What is our responsibility as artists to reinvent or reimagine our world, our selves, our work in order to dismantle current systems and conventions and tastes that are at best, dated and stifling, and at worst a threat to real, lived lives? What role does re-imagination play in freedom?
Sometimes the name and the body stop serving one another. It has been ineffective to always have to explain what this journal wasn’t (about JF, for instance) before we could say what we were. It is far too easy to distract oneself with the symptom instead of the problems rooted in the system at play.
Dear James, I wrote this all in cat memes cuz I didn’t want anything to get missed.
Three Poems by Chelsey Weber-Smith One day someone important will say this is not a poem Walking up and down the same strip of land Li Po, I heard your drunk ass tried to embrace the moon and drowned One day someone important will say this is not a poem so I’ll join … Continue reading
My Friend Jesus by Kamala Puligandla My friend Jesus says he usually goes by Chuey or Chuchi or Leon, which is his last name, but considering that we’ve just officially met, and we’re at school—“a very official place,” he says—he’ll have me call him Jesus. “Thanks,” I say. “Yeah,” he says offhandedly and then stares … Continue reading
Two poems by Kamden Hilliard Hong Kong Aubade Nothing is Fast Enough Nothing Hong Kong Aubade above his crack of dawn: a tramp stomped sun spreading the smallness of his hard backing cast under the hungover light of an unfamiliar city and after these assorted mistakes (beer, a dead phone) i dont know … Continue reading
How To Be Lucky by Jean Burnet Because they could afford it, they had a large wedding. Dick’s family was all there, shooting looks in her direction. Rita’s was too. In the few short hours before her union, her mother—who made a fuss of everything—tried to teach her something about love. Her friends came, too. … Continue reading
Four poems by Yasmin Belkhyr Ars Poetica Swim Good Single Exposure Jackson’s Island Ars Poetica the shadow of a thigh on a cream wall // your father’s name or your father’s throat // the things we only do past 11 // a forest of brown legs and feet // a belly green as gold, soft … Continue reading
Dear James, The media loves open letters so I should make it clear that this is to you and to the universal yous, that is, all the Jameses reading this. It’s an editorial note cloaked in an open letter. I’m not being sneaky! Just embracing the unusual side effect of this project. The name James … Continue reading
Our fiction editor for January and February, Aaron Counts has written and read with professors, prisoners, dropouts & scholars. He is the co-author of the non-fiction text Reclaiming Black Manhood, and is a social justice speaker and educator. Aaron is an artist-in-residence with the Writers-in-the-Schools program, and the lead artist with King County’s Creative Alternatives Program, which uses … Continue reading
Our poetry editor for January and February is Maisha Z. Johnson, a writer, healer, and troublemaker of Trinidadian descent. She has an MFA in Poetry from Pacific University, and she studied creative writing at San Francisco State University. Her work has won competitions including Literary Death Match, The Lit Slam, and Portuguese Artists Colony, appeared in … Continue reading
Our Nonfiction editor for January and February is Maya Sonenberg. Her story collections are Cartographies (winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize) and Voices from the Blue Hotel. More recent fiction and nonfiction appear in Web Conjunctions, DIAGRAM, Hotel Amerika, and elsewhere. The Cupboard will bring out a chapbook of her prose and drawings in 2015. … Continue reading
Erin Sroka, Fiction Editor for November/December, is a writer living in Durham, North Carolina. Why work for The James Franco Review: I like the playfulness in the submission process, the conceit that you can take a break from being just another writer, sitting at a desk in sweatpants, damp with anxieties about not making it. Instead, you … Continue reading
The James Franco Review 