Waterwheel Review

Literature Without Labels

  • Waterwheel Review
  • About
  • Masthead
  • Submit
  • Fancy Business
  • Contributors
  • Archives

January 1, 2023 By Suzanne Farrell Smith

From the Editors | Issue #23

January 2023

From the Editors

No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.  —Virginia Woolf

Editors Cheryl Wilder, Suzanne Farrell Smith, and Claire Guyton

We’re harboring ghosts in Issue 23. The ghost of a dead sister, an alternative life, a lost ambition. We love starting the year with a collection of ekphrastics that make us thrill to being alone in the quiet mystery of what happens next: Terri Brown-Davidson on Hilma af Klint’s “Self Portrait,” in which a mystic yearns to become geometry at its purest; Mark Katrinak on Edward Hopper’s “Hotel Room,” where destinations fail; and DB Jonas on Kafka’s character “Odradek,” who lives, says Jonas, “where the sounds of words call to one another across impossible distances.” We can think of no better line to ring in the New Year than that.

—Claire, Suzanne, Cheryl 


Join Our Growing Community

We’re in our third season here at Waterwheel Review, and we couldn’t be happier. But we have big dreams. Right now we have two ways—in addition to being an author or maker—to be a part of our labor of love.

1. Sign up for our newsletter.

You’ll know when each issue goes live and learn news about WWR and our authors.

*We promise never to sell or share your information. We hate spam as much as you do. For more info, read our full Privacy Policy.

2. Support literature without labels.

All expenses are out of pocket. Any help goes to our submissions manager and media. We would LOVE to one day pay authors, hold contests, speak at conferences… (slow down, deep breath). Thank you for supporting literature and art!

Support WWR

Filed Under: From the Editors

October 1, 2022 By Suzanne Farrell Smith

From the Editors | Issue #20

October 2022

From the Editors

Beauty is a defiance of authority. — William Carlos Williams

editors suzanne smith, cheryl wilder, and claire guyton pose in fun hats and accessories

We’re exploring beauty and loss in Issue 20. Anne Myles pushes hard in “An Origin Story” on the relationship between truth and beauty; when is truth forever ugly, she asks, in a story about loss. “Bloom” is a master class by Elana Wolff on how to weave beauty from a meditation on the details of ordinary life—“We’re all just passing through here,” she says, so let’s not grow weary of gazing at trees. The portrait of “Sarah” from Christina Rauh Fishburne is beautiful, too, and a paean to the loss of what might have been. Each of these three pieces makes loveliness from something broken. Beauty as defiance.

—Claire, Suzanne, Cheryl 


Join Our Growing Community

We’re in our third season here at Waterwheel Review, and we couldn’t be happier. But we have big dreams. Right now we have two ways—in addition to being an author or maker—to be a part of our labor of love.

1. Sign up for our newsletter.

You’ll know when each issue goes live and learn news about WWR and our authors.

*We promise never to sell or share your information. We hate spam as much as you do. For more info, read our full Privacy Policy.

2. Support literature without labels.

All expenses are out of pocket. Any help goes to our submissions manager and media. We would LOVE to one day pay authors, hold contests, speak at conferences… (slow down, deep breath). Thank you for supporting literature and art!

Support WWR

Filed Under: From the Editors

April 1, 2022 By Suzanne Farrell Smith

From the Editors | Issue # 17

April 2022

From the Editors

Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words
and everything in the world understands it. —Frances Hodgson Burnett

closeup of three women in separate Zoom screenshots

That was not what I meant at all—this line marks the end of the budding romance in “After Uncle Louie Got Me on Some Nights at the Daily News” by Joe Benevento, a piece about laboring in the act of meaning-making, both in a newspaper’s printing press and with a Bic pen on a pad of paper. “A Brother Is” to love, says Nancy Huggett, but also to lead you down paths of loving that have no answer for disconnection. Her exquisite paean to a sister’s love somehow finds the words. Of birdsong and squawking and chattering “feathery discourse,” Jeff Schiff asks in “Bird Say,” Has to be meaning in it / right? We think there is meaning in it, yes, and Jeff made still more. There are so many beautiful things we understand without words. And then there is so much beautiful art that exists only because we can name things.

—Claire, Suzanne, Cheryl


Join Our Growing Community

We’re just getting started here at Waterwheel Review, and we couldn’t be happier. But we have big dreams. Right now we have two ways—in addition to being an author or maker—to be a part of our labor of love.

1. Sign up for our newsletter.

You’ll know when each issue goes live and learn news about WWR and our authors.

*We promise never to sell or share your information. We hate spam as much as you do. For more info, read our full Privacy Policy.

2. Support literature without labels.

All expenses are out of pocket. Any help goes to our submissions manager and media. We would LOVE to one day pay authors, hold contests, speak at conferences… (slow down, deep breath). Thank you for supporting literature and art!

Support WWR

Filed Under: From the Editors

January 1, 2022 By Suzanne Farrell Smith

From the Editors | Issue #14

January 2022

From the Editors

Truth comes only infrequently and only in flashes. —Pamelyn Casto

screenshot of editors on Zoom call

Truth pushes to the surface from the start of Ron Riekki’s “idiopathic” as well as in “Movement,” by Ace Boggess, two otherwise very different flashes of beauty. The longer “Greenwich Origin Story,” by Joanna Theiss, keeps its truth hidden until the quiet, unspoken end. Each piece signposts radically different human experience, and our companions highlight the contrasts in tone, particularly the two songs. Issue 14 is a game of emotional ping pong. In real life, no thank you. In art? Give me the bounce, the pop, the smash. Give me flight.

—Claire, Suzanne, Cheryl


Join Our Growing Community

We’re just getting started here at Waterwheel Review, and we couldn’t be happier. But we have big dreams. Right now we have two ways—in addition to being an author or maker—to be a part of our labor of love.

1. Sign up for our newsletter.

You’ll know when each issue goes live and learn news about WWR and our authors.

*We promise never to sell or share your information. We hate spam as much as you do. For more info, read our full Privacy Policy.

2. Support literature without labels.

All expenses are out of pocket. Any help goes to our submissions manager and media. We would LOVE to one day pay authors, hold contests, speak at conferences… (slow down, deep breath). Thank you for supporting literature and art!

Support WWR

Filed Under: From the Editors

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • Next Page »
  • Home
  • About
  • Masthead
  • Submit
  • Contributors
  • Sitemap

Copyright © 2020-23 Waterwheel Review · Website ♥ to BornWilder


Read our Privacy and Data Collection Policy

Support WWR