Online Features 

Cover Artist: Kurt Solmssen

Born in Pennslyvania, Philadelphia, Kurt Solmssen attended the Pennslyvania Academy of Fine Arts on scholarship before graduating from the University of Pennslyvania with a BFA in 1986. Featured in the George Bills Gallery in New York and the San Juan Islands Museum of Art, Kurt continues to pursue his passion for art in Catamaran’s Winter 2024 issue.

“Solmssen’s paintings feel like a cross between Edward Hopper and Fairfield Porter, but that’s not to say that his work is derivative. Solmssen brings his own fresh eye and perspective to the subjects and landscapes he paints.” - Meg Daly, Season of Light, American Art Collector Magazine, 2023

Interview: Josip Novakovich

To preview Catherine Segurson’s interview with Josip Novakovich click on the title below:

Josip novakovich Interview

Josip Novakovich emigrated from Croatia to the United States at the age of twenty. He has published a dozen books, including a novel, April Fool’s Day (Harper, 2004), which has been translated into ten languages, five story collections (Infidelities [Harper Perennial, 2005], Yolk [Graywolf Press, 1995], Salvation and Other Disasters [Graywolf Press, 1998], Heritage of Smoke [Dzanc Books, 2017], and Tumbleweed [Esplanade Books, 2017]), and three collections of narrative essays, as well as two books of practical criticism. His work was anthologized in Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize, and O. Henry Prize Stories. He has received the Whiting Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, the Ingram Merrill Award, and an American Book Award, and in 2013 he was a Man Booker International Award finalist. He has taught at Penn State, University of Cincinnati, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and now teaches creative writing at Concordia University in Montreal. His most recent novel, Rubble of Rubles, was published in December of 2022 by Dzanc Books. To preview selected poetry, fiction, and nonfiction features click on the title below:

Fiction: Suzanne Zipperer

Beyond the Ice

Suzanne Zipperer has always been a writer between community work, raising children, making a living, being a friend, and all the other excuses she uses to avoid writing. Zipperer lives in northeastern Wisconsin on her family farm. She doesn’t farm; it’s more work than writing. She has published many pieces of nonfiction, a couple of poems, and several short stories linked from her Facebook page. Her story “Shaken” was short-listed for Wisconsin People & Ideas fiction contest. After a nearly twenty-year hiatus from fiction, Zipperer revisited her novel, “How We Got Here,” and is looking for a publisher. This story is from a collection she is working on about older men.

Nonfiction: Patrice Vecchione

Meatloaf: Lessons from childhood

Patrice Vecchione’s most recent book, My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice: A Guide to Writing Poetry & Speaking Your Truth (Seven Stories Press) appeared in 2020. Mar- celo Hernandez Castillo said it “gives us endless ways to access our creative selves.” Her other nonfiction books include Step into Nature: Nurturing Imagination and Spirit in Everyday Life (Beyond Words/Simon & Schuster, 2015) and Writing and the Spiritual Life: Finding Your Voice by Looking Within (McGraw-Hill, 2001). She’s the author of two collections of poetry, Territory of Wind (Many Names Press) and The Knot Untied (Palanquin Press/Community Publishing). She is also an editor of many anthologies, including Ink Knows No Borders: Poems of the Immigrant and Refugee Experience (Seven Stories Press, 2019).

Poetry: Rosa Lane

The Daguerreotype (Camera Obscura)

Rosa Lane is the author of four poetry collections: Called Back, selected by Tupelo Press from the 2022 Summer Open Reading Period, forthcoming 2024; Chouteau’s Chalk (University of Georgia Press, 2019), winner of the 2017 Georgia Poetry Prize; Tiller North (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2016), winner of the 2017 National Indie Excellence Award; and Roots and Reckonings (Granite Press, East, 1980), a chapbook. Her most recent poems have appeared in Five Points, Massachusetts Review, Nimrod, Ploughshares, RHINO Poetry, River Heron Review, The Southampton Review, and elsewhere. This poem is the winner of the 2023 Morton Marcus Poetry Prize for a single poem.

Translation:

Ana Maria Shua
translated from the Spanish by Steven J. Stewart

War

Ana María Shua (1951–) has published over eighty books in numerous genres: novels, short stories, poetry, drama, children’s fiction, books of humor and Jewish folklore, anthologies, film scripts, journalistic articles, and essays. She has received numerous national and international awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, and is one of Argentina’s premier living writers.

Steven J. Stewart has been awarded two Literature Fellowships for Translation Projects by the National Endowment for the Arts (2005 and 2015). He has published two books of the short fiction of Argentinian Ana María Shua: Microfictions (University of Nebraska Press, 2009) and Without a Net (Hanging Loose Press, 2012).

Issue 43 Winter 2024

Cover & Table of Contents