Dear
Readers,
Where
there was ice, feel the warm wine of renewed life flow ... all the lifelines opening to the intoxication of spring. Shake
off the chill, because the earth is popping with bursting seeds, blossoming with color and fragrance and joie de
vivre. Welcome to spring!
New
life has come to The Smoking Poet, too. The prose in this issue is brought to you by our new fiction and non-fiction
editor, Russell Rowland. Sound familiar? Perhaps you recall reading our interview with Russell in the winter issue. Perhaps you couldn't resist cracking open one of his Montana novels, In Open Spaces and The Watershed Years. Russell writes with a voice that knows place, and now he has made a literary home at The Smoking Poet to
read your prose submissions, offer you his expert edits, encourage your creativity in stories, essays, and memoirs. We
are sure when you read the collection of prose in this issue, you'll understand why we are so excited to have Russell join
TSP.
Russell
will be the first to tell you, every writer can use a mentor. His was a writer many of us know and respect: Sue Miller, author of The Good Mother, The Senator's Wife, The Distinguished Guest, Oprah's Pick While I Was Gone, and many other bestselling novels (some of which have been turned into popular movies). If you haven't
yet had the intense literary pleasure of immersing yourself in a Sue Miller novel, please meet: Sue Miller, our feature author.
Also
in this issue: our feature poet, Harry Owen, Poet Laureate of Cheshire, England.
This evening growls, flicks switches,
and the garden sweats beneath
rain.
Here you may taste the sharp edge
of tongues –
green, succulent, electrically
barbed;
you will feel them because I am
rooted
in dry earth that on other days
puffs
like smoke at raindrops...
And
we haven't left Harry Owen alone in this lush garden of poetry. Wander through four pages of poetry by many fine poets from various points across the globe... then lose yourself in a collection of stories, essays, and a memoir that will haunt you for days. Continue your tour of Greece, part two, then don't forget to read the book reviews to find your next treasure, or find your freedom in our feature book, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men by Lundy Bancroft.
Gracing
these pages with watercolor and oil paintings, etchings and charcoal sketches is the artwork of my father,
Viestarts Aistars. We show them here with gratitude and pride.
Feel
the creative juices flowing yet? Your muses awakening? Ah, then you mustn't miss TSP's First Annual Short Story Contest, underway now. Send us your very best. Your very best. Our summer issue might just be waiting for you...
With
a good word,
Zinta Aistars
Managing Editor
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