Some stories are just too amazing not to be told. In Judy Batalion’s Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters In Hitler’s Ghettos, she uncovers the incredible stories of brave young women during the Holocaust. In the midst of horror, these women banded together and formed a deadly militia in which they called themselves, the “Ghetto Girls.” The book begins with a powerful and heartbreaking quotation taken from a song about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and written by a young Jewish girl before her death: “With graves on street corners, Will outlive her enemies, Will see the light of days.”
The women in Light of Days had unwavering courage that allowed them to choose the more difficult and honorable path, to fight the Nazi regime.…
Matty Bennett’s debut poetry collection, What Are The Men Writing in the Sugar?, was published by Rebel Satori Press last April. His poems have appeared in Juked, Watershed Review, Cardiff Review, and many other journals. He earned his MFA in poetry from Virginia Tech. Currently, he works as a high school ESL English teacher and coach in Providence, RI.
In this episode of Cover to Cover with . . ., Bennett chats with Editor-in-Chief Jordan Blum about his writing; his life as a student and teacher; and much more.
Brandi Spering is the Assistant CNF Editor at Schuylkill Valley Journal Online. Her first book, This I Can Tell You (Perennial Press, 2021), is a poetic memoir that examines the fragility of memory. Other works can be found in super/natural: art and fiction for the future, Forum Magazine, Superfroot Magazine, Artblog, and more.
In this episode of Cover to Cover with . . ., Editor-in-Chief Jordan Blum chats with Sperling about the creation and publication of her book, reconciling trauma, finding catharsis through creativity, and much more!
Carol Van Den Hende is a speaker and author whose award-winning novel, Goodbye, Orchid (which was named a 2020 Favorite Book by The Write Review), deals with themes of love, loss, and disability. The story is inspired by combat-wounded veterans and centers on a wounded entrepreneur named Phoenix Walker who questions who he is post-accident and how he’ll continue a relationship with a woman named Orchid. A portion of profits is being donated to charities including USA Cares.
In this episode of Cover to Cover with . . ., Editor-in-Chief Jordan Blum speaks with Van Den Hende about the inspirations and processes that went into creating Goodbye, Orchid, as well as her interest in Jack White’s music, her strategies for marketing her work, and much more!…
Within the industrial design world, Eva Zeisel is a legend, but I had no idea when I began working for her. It was 2000, I was 24, and had recently moved to Manhattan. I responded to an ad in the Village Voice that promised $12 an hour for an administrative assistant to a designer. The next day, I took the number 1 train to 116th & Broadway and entered her large, cluttered apartment for an interview. Immediately inside were floor-to-ceiling overstuffed bookcases. “Come in dah-ling,” I followed the voice through a maze of tables dotted with lamps, vases, and bowls (which I’d learn were all her own designs) to find an ancient-looking woman. With fluffy white hair and cloudy eyes, Eva sat in a pink and gold wingback chair.…
My reticent leanings began at a young age. I was about eight years old when my younger sister died from leukemia. Life for us before that was idyllic. Our father worked for a multinational oil company and we’d lived abroad starting soon after I was born, with all the benefits bestowed upon expatriates. My sister, Gail, was born in Jamacia, which for us in the 1950s was a paradise, very safe and very British. Gail’s cancer put an end to all of that. We returned to the United States.
Gail’s death was my fault, as far as I knew. I’d failed to do what a big brother was supposed to do: keep her safe. Sixty years later, I’ve not convinced myself that isn’t true. And I don’t expect I ever will.…
“Maybe it’s just our generation, but there’s always been this constant pressure to actively work towards success, money, or fame… There’s this fear that if you haven’t made a name for yourself by the age of twenty, you’ll never be successful,” says a member of Kindergarten Breakfast, a highschool-based satire band, “And when you’re working with the arts, that pressure is even more extreme. You have to be amazing. You have to be the best. You have to be something the world’s never seen, or it feels like you’re nothing at all. It’s absolutely dreadful on the mind—it makes you feel worthless, it makes you feel guilty if you’re not always working, working, working . . . and it’s exhausting. Oh boy, is it exhausting.”
