Orchid: A Literary Review

*** WE ARE UPDATING THE WEBSITE TO FEATURE MORE BROAD LITERARY REVIEW AS ORCHID IS NOT PUBLISHED ANY LONGER ***

Welcome to the Orchid web site. Take a look around. You’ll find subscription info (“Get Yours”), submission guidelines (“You Will Submit!!!”), info about the editors and staff (“Who Are These Fools?”), new photos on our “Pin-ups” page, event info, and more. We hope you have some fun here. Most importantly, we hope you read Orchid. It’s all about great fiction.

SPECIAL OFFER—FREE COPY OF Orchid issue five.
Order a subscription to Orchid and receive issue five for free or another back issue of your choice for free. To take advantage of this special offer scroll down and click on the subscription link this page or click on the “Get Yours” link on the left. You can also mail subscription orders to Orchid, P. O. Box 131457, Ann Arbor, MI, 48113-1457.

SPECIAL NOTE—We don’t want to put a damper on any of this opening stuff by placing a note that some might find disconcerting. So, read the page in order and and just pay attention to the special note when you get to it.

Award winning author and all-around nice guy, Stuart Dybek will be the judge for or 2007 Short Fiction Contest. June 1 was the deadline for our 2006 Short Fiction Contest judged by Peter Ho Davies. Contest entries are being read and an announcement of the winner and runners up will be made in July. The first prize is $1100. This contest is now closed but we are accepting entries for our 2007 Short Fiction Contest with a deadline of June 1, 2007. Enter now for your chance to win the $1100 First Prize. Your contest entry will also be considered for publication even if it dosn’t win the contest. We’ve published three of the runners up from last year’s contest just as we’re publishing several runners up for our Great Stories of Few Words Contest. The deadline is June 1, 2007. GSOFW Contest News!!!: Our brand new Great Stories of Few Words Contest has a winner!!! Amy Hempel has chosen “The Downer” by J. D. Blair as winner for this year’s $500 prize. Check our Short Fiction Contst page to read about the prize winner and other finalists.

What is it with pears?. We’re happy to announce that two Orchid authors have new books recently published. The Prisoner Pear by Elissa Minor Rust is now available. This outstanding collection of stories includes “Iris and Megan Imagine Alternatives” which first appeared in issue five of Orchid. The collection is published by Swallow Press and we highly recommend going out to your local bookseller to get your copy. Another great new book is Nothing in the World a novella by Roy Kesey. You can check out info about this book at nothingintheworld.com. We don’t know what it is but both books have pears on the cover. See our PIN UPS page for pictures of both books.

SPECIAL NOTE—Okay, here it is. As you may know, Orchid is done for love not money meaning it’s an full-time job for which we are not paid. We have real jobs, we have families, we have many other duties and responsibilities. It’s just so happens that one of those responsibilities has reached a crisis point in the last day or two requiring urgent and immediate attention on our part. If the urgent attention is not given, some things that are very important to us will implode and it won’t be pretty. In fact, it’s already pretty ugly but that’s a long story that we’ll tell another time (maybe). Anyway, this means the info previously posted below (Backlog Blues) is even more true. We will still be sorting through contest entries but we’ll be finished and sharing the results later than we had hoped. We’ll still be reading submissions but not at our usual pace. For practical purposes we’ll be suspending regular work on Orchid for the next two to four weeks. Let me emphasize: WE ARE NOT DEAD. Orchid #7 is more than 50% complete wiith much fine work, including stories by contest winnters, C. Abe Gaustad and J. D. Blair, and other fiction by Anne Campisi, Bill Capossere, Nancy Graham, Stephanie Harrison, Elizabeth Koch, Tao Lin, Suzanne McConnell and David Poissant.

BACKLOG BLUES—About response times, the Vicarious Motherhood anthology, and other miscellany. Yes, once again, we are a bit behind on things. Orchid is more than a full time job but as you may know we’re not paid. Our paying jobs and other stuff have gotten in the way more than usual lately. And we’re sorting through a ton of contest entries for our recently completed contest. As a result we have a huge pile of unread manuscripts and another huge pile of manuscripts under consideration for publication. Response times to submissions may now be up to six months or longer. All subscription orders and sample copy orders are being filled in a two to three week time frame. Please let us know if you don’t receive your subscription or sample copy order in that time frame (media mail can be kind of funky at times).

People have wondered about our planned Vicarious Motherhood anthology. We still plan to publish the anthology but getting Orchid out in a timely manner is number one on our list of priorities at this point. This has become more difficult than usual because of the aforementioned reasons and more. Issue number six was six months late and we don’t intend to let that happen again. If you submitted work for the anthology and have not received an acceptance it means that we are still considering your work. We hope to have more news and decision on the anthology in six to eight months.

Orchid No. 5 is still available. Get your copy before this popular issue is sold out. You can get a free copy with any subscription. Order your subscription by clicking on the subscription link this page, the GET YOURS link on the left, or MOST RECENT PAST link at the bottom of this page. You can also mail subscription orders to Orchid, P. O. Box 131457, Ann Arbor, MI, 48113-1457. Issue five of Orchid has great fiction by Harriotte Aaron, Kevin Breen, Elisabeth Brink, Randy DeVita, Jonathan Evison, Joseph O’Malley, Catherine Rios, Elissa Minor Rust, Adam Schuitema, and Laura Hulthén Thomas. Mary Stepp interviews Beth Lordan and Amy Sumerton interviews Julie Orringer. And, of course, there are new Afterthoughts and five new lists of five: Smells Like Teen Spirit, Got to Get You Into My Life, On the Road Again, We are Family, and Do You Believe in Magic. You say you don’t know what the five lists of five are? Then you have to order your subscription and find out. You can check out the latest info on Orchid number five by clicking on the MOST RECENT PAST link at the bottom of this page. For info about Orchid number six, click the PRESENT link on the left of this page.