Lit Mag for Emerging Writers Resonates and Sparkles
Dedicated to emerging writers—those who have yet to publish a novel-length work— The Masters Review offers both print and online content. The web version centers on “New Voices,” fiction and nonfiction writers for whom submissions are free. Authors in this category are compensated generously: ten cents per word, up to $200 for accepted pieces. The Masters Review also offers numerous award opportunities throughout the year, which require submission fees, in addition to their annual printed anthology, which features ten writers selected by a guest judge. In her opening note to Volume VI, Editorial Director Sadye Teiser writes that she is “proud to be an editor of a publication that offers a level playing field to writers who are early in their careers.” This is not to say the writers are amateurs. The stories in the current anthology are strong beyond belief, worthy of praise and attention. Their authors might be emerging, but they are already, undeniably, here.
The guest judge of Volume VI is Roxane Gay, a writer of powerful fiction, nonfiction, comics, and criticism, as well as a co-founder of PANK and source of sharp entertainment on Twitter @rgay. In her own note, Gay explains how overused plotlines can lead a reader to develop “emotional calluses,” but also how stories can thrill, make her lose her breath, and remind her that “this is a remarkable time to be alive and reading.” These ten stories, winnowed down from the thirty that were sent her way, are each worthy; some, though, are absolute treasures.
“A Man Stands Tall” by Gabriel Moseley is an enthralling view of a family tested to its absolute limit. Tom and Helen have signed themselves, and their son Ajay, up for a survival show called Homesteaders, set in the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana. They are contractually obligated to live like pioneers for six months, hunting, fishing, farming, providing first aid, and co-existing with two other nearby families: the Dukes and the Atkinsons. Tom had seen it as an opportunity to toughen up his “chubby, fourteen-year-old, videogame-addicted son,” but the Duke brothers, who seemed polite and athletic at first, reveal a sadistic streak that brings out a fiercely paternal side of Tom. Invasive cameramen, the work of surviving, unfamiliar families, and a life thrown upside down are just a few of the complicated elements at play. Moseley’s story is riveting even before the action ratchets up and the story comes to its startling conclusion.
“Out of Our Suffering” by Kasey Thornton is the emotional time bomb of the issue, following Emma, a fifth grader wrestling with a changing body and a complicated family dynamic marred by multiple forms of abuse. Jealous of her father’s hunting dog, Loretta, Emma takes matters into her own hands, a move lost in (or possibly prompting) an avalanche of pain, realization, and ultimately, painfully, a form of freedom. Aided by a sister she’s largely confused for a rival, Emma works her way toward escape. The last paragraph, so terribly sad and beautiful, is stripped-down language at its finest, one of the most moving moments in the issue.
There is a Blue Jay sitting on a branch a few trees away from me and in the morning sun it is the prettiest blue I’ve ever seen in my life, prettier than any paint or crayon or marker could ever be. When my Daddy calls my name again that pretty blue bird gets scared and flies up up and away. I watch until it’s gone and then I take a deep breath and hold it hard in my chest like I am holding the air itself.
In her story “Migrations,” Michele Host delivers the reader into the world of Child Protective Services, following Nikki, a New York transplant from Wisconsin, as she navigates a job that is difficult at the best of times. Eventually, sent to check up on two children who have been missing from school and whose mother, a doctor, has seemed a nervous wreck in public, Nikki discovers the limits of maternal protection, empathizes with it, and considers her own flight from a country in which boys wearing hoodies and boys with toy guns are themselves shot down. “If this country were my patient,” Dr. Harris says, “I’d say it was beyond help. Nothing I can do to save it. But I can save my kids […] I can leave.”
The final story, “Steal Away” by Nicole Cuffy, follows a sharecropping couple as they struggle to meet their quotas and slowly build a secret fund designed to finance their son’s education. Dependent on the relative generosity of Mr. Lysee, whose family had owned her ancestors, Hester’s bonds are camouflaged but far from gone. As a devout Christian, she sees the whole landscape as scripture and struggles to understand why white folks react with violence instead of talk. “But some white folks had something in them that made them hate something that was its own thing,” Hester reasons, “something that could never truly be owned.” Bound to a system only marginally better than slavery, then cut loose of it, Hester must consider a new path, sending her son North, risking the loss of family and the culture of the South that she holds so dear.
Volume VI of The Masters Review is full of stories that resonate deeply, of prose that sparkles, and of authors who illuminate the literary landscape. The six pieces that have gone unmentioned in this review are also commendable; they subvert gender dynamics and expectations, examine the limits of the sibling bond, and claw at their readers with little burnt fingers. This is a worthy publication, doing vital work, preserving and lifting up authors in the early stages of their careers—writers who have earned every page. I imagine it’s difficult not to become a fan and an evangelist after reading The Masters Review, but who’d want to resist?
