Updates

Updates: Issue / Nominations / Info | Early 2020

Updates

Dear writers,

It’s been a month since our Fifth Issue was published, and we wanted to share that in the first ten days after the coming out of the issue we received around 2000 visits, which is very enthusiastic. While beginning with Bold + Italic, we sure had been naively ambitious in expecting such a number of visitors after each issue – but our naivety has also been rewarded with this issue.

So, this post is put up here to celebrate all that it signifies, and to inform our (regular and upcoming) contributors about several other things:

  • With the help of the brilliant number of submissions we’ve been receiving for every issue, we’ve been able to nominate poetry and prose for several awards – and now we’ve created a page for that here. We’ll be updating the nominations list every time something new happens.
  • We’ve also created a contributor’s directory now, here – and we’re also working on arranging the links everywhere.
  • And the most important notice is about an upcoming Ekphrastic Challenge – we’re working to update it online soon (we may take a fortnight or so). For the challenge, we’ll be putting up an artwork from a favourite artist at times and you’ll have to respond to it in your very own manner; the best responses will show up in an issue at some time in respective years.

Please rest assured, we’ll be updating our pages accordingly with every little information we can share with you.

With regards,

The Team

PS: If you’re wondering, the most read piece from this issue is Audrey Molloy — 3 Poems, with over a hundred views alone. Have a look!

* Cover image, by Jayant Kashyap

The Installation in San Francisco of ‘Tides’, a Two-Ton Sculpture by Our Issue 01 Artist, Yoko Kubrick

Artwork, Updates

In the very first issue of Bold + Italic, we had the opportunity to feature a sculpture, titled Tides, inspired by the ocean waves. Kubrick crafted it in Tuscany, Italy of Carrara marble. She tells us it was completed on a commission for the University of San Francisco (commissioned by the graduating class of 1968 for the 50th anniversary of their graduation when it was an all-women’s college – Lone Mountain Women’s College.)

Tides is now located at the top of the Lone Mountain campus staircase in the Sacred Heart Garden – “which for me,” Kubrick says, “is arguably one of the most beautiful views in all of San Francisco.”

“Tides was inspired by the Banzai Pipeline, a surf reef break on the North Shore of Oahu, where I lived as a child. Through this form, I try to express reverence for the beauty, movement, fluidity, and energy of ocean waves. […] I think there is a sort of magic that happens when we can merge with nature in this way.” – Yoko Kubrick, Issue 01

Here is what USF wrote about Tides and its installation in SF: “How to Install a Two Ton Sculpture” – quoting one of the students, “It’s really nice to have a little rest area going up all these stairs to Lone Mountain.”

In another article in the NY Times – “The Sculptor Who Conceives Classical Myths,” – Nick Marino writes about her work that the “piece doesn’t have a front or back, so you’re never certain how to view it; the only focal point is a suggestive hole that Kubrick bored through the middle.” To which, Kubrick suggests that such sculptures “give a larger space for interpretation; if you see a perfect image of something that’s classical realism, it doesn’t leave as much room for the imagination.”

A dream accomplished for her, Kubrick informs us that of the 358 public artworks in San Francisco listed in the Smithsonian’s online catalogue, only 15% are by women artists. (a sad fact?)

yokoworkingangleginder

Yoko Kubrick is an American sculptor of Japanese and Czech heritage. She grew up in Guam, Hawaii, California and former Czechoslovakia, the contrasting cultures from where aroused her interest in the arts and now inform her work as a sculptor. She studied briefly at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara (in Carrara, Italy) before leaving to work alongside professional sculptors in a marble atelier. She currently divides her time between the San Francisco Bay Area and Tuscany, Italy. Find her here!

Updates: Issue / Nominations | Mid 2019

Updates

Hello, dear readers, writers and contributors,

It was in mid March — only a little over three months before now — that we began accepting submissions for the fourth issue of Bold + Italic. The entry of genres picked up wonderful pace initially and during the time that numbers were gradually surpassing each previous number, we added to our positivity by nominating some poems for Best Indian Poetry 2019, those being:

• Time Warp, Simran Keshwani

• A Whiff of Spice, Uma Venkatraman

• Black, Divya Devarajan

• A Rube Goldberg Day, Aditya Shankar

We moved further, wrote to each of our nominees and congratulated them. And all this time, on the other side of the road, numerous submissions kept appearing each day, made it to our door: some came in and had to leave even though we wanted them to stay; some stayed a little longer, took tea; some, some more tea; and there were others that never left and happily added up as family. — One is those was Monica Lewis’ humorous THE MOST GOLDEN TICKET, alongside David Appelbaum’s the bicycle man.

All of this did keep us quite busy — and the very added up family now appears as our Issue 04, with artwork by Jeremy Nathan Marks and Anne Casey as our featured poet this time.

It is a wonderful issue — has been compiled to be one — and while we plan to send a set of poems and fiction we published as nominations for Best of the Net this year, please take some time to go through it. It won’t be a time ‘wasted’!

Also, before we leave, we’re still open to creative nonfiction submissions and those of art; however, for the fifth issue, we are also soliciting some of our favourite writers for their wonderful works.

Stay tuned,

Yours,

Lisa, Kat & Jayant

“April is the Cruellest Month”

Updates

But, by far, has it been so really?

Hello Wonderful Readers,

It’s been a bit over a month and a half now since the time that Issue 03 appeared. With a number of wonderful writers from far-off planets. With a wonderful artwork, from Jim Zola, which was an ‘at-a-glance’ selection.

So, this blog post today means to celebrate such writing — such wonderful writing. And, to say just so, we’re cheering for those pieces that we published in Issue 03, which were read the most:

  1. You Said I Can Nurture, Richard Thomas: a total of 155 people have read this poem so far.
  2. Moon, Fiona Perry: by far a total of 134 people have tracked her here.
  3. Perspectives on a Crime Scene, Alex Stolis: we’ve been receiving several emails saying that this set of poems is a beauty, while 123 people have read it thus.

But then, these are all poems, and the most read prose piece from our Issue 03 is Cristina Bresser de Campos’ Grandpa Orsini, which is a success in itself too — with 95 reads thus far.

On the other hand, while we have received 20 per cent more submissions this time than any of the previous issues, we’ve also been planning to nominate some poems from our first two issues for the Best Indian Poetry, further updates regarding which we’ll put up sometime soon — very soon, let’s hope!

And until then, we’re hoping to read more from you, be it fiction, nonfiction, poetry or else (and we wish to look at more art pieces very much!)

Warmly,

Kat, Lisa & Jayant

Bold + Italic

PS: Have a look at Duotrope’s interview with one of us to know more about our preferences.

Cover photo: shot at Bandipora, Jammu & Kashmir, India; shot by Naureen.

Happy New Year

Updates

To begin with, allow us to wish all of you — our friends, friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends — a very happy new year, with a hope that it all begins the best way possible and continues thus.

This new year, we’re reading new and old writers alike while working on our Issue 03, which is partially based on the theme of ‘infants.’ We began with Vladimir Nabokov while sorting out the submissions, are reading Miriam Darlington and are moving forward to Sylvia Plath later this month.

This blog post, here, is meant specifically to celebrate three pieces of the many that we published. Those three pieces that were the most read in our very first year, which are —

  1. Other, by Robert Okaji — Poetry, 220 Views
  2. Black, by Divya Devarajan — Poetry, 184 Views
  3. The Man Who Stopped Speaking, by Sylvia Schwartz — Prose, 144 Views

We hope that you like these pieces enough, and keep showering your presence along.

We are currently working on our Issue 03, and we’ll soon be working on the submissions that we’ve now begun receiving for Issue 04.

With warmth,

Lisa, Kat and Jayant

ISSUE 01 | ISSUE 02

• Image: Amar Saeed, Pixelated Reality

Pushcart (2018) Update

Updates

So to begin with, your little e-magazine here has brought forth its second issue with quite a success, but we had left something a little missing for you — the Featured Poems(s) segment of Issue 02, particularly; and we’ve readied ourselves to show you what we’ve got.

The Featured Poems this time come up from Kathryn Maris’s third collection The House with Only an Attic and a Basement (Penguin, 2018). We’re sure you’ll those as much as (or more than) we did, but never lesser!

Read her featured poems, School Run, and Jesus with Cigarette, here!!!

As for the Pushcart Prize, as the title suggests, let’s tell you that we’ve nominated six items (as is the rule) for the Pushcart Prize, and those are —

from Issue 01:

the nominations

from Issue 02:

With particular thanks to Sylvia Schwartz for helping with posting the nominations to the committee, without whom, obviously, the nominations would never be possible.

With your continued support, we also hope to keep nominating for numerous prizes further.

Regards,

Bold + Italic