Issue 8 is available for purchase!

This is Issue 8 (click to buy):

This is you:

 

Issue 9’s submission period starts August 1. You want to know how awesome we are? Buy Issue 8.

 

And now I’ll shut up.

We’ve Got Issue 8 Covered

With a little help from Kathy Rudin ( who submitted art to us, which meant I didn’t have to scour DeviantArt for some for once), we’ve got us a fine cover for our eighth issue.

Kathy is an artist from New York City, and the title of the photograph is “Untitled (Mary).”

The issue itself should be forthcoming, maybe as early as Monday. We’ll update when it’s available for purchase.

In the meantime, keep honing your stories and sharpening your poems; Issue 9’s submission period starts in less than two weeks.

The Starting Lineup for Issue 8 is…

First up, the winners of Issue 8’s “First Time” Contest:

For our blue-ribbon poem, we’ve got Sarah-Jean Krahn with “Journal of Dead Bodies and Hidden Treasures.” Very beautiful and moving, and one of the more interesting forms we’ve ever published.

And the winning story is Emily Rose Cole and her micro fiction piece “Mama.” Just a hundred words, but they’re all perfect. She actually submitted a day before we closed up for the period, so this is also vindication for the last-minute folks out there as well.

Filling out our Issue 8 team is:

Michelle Watters – “Eyes like the sky”
Matt Dennison – “Sunshine” (very glad to finally get to publish Matt on his sixth go-around, even though the poem makes me want to cry)
Art Heifetz – “My First Playmate” (long time readers might remember Art from Issue 5, making him our first two-time author)
J. Edward Kruft – “Heck Street”
Jay Duret – “Finny Chinook”

Thanks to all our authors! Later this week we’ll have cover art, and then soon after you’ll be able to purchase a copy of Issue 8 and read all these lovely works of art. Till then, don’t do anything stupid.

Battle “First Time” is OV-AH! … And We’ve Been Critiqued!

Or at least that’s what I think they say on the old Iron Chef. Anyway, thanks to everyone for your submissions; you can stop now, at least for another thirty days. We’ll be updating here regarding Issue 8, including authors, contest winners, cover art, and when you can buy your copy.

In the meantime, Bop Dead City’s last issue was recently reviewed on NewPages.com, a lovely site that offers a virtual newsstand of literary journals like us, reviews, and calls for submissions. Melanie Tague had many nice things to say, mostly about poems and stories themselves, which is the way it should be. Mostly she calls us humble a lot, which is true and a very beautiful way of saying “shoddily produced by an amateur.” Ruben Rodriguez and Nancy Hightower get specific shoutouts for their work. Read all about it here: http://www.newpages.com/literary-magazine-reviews/2014-06-16/#Bop-Dead-City-I7-Spring-2014