Five Points Volume 15 1&2 Available Now!

Five Points is proud to announce the release of our newest issue, Volume 15 1&2! This is a double issue packed with a wide array of poetry, fiction, essays, interviews, art, and more! Here are some of the contributors you can expect to see in the new issue:

• Kim Addonizio
• Ward Briggs
• Billy Collins
• Christopher Dickey
• Lauren Groff
• Jennifer Haigh
• Barbara Hamby
• Edward Hirsch
• Jane Hirshfield
• Alice Hoffman
• Edward Hower
• David Kirby
• Laurence Lieberman
• Deborah Luster
• James May
• Sharon Olds
• Chelsea Rathburn
• Anya Silver
• Elizabeth Spencer
• Elizabeth Spires
• Ernest Saurez
• Melane Rae Thon
• Daren Wang
• Lauren Watel
• ……and many more!

Visit our website to find out more, or purchase copies of Five Points here!

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Celebrating 15 Volumes of Five Points!

Hey everyone, this month marks the release of the 15th volume of Five Points! If you’re in the area, why not come and celebrate with us?

A Celebration and Launch of the 15^th Volume Edition of Five Points: A Journal of Literature & Art will take place on Thursday, April 11th at 7:30pm at the Rialto Center for the Arts, Georgia State University. Authors featured in the double issue will read from their works of poetry and fiction including: Barbara Hamby, David Kirby, Thomas Lux, and Lauren Watel.

Five Points: A Journal of Literature & Art has been published since 1996 by the Department of English at Georgia State University and has made important contributions to the field of contemporary literature. Known for their commitment to originality and excellence, co-editors, David Bottoms and Megan Sexton have promoted the journal’s mission by discovering and publishing the finest literary writing and visual art and presenting it to a wide readership. Five Points features work by established and emerging writers, including Lauren Groff, Jennifer Haigh, Natasha Trethewey, Philip Levine, and Billy Collins. Works featured in Five Points are often featured in the nation’s premiere literary anthologies such as Best American Poetry, Best American Short Stories, New Stories from the South among others. The writer and previous Five Points contributor Ann Hood has captured the journal’s contribution to the literary landscape with this quote: “Five Points is stimulating, intelligent, always interesting, and necessary—we need magazines like it.”

This event is free and open to the public. The Rialto Center for the Arts is located at 80 Forsyth St, NW. For more information, contact Megan Sexton at: msexton@gsu.edu.

We hope to see you there!

Come Visit us at the Annual AWP Conference!

This year, AWP’s annual conference and bookfair (North America’s largest literary conference) will be held March 6-9 at the Hynes Convention Center & Sheraton Boston Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts. As usual, Five Points will be in attendance, so please come and stop by our table! This year, we will be at table S20. You’ll even be able to pick up one of these spiffy buttons–for free! Find out all the details about the AWP conference here! There are over 550 readings, lectures, panel discussions, forums, book signings, and more! We hope to see you there!

Again, that’s table S20! And FREE BUTTONS!!

In Memory of Ellen Douglas

The Los Angeles Times has posted a lovely piece in memory of Ellen Douglas (whose real name was Josephine Ayres Haxton), a National Book Award nominee who also served as a contributing editor for Five Points:

Ellen Douglas, a Mississippi native whose novels were widely praised for their portrayal of the racially conflicted South, died Wednesday in Jackson, Miss., after an extended illness. She was 91.

Set in Mississippi, Douglas’ writing dealt candidly with race relations, families and the role of women. She wrote 11 books, including six novels and several collections of short stories and essays.

Her third novel, “Apostles of Light,” was a 1973 National Book Award nominee. It is a complex novel about the mistreatment of residents at a home for the elderly in fictional Homochitto, Miss., a town that was the setting of many of her works.

“If you don’t have conflict, you don’t have fiction,” Douglas told the Associated Press in a 2005 interview about race relations and other forces that helped shape literature.

Her writing remained a hobby for many years until a close friend, poet Charles Bell, gave one of her manuscripts to an editor at Houghton Mifflin. In 1962, she published her first novel, “A Family’s Affairs,” a book she later said was closely based on two aunts. The New York Times named it one of the best novels of the year.

The article goes on to describe her childhood, personal life, and professional influences. Once again, the full article can be viewed here.

We thank Ms. Douglas  for all of her support, and our thoughts go out to her family.

Literature Reading: Anya Silver and Hugh Sheehy!

Anya Silver

Five Points is proud to announce an upcoming reading featuring Anya Silver and Hugh Sheehy! The reading is FREE to the public and will take place on Thursday, October 11 at 7:30 p.m. in GSU’s Troy Moore Library (General Classroom Building 939). Both of these accomplished writers have contributed to our journal in the past, and we are excited to have them on campus for this event!

Anya Silver is the author of The Ninety-Third Name of God. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including Image, New Ohio Review, Witness, Prairie Schooner, Christian Century, Christianity and Literature, Anglican Theological Review, and Five Points. 

Hugh Sheehy

Hugh Sheehy’s collection The Invisibles won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. His stories have appeared in Glimmer Train, Kenyon Review, Five Points, and Best American Mystery Stories. 

For more information on the reading, feel free to contact Heather Russel in the Department of English at 404-413-5800.

Hope to see everyone there!

 

In Memory of Louis Simpson

Five Points was saddened to hear about the recent passing of Louis Simpson, who died last Friday at the age of 89. Mr. Simpson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, was very supportive of Five Points through the years, even from our very first issue. He graciously provided us with poems as well as an interview to publish, and we will not forget his unwavering support for our journal. The New York Times has published an obituary honoring his memory:

Mr. Simpson sought the poetry in everyday life, writing in a simple, unadorned style with specifically American settings. The poet and critic Edward Hirsch called him “the Chekhov of contemporary American poetry.”

“It’s complicated, being an American,” Mr. Simpson wrote in the poem “On the Lawn at the Villa.” “Having the money and the bad conscience, both at the same time.”

His collection “At the End of the Open Road,” for which he won the Pulitzer in 1964, painted a grim picture of the American temperament in the last half of the 20th century in poems like “In the Suburbs”:

There’s no way out.

You were born to waste your life.

You were born to this middleclass life

As others before you

Were born to walk in procession

To the temple, singing.

In later years Mr. Simpson’s poems displayed less pessimism and more of an acceptance of the world as it is. In a valedictory poem, “A Farewell to His Muse,” he reflected:

All you really know is given

at moments when you’re seeing

and listening.

Being in love

is a great help.

Oh yes, but keep a dog.

The article goes on to describe Mr. Simpson’s extraordinary life, including his time as an infantryman in World War II, before finishing with a fitting poem:

In a poem simply titled “American Poetry,” Mr. Simpson described what might be considered the essence of his work:

Whatever it is, it must have

A stomach that can digest

Rubber, coal, uranium, moons, poems.

Like the shark, it contains a shoe.

It must swim for miles through the desert

Uttering cries that are almost human.

The full obituary can be found here, at the New York Times website. We once again thank Mr. Simpson for all of his support. He will be sorely missed.

 

Our New Online Submission Database is Up and Running!

We’re pleased to announce that we are now accepting submissions online via Tell It Slant! Here, you will find all of our submission guidelines and reading periods, and you can submit your work to our journal at the click of a button! You can also enter our James Dickey Prize for Poetry contest straight from this site!

So what are you waiting for? Click here to start submitting!

Five Points Earns 5-Star Review from “The Review Review”

The Review Review (I’m not kidding–that’s really the site’s name) has published a stellar 5-star review titled “Where Beautiful Writing Converges” for Five Points’s Spring 2012 issue! Here are a few excerpts from the article:

Junctions are extraordinary places. They usually lead us to the very best—or worst—of a city or town. Five Points, a journal of literature and art published three times a year by Georgia State University, is an exceptional convergence point that exposes us to some prime examples of contemporary American art. Poetry, fiction, essay, interview and photography immerse us into a literary universe comprised by well-known names such as David Kirby and Lynn Steger, and lesser known authors such as Lauren Watel and Tania James.

It could take us a lifetime to find the one author who unknowingly uses our personal woes—or triumphs—as his/her canvas; but this edition of Five Points is a good starting point. It doesn’t matter if you are still trying to make amends with poetry or if you just crave some beauty in your life, this journal is worth reading. If you are trying to write compelling fiction and poetry, this is also a great point of departure, as you will find distinct voices that could help you on the quest towards becoming a better author.

The article specifically praises Anya Silver, Chris Verene, Lauren Watel, Billy Collins, Gregory Fraser, and David Kirby. It even references Lauren Watel’s contributor post published here on our blog!

So be sure to check the full article out for yourself right here!

And you can order a copy of the Five Points Spring 2012 issue (14.2) here!

Get Ready for the 2012 Decatur Book Festival!

The largest independent book festival in the nation is back for its seventh year with more than 300 best-selling authors! The Decatur Book Festival is completely FREE and takes place during Labor Day weekend (Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 1-2). Be sure to check out all of the prevalent information here!

Five Points will be present at the festival, and our booth is number 201!

This year’s keynote address will come from U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey and take place at the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts at Emory on August 31st at 8 PM.

Expect plenty of poets at this year’s festival, including David Bottoms, Wyn Cooper, Mark Doty, Charlotte Pence, Patricia Smith, David Kirby, Barbara Hamby, Kevin Young, and many more!

Likewise, you’ll have the chance to check out authors such as Michael Connelley, Meg Cabot, Erin Morgenstern, Julie Otsuka, Isabel Wilkerson, Tess Gerritsen, Kathy Reichs, Patrick McDonnell, Gail Tsukiyama, Baratunde Thurston, Adam Reed, and many more!

But the festival’s not just for adults—children’s authors will be represented as well, including Kevin Henkes (creator of the beloved character Lilly of Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse). There are plenty of events for children as well, so be sure to check those out online!

So come and check out Five Points at Booth 201, and oh yeah—did I mention the festival is FREE? Well, it bears repeating.

Five Points Volume 14.3 On Shelves Now!

Five Points Volume 14.3 is out on shelves now! Learn more about the new issue and order a copy here!

This issue features works from the following authors, poets, and artists:

• Edward Hirsch
• Mark Jarman
• A.E. Stallings
• David Kirby
• Anne Marie Macari
• R.T. Smith
• Linda Pastan
• David Wagoner
• James Wooden
• Ron Houchin
• Tania James
• Nancy Zafris
• George Singleton
• Hugh Sheehy
• Debra Spark
• James Rioux
• Beth Gylys (Interview with A.E. Stallings)
• Cynthia Farnell
• Ernest G. Welch

For a full table of contents, click here!

Be sure to visit the Five Points website for a sample poem and more information on the issue!