Hey there, blog enthusiasts! Here are Flyway’s updates for this week:

1. We’re still looking for your poetry chapbook submissions for our Hazel Lipa Chapbook contest! Get published, win money and prosper.

2. Find our table at AWP. Look for our awesome paper-mache tree, stop by for some freebies,  get information on subscriptions, and tell us who you are — we want to know!

3. Are you an artist or photographer? Looking for a way to get your work out there? Flyway wants YOUR art submissions for the cover of our upcoming Spring 2011 issue. Please send all inquiries to flywaypub@gmail.com! Attach your submission and write a cover letter in the body of the email. Submit before 3/20. We’re especially looking for art with a focus on place and environment — up for all interpretation.

Oh — and, have you found us on twitter? @flyway_journal

Who are your favorite authors?

That’s a hard question. Haruki Murakami, Lorrie Moore, T.C. Boyle, George Saunders, too many to all list here.

What is your favorite book?

No such thing.

What does “place” mean to you?

Place grounds experience and thought. There’s more to the story than what the characters think and do. Place is both the physical and intangible environment in which story happens. It’s what makes fiction resonate.

What is your favorite place or environment?

I haven’t yet become the kind of person to feel like any one place is home, so my favorite places are scattered around. I like quiet places. The high desert. The redwoods. The more rugged stretches of the Pacific coast. I like mountains. The Cascades. The alpine Sierras.

What do you look for in a piece of writing?

First I look for something that captures me as a reader, not an editor. I look for fiction that takes stylistic and structural risks. I look for a story that has something to say about the world but doesn’t beat me over the head with it. I want a story to linger with me after I have finished reading it.

What’s something surprising you learned last week?
Whales have different dialects and accents—each whale family has its own song patterns. That probably should have surprised me less than it did. There’s an online experiment called Whale FM where you can match similar whale songs to help scientists understand whale communication better.

Flyway editor, Chris Wiewiora, reviews John Brandon’s, Cirtus County.

John Brandon focuses Citrus County, his second novel, on a trifecta of characters: Toby, an orphan and the track team’s solo pole-vaulter, who lives in the muck house of his drug-dealing uncle; Shelby, the new kid in school, shadowed by her mother’s death that lingers over her father and sister; and Mr. Hibma—Toby and Shelby’s geography teacher at the middle school—numbed by a routine of student presentations and bogus lectures.

As a fellow Floridian, I appreciate that Brandon sets Citrus County west of Orlando’s Disney developments and north of Tampa Bay’s beaches. Instead of trite lush sprawl and touristy hot spots, Brandon submerges his characters in cracked concrete, dried palm fronds, and thick, sticky heat. Unable to escape, Toby, Shelby, and Mr. Hibma take drastic actions to redefine themselves. Toby kidnaps Kaley, Shelby’s younger sister, but discovers that “whatever had been wrong seemed more wrong now.” Shelby, who doesn’t know of Toby’s transgression, develops a crush on his loner attitude and then acts out in school to get his attention. Mr. Hibma plots to murder Mrs. Connors–the English teacher next to his classroom who tells him that he needs to post class rules identical to the school rules, reminds him his shirts are wrinkled, and has a poster in her classroom with the word PERSISTANCE underneath a sailing ship.

Just as Kaley needs rescue, Mr. Hibma, Shelby, and Toby need to be saved from themselves. However, is there a hero in Citrus County? Brandon reveals the crux of this question—you survive things by making it through them, alone—when Mr. Hibma tries to assure, but ends up over-sharing with Shelby:

“We never know what’s going to screw us up,” he said. “We think it has to be glaring tragedies, but that’s not always the case.”

Mr. Hibma wasn’t sure where he was going with this. He was, to his own surprise, taking a stab at being profound and helpful:

“Sometimes the tragedies strengthen us in the end. They make us more ourselves, you know—concentrate us.”

Mr. Hibma, Shelby, and Toby’s lives are braided together in Citrus County. However, their redemptions occur separately. And so, Brandon gives his reader the relief of being able to exit Citrus County along with the grief of leaving the three characters behind.

Whether you’re single or “settled,” here are some updates from Flyway:

Flyway will be at AWP this year. Look for our paper-mache Flyway tree and snag some freebies when you stop by the table to say hello. We hope to see you there!

Here’s a reminder in Valentine’s poem to submit to our annual Hazel Lipa Chapbook Contest:

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
We want your chapbooks
Before the deadline is through.

..Submit your as-of-yet unpublished poetry chapbooks by 3/15! Submission costs include a one-year subscription to Flyway.

We’re also looking forward to Iowa State’s upcoming 8th Annual Symposium on Wildness  featuring the geniuses of Amy Nezhukumatathil, Rolf Potts, Daniel Woodrell and Anthony Doerr. If you’re in Ames, be sure to check out a few of the amazing events Sunday 2/26 and Monday 2/27.

Keep checking the Flyway blog for more updates and fun stuff.

What drives you to write? I’d be lying if I didn’t say that workshop deadlines often provide a magical and much-needed kick in the pants. In the absence of deadlines, I write to explore, to play with language, and to figure out what I know. Writing is sometimes exciting and sometimes awful and soul-crushing, but it’s something I’ve always done and found worth doing.

Who is your favorite author? Sappho for the win! More recent obsessions include Carolyn Forché and Terry Tempest Williams.

What does “place” mean to you? Aldo Leopold’s “The Land Ethic” has really shaped my understanding of place—not a static backdrop, but a dynamic community. I find place in connection and relationship, all the complex ties that bind me to land, air, water, plants, animals, and other humans.

What is your favorite place or environment? Oh man, I miss Burlington, VT, so much. Church Street, Lake Champlain, slouching porches, weird talkative strangers, community gardens, art and music everywhere, quick summers and endless snow, Nader Guy, and visible mountains—little ones, but still, topography. What more could a person want?

What do you look for in a piece of writing? What most readers look for: a piece that sparks my interest early, keeps me reading, and stays with me after I’ve reached the end. I’m a sucker for beauty, authority, honesty, and fresh, compelling language. Humor, when it works, is also a plus.

What’s something surprising you learned last week? This story about a mysterious artist leaving gorgeous, intricate sculptures in Scottish libraries and museums made me ridiculously happy.