We’re pleased to announce the terrific judges lined up for our 2010 contests:

*The A. David Schwartz Fiction Prize: Benjamin Percy, author of The Wilding and Refresh, Refresh

*The Beau Boudreaux Poetry Prize: Quraysh Ali Lansana, author of They Shall Run: Harriet Tubman Poems and Southside Rain

*The David B. Saunders Prize for Creative Nonfiction: Deb Olin Unferth, author of Vacation and Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War (forthcoming Feb. 2011).

Each contest features a prize of $1,000 and publication, with a postmark deadline of December 31, 2010. You could probably use the money–why not check out the details?

Hearty congratulations to former contributor Adam Schuitema, whose short story collection Freshwater Boys was recently released by Delphinium Books.  One of the collection’s eleven stories, “The Feel of Meridians,” first appeared in cream city review 27.2.  Why not check out Adam’s website or pick up a copy of his work today?  We can pretty much guarantee you’ll enjoy it.

This short story can be found on pages 138-149 of our Spring 2009 issue.

Gyrovague

“Fourth, and finally, there are the monks called gyrovagues, who spend their entire lives drifting from region to region, staying as guests for three or four days in different monasteries. Always on the move, they never settle down, and are slaves to their own wills and gross appetites. In every way they are worse than sarabaites. It is better to keep silent than to speak of all these and their disgraceful way of life. Let us pass them by, then, and with the help of the Lord, proceed to draw up a plan for the strong kind, the cenobites” (Fry, 32).

The monk who wanders too much, he is slight with blonde hair and a beard and a mustache and eyebrows to match. He is very smart, you see right away. Something about the face. The way he uses his hands when he talks, the words he chooses well. He is from a monastery in Maine. He joined two years ago. He wears a green wool sweater with a hole in the elbow. His eyes are blue, and he has this cunning smile that reels you in. You watch his dimples as he speaks. You watch his lips.

Some monks have Brooks Brothers shirts, he says.

Any gift I receive has to be approved by the monks, he says. They decide if I can use it or not.

And who approves the Brooks Brothers? you say.

He says, That’s a mystery.
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