by Natalie Satakovski
With each new issue of Gulf Stream Magazine, you’ll find a fresh palate of literary tastes represented in our pages.
This fall, fourteen readers and editors—all writers from FIU’s MFA program—considered submissions, contended for their picks, and helped pull Issue 27 together.
Named for our unusual social season, this issue is a collection of fearless literature and art, unafraid of being bold, authentic… and alone.
In fiction, stories by Rita Ciresi and Jeffrey Wolf reveal what it’s like to be isolated, even when among others. For more challenging reads that touch on this theme, click over to “Disappearing Act” and “The Joy You Feel,” two stories nestled in their respective experimental and transgressive niches.
For lovers of memoir, our two moving creative nonfiction pieces show the lengths that family members will go to to get closer together.
Issue 27’s poetry spans a stirring tonal range. The poets flex their water metaphors in a dare to be innovative, and use humor, satire and irony to make meaningful conversation. Be sure to check out “Lesbian Barbie,” which responds to the poetry of American treasure and Gulf Stream faculty advisor Denise Duhamel.
If these selections say anything about our literary appetites during the COVID pandemic, we sure haven’t lost our taste for visceral prose and acerbic poetry. But while we wait for hindsight to focus the critical lens, I hope you enjoy the read.
Natalie Satakovski is the fall 2020 editor of Gulf Stream Magazine and a Lawrence A Sanders Fellow at Florida International University. Her fiction has appeared in Meniscus, SQ Mag, Mystery Weekly, Selfies from the End of the World, and others. Having returned home to Australia to ride out the pandemic, she spends many virtual hours in Miami.
Zaam Arif is an American-Pakistani contemporary artist residing and working in Houston, Texas. He explores existentialist experiences of the layman. Zaam confronts it with a penetrating interpretation of human nature, transforming it into a visceral reality. His work is a manifestation of his understanding of the contemporary human condition.
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