The 2017 APS Emerging Writer Fellowships

September 22, 2016

We are pleased to announce that applications will open on October 1 for our 2017 Emerging Writer Fellowships.

There Will Never Be Another Person Like Jim Again

Yiyun Li • August 12, 2016

The first year I taught freshman rhetoric at Iowa, a young woman announced at the beginning of the semester that she was from a Catholic, white supremacist background.

On “A Lucky Man” by Jamel Brinkley

Victor LaValle • July 15, 2016

These stories deal in large-scale deceit and betrayal, there are painful things at work in this fiction, but much like the scene I described above, Jamel Brinkley regularly finds ways to pierce through the dramatic and find the subtle and humane lurking within.

On “Yes” by Elizabeth Gaffney

Sasha Saben Callaghan • June 2, 2016

I began reading Elizabeth Gaffney’s short story with a wince of parental recognition. Pets are hell, and having to explain their traumatic demise to a small, tear-stained child usually leads to an existential crisis, followed by the dubious consolation of hunting down some equally doomed replacement.

Days

Dorthe Nors • May 20, 2016

In celebration of the forthcoming publication of So Much for That Winter by Dorthe Nors, the next A Public Space Book with Graywolf Press, we're excited to share this excerpt from "Days," one of the two novellas in the collection.

Wayfaring

Robert Sullivan • May 4, 2016

In which a small group—poet, historian, and reporter—search for the last two words missing after a five-year search for all of the words in the Langston Hughes poem “Island.”

On the Fictional Self: An Interview with Sara Majka

A. N. Devers • February 16, 2016

A. N. Devers talks with debut author Sara Majka about the Wu-Tang Clan, Alice Munro, and the intimacy of fiction. Cities I’ve Never Lived In: Stories by Sara Majka, is the newest A Public Space Book, with Graywolf Press.

The 2016 Emerging Writer Fellows

February 9, 2016

We are thrilled to announce our 2016 Emerging Writer Fellows: Sasha Saben Callaghan, Kristen Gleason, and Gothataone Moeng. We would also like to thank all of the writers who submitted manuscripts, the readers who spent the past eight weeks evaluating, debating, and championing applications, and the National Endowment for the Arts for its generous support of the program.

Supporting new writers has been an essential part of A Public Space since our debut issue—Leslie Jamison, Nam Le, and Jesmyn Ward published their first stories in the magazine—and with the Emerging Writer Fellowships we hope to continue this tradition by finding writers who have not yet published a book-length work but whose writing shows exceptional talent.

In response to an open call in October 2015, we received nearly 1,100 submissions from emerging writers across the world.

Here is some information about the three fellows, and a glimpse of the stories they shared with us:

Sasha Saben Callaghan is sixty and began writing seriously three years ago. In October 2015 she graduated from Edinburgh Napier University with an MA in creative writing. She is currently working on a graphic novel set in Victorian London about the short but remarkable life of Adelaide Foltinowicz and her relationship with the decadent poet Ernest Dowson. Sasha is the program director of the Big Flame Disability Arts Festival and lives on the east coast of Scotland with her children and granddaughter.

It is NOT A GOOD IDEA. It is a stupid idea. Patrick always GOES OFF, he goes OFF ON ONE. Patrick is always PLAYING HAMLET. Jackie says Patrick is a right MARDYBUM. Patrick NEEDS A GOOD SLAP. — "A List of Some of the Things Martin Knows"

Kristen Gleason was born in California. Her fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Fence, Fairy Tale Review, the Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere. In 2011, she was the recipient of a High North Fellowship from the University of Tromsø, Norway. Currently she lives in Athens, Georgia, where she is a doctoral student in creative writing.

He followed the helicopter’s path up the mountainside. There the pale pig slept in her pen of rebar and string. There she slept in the shadow of the great jointed tube that was swallowing and swallowing the waterfall. The tube would never get full and neither would the pale pig, who held in the bowl of her eye all the fruit that had ever been and all the fruit that would ever be. — "The Pale Pig"

Gothataone Moeng was born in Serowe, Botswana, and currently lives in Oxford, Mississippi, where she is a second-year MFA candidate at the University of Mississippi. In 2015 she was a finalist for the Driftless Prize in Fiction.

Our favorite dresses and tops fluttered all around the room from nails someone had hammered onto the wall. Our room—The Mansion, we called it—seemed to always be writhing and heaving under the weight of all our bodies, our Sheen Straight and Blue Magic, our wigs, our lipsticks, our perfume, our sweat, our laughter, our worries, our convictions that we would tame the city. — "Bodies"

Our 2015 Emerging Writer Fellows were Jai Chakrabarti, Cornelius FitzPatrick, and Arinze Ifeakandu. Our 2014 Emerging Writer Fellows were Vanessa Hutchinson, Mahreen Sohail, and April Wolfe.

The 2016 APS Emerging Writer Fellowships

October 1, 2015

We are pleased to announce that applications are now open for our 2016 Emerging Writer Fellowships.

The Blade Sharpener

Jai Chakrabarti • July 7, 2015

Whenever I visit Kolkata, India, the city of my birth, nostalgia follows me through the streets. I notice which of the older buildings have become new malls, which of the sweet shops known for their condensed milk squares have now been replaced by modern confectionaries or worse, a Baskin-Robbins, which of the old cow-claimed roads have been cleared to make room for apartments. My travel journals are full of these observations and the memories that come with them.