Issue #68

Summer is upon us, and for many this means warmer weather, vacations and summer breaks, with flora and fauna abundant. At Mud Season, this means another issue is published as we appreciate the changing seasons and are grateful to share such meaningful work. For Issue #68, our featured artist is Danielle Benvenuto, an artist originally from New York and now living in Berlin, Germany, with a portfolio of visual pieces representing body, form, and shape. We hope these visual selections merge with and complement these fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction pieces of Issue #68. 

Our poetry staff selected Casey Harloe for this issue’s featured poet, a writer bringing a strong voice and robust imagery to this issue. With a strong, devastating anchor that threads itself throughout the poems, Harloe writes, “i’ve been hunted not for my smile, / but flesh.” These poems are not to be missed in this issue.

Barbara Ridley, author of our creative nonfiction piece “Getting Up There,” tears open new ways of viewing life, aging, and change with the turn of each proverbial page. A moving, grounded essay, this piece engages with the challenges and joys of aging as a woman, complete with exciting descriptions of bookcases, a robust writing career, and thoughtful lapses into biology. 

Our selected fiction piece is actually a series of flash fiction pieces by Helena Paoli—a first for Mud Season. These pieces explore the interconnected nature of female friendships through several different micro narratives. “She would never leave me,” writes Paoli in one piece, testing fate and mortality.

At Mud Season, we’re committed to publishing emerging and established artists who deafeningly challenge what it means to be human and an artist in this day and age. Please be sure to check back next month when our interviews with these writers and artists will be published on our site. In the meantime, we’re left asking: how does change, aging, and an active artistic voice and vision inform us during this time? May summer unveil what’s next, with positive and elegant growth.