Contest Announcement

Short Story Contest Judged by Susan Minot - WINNERS ANNOUNCED!

1st Place - The Pearl by Clarissa Cummings
2nd Place - It's Clear You Can't Stay Here But I Love You by Elizabeth Bull
3rd Place - Kitten in a Bag by Miranda Featherstone.

Congratulations and thanks to everyone that participated!!!
Winners will be contacted shortly. All winning stories will be published in H.O.W. Journal.

Guidelines and More Info. >>

Upcoming Events

H.O.W. Journal is proud to announce the first edition of Wearable Literature.

Wearable Literature is a new line of t-shirts designed by Marcos Chin, incorporating the literature of Jonathan Ames, Amy Hempel, Rick Moody & Honor Moore, as well as an exclusive Dave Eggers designed t-shirt.

More Info. >>

Public Works Dept., H.O.W. Journal, and Gawker Artists present:

Springy, Spring, Spring: Issue 6 Fundraiser & Art Auction

Thursday, May 6th, 2010
7:00 - 10:00PM at a private loft in Tribeca, NYC
112 Franklin St, 4th Floor, NYC 10013

View the Art Auction Preview Page >>

The night will feature:

• Musical performances by Ali Smith and Jon Howard
• Readings by: Luis Jaramillo and Roxana Robinson
• Complimentary hors d'oeuvres provided by Macao Trading Co., and alcoholic refreshments.
• A bouquet of special raffle prizes donated by Faina European Day Spa, and more.
• A silent art auction selected by Gawker Artists curator Liz Dimmitt and notorious street artist Billi Kid (PWD) including artwork from Billi Kid, Stefanie Schneider, James and Karla Murray, Jess Levey, Ali Smith, Heather Morgan, Fernanda Cohen, Genevieve Dimmitt, Kenneth E. Parris III, Jonathan Fasulo, Greg Silverman, Jonathan Shehee, Joe Heaps Nelson, Sarah Goodreau, SamDakota, Emiliano Granado, Melissa Gorman, Celso, Stikman, Cake, Cern, Allan I. Ludwig aka Elisha Cook Jr., Royce Bannon, Blanco, Joe Iurato, Luna Park, Under Water Pirates, Chris and Veng of Robots Will Kill, NohJColey, Infinity, Christine Dempsey, Avoid, Ian H. Farrell, Peru Ana Ana Peru, Markus Hartel, Theresa Ortolani, Randy Polumbo, Ricky Powell, and many more. A special online preview of the artworks will be available prior to the night of the event.

Event Inquiries contact press@howjournal.com

Buy Tickets & More Info. >>

Contest Announcement

Short Story Contest Judged by Susan Minot
H.O.W. Journal is hosting its first short story contest to be judged by acclaimed author Susan Minot. The deadline is May 15th, 2010. The contest is open to all writers and all themes.

1st Place - $1000
2nd Place - $300
3rd Place - $100.

All winning stories will be published in H.O.W. Journal.

Guidelines and More Info. >>

Fiction - Issue 6

"The Bureau" by Roxana Robinson
My mother's bureau is now in its place in our bedroom. It looks beautiful there, the rich glow of its wood grain golden against the leafy wallpaper, but I can't bring myself to open it. It feels loaded with something.

I leave it closed for a long time, the four deep drawers shut on their contents, whatever they are. I put all my own clothes in a little pine bureau in my closet. I don't put them in neatly, but messily and hastily, as though the whole situation is provisional.

Finally I go to the bureau—it's now mine, I own it—and I open the top drawer. Immediately I'm hit by a dense unpleasant smell. It's the way Mother smelled when she was at that place. It's not the way she ever smelled during the rest of her life, which was fresh and clean, with some light flowery cologne-y scent. Her scarves, her sweaters, everything smelled of that.

Read more >>

Fiction - Issue 6

"Economics" by Aryn Kyle
From BOYS AND GIRLS LIKE YOU AND ME by Aryn Kyle, which will be published in April 2010 by Scribner. Copyright © 2010 by Aryn Kyle.

That was the year I thought I'd never be happy again. I was eighteen and starting college at the school where my older sister was majoring in business—a small, pretty campus full of tall, pretty people, all of whom seemed easy and relaxed, as though they wanted nothing more than to live in this town and attend this college. I did not want to go to college, did not want to live with my sister, did not want to be an eleven-hour drive from my boyfriend who, I knew, was not in love with me the way that I was in love with him and would quickly abandon the idea of me without the actual me around to keep him distracted with blowjobs. But my mother said I didn't have a choice about going to college, and I was still young enough to believe that because she said so, it was true.

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Art - Issue 6

Issue 6 >>

Nonfiction - Issue 6

"Blunder, Youth" by William Giraldi
The persistent ghouls of one's past do not simply whisper the word "Rosebud"; they can speak complete sentences and recite catalogues, and they begin by saying this: "You damned fool, look at what the youth of you has done."

In the summer of 1995 I enrolled in classes at Harvard Summer School, and for years after it remained the most vital experience of my life, entirely different from anything else I had ever known. Overnight I had become a citizen of the world, establishing friendships with students from Korea, China, Japan, Brazil, Germany, France, and that other alien land, California. Harvard Square on Friday and Saturday nights in June was a spectacle so stimulating I sometimes stared in awe: the musicians, the jugglers, the performance artists, the chess players, and the punk-rock vagabonds all huddled at the entrance of the Harvard T stop, smoking and dancing and looking like a carnival of happy devils.

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Nonfiction - Issue 6

"In The Cornucopia Of Your Ear" by Emma Larson
When we moved east, we smudged the house with sage. My father hung animal bones from the arbor out back; he planted Buddha statues beneath the trees. His office was dark green and he lined the walls with poetry books and kachina dolls, crystals, coyote figurines, tarot decks, driftwood. On the wall, an enormous photograph of a naked Marilyn Monroe. On his desk, James Dean, Steve McQueen. I asked my father what religion we were. "I'm a neo-Platonist pagan," he said.

When we moved east, my father handed us string-tied bundles billowing smoke and he said "Cleanse the house's spirits," and we two, my little sister and I, we danced barefoot all throughout the huge, cold, creaking place. In our flowered leggings and striped sweaters, we spun into every wood-floored room, waving the dry grey leaves like Fourth of July sparklers.

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Poetry - Issue 6

"Ashes To Guazapa" by Carolyn Forché
Your cinerary box was light, but filled with you it weighed eight pounds. Nevertheless we each wanted our turn carrying you up the mountain. We passed the roofless chapel, the crater, the graves of the youngest, the camping place, the secret paths, the impossible stone road. We came upon the shivering trees where the magical foreign doctor was said to dig out bullets with a pen knife and supply the children with iron by dipping rusty nails in water. We came upon the past, where the holes were dug, and if you dug there now you'd fill quite a sack with bones. We don't stop to dig there. We carried your box to another place, not as far as we would have liked, but far enough, where we all had our pictures taken with you, and then your box posed with your former truck, that will now belong to the priest you saved from prison. The truck seemed to know what had happened. We spent a long time piling stones around the trees, even the mayor who was once a fighter himself in these hills piled stones.

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Poetry - Issue 6

"Last Call" by Alex Dimitrov
As the ice thaws and rain quickens
I dial his old number, printed in one of the biographies:
8083—and for a moment it's 1929

at 190 Columbia Heights
where Hart Crane answers the phone.
Take this Sea, he says. And I take it.

If you know where in the past to look,
you will find words already written
in the more or less exact tongue of your soul.

Read more >>

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