The Hollins Critic

A leading American literary journal, The Hollins Critic enters its 47th year in 2010 with essays on writers like Susan Stewart by Lisa Williams, Carrie Brown by Mariflo Stephens, Ronald Firbank by Peter Dempsey, and Cecilia Woloch by Lynnell Edwards.

The Hollins Critic, published five times a year, presents the first serious surveys of the whole bodies of contemporary writers’ work, with complete checklists. In past issues, you’ll find essays on such writers as John Engels (by David Huddle), James McCourt (by David Rollow), Jane Hirshfield (by Jeanne Larsen), Edwidge Danticat (by Denise Shaw), Vern Rutsala (by Lewis Turco), Sarah Arvio (by Lisa Williams) and Milton Kessler (by Liz Rosenberg).

The Hollins Critic also offers brief reviews of books you want to know about and poetry by poets both new and established. And every issue has a cover portrait by Susan Avishai M.A. '02.

Jason Shinder December 2009 Critic	Dara Wier October 2009 Critic	Christine Garren April 2009 Critic	Kelly Cherry February 2009 Critic

June 2010 Issue Excerpt

"Here, There, Where: The Shifting Nature of David Huddle’s Appalachia"
By Casey Clabough

[A]fter all, the great majority of people are destined to be, in some sense, provincials—and so why not make them good provincials, not provincials by prejudice, but knowing something about their own province for good or for bad, and, therefore, better able to function also as citizens of the world? — George Stewart

Much as that mountain culture along the New River near a village called Ivanhoe in southwest Virginia has troubled and does trouble him, David Huddle can’t seem to help but return to it again and again in his work, repeatedly conjuring up that small portion of hilly rural Virginia in print using a number of fictionalized names, including, most recently, Glory River: the title of a 2008 volume of poems which very well may prove his best collection of verse—perhaps his best book altogether—through the first decade of the twenty-first century.

"Professor Nelson can’t get free of Stevens Creek, Virginia," declares the first line of Huddle’s second novel, La Tour Dreams of the Wolf Girl, ascribing yet another name to the same basic region, while also suggesting the protagonist’s binding fate—debilitating psychological prison sentence at its worst, muse’s blessing at best—is true enough for Professor Nelson’s creator as well. And is this not as it should be, especially for writers? Much as we yearn to escape our formative places, occasionally fooling ourselves into believing we have succeeded, they surface from time to time, or, to regionalize a cliché, come back to haint us in ways so subtle we frequently fail to understand or even discern them. Fortunately, however, the relationships between formative places and artists remain a little easier to ponder and trace as a result of those created bodies of work which possess the capacity to serve as conduits or translators between the two. Paradoxically then, many of the qualities David Huddle and writers of similar upbringings—myself included—tend to shut out, lament with embarrassment and/or outright despise concerning their parochial points of origin—meanness, savagery, patriarchy, violence, countless manifestations of numbing small-mindedness, a smothering overriding xenophobia—often function as or among the most powerful catalytic variables in the workings of a writer’s craft. After all, our bodies have digested and continue to carry the trace elements of the soil, fauna, air, animals—as well as the often unconscious psychological impacts of sound, weather, topography, and human interaction—long after we have departed. A connection remains, some of the dimensions of which tend to make our places almost indistinguishable from ourselves: to the extent we might even be known to others and ourselves by the same names. It is no fiction at all, for instance, that about five miles northwest of Ivanhoe—in the shadow of Raven Cliff, just off state route 619, along Cripple Creek—there is a place on the map consisting of little more than a scattering of homes called "Huddle."

Cover portrait © Susan Avishai 2010

Writer's Guidelines

The Hollins Critic reads poetry submissions from September 1 to December 15 each year. Poetry must be submitted to The Hollins Critic using the link below. There are no rules about style or subject. One to five poems may be submitted.

The Critic pays $25.00 per poem, upon publication. All rights revert to the author following publication, but if the poem is reprinted elsewhere, the Critic should be credited.

Besides poetry, the Critic publishes an essay on a contemporary author in each issue, and book reviews as space permits. The Critic does not accept unsolicited essays. Rarely do we accept unsolicited book reviews. When a review is published, the author receives a copy of the issue, and two copies are sent to the book’s publisher. Only poetry may be submitted through the link below.

The Critic does not publish fiction.

Click here to submit to the Critic.

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