The Fall 2008 edition of SHARK REEF (www.sharkreef.org) is leaner than some past issues but it’s meaty and provocative. You’ll find fiction from Jill McCabe Johnson and Clark Gilbert, Lorna Reese’s memoir on how she came to the islands, and poems from Julia Klimek, Lin McNulty and Lewis Spaulding.
McCabe and McNulty are from Orcas Island, Gilbert and Spaulding are from San Juan, and Reese, Klimek, and featured visual artist Summer Moon Scriver hail from Lopez. “Shaw Island, where are you?” wonders Reese, who is also editor and co-founder of the online literary magazine.
Co-editor for the fall edition was Stephen Adams, Lopez writer, reader, and lover of poetry. Adams’s short fiction has been published in a literary magazines, including The Panhandler and The Armchair Aesthete. It was also rejected by some of the finest publications in the English language.
The art being featured in this issue is stunning black-and-white photographs from a book coming out this fall from Iris Graville and Summer Moon Scriver, called “Hands at Work: Portraits and Profiles of People Who Work with Their Hands.”
Last fall, SHARK REEF opened submissions to all San Juan Islands writers and began publishing twice yearly. Since then, close to a score of new writers have had their worked featured in the magazine.
“It’s been exciting to see SHARK REEF evolving and gratifying to find new San Juan Islands writers and get their stories out there. We even had a reading on Orcas recently, at Darvill’s Books in Eastsound. Called SHARK REEF Night on Orcas, the event played to a full house and gave five poets an opportunity to read their own work to their community. We hope to be able to do more readings like this on all the islands,” said Reese.
SHARK REEF’s reason for being is to give serious San Juan Islands writers an opportunity to publish their work. Earlier issues of SHARK REEF can be found in the archives section of the website.
Submission deadline for the Spring 2008 issue is December 31. See the website for submission guidelines and get submissions in now!
SHARK REEF publishes two issues a year, one in the spring and one in the fall. Submission deadlines are June 30 and December 31. They consider solicited and unsolicited material, published previously or unpublished, fiction, non-fiction prose, poetry and dramatic writing. The online magazine also features artwork by local visual artists in each issue.
