Issue Six is super-dope. It’s got a story by J. Robert Lennon plumbing the funny funny depths of husbandship, Lisa Beebe with a story that doubles as instructions for the proper construction and zoning procedures for a backyard igloo within Baltimore city limits, Matthew Gavin Frank on the Nevada Cocktail and its connection to Auschwitz, and poems by the likes of Raena Shirali, Ricky Garni, MRB Chelko, Nicholas Wong, John Gallaher, Sampurna Chattarji, Melissa Barrett, slp, Thea Brown, Avni Vyas, and Meghan Privitello, not to mention work by a dozen other contributors that will straight-up blow your mind. [Read it, fool.]
Nothing says “summer jams” quite like demonic possession, dogs mauling and devouring weird night-visitors, or the legal and ethical complications of genetic research, amiright? Issue Five’s got all of that, plus the winners and runners up of our inaugural Fiction and Poetry Prizes, ceramics performance art by Teri Frame, an essay about Philip Seymour Hoffman, addiction, and the Keystone XL pipeline by Nicole Walker, and poems by lyrical juggernauts including Mary Jo Bang, Donna Stonecipher, Kerri Webster, Betsy Wheeler, John Estes, and eight-or-so other purveyors of literary greatness. [Get it.]
What was so amazing about Issue Four? Well, Glenn Shaheen’s text-based RPG adventure “POET The Game,” for starters. Plus a multimedia essay by Shena McAuliffe; not-quite-categorizable poem/essay things by Kate Partridge, new poems by fine folks like Catie Rosemurgy, Dan Beachy-Quick, Jennifer MacKenzie, Anna Maria Hong, Carrie Fountain, and Paul Otremba; fiction by Laura Schadler, Jennifer A. Howard, and Bridget Apfeld; paintings by Leo Katunaric, photos by Stefanie Schneider, and installations by Paul Ferragut; and about a dozen other bundles of basically the best stuff ever. [Go there.]
Issue Three was pretty great, right? Remember those interactive comics by Katya Apekina? That multimedia essay by Steve Wasserman about an international criminal, the Backstreet Boys, and the meaning of love? Those new stories by Chantel Tattoli and Claire Harlan Orsi? The lyric essay about eating disorders and body image by Emily Carr? Lesley Wolff’s exclusive interview with (and recipes by!) Slow Food Superhero Nancy Singleton Hachisu? That new poem by poetry legend Fanny Howe? Those collaborative poetry projects from tag teams Elisa Gabbert/Kathleen Rooney and Monica Berlin/Beth Marzoni? Well you can’t remember if you haven’t [read them, pal.]
Issue Two featured Anna Journey’s multimedia lyric essay “Widowmaker: How to Get Struck by Lightning,” an essay from David S. MacLean titled “That You Ever Saw,” a mashup soundboard called “Death Row Records Presents The Waste Land,” new stories by Paula Bomer and Chaitali Sen, drawings by Terrell James, and poems from the likes of Heather Christle, Farnoosh Fathi, Geoffrey Nutter, and David Wojciechowski. Not to mention all the awesome stuff we’re not mentioning here! You should go [read the rest.]
Our debut issue sure was amazing, what with Elena Passarello’s epic mixed-media essay about Frank Sinatra, Jason Polan’s drawings of trees in Central Park, Alison Stine’s lyric essay on the subject of loneliness, the now-infamous Flannery O’Connor Soundboard, new fiction from S. E. Smith, Chad Simpson, Anjali Sachdeva, and Kirby Johnson, Aaron Gilbreath’s audio essay and interview with a member of Portland, Oregon’s homeless community, poems from such notables as Graham Foust, Bruce Smith, Shane McCrae, Samuel Amadon, Kara Candito, Melissa Broder, Paul Killebrew, and Sandra Simonds. And you haven’t read it yet?!?! [Give us a break.]
Following the launch of Issue Seven in August, Better will be going on a hiatus as we reconsider our editorial and publishing structures. Thank you for your patience!
Cruise through our archives, below! Soon, we hope to make all of our content searchable. But until we can get a handle on all that complicated javascript or PHP or whatever, we hope a little tried and true alphabetization will do.
