Jackson

    Tori Jackson is a graduate English student and humanitarian activist. Her interests in editing and publishing come from a deeper love of writing and unveiling the power of words. In the future, she’d like to become an established author and expand her local nonprofit, the South Carolina Upstate Humanitarian Hub, that aims to create third spaces where art and writing act as common ground for connection and unity within the community. In addition, Tori is applying her skills from The South Carolina Review to the group newsletter which consists of student writing, think pieces, and current events. She looks forward to the chance to be a full time editor of her own literary magazine! 

    Serena Johnson

    This is Serena! She is an aspiring editor and major foodie, and is wholly incapable of liking anything in a casual capacity (her current obsessions are Arcane and Tracy Deonn’s The Legendborn Cycle). These days, she spends about sixteen hours a day curating Pinterest boards for various fictional works and the remaining eight hours eating, missing her dog (he’s at home with her lovely family), and hoping the cat distribution system will bless her. She is a junior English major at Clemson with a dual minor in creative writing and brand communications.

    Kristen Huynh

    Kristen Huynh is a senior English major who loves reading fantasy, writing literary fiction, watching period dramas, and baking when she has deadlines to meet. Some of her permanent obsessions are Bridgerton, Percy Jackson, and Pinterest. This fall, she’ll be starting law school at UofSC (don’t worry—once a tiger, always a tiger!), unless she decides to fulfill that café-bookstore-bakery dream instead.

    Brett Porter

    Brett is a sophomore English major at Clemson from Massachusetts. In his free time, he enjoys reading, playing sports, and fishing. His favorite author is Kurt Vonnegut who ignited his love for reading and writing. Besides that, he loves to play fantasy football and has won a total of four league championships with his friends. Brett believes that an otter best resembles his personality and aspires to be one when he grows up.

    Caroline Anderson

    Caroline Anderson is a senior English major from New York, though her accent and attitude only come out every once in a while. Caroline enjoys reading and correcting other people’s grammar. She is situationally a big enthusiast of the Oxford comma but limits herself to only correcting it every other day. Caroline’s favorite author is Mary Shelley, and she is currently planning her move to Galway to get her Master’s Degree.

    Rachel Bertram

    Rachel Bertram is a DJ at Clemson’s alternative radio station, WSBF-FM. They spend their free time playing guitar, pickling veggies, and writing letters they will never send. They are inspired by the living room routine from The Perks of Being a Wallflower, one-liner Letterboxd reviews, and sitting beside large bodies of water.

    Ashtyn Goff

    Meet Ashtyn! She’s an English grad student who spends all of her time reading young adult literature. In other words, she never got over The Hunger Games and has found a way to make that her personality. She runs a book-related Instagram and YouTube channel where she makes her book obsession everyone else’s problem. She recently discovered a love for fan art and always has a Pinterest tab open. She also adores soul-crushing movies or anything with Christian Bale in it. Speaking of Christian Bale, she loves Little Women and currently has eight editions of the book on her shelves. Outside of fangirling, Ashtyn enjoys national parks, cute dogs, and crocheting—oh, and SCR, of course.

    Ella Kindt

    Ella Kindt is a poet and graduating English major with a crippling houseplant addiction. She’s pursuing an MFA in poetry at North Carolina State University in the fall of 2025. She spends her free time playing guitar, singing off-key and reading gothic horror novels. Her current favorite song is Katya’s verse in “Read You, Wrote You” from the finale of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars season 2. She’s obsessed with the color green.

    Makenzie Anderson

    Makenzie Anderson is a writer from South Carolina. In May 2025, she will graduate from Clemson University with a B.A. in English and a minor in poetry. She will attend Virginia Tech’s MFA Poetry program in the fall of 2025. Her poetry explores girlhood and womanhood, sapphic identity, and familial relations. She channels her southernness while simultaneously addressing coastal South Carolina’s haunting and alienating powers in her writing. She also adores hummingbirds and the color lavender.

    Jennifer Terry

    Jennifer Terry is a graduating MA in English student who enjoys reading, writing, and playing The Sims 4. She is currently obsessed with all of her friends’ dogs and loves the color pink. Jennifer lives for weird stories and poetry that deals with grief and loss. Sometimes she wishes she was a worm.

    Posted in News

    SCR opens new submission windows

    Posted on by Kate

    The South Carolina Review has now established regular reading periods instead of rolling submissions! The new submission windows are below:

    • April 15th – July 15th to be published in the following Spring issue
    • September 15th – December 15th to be published in the following Fall issue

    Submissions are now open! We cannot wait to read your work!

    Posted in News

    Interview with 56.2 Ronald Moran Prizewinner in Fiction Matt Lumbard

    Posted on by Kate

    Each year, SCR presents the Ronald Moran Prize in Fiction and Poetry for the best fiction and poetry submission of the year. Our fiction winner for Spring 2024 was Matt Lumbard, with his story “Big River, little river,” from SCR 56.2.

    One of our assistant editors, Ella Kindt, interviewed Matt Lumbard about all things river, big and little. Read Lumbard’s winning story, “Big River, little river” here.

    Ella Kindt: How did you decide on the Giant River Otter in “Big River, little river?” Do you have a particular connection to otters?

    Matt Lumbard: The Giant River Otter popped out of nowhere into the story, but I think I was reading about them not too long before writing it, so they were lolling around my subconscious. They’re totally fascinating, endangered, very intelligent, beautiful, but at the same time terrifying with their size. I think at some point I realized that we associate otters as cute and cuddly…we all have that image in our heads of them lounging on their backs, holding hands…but at the same time, if you look into them in more detail, you hear about some pretty vicious behavior. So if you then take the Giant River Otter…we’re talking about an animal that can be six feet long…you have this edge to the story, and it becomes kind of scary…which was a lot of fun to play with. But yes, in general I’ve always loved otters, they’re one of my favorite animals. They’re like these crazy water-dogs to me.

    EK: You said this story is about leaving home. Can you tell us about some place you left? Do your own personal experiences with leaving play a role in how the story ends?

    ML: I left home a year or so before writing that story, so it was on my mind a lot. Even after only a year, which is not very long, you visit back home, and notice things are different. You’re different for having been away, and home is different because it’s been sort of moving on without you. That should be the most obvious thing in the world, and something everyone anticipates, but I don’t think it really hits you in the gut until you see and feel it for yourself. My own experience with leaving home absolutely played a role in how the story ends. I think to me it’s like, you’re either gonna go home and entrench yourself back into that life, or you’re going to fully accept the changes that are happening—you’re going to dive in headfirst and see where the current takes you, you’re going to become a Giant River Otter.

    EK: Along those same lines – although it’s never exactly specified, the story seems to be set in the bayou area of Louisiana. Is that the area that you call home? Are you from there originally? Have you ever piloted a river boat?

    ML: I’d say that’s a pretty good guess. And no, I live in D.C. now, but the place I call home is Verona, New York, which is a very rural place in Upstate New York, and a place that I cannot for the life of me stop writing about. Like the narrator, I basically grew up in a creek and the deciduous forest around it. It’s all about fresh water for me—rivers, creeks, lakes—I don’t like salt water at all. Verona is on the Erie Canal, so that’s where the mentions of the canal, aka the “little river,” back home come in. No, I’ve never piloted a motorized boat of any kind, actually! But it’s hard to deny the romance of river boats. Actually, I’ve never even seen the Mississippi River! But that’s the fun of fiction, eh?

    EK: There’s a narrative structure to “Big River, little river,” but the linear plot isn’t really at the forefront. The story reads as if the narrator just says whatever’s on his mind at the moment it occurs to him. Tell us more about the writing process for this story. Did you have the narrative in the back of your head while writing it, or did it just come to you as you moved along?

    ML: Well, it reads that way because that’s exactly what I was doing myself! Just writing completely from the hip. I haven’t been able to quite do that since. It was really fun…I just woke up with those lines in my head: I am the dumbest man driving a boat on the Mississippi today. I weigh five hundred pounds. I want to talk to you. It wasn’t from a dream I’d just had or anything. I have no idea where those lines came from, but I texted it to a friend who is often subject to all sorts of weird messages…then I realized: wait, I really like that. That’s a story. So, I went over and wrote it in one go. When I made myself the 500-pound river boat captain sort of waxing nostalgic about home, that part fell into place with almost no effort. Then, by the time I wrote the line I see cats and dogs in the stars and I knew I wanted to give those two little leaving-related anecdotes about Catnip the cat and Brittany the dog. That was a lot of fun too, and both of those anecdotes are pretty close to being true stories. I knew I was going to bring the Giant River Otter back into the story after those anecdotes, having mentioned the otters in the beginning, but I didn’t know how or what I was going to do. There wasn’t really a plan in place to have a talking Giant River Otter in the story, much less one that I fall in love with. She kind of stomped into the story much like she stomps uninvited onto the boat. But when I thought back to the bit about the shack people telling legends about people turning into Giant River Otters, it made perfect sense to me. When I saw her in my head I thought, oh…this is perfect…I’m in love with her…I’m 500 pounds, she’s 400 pounds, I love the water, this is it, and it’s my turn to leave now.

    EK: What are you up to now? Are you working on anything exciting? Have any upcoming publications?

    ML: I’m trying to revise a story now that I thought I’d finished a while ago and was never quite happy with. Things started to kick back into gear for it though, so I’m wrestling with that, sort of hammering away on that bad boy. As always, I’m also shopping around a handful of finished stories that I’m happy with. But my biggest project, which is always always always on my mind, is a novel I’m working on. It’s been in the works for around two years now, and sits in a shoebox, unorganized beyond belief…written on cocktail napkins, Post-its, menus, pages torn out of books, loose leaf scraps, etc…it’s going to be a huge effort to organize it all, but it’ll be fun. The good news is that it’s 65% already written in the shoebox/my head. I haven’t typed even the first sentence at the computer yet, but the house is already built. Now I have to move in, furnish it, decorate, find out where the floors creak…make it into a home. And yes, I have a story coming out very soon in issue #49 of Meridian, University of Virginia’s literary magazine.

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