Monday, October 17, 2011

Open Reading Period for Redux & Mark Lewandowski's Essay, "Tourist Season at Auschwitz"

I’m pleased to announce that Redux will be holding an open submission period from October 24 to November 19.

Redux is an online journal focused exclusively on previously published fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction.  To be considered for the journal, your piece must be:

--previously published in a literary journal (not a student-only publication)
--not elsewhere online
--not part of a book
--a piece for which you retain publication rights
--accessible in a .doc, .docx, or .rtf file

There’s no payment for publication, but your work will find a new audience and live a long, happy life on the internet.  If your work is accepted, you will be asked to provide a short piece discussing the story of writing your piece (a la Best American Short Stories) and a bio with as many links as you’d like.

You can read the full submission guidelines here:  http://reduxlitjournal.blogspot.com/p/submission-guidelines-for-redux.html

And be sure to check out today’s new post on Redux, “Tourist Season at Auschwitz,” a moving piece of creative nonfiction by Mark Lewandowski that originally appeared in The Gettysburg Review:

“At Birkenau stands a mound unlike those dotting the countryside that Poles have built in remembrance of past generals and statesmen.  You will not see picknickers lay out blankets on it or watch their children roll down the slopes.  The Birkenau mound is a mass grave for Soviet soldiers killed by the Nazis.  The bodies were packed so tightly together that they are still decomposing, and when it rains now, almost fifty years later, human grease rises to the surface and fans out through the grass in a brilliant rainbow of color.

“Not far from the mound lies what looks like an ordinary pond.  Bend over and peer into its depths and you might be surprised not to see a minnow or two, at least, in the water.  Take a stick.  Dip it into the water and movie it in circles.  Soon, a whirlpool of gray ash will funnel to the surface.  This pond is only one repository for the remains of the Jews.

“A Polish actor told me that these were just a couple of the sights in the Auschwitz complex most tourists miss.  I was with two American women I had met in a youth hostel in Kraków.  This was the summer of 1990.”

Work-in-Progress

DC-area author Leslie Pietrzyk explores the creative process and all things literary.