Second Annual Euphony Cover Contest
We are pleased to announce the second of what we hope will become annual Euphony cover contests! Last year’s winner was included on the cover of our magazine both for the print and website versions, and had a bio included with our authors in the back of the magazine.
Because we are trying to get the magazine together in line for an early January publication date, the time for this year’s cover contest will be pretty short. We would like to receive your submissions by next Friday, December 9th, 2011. Submissions sent after that date will still be considered until an appropriate candidate for the cover has been found, but you increase your likelihood of being chosen if you submit sooner rather than later.
We welcome multiple photos per submission, but please keep them to a reasonable number (do not spam us with 12-photo emails), and send each photograph in a separate email to make it easier for us to go through them. Submissions should be sent to the Fiction Editor, Keith Jamieson, at keithjamieson@uchicago.edu.
One additional point: as this is the Winter 2012 issue, preference will be given to photographs that, either in subject matter, theme, or composition, somehow resonate with the idea of “winter”. A broad range of meanings for the term beyond just the season are, however, completely acceptable.
Good luck!
- The Editors
Important Message from the Editors: Temporary Submissions Change
As a result of some editorial turnover at the end of last year, we are currently experiencing a problem with Euphony’s email account that makes it impossible to access submissions sent to us over the summer break (June through September). On a temporary basis, we would like all submissions sent to Euphony between June and the present to be emailed directly to the pertinent editor, rather than through the magazine’s email account.
Fiction pieces should be sent to Keith Jamieson, the Fiction Editor, at keithjamieson@uchicago.edu.
Poetry pieces should be sent to Kirsten Ihns, the Poetry Editor, at alexai@uchicago.edu.
If you emailed anything over the summer break, you should resubmit to one of us, and we will try to get back to you as quickly as possible. New submissions will of course be considered and should also be sent to the above addresses.
Please note that this change is only temporary. Once the Euphony email account is back to normal, all email should again be sent there and not to the fiction and poetry editors. Maintaining a separate account makes it easier for us to organize materials related to the magazine without them becoming lost in personal or academic trivia. After the Euphony account is fixed and a message has been posted here to that effect, submissions sent directly to the editors will no longer be considered for publication.
We are sorry for any inconvenience this has caused, and hope to resolve the problem very soon.
- The Editors
Welcome to Euphony
Welcome to the online version of Euphony Journal, the biannual literary magazine of the University of Chicago. Please feel free to have a look around: use the navigation bar to the right to browse through our web-exclusive content, or refer to the above menu for information about the journal, past issues, and submissions guidelines.
Important Message from the Editors: Emails from RSO Fair
For those of you who expressed interest in Euphony at the RSO Fair last week, but who haven’t yet received fiction and poetry packets, it’s possible that we were unable to read your email. If you would still like to join Euphony and haven’t been contacted by us, send either Kirsten (alexai@uchicago.edu) or Keith (keithjamieson@uchicago.edu) an email, and we’ll get back to you as quickly as possible.
As a reminder, Euphony’s first official meeting of the quarter will be held this coming Thursday, October 6th, at 7:00 pm in the Reynolds Club conference room (019). Hope to see you there!
- The Editors
Welcome to a New Year of Euphony!
Hello, everyone! Euphony is pleased to begin its 12th year of operation by publishing the story “When We Are Gone the Light Is Alone”, by Michael McCanne, as well as the poem “War Games”, by Rob Schultz, both to be found below. We hope these to be just the first of many interesting new pieces of fiction and poetry we can present to you this year.
Our first actual meeting of the year will be on Thursday, October 6th in the Reynolds Club conference room (019) at 7 pm. We look forward to seeing all those interested in participating in our magazine then, and best wishes for the new academic year!
- The Editors
Poetry: “War Games” by Rob Schultz
My brother was the cowboy,
I the Indian. Stumping his
Stick horse in crazy zigzags
He dug up dirt. Once I stabbed
The ground with my knife.
Nicked his ear.
He grew industrious, mowed the lawn
In neat squares, uprooted weeds–wild-
Flowers–built a plywood fort
Under a weathered oak whose branches
I climbed to watch, silent, dead-still.
Papa smiled and patted his burr cut
And called him a diligent boy.
I drew a circle around myself,
Let hair grow down my neck,
And worshiped round wet stones.
Navigating woods by smell of fog,
Watching street lights on the river,
Testing my breath on walks that winter,
I was sure the dead would return.
Shadow that ran across our lawn
And lost itself in the sunset:
I knew it was my mother.
“Just the light,” said my brother.
Drawing his cap gun, he aimed
Straight for the heart.
Mother Earth.
Fiction: “When We Are Gone the Light Is Alone” by Michael McCanne
The women departing slip of their chemises of light
All of a single sudden not a soul remains
When we are gone the light is alone
Paul Eluard
Predawn.
In the city, a factory burned.
Luisa paused, her brush frozen in the air, touching her lashes.
The transportation workers are out on strike; the freeways blockaded.
The capital will be cut off.
From up high, the city was unnaturally still.
She continued applying make up, noticing, perhaps for the second or third time, that the circle of lights around the mirror made tiny rings in her pupils.
Drinking coffee on the balcony, she watched the smoke rise in the distance against the ashen sky. She loved being in the apartment early in the morning when her husband was gone. It gave her sense of calm and readiness for the day. In their room, the bed was already made and her suit lay across the sheets.
Her husband had withdrawn a bundle of dollars, in case the peso devalued, and had put them in the freezer, inside a plastic bag. They never kept much money around the house and since he had left, three days prior, she found herself, again and again, in front of the open freezer, looking at those frozen bills.
The Spring 2011 Issue
…is here! Physical copies will be delivered shortly, but in the meantime, click on the image below to download the PDF. We hope you enjoy this issue!
We Have a Cover!
Congratulations to Kristina Strother-Garcia, whose photograph will appear on the cover of our Spring 2011 issue! It was hard to select just one photograph, as we received a lot of truly fantastic submissions, but thank you to everyone who participated. The cover contest will probably be a regular fixture at Euphony from now on, so watch out for our notice in the autumn!
- The Editors
Euphony Spring 2011 Cover Contest
Euphony’s Spring issue is currently in production, and we need cover art! Anybody who does photography and other art media is welcome to send us submissions for our cover contest. The requirements are simple: 1) We’re looking for artwork somehow related to the theme of “Spring” (no black and white submissions, please); 2) Submissions should be able to crop to 414 X 630 pixels. You may send a low-resolution sample for now, and if we’re interested we’ll contact you about a high-resolution image. Photography/art of different dimensions is also fine, but will be cropped to our discretion.
The selected work will grace the cover of our upcoming issue, and the artist will receive a publication credit with Euphony. Take a look at our past issues (links in the above menu) for an idea of what we’ve chosen in the past.
Interested in participating? Submissions accepted until May 11th to euphony@uchicago.edu.
Good luck!
- The Editors
Fiction: “Grace” by Jason M. Jones
Then turning to the spirit once again,
I said: “Francesca, what you suffer here
melts me to tears of pity and pain.But tell me: in the time of your sweetest sighs
by what appearances found love the way
to lure you to his perilous paradise?”-The Inferno, Dante, Canto V, Circle Two
I. Francesca
Paolo threw himself from the window last night, but it might have been the night before or the night before that. It might have been a hundred years ago, and it’s quite likely he’ll do it again tomorrow. Time means so little when the same monotonous moonbeams have streamed through these broken panes for years on end and all I see is night.
He returned inexplicably, and that’s what matters. I woke (who can say how long I slept?) and there he was, sitting across from me. We never share a word, but lacking that mad look, the snarling smile and arch of his brow, this room would lose meaning, the shadows wouldn’t take form, and our story would dissolve.
When I close my eyes, I can see his face—not Paolo’s, but a replica—a round, olive orb, curtained by twisting black locks, his brazen scowl as he crept the corridors before our death, his eyes like flames in the bedroom’s hearth. He clutches a long knife below the blade’s silver glint—his lips a demonic curl—and he springs through heavy wooden doors to catch us off guard.
