Barrelhouse

@barrelhouse

Proudly independent literary magazine & small press, established in 2004. Books + print issues + online issues + conferences + writing retreats + other stuff.

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Barrelhouse@barrelhouse· Jul 10

If you're just a lover of deals, generally, looking to maximize your savings, here's the go-to package from our shop. 2 memoirs + 2 poetry books for a total savings of 50 American dollars www.barrelhousemag.com/shop

cover of An Encyclopedia of Bending Time by Kristin Keane, normal price $18, design by Shanna Compton

Cover of Whatever Love Means by Chrisine No, normal price $17, design by Shanna Compton

Cover of If This Should Reach You in Time by Justin Marks, normal price $17, design by Shanna Compton

Cover of Mercy, by Marcia Trahan, normal price $18, design by Shanna Compton

Barrelhouse@barrelhouse· Jul 10

Reminder that our huge sale is still ongoing -- Just $5 for everything in our entire back catalog. Here's a sampler you could pick out if you're just trying to get a broad sense of our whole deal, plus a final image to help you out if you're not good at math www.barrelhousemag.com/shop

Cover of issue 25 -- sort of a psychedelic water buffalo thing going on

Cover of Gina Myers poetry collection Some of the Times, design by Shanna Compton

Barrelhouse@barrelhouse· Jul 7

Thank you to @wigleaf.bsky.social for recognizing two Barrelhouse pieces in the Top 50 this year! And congrats to @lumchanmfa.bsky.social & Riley Richards! Links to both pieces below in the thread

Cool graphic announcing that Melissa Llanes Brownlee's story "When Aerosmith and Run DMC Decide to co-parent" was selected for the Wigleaf Top 50. And Riley Richards' poem "Gerard Butler" was longlisted.

Barrelhouse@barrelhouse· Jun 28

Camp has occurred

Horrible quality photo of camp fireworks

Barrelhouse@barrelhouse· Jun 8

Bob Odenkirk in I Think You Should Leave, noting that triples is best

Barrelhouse@barrelhouse· May 31

On the eve of our submission window opening, we felt we should add an AI policy

ABOUT AI:
Anyone who uses AI to write something they submit to us is a loser, and we want nothing to do with them.

Barrelhouse@barrelhouse· May 27

Reminder

We open for subs June 1. All genres. $50, no sub fees. Barrelhousemag.com

There's a whole UFO/alien thing going on too

Barrelhouse@barrelhouse· May 20

worried that this cover from Issue 22 may give people the wrong idea that we are a robot-friendly enterprise

sexy rock em sock em robots (cover by John-Paul Gurnett)

Barrelhouse@barrelhouse· May 12

And thanks to @agnimagazine.bsky.social for running this interview with @ericarstern.bsky.social about FRONTIER agnionline.bu.edu/preview/77ce...

Conversation by Elizabeth Brogden
In early 2025, I read Erica Stern’s first book, Frontier: A Memoir & a Ghost Story (Barrelhouse, 2025), in which she addresses the traumatic birth of her eldest son. At the time, I was a little over six years out from my own harrowing experience of bringing my daughter into the world and had struggled to find ways to reflect on it in prose that avoided (quite literal) navel-gazing. Erica’s work—an astonishing warp and weft of raw memoir and meticulously researched historical fiction—introduced me to fresh, meaningful, and profoundly pleasurable ways of writing about the painful scars left by umbilical ties. Our conversation took place a few months later

$Erica Stern: The hybridity came about by accident, or at least from instinct. This project started out as a straightforward memoir, but I was preoccupied with how birthing in general—the absolute loss of control over the body, the wildness of it—and also the specific way things went wrong medically for me, felt so removed from modernity. Perhaps contradictorily, I was aware that while things had gone wrong, they could have been much worse without modern medical intervention. So I wrote a short paragraph in the middle of the description of my labor, beginning with the hypothetical: What if I had given birth in the Wild West?This allowed me to literally manifest the sense of existing in multiple timelines at once, which had been so visceral and disorienting for me during and immediately after delivery. I was in the very modern hospital and also in a cabin with a dirt floor. I was surrounded by sterile, technologically-advanced equipment and somewhere without modern plumbing or electricity. I kept coming back to that what if, because I realized the concepts of splitting and fracturing and liminality were at the heart of the book.$

Barrelhouse@barrelhouse· May 12

Thanks to @riverteeth.bsky.social for this great review of @ericarstern.bsky.social's FRONTIER! riverteethjournal.com/book-reviews...

Frontier belongs on a shelf with books like Homing Instincts and Ordinary Insanity by Sarah Menkedeck; Near Breathing by Kathryn Rhett; Hysterical by Elisa Bassist, and Lady Parts by Deborah Copaken. Not all of these titles address complications in childbirth, but all address the ways women and women’s health issues are sidelined by the medical establishment. Stern’s memoir engages the reader on so many levels—intellectually, psychologically, emotionally, and sheer curiosity. It’s a hard one to put down.

Finally, Stern’s talent for description awes the reader at every turn. Early on, her description of the Labor & Delivery room conjures an image of a multi-limbed monster: “…after the arms and claws recede back into the walls…” (47). A skilled writer, she doesn’t describe randomly, but carefully selects details from the memoir’s available landscape, to add depth and meaning and subtext, so that what she’s describing is both the actual, concrete object in the world (a child’s swing, a basketball post), but is also all the feeling and association that thing conjures.

Barrelhouse@barrelhouse· Apr 17

For anyone else wondering-- yes, newsletter! Go to barrelhousemag.com and scroll way down till you see this. We promise not to be annoying

Barrelhouse@barrelhouse· Mar 5

Our barely offsite reading at AWP tomorrow is right here, on Pratt Street across from Pratt Ale House. Noon! Featuring @patrickcrerand.bsky.social & @mariannelchan.bsky.social

Flyer with mostly the same details as the post

Barrelhouse@barrelhouse· Mar 5

We are here to sell you books and shirts and more, table 1185 by the snack stand

Barrelhouse@barrelhouse· Feb 25

New supply of shirts has arrived just in time for AWP

Black t with blowfish & text "unreliable narrator", green "keep it weird" shirt with fox bird thing, and the classic, never to be imitated "fucking poets, man"

Barrelhouse@barrelhouse· Feb 22

Issue 26 is available for pre-order! We'll have it in hand *just* in time for AWP, we think, and you can get your orders in now. Look at this lineup! www.barrelhousemag.com/shop/p/pre-o...

Issue 26 cover, by Michael Bargamian. Classy couple having a nice meal in front of a wildfire. It looks very cool.

Issue 26 table of contents and I'm sorry I'm not going to type all the names here, please just click the pre-order link for a full listing of all contributors

Barrelhouse@barrelhouse· Feb 21

Hey here's all our essential AWP info. Come out and find us!

beautiful, not remotely cluttered, flyer of laser cat highlighting our various things. Booth 1185
Wednesday, reading with some other presses at the United Methodist Church on Mt. Vernon Place, 7-10
Friday, Erica Stern book signing at 10 AM & Barely offsite reading at noon
Saturday, Reading at Metro Gallery, 5-7

Barrelhouse@barrelhouse· Dec 19

Congrats to our reviews editor Katharine Coldiron @ferrifrigida.bsky.social al & @autofocusbooks.bsky.social for making the @penamerica.bsky.social longlist!!!

screenshot of the PEN-Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award finalists, not gonna list them all, just note that it includes OUT THERE IN THE DARK by Katharine Coldiron

Barrelhouse@barrelhouse· Nov 14

Pushcart nominees! @dannycaine.com @shimmer.bsky.social @jasonjonesm.bsky.social

Poetry (2)
"Burning Down the Waffle House" by Danny Caine
"Grain" by Carolene Kurien
Fiction (2)
"Ruptures" by Ray Wise
"Party Night" by Yusuf Poladin
Nonfiction (2)
"The Australian Job" by Steve Himmer
"Leafing Through Jack Gilbert’s The Dance Most of All for Inspiration: An Essay of Marriage" by J. M. Jones

Barrelhouse@barrelhouse· Oct 24

Great essay by @ericarstern.bsky.social in @wsj.com www.wsj.com/lifestyle/re...

Giving birth a second time (and, years later, a third), didn’t take away any of my love for my oldest son. In fact, it allowed me to separate him from the experience of his birth. I could leave that trauma, or at least the power it wielded over me, behind. It had taken another round to figure out what should have been obvious: the child was not the birth. I hugged them close—children who had arrived in different ways, but who were both very much mine.
[Family photo below]

Barrelhouse@barrelhouse· Oct 3

Mid-Atlantic writers, we are returning to American U on 4/18 for our annual Conversations & Connections conference. More details, full lineup, and registration coming soon.

Flyer for the conference with all the details in the post, plus a little alien guy and a funky spaceship

Barrelhouse@barrelhouse· Aug 10

Best of the Net nominees! Including @demisty.bsky.social @kcmeadbrewer.com @patrickcrerand.bsky.social @carrieconners.bsky.social @dsrandol.bsky.social & @jiksuncheung.bsky.social

Snappy lil graphic announcing our best of the net noms:
fiction- Missippi June by DeMisty D. Bellinger & My Pretties by K.C. Mead-Brewer
CNF: Lingerie Momeny by Rebecca Mental & Centerfold by Patrick Crerand
Poetry: Wisconsin Sexy by Carrie Conners, a brief correlation between queer sex and U.S. manifest destiny by d.S. randol & People Also Ask by Quinn Franzen
Artwork: Cover art by Jiksun Cheung

Barrelhouse@barrelhouse· Jun 3

Thanks to @chicagorevbooks.bsky.social for including FRONTIER on this list of 12 must reads for June! chireviewofbooks.com/2025/06/02/1...

After unexpected pregnancy complications put Erica Stern on the threshold of life and death, she was able to identify the liminal space that connects her to generations of mothers before her. Frontier is a fascinating hybrid memoir that combines the author’s personal experience with pregnancy and motherhood and a Wild West ghost story about a mother who died in childbirth that roams her old homestead, tethered to the family she left behind. With its intricate and unique blend of memoir, fiction, and research, Frontier highlights how versatile and provocative the art form of writing can be when handled by a writer as talented as Erica Stern.

Barrelhouse@barrelhouse· May 30

Chicago! Join us for a FRONTIER launch party next week! @ericarstern.bsky.social & @finejuli.bsky.social at @volumesbooks.bsky.social, on 6/5

promotional flyer with essential info for this event -- 6/5, 6:30, Volumes Book Cafe

Barrelhouse@barrelhouse· May 23

Writers, get your submissions ready. Fiction always hits the cap (500) very fast, so don't delay. NF and poetry also have caps (500 & 800, respectively) though they don't typically fill up quite as fast. Don't be boring, that's the main tip

Barrelhouse@barrelhouse· May 22

Got some exciting news this week- Congrats to @ruthjoffre.bsky.social and thank you to Ofelia Montelongo for editing the issue!

Barrelhouse branded graphic noting that Ruth Joffre's student "A Girl Experiments With Being Human" has been selected for Best Small Fictions 2025

Barrelhouse@barrelhouse· Apr 19

Pretty rare copy of issue 20 found in the wild (at Inkwood books in Haddonfield, NJ)

Barrelhouse@barrelhouse· Mar 28

Scenes from our AWP reading this afternoon

Barrelhouse@barrelhouse· Mar 28

Hey the steps are inaccessible, take note of this new location right near the main entrance (also just look for us)

Barrelhouse@barrelhouse· Mar 27

Very limited supplies of Barrelhouse 25 and stickers available at AWP table 461!

Barrelhouse@barrelhouse· Mar 24

Reminder that even though we don't have an AWP table this year, we are still running one (barely) off-site event, Friday at noon on the convention center stairs. Take a break from the book fair and come hang with us (we'll have a very limited supply of issue 25 with us too)