The Spring 2008 issue of
Santa Monica Review
is available now.

Santa Monica College’s national literary arts journal, published twice yearly, showcases the literary voices of established authors and emerging writers. Founded by SMC English instructor Jim Krusoe (Blood Lake, Iceland, Girl Factory), the Review has presented readers experimental, thoughtful, and funny works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, interviews, and essays—including works by well-known authors such as Aimee Bender, Gary Soto, Lynn Freed, Harold Pinter and Diane Lefer —during its twenty years of publication, and has achieved a reputation as one of the West Coast’s leading journals.

The Spring 2008 issue of Santa Monica Review, edited by Andrew Tonkovich, includes work by the magazine’s founder, frequent local contributors, prize-winning national authors and first-time-in-print writers. With a first-time ever color cover and expanded length, the edition includes a chapter from his book-in progress by Southern California novelist Jervey Tervelon (Understand This), two short stories by Barry Gifford (Wild at Heart) and a darkly comic piece by Terese Svoboda (Black Glasses Like Clark Kent). Also included is work by three first-time writers, among them UCLA grad student Bright Yuan and Steve De Jarnatt, the writer/director of the indie cult classic film Miracle Mile. The issue begins with a short story by Jim Krusoe and includes writing from two of his former Santa Monica College creative writing workshop students, Stephanie Kerley Schwartz and Lisa Alvarez, as well as offerings from frequent contributor Gary Amdahl (Visigoth) and Roberto Ontiveros and a short story by Victoria Patterson, a UC Riverside MFA student whose collection arrives next year. Hadley Hall Meares tells a wry, exhuberant, hilarious story about cast members of a traveling religious pageant. Anne Germanacos, also a fequent contributor, writes from her part-time home on the island of Crete.

Full-color cover art for the Spring 2008 20th Anniversary edition is by renowned Southern California artist Peggy Reavey.

Santa Monica Review is available for sale online through the SMR website and distributed by Ingram Periodicals and Armadillo Distributors, as well at the SMC Bookstore, Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center  in Venice, California and other local and national independent and chain booksellers. Copies are also available by mail directly and by subscription through Santa Monica Review, Santa Monica College, 1900 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica, CA 90405.

Santa Monica Review • $7/issue • $12/year subscription

The Fall 2008 issue appears in September.

Complete contents of the Spring 2008 issue:

Jim Krusoe – Wally
Victoria Patterson – Johnny Hitman
Hadley Hall Meares – Jesus Says Wrap it Up
Michael Jauchen – Love Letter # 25
Bright Yuan – The Sun Ravens
Michael J. Lee – If We Should Ever Meet
Linda Purdy – Hormel
Stephanie Kerley Schwartz – Everything All at Once
Barry Gifford – The Great Failure
Barry Gifford – Irredeemable
Andrew Day – Ready
Roberto Ontiveros – Open House
Jervey Tervalon – Hope Found Chauncey
Anne Germanacos – Her Dowry
Lisa Alvarez – Ocean Park #12
Steve De Jarnatt – Rubiaux Rising
Terese Svoboda – Drug Dealers
Gary Amdahl – The Gazebo

Contributors:

Lisa Alvarez is the co-editor, with Alan Cheuse, of Writer’s Workshop in a Book: The Squaw Valley Community of Writers on the Art of Fiction. Her own essays and short stories have appeared in literary magazines, the OC Weekly and Los Angeles Times and, most recently, Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature. She teaches a long-running creative writing workshop at Irvine Valley College and is co-director of the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley summer writers workshops. Alvarez hosts “The Mark on the Wall,” a literary weblog for Orange County, California.

Gary Amdahl is the author of the short story collection Visigoth, winner of the Milkweed Prize in 2006. Two novellas, I am Death, or, Bartleby the Mobster: A Story of Chicago (SMR, Spring 2002) and Peasants, will be published in the spring of 2008, followed by a novel, The Daredevils, and another collection, The Intimidator Still Lives in Our Hearts, in spring 2009. He teaches in the UCLA Extension Program, at the University of Redlands and at UC Riverside, Palm Desert.

Andrew Day’s fiction has appeared in New England Review, Eyeshot, Pindeldyboz, and elsewhere. He lives in California.

Steve De Jarnatt has toiled in film and television for twenty years as a writer and director. Born in Sterling, Colorado, he grew up in the small logging town of Longview, Washington where he very briefly held the State Record in the 440-yard dash. De Jarnatt wrote and directed the cult indie film Miracle Mile. He currently resides in West LA and Port Townsend, and has a small vintage audio recording rental business. This is his first ever submitted story and first time published.

Anne Germanacos’s work has appeared recently in Descant, Quarterly West, Blackbird, Salamander, Florida Review, Pindeldyboz and others. Her story “Easter” appeared in Fall 2005 SMR. She lives in San Francisco and on Crete.

Barry Gifford is the author of Wild at Heart, Night People, and The Phantom Father, among many other books. He has also co-written screenplays for films such as Perdita Durango, Lost Highway, and City of Ghosts. His most recent books are The Cavalry Charges (essays) and a novel, Memories from a Sinking Ship, which is also available as an audiobook. You may visit him at BarryGifford.com.

Michael Jauchen lives in Lafayette, Louisiana, where he’s finishing up a Ph.D. at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette. Some of his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sentence, NOÖ Journal, and H_NGM_N.

Jim Krusoe’s novel, Iceland, appeared from Dalkey Archive Press. He is author of a book of stories, Blood Lake (Boaz Publishing), and his new novel, Girl Factory, is scheduled for publication in May by Tin House Books. He is the founding editor of SMR.

Michael J. Lee resides in a country home in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. This is his first print publication.

Hadley Hall Meares is named after Ernest Hemingway’s first wife and hails from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She earned a B.A. in Art and Film History at Hollins University, in Roanoke, Virginia, where she studied with acclaimed poet Richard Dillard. Writing has appeared in Quintessentially Magazine, Ostrich Ink, The Roanoke Times and in the upcoming Southern Indiana Review. She currently lives in Los Angeles.

Roberto Ontiveros (a frequent contributor to SMR) has published short stories in the Threepenny Review as well as the anthology Hecho en Tejas. These make up a book called The Fight for Space. He is a book critic who has written for the Austin American-Statesman, The Dallas Morning News, and the San Francisco Chronicle.

Victoria Patterson has been a waitress for most of her adult life. She is currently a Lecturer at the University of California, Riverside, and a recent graduate of the Creative Writing program there. Her collection of interrelated short stories is slated for publication with Houghton Mifflin in spring 2009. Her work has appeared in various literary journals, including The Sun, Snake Nation Review, Quality Women’s Fiction, and is forthcoming in The Florida Review.

Linda Purdy is native of Southern California with an M.L.S. in Library and Information Science and an undergraduate degree in English from Whittier College. She has participated in the Poetry and Creative Writing workshops at Irvine Valley College, where she wrote her first fiction last year. Her poetry has appeared in Faultline, International Harvest, and The Ear.

Peggy Reavey is an acclaimed graphic artist. For more on her work see PeggyReavey.com. About her work Reavey writes,

My paintings are stories, except they don’t proceed in the usual way. They don’t proceed at all, really, except in the mind of the viewer.

I’m often called a surrealist, but I see my work as fantastical; like magic realism before it’s been translated into words.

I don’t paint “the figure.” I paint people. I paint personal, intensely subjective, memory-based pictures; people eating, falling down, watching TV, sleeping, singing, getting beat up, or stabbing somebody, or crying, or dying. Increasingly, I respond to larger world events—hunger, homelessness, the natural world—still threading imagery back through subjective memory and emotion.

My work has been described as a marriage between Ann Landers and William Blake.

I use pattern because it’s beautiful, relentless, and everywhere—wallpaper, the rhythm of days, weeks, years—consoling and irritating. The pattern of the English alphabet conveys meaning and is also beautiful. Ribbons of illegible sentences mirror the perpetual scrawl of daily, overheard foreign conversations, the longing to connect, the letting go of figuring life out.

Stephanie Kerley Schwartz writes plays and short fiction, designs various things, and drives in Los Angeles. She recently completed Burning Daylight, a play intertwining the life and writing of Jack London. Her story “Falcon” appears in Fall 2007 SMR.

Terese Svoboda is the author of ten books of prose and poetry, most recently Black Glasses Like Clark Kent, a memoir about her uncle who was an MP guarding a stockade full of American GIs in postwar Japan when his captain ordered executions.

Jervey Tervalon is the author of five novels and is the co-editor of the The Cocaine Chronicles, published by Akashic Books. He teaches creative writing at USC, not far from the Jefferson Park neighborhood he grew up in. Currently he lives in Pasadena with his two daughters. “Hope Found Chauncey” is the first chapter of a novel in progress.

Bright Yuan lives in Los Angeles. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in American history at UCLA. “The Sun Ravens” is her first published story.

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