Words by Julian Drury
Image by Gretchen Gales

When one thinks of New Orleans, Mardi Gras is perhaps the first phrase that comes to mind. Carnival season has come to define New Orleans more than anything else. Millions of people flock to the city every year to take part in the festivities. For the tourists that visit New Orleans for Mardi Gras, nothing but excitement and revelry is said about the holiday. Many locals, however, have developed a strikingly different attitude toward Carnival season. For the locals of New Orleans, Mardi Gras is not a period where the good times roll. Rather, it is a season of unease and exhaustion. 
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By The Editors

We love videopoems here at Quail Bell and have published a lot of them in the past. That's why we're fascinated with other artists who are using this unique medium to communicate their art. We spoke with Dave Bonta of Moving Poems Weekly Digest to hear more about the unorthodox way videopoetry is changing the way we experience the classic art form:
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By J. Ray Paradiso

So, I had a few pops after work an’ was feelin’ loosey-goosey.
 
Waddlin’ on d’lift to my pond on 12 + 1 atop Chicago’s DaftView, I Hello’d a Monroe blond, wound tight, on her way UP.
                                                                                                     
“Do ya smell bug spray?” I quacked.
 
“I think it’s my perfume,” she nada’d; then, bolted like a shootin’ star/let
on Aphrodite’s floor.
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A friend once asked me, “How do you know when you’re being jerky?”
 
“When it hurts,” I advised.

“That’s brilliant,” he said.

Ouch!

By Rosemarie O’Connor
Capital News Service

RICHMOND, Virginia — Tension filled the room Wednesday as a House subcommittee voted to kill a bill that would have let localities decide whether to remove or modify Confederate monuments in their jurisdictions.
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By Madison Manske
Capital News Service

RICHMOND, Virginia — An exhibit opening Saturday at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts boasts an American collection of 17 th -century acclaimed artist Wenceslaus Hollar – that rivals only four other collections worldwide.

By The Editors

​Tragedy Queens is an anthology of stunning work by writers across genres, including Quail Bell founder Christine Sloan Stoddard. The anthology was edited and curated by Leza Cantoral and we were glad to have the opportunity to chat with Cantoral about Sylvia Plath, Lana del Rey, and balking against societal expectations as the anthology nears its one year anniversary. (Okay, the interview was all over e-mail, but welcome to the digital age.) 
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​Visalia, Tulare County, 1993

When I was ten years old my father purchased a '76 Cutlass Supreme. His used ride was not in mint-condition, nor worthy of praise or car show drool. The Cutlass was a third-generation Oldsmobile coupe that differed in style and size from the original model. My father’s new ride was spacious compared to our '89 Suzuki Swift. ​
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Words by Turner Youngblood Smith
Art by Frankeweiler
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Images by Jenny Parks

The Red for Ed march and rally saw teachers, and supporters, from across the state walk from the edge of Virginia Commonwealth University's campus to the state capitol in Richmond, Virginia where the crowd lobbied for fully funded public education.

"Virginia is $9300 behind the national average in teacher salaries," said Jenny Parks of the reasons many attended the march. "​There were teachers and supporters as far as I could see in both directions. And lots of great signs!"

By Christine Sloan Stoddard

My vote for the warmest and least pretentious literary reading series in New York City goes to Big Words, Etc., co-hosted by Jess Martinez and Stacey Kahn. Everyone is welcome and there's no pissing contest involved. No MFA? No book? No publishing credits anywhere at all? No problem. People come to Big Words because they want to hear good stories told by a variety of voices. The audience even gets to vote on the theme for the following reading. Most recently, I read at Big Words on January 9th and the theme was "seething." When Jess and Stacey announced that the seventh anniversary of the reading series was approaching this spring, I thought the time was right for a Quail Bell interview. Luckily (though unsurprisingly), they obliged. What follows are my questions with answers from both Jess and Stacey:
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By Ren Martinez

There are places that spill magic into the world, and the people who live there, breathing it in, inevitably become magic, too. Cenote City (CLASH Books) by Monique Quintana is a story about such a place and such a people. Rich in cultural heritage and simmering with colorful imagery, Cenote City is poetry-turned-prose, exploring the realities of poverty, grief, and oppression within the colorful spinnings of a fairy tale, too beautiful and sharp not to be true.
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By Kathleen Shaw
Capital News Service

By Ghia Vitale

Nothing Is Okay by Rachel Wiley might be the most electrifying feminist poetry book I’ve ever read. Rachel Wiley is a fat activist/body positive activist, performer, and poet from Columbus, Ohio. This poetry reflects on her thoughts and experiences related to being biracial, fat, and queer. I was happy to find that reading her poetry is as exhilarating as I imagine her spoken word performances are.

By Saffeya Ahmed
Capital News Service

By The Editors

Robyn Campbell​ was the first to have faith in founder Christine Sloan Stoddard's chapbook Mi Abuela, Queen of Nightmares. The chapbook was the budding section of Stoddard's full collection Water for the Cactus Woman (Spuyten Duvil, 2018), recently highlighted in the Poetry Foundation's news section. We wanted to give back to the press that played a significant part of the collection's journey.

By The Editors

​In a surprising and devastating blow early this morning, the famed HuffPost Opinion section abruptly announced its shutdown and layoffs of all of its staff. 

By The Editors

We like to look within our pool of regular contributors and give them a chance to tell their story, too. We chatted with our very own staff writer Leah Mueller about her writing process, ageism in the writing community, as well as what drove her to commit to writing past society's limits. 
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By Sanchali Singh
Capital News Service

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Chef José Andrés stood outside of the Pennsylvania Avenue World Central Kitchen location for hours Wednesday, welcoming furloughed federal employees into the cafe to get food and supplies to help feed them and their families.

World Central Kitchen, a registered non-profit organization, does more than just hand out hot meals. Partnering with organizations like Martha’s Table, Verizon and Pepco, the resource center provides federal workers in need with fresh produce, diapers, pet food and bill payment consultations.
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By The Editors

The deadline for the MFA Creative Writing programs with the latest admissions deadlines is February 1st. OK, fine, you'll see a handful that accept applications as late as March 1st or 15th, but they're rare birds. We are firmly in freak-out season for MFA Creative Writing hopefuls. According to a 2017 LitHub article (more like a poem by the numbers), an average of 20,000 (!!!) MFA Creative Writing applications are submitted each season. Many of the writers who get accepted and end up enrolling are not straight out of college either. The average age of a full-time MFA student is 27.3 years old. But as LitHub Amy Brady demonstrates with her cheekily culled statistics, you don't need to have an MFA in Creative Writing to get your books published. Read "MFA By The Numbers, On the Eve of AWP" here (especially if you're thinking of going to AWP 2019 in Portland, Oregon, like our friends at CLASH Books.)

By Luna Lark

I am worth more than that essay due tomorrow. Or that poem that literary magazines keep rejecting. Or that chapbook of mine that no press seems to want (at least not enough because the rejection letters are so achingly kind.) I am worth more than the marketing plan I still have to write for a client who has forgotten that I am human. I am worth more than the social media strategy I submitted yesterday that a client has not yet approved. I am worth more than the package of blog posts a client approved but has not yet paid me for. I am worth more than every letter, every word, every paragraph, every page that I write because I long to write and then those that I write because I must survive.
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By The Editors

We're ecstatic to see Monique Quintana's review of our founder Christine Sloan Stoddard's book, Water for the Cactus Woman, in Luna Luna Magazine today. Here's how it begins:

By The Editors

Brrr!! Are you hibernating? It's time to get out of the house! Insight Magazine, run by Fokus, the NYC-based non-profit empowering 18-29 year-olds through creativity, is having a party in Brooklyn on January 26th. This publication, which we recently mentioned in our feature on Cheryl Lee Bowers, is turning 14 years old. Here's an excerpt from Fokus's email invite:

By M. Alouette

In some ways, I live large. Those tend to be the ways that don't cost money. In most other ways—the ways that involve services and material goods—my life is much humbler. I am middle class and earn the median income for my area, which is predominantly lower-middle class in a very expensive city. I have no debt in large part because I live within my means. I'm also lucky to be in relatively good health and to have no serious accidents or catastrophes. Or least nothing recently. Everything really bad is far enough in the past that I've been able to re-build and move on. Again, I'm lucky. But I've made some of my own luck; with that luck comes guilt. I'm frugal in most realms and I prioritize my spending, which means I cannot always buy the most ethical products. To have control over my financial security, I buy all of my cosmetics and toiletries at the dollar store. I don't deny myself my self-care rituals. I just groom and primp on the cheap. If I regularly bought department store, organic store, and salon brands, I would not have the level of financial security that I have now. ​​I'd probably have credit card debt. After all, the average U.S. household has almost $7,000 worth of credit card debt. That could just as easily be me. With that debt, I couldn't honor my civic duties to the extent I do now.

By The Editors

We're always hearing about rad art events in Philly and Pittsburgh, so it's encouraging to hear when other parts of Pennsylvania have their own exciting happenings. One on our radar right now is "Tear It Down," an art exhibition featuring Latinx artists at The Alternative Gallery in Allentown. That includes our previously featured painter/photographer Helen Sánchez Stoddard. Here's the official language describing the gallery's open house for the show on January 31st:
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​By Caitlin Morris
Capital News Service

RICHMOND, Virginia — Hundreds of political activists from across Virginia gathered in Richmond on Monday to lobby in favor of driving rights for immigrants, a higher minimum wage and voting rights for felons.
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