Literary

Julia Brennan is a writer and performer from central New York. Her work has been published in Hotel America, Big Big Wednesday, and Tarpaulin Sky Press, among other publications. Her debut novel, Hunting Season, won the 2019 Tarpaulin Sky Book Award and will be published in 2020. By Julia Brennan

Aug 01

What Pain Can Do

About the pain. I’ll first describe it clinically, as if I were a camera. I began to sweat everywhere after a flash of heat lit my skin (the whole organ). I lost the ability or will to control the movement of my eyes, which rolled around the room. My eyes also streamed tears, though my face lacked the grimaces and spasms which normally accompany them. Finally, I moaned. By Ken Baumann

Jul 26

New Mexico Women: Natalie Goldberg

New Mexico Women

Natalie Goldberg, author of "Writing Down the Bones," made New Mexico her home and the center of her writing practice fifty years ago. By Jenn Shapland

Jun 26

Writings: Medallions

After planting and harvesting crops for over forty years, you would think a being might finally comprehend the ephemeral nature of all things. Not, alas, this one. At least not within my deep inner recesses, in the private folds of knowing... By Stanley Crawford

May 24

Writings + The Printed Page

The Printed PageWritings

John Shepherd’s pack weighed him down, straps cutting into fleece, water bottle digging into his hip. The hike had taken longer than he’d anticipated. The light was fading... By Joaquin Gomez

Apr 26

Five Poems: Marie Claire Bryant

1 We drove to a place to look up... By Marie Claire Bryant

Jan 30

Interview with Poet Joy Harjo

I still feel like a New Mexico writer in part, an important part, and my plans are to secure a little place there to live at least part of the time...New Mexico inspires me as no other place. I consider it the birthplace of my poetry, though of course, my poetry was set in place for generations, through all the speakers, singers, and artists in my ancestral lines. By Jenn Shapland

Oct 30

David Hammons: Bliz-aard Ball Sale by Elena Filipovic

February 1983: a man in coat and scarf stands on a sidewalk among various street vendors at Cooper Square in downtown New York City. At his feet, a collection of perfectly spherical white forms... By Chelsea Weathers

Oct 30

The Fish in the Trees

The leaves in the trees, one night—more leaves than there are stars in the sky, more leaves than there are eyes to look up at the night sky to see them with— By Peter Markus

Oct 01

I Heard it Was the War

All this madness has made me terribly sad. I didn't buy the diet pills because they were too expensive. Or perhaps, that's life. The world tells you for so long... By Shayla Lawz

Aug 28

Mary Hunter Austin

New Mexico Women

The phrase "Santa Fe women" calls to mind a range of women throughout history... By Jenn Shapland

Jul 30

Curatorial Activism

On April 1, 2014, the editors at ArtSlant reported that MoMA would “give the museum over exclusively to women artists for the entire year of 2015.”... By Jenn Shapland

May 01

Interview with Colson Whitehead

In the late '80s and early '90s, Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning novelist Colson Whitehead and New Yorker Poetry Editor Kevin Young were a couple of kids at Harvard. They became friends long before either had a writing career to speak of, but in Whitehead's words... By Jenn Shapland

Apr 11

April Reading

NewsThe Library

When Jenny George read from her collection The Dream of Reason at Collected Works in early April, her voice was soft, slow, and steady. Like her poems, her reading rendered heartbreaking compressions of language and feeling into something delicate to behold. Her images ... By Jenn Shapland

Apr 01

Everything I Lost in the Flood: Essays on Pictures, Language and Code

For fans of Laurie Anderson, and I certainly count myself as one, the book Everything I Lost in the Flood archives her forty-plus-year art career, beginning with a 1974 performance piece called Duets on Ice. This work, even in its simplicity, constellates a certain inscrutable... By Diane Armitage

Mar 15

March 2018 Reading

Winter in the northern Midwest is not a place I return to in person, at least not willingly. It is a place I dread for its deadly overcast sadness, a dread that, I learned from Michigan poet Emily Van Kley's collection, constitutes its own heady nostalgia. The Cold and the Rust… By Jenn Shapland

Feb 22

February 2018 Reading

Calling herself a "visual artist who writes," author Verónica Gerber Bicecci approaches fiction from the conceptual and the personal simultaneously: What does it mean, logically, for a person to be missing? And how does it feel? Bicecci incorporates line drawings throughout Empty... By Jenn Shapland

Feb 01

3 Questions: Aleksandar Hemon

In the last year, Aleksandar Hemon’s writings in response to the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the perils of Trumpism have served as my touchstones, pieces I bookmark and return to and share when I’m feeling especially low, especially unable to proceed. Hemon is a Chicago-based... By Jenn Shapland

Feb 01

Two Poems from Ruins of Modernity

Kate Ingold is a visual artist and poet working in a variety of media. In her work, she examines issues of disturbance, reparation, and collapse, and the nostalgia and regret that can accompany loss.... By Kate Ingold

Jan 18

January 2018 Reading

News

Zadie Smith is the reason I left Facebook. As I was reading—actually, as my partner, who snatched it up the moment it arrived, was reading—her new collection of essays Feel Free, I revisited a piece of hers I remember from several years ago to see if it held up. "Generation Why?"... By Jenn Shapland

Dec 01

The Magazine’s Best Books 2016: Staff Picks Edition

Each year, THE Magazine curates a list of the year's best art books. This year we've asked our contributors for their recent favorite arts reading materials. The results ranged from exhibition catalogues to memoirs, artist books to artists' writings. By Southwest Contemporary

Dec 01

Twice Through the Maze

Review

In nightmarish political times, it’s important to keep in mind that books are more than just objects, and that the pen is always, always mightier than the sword. Pay attention to who’s reading books and who is not, to who is making them and who is burning them... By Jordan Eddy

Jan 02

IAIA Winter Readers Gathering

News

Each January, as Santa Fe et environs settle back into their quiet winter ways following the bustle of holidays, markets, and festivals, the Low Residency MFA program in Creative Writing gathers at IAIA for a week of workshops and unforgettable public readings. This is the only... By Jenn Shapland

Dec 14

December Reading: Three Titles from 2017

As a difficult year winds to a close, I’ve been thinking about what books made a difference for me in 2017. What changed my mind, or opened it, or gave me language to understand and express the present moment? Here are three 2017 titles that made me see things in a new way... By Jenn Shapland

Dec 01

THE Best Books 2017

Each year, we ask The Magazine’s contributors to pick their favorite recent (or recently relevant) books to recommend for your holiday-season reading. Read on for their suggestions... By Southwest Contemporary

Dec 01

Consumed

I am both of these women. The first one opens the living room drapes, sees it happening, and screams for her husband. He doesn’t answer. She slaps the palm of her hand against the glass pane over and over again until her hand throbs. She isn’t thinking straight... By Susan Wider

Nov 07

November Book Reviews

Jenn Shapland reviews three recent book releases: The Glass Eye by Jeannie Vanasco (nonfiction), Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado (fiction), and For Want of Water: And Other Poems by Sasha Pimentel (poetry) ... By Jenn Shapland

Nov 01

Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay In Forty Questions

Sometimes a writer’s subject finds her. Valeria Luiselli, a novelist and essayist from Mexico City, was waiting for her green card when she and her niece started working as interpreters at the New York immigration court. Luiselli had heard from her own immigration lawyer that after... By Jenn Shapland

Oct 01

New Releases: One Sentence Book Reviews

New fall book released in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry are reviewed with one sentence and one quotation of each from Jenn Shapland. Titles include The Dark Dark by Samantha Hunt, Katalin Street by Magda Szabo, The Mountain by Paul Yoon, Letters to his Neighbor by Marcel Proust ... By Jenn Shapland

Sep 01

Doris Cross: Selected Works

Review

En route from one Southwest Arts Oasis to another, determined to see the works of Doris Cross (1907-1994) in Marfa and carrying a friend's artwork in our trunk, we passed through the heart of darkness [...] By Jenn Shapland

Sep 01

Louise Lawler: Receptions

Louise Lawler has spent her career effacing any presence of her own identity in her artworks. Her works themselves are often either mechanically produced or feature the work of other artists. [...] By Chelsea Weathers

Feb 01

Mary Dezember: Still Howling

Review

Mary Dezember: Still Howling: When I walked in to Mary Dezember’s reading for Still Howling, upstairs from the plaza in a snug gallery space run by Strangers Collective, the poet came up to me and immediately connected me with something I’d written, something about women, she said... By Jenn Shapland

Aug 01

Layli Long Soldier: WHEREAS

At the heart of Layli Long Soldier’s WHEREAS lie two apologies. One comes from the poet’s father for his drinking and his absence during her childhood. This apology, [...] By Jenn Shapland

Feb 01

A Neverending Story: Finnegans Wake in the Information Age

The music plays. Suddenly the words feel right. It makes perfect sense. The Norse god Odin is crossing a rainbow bridge into the castle in heaven. That's one way of reading it at least. The recording switches off. Discussion resumes. A college professor hovers over a giant textbook... By Maxwell Lucas

Aug 01

Hydro

Daniel Bohnhorst lives in Santa Fe. He works at op.cit. books and the Violin Shop of Santa Fe. [...] By Daniel Bohnhorst

Jul 01

Openings: A Memoir from the Women’s Art Movement, New York City 1970-1992

While she was planning Views by Women Artists, a massive collaborative exhibition in 1982 during the annual College Art Association conference, Sabra Moore’s own show, Pieced [...] By Jenn Shapland

Apr 01

Matriz del Sol