June News

A PUBLIC SPACE NO. 33

An issue of choreographies. With Camille Rankine, Oak Morse, Mark Hage, Jorie Graham, Nina Ferraz, and more. Order your copy, or subscribe, here.

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FIRECRACKER AWARD FINALIST
SMALL SCALE SINNERS by Mahreen Sohail

Congratulations to Mahreen Sohail and her debut story collection, Small Scale Sinners (A Public Space Books), which is a finalist for the CLMP Firecracker Award for Fiction. Presented by the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP), the award celebrates independently published books and magazines that make a significant contribution to our literary culture. Mahreen's story "Basic Training" appeared in A Public Space No. 24.

Winners will be announced in a virtual ceremony on June 25 at 6 PM ET. Register here.

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SUBMIT
June 1 - July 1
A Public Space is accepting submissions to the magazine in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. This reading period, for the first time, we have a separate category for translations. This month's Public Access featuring Calvin Gimpelevich, Tawanda Mulalu, Arinze Ifeakandu, Therese Stanton, and Arthur Rimbaud gives a sense of some of our current interests. Guidelines for submitting your work are available here.

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WORKSHOPS
Calvin Gimpelevich
Bodies in Space
Wednesdays, July 8-29, 7:00-9:00pm ET (4 sessions)
Online
How is the physical world depicted in literature? What does it mean for different characters to engage with buildings? What does place mean to them? How can we describe the sensory experiences of physical space in dynamic ways? Bodies in Space is a generative workshop diving into the ways we think and write about the physical world. Over the course of this four-week workshop we will look at both theories of how bodies move through space and examples of different ways writers describe, or move characters through, the physical world. Register here.

Chloe Garcia Roberts
Translation as Cosmovision
Mondays, July 13-August 17, 7:00–9:00pm ET (6 sessions)
Online
What strategies can the translator use to recreate the relationship between an author's voice and their language? What role do the translator's impressions and reading play? Join Chloe Garcia Roberts for a six-week workshop to explore what makes for a successful translation of a collection of writing (be it poetry or prose). Along the way we will also look at some practical techniques for a cosmological translation approach such as the creation of research maps, lexicons, and real-time translator’s notes. Register here.

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2026 WEEKEND WRITERS' RETREAT
Applications are open!
Join us at our third annual Weekend Writers’ Retreat, presented in partnership with Kaatsbaan Cultural Park from Thursday, October 8 to Sunday, October 11, 2026. Nurture new work over a long weekend of generative writing workshops, led by Jo Ann Beard, Mary-Beth Hughes, Tracy O'Neill, Robert Sullivan, Peter Trachtenberg, and Ada Zhang. Mingle with fellow writers, editors, and artists between literary talks hosted by Samantha Hunt, Amitava Kumar, and others and during evening events. See more.

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PUBLIC ACCESS
This month's Public Access–work from the magazine's archive, made free and open to all–was selected by Sabrina Pyun, the managing editor at A Public Space.

Selected and Introduced by Sabrina Pyun
Five works of reckoning for pride month. What becomes out of lack or difference? What is born of confrontation—with a condition? with estrangement? with a person? with inspiration? with anguish? The following pieces may not answer these questions, but rather they explore and invite the reader to experience them. 

Eye and Mind
Calvin Gimpelevich
Aphantasia comes from the Greek phantasía (imagination), its “a” conferring a lack. The most frequent poetic description of aphants is people for whom the mind’s eye is blind. Continue reading.

My Sister Likes Girls and Does Not Return for My Mother’s Fiftieth
Tawanda Mulalu
My phone’s wet. My parents buzz.
The leaves are red

and falling now. Hadn’t seen that
before either. I’m always surprised by rain.
Continue reading.

God’s Children Are Little Broken Things
Arinze Ifeakandu
Later, you searched on Google. You had said the word in your head, gay, and had typed it. And now that you needed someone to talk to so badly, there was nobody who would certainly understand. Continue reading.

Is That You, Walt Whitman?
Therese Stanton
There is no reality, he thought. The most incredible feeling of peace washed through him, and he felt an unseen hand trace the outline of his body. A witty touch. A faithful touch. A flash of euphoria. Continue reading.

The Stolen Heart
Arthur Rimbaud 
translated from the French by Lucy Sante
O passing hocus-pocus waves,
Take my heart, that it be washed.
Stiff and hard and soldierly
Their insults have perverted it!
Continue reading.

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NEWS FROM APS FRIENDS AND CONTRIBUTORS
The Patient Wait of the Stones, a memoir by APS contributor Antonio Romani, is out now from Galpón Press. The book chronicles his late-in-life move to a tiny, little-known medieval borgo in northwest Tuscany.

On June 13, join APS contributing editor Annie Coggan for a workshop on modernist smocking at Fiddlestyx, a Russell Janis space located in the Berkshires.

APS instructor J. Mae Barizo will present a workshop performance of her opera DRIFT at Opera Saratoga on June 21 and June 26. DRIFT examines motherlands, migration, and memory.