Aster(ix) Journal Newsletter | March 2017

Dear Aster(ix) readers,

We are excited to present Best of Kweli! In the spirit of content spilling from one journal to another, Aster(ix) Editor Angie Cruz has spent the past six months working with University of Pittsburgh MFA students to cull through seven years of work published in Kweli Journal. Together they selected twenty pieces to feature in a compilation that highlights the important work Kweli is doing.

This print anthology celebrates the editorial work by Kweli Journal Editor Laura Pegram and her dedication to helping writers of color. Along with many other amazing prose and poetry writers, the issue features “Ain’t That Good News” by Brit Bennett, an annotated bibliography overviewing “the intellectual Macdaddy,” by Nelly Rosario, and an excerpt from Tiphanie Yanique‘s An Introduction to the Monster. Artist Aracelis Girmay provided the beautiful cover art.

To celebrate the launch of this issue we’ll be hosting a reading in NYC on March 23rd from 6 – 8 pm at the New York Times Conference Center, 620 8th Ave. We’ll have copies of Best of Kweli at the event, but you can preorder now. Seating is limited so please RSVP with an email to: RSVP@kwelijournal.org. Don’t forget to visit our Facebook event page for more details about our readers for the evening.

For those of you in Pittsburgh, we hope you’ll come to our City of Asylum reading March 16th at Alphabet City at 8 pm. Come listen to readings from Patricia Engel, author of The Veins of the Ocean, and Founder/Publisher of Aster(ix) Adriana E. Ramírez, author of Dead Boys. Admission is FREE but you must RSVP here.

If you would like to help us publish the censored and omitted, and furthur support our efforts and journal, please consider subscribing to Aster(ix).

With love,
Aster(ix) Journal

Read On

Angie Cruz Interviews Laura Pegram about Kweli Journal | Angie Cruz
“Kweli wasn’t a definitive plan until I ended up in the hospital and then in a wheelchair, and my life, as I knew it, completely changed. By that point, I had been living with mixed connective tissue disease (MCTD) for over 20 years.”

Fiction: Ain’t That Good News | Brit Bennett
But she didn’t want to use the gun. For twelve years, she’d carried that blade in Psalm 94, hoping she’d be walking around town one day and out of nowhere, she’d see him.

Poetry: derrame | Noel Quiñones
Lo siento, la primera palabra
siempre es permiso. Its
bramble song, catching sand
in its test of boundary, forgive

Fiction: Still Life | Cecca Austin Ochoa
I lie and say this scar’s a gift from my cat. Three inches long, hypertrophic, silver and purple; it’s like the hidden seam in taxidermy, only inside out. People look doubtful—including Ana who’s got more scars than a lightning tree—but when they meet my cat, wild thing, they believe.

Essay: Judging A Cover By His Books: An Annotated Bibliography of the Intellectual Macdaddy | Nelly Rosario
This annotated bibliography is a comprehensive overview of the titles most prominently displayed on the bookshelves—real or virtual—of the cosmopolitan educated heterosexual male of color whose intention is to seduce the bodies and minds of cosmopolitan educated heterosexual females of color.

Poetry: After Hurricane Sandy | Cynthia Dewi Oka
We climb toward the rumored grave
of an Native American healer, the earth
a vertigo of blackness and exposed
root beneath our palms, pressing up
through the waves of molten leaves

Fiction: Cold | Naima Coster
Noelle looked a lot older than almost-ten, the little swipes of purple under her eyes a reminder that no matter how fine they all seemed, the girls missed their daddy. She repeated after Lacey, a blanket tucked under her chin, and her face serious, as if she knew how much every letter was worth.

Poetry: i watch papa bury our dog in a grave the size of a pond | Raven Jackson
stains in shapes of crooked
eyes—my jaws lock in mid-sentence

Fiction: Poor Girls’ Palace | Leslie C. Youngblood
Once she said, “I love you, Rissa, but if I had to do it over, I would have waited to have you. Or at least I’d have stayed in school. Big belly and all,” she said and feigned a waddle. “Don’t let no boy get in your head. No matter how much you love him. He’ll leave you one way or another.”

Poetry: What Lies Beneath | Cynthia Manick
call a man sweet dusty, mold
knots of spit and hair like clayuntil a baby’s head is perfectly round.
These hands are good for killing—

Fiction: An Introduction to the Monster (Novel Excerpt) | Tiphanie Yanique
Thank you, monster, for the short pants. Thank you for the ash on my knees that looked like a disease. Thank you for the blood in my nose that guzzled out and coated my mouth and neck and shirt and scared the sergeants just enough.

Nonfiction: Backward Through the Story | Audrey M. Peterson
Everybody in the church knew about it, even knew which tree the lynchers used, only you won’t find anything but the stump there now.

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As usual, many of you know Aster(ix) is a work of puro amor devoted to writers, artists, thinkers and activists committed to social change. It runs on crazy midnight-oil kind of energy and thrives on word-of-mouth. So thank you to all of you who tweet, instagram, and subscribe to our newsletter, who like our FB page and cite us in your work.

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