Prose, Poetry, and Art since 1956
One of the most difficult aspects of writing to publish is the seemingly endless number of submissions sent out, only to be responded to with varying degrees of “sorry, try again.” We at Portland Review are inspired by and support the resilience of the writers who push through and continue to submit. When that letter or email of acceptance finally arrives, it is accompanied by elation and a renewed…
As I finish up my first year in Portland State University’s MFA in creative writing program, I still find myself wondering how writers work up the courage to read their work to a live audience. I’ve learned that when writing for the ear, simplicity in language is easier for the brain to comprehend, as are sentence constructions that front-load the verb. Since we have evolved to rely…
In creating New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction (forthcoming August, 2018), editors James Thomas and Robert Scotellaro combed through print and online journals, individual collections, and literary anthologies for short gems. All of the one hundred and forty stories included in this W. W. Norton & Company anthology are individually less than three hundred words. Though brief, these narratives are deep. In the anthology’s forward, Robert Shapard notes the length of stories has been…
A sliver of ice connects us and evaporates, / fades, becomes forgotten, / erased, / until one day no one will believe / the world was covered by frozen / mountain ranges
A look back at Portland Review’s very first issue and the uncanny ways it parallels the work we do today to make the journal a platform for meaningful poetry, prose, and art.