Gary Belsky, the former editor in chief of ESPN The Magazine, is the president of Elland Road Partners, a media consulting firm, and the New York Times bestselling author of eight books.
december: Tell us a bit about this essay: where did it come from? What does it mean to you?
Gary: It’s obviously a very personal subject, one that I had intended to write about through a traditional narrative reporting lens. But there were challenges to that, and once I learned that his death was ruled a suicide I decided to look for another way to write about our friend and that time. Eventually, I realized that there wasn’t a truth to be reported but rather my memories to be explored. This piece was not meant to be the official record of our friend’s life and death, nor of our relationship, but rather a reflection of how he and that time lives in my memories.
december: What’s a standout moment you remember from the process of working on it? A stroke of inspiration, a generative brainstorm, a revision challenge, an a-ha moment, a time you shared it with a reader who loved it? Give us a window into the way this piece came to life.
Gary: At one point when I was struggling to figure out what to do with the piece I just decided randomly to write it out as a non-rhyming poem. Or something like that, but whatever the case in stanzas. Like a tone poem. Anyway, I was at work, taking a break, and what I wrote at first didn’t really cohere—it was more a dumping of ideas on the page—but I remember feeling some of the feelings that I wanted to communicate. About memory, about childhood, about loss, about the ways people can affect you throughout your life. So I started tinkering with the structure and eventually found my way to the piece as it stands now. Took a full year, if I’m being honest, revisiting it on and off.
december: This year, we’re celebrating 10 years of publishing december. Can you tell us how literary magazines like december have been important in your literary career? What do you think the importance of the lit mag is to literary culture at large?
Gary: I think that the act of treating words and sentences and paragraphs and punctuation as sacred—which is what I believe literary magazines do at their essence—is important, from a societal point of view. I sort of think of literary magazines in the sort of the same way I think of those old scriptoria in monestaries back when writing was the province of the educated elite, e.g., monks and nuns! Literary magazines are keepers of language.
december: What are you working on now?
Gary: Well, my job, but also a piece about bias in judgment for The New York Times. Quite literally, I mean. It’s about judges and conflict of interest and recusal. I speak and write about judgment and decision making sometimes, ever since publication of the book I co-authored with Tom Gilovich of Cornell, Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes—And How To Correct Them: Lessons from the Life-Chaning Science of Behavioral Economics.
december: What’s something else you love to do or are passionate about outside of writing?
Gary: Food. I like eating.
december: Where can people find out more about you?
Christine Kwon is a Korean American poet and fiction writer. Her debut poetry collection, A Ribbon the Most Perfect Blue, won the Cowles Poetry Book Prize (Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2023).
She lives in a yellow shotgun house in New Orleans with her partner and their three cats, Trotsky, Lady (Murasaki), and (Cy) Twombly. She is the literary editor at Tilted House Press.
Her work has appeared or is imminent in The Poetry Project, Hot Pink Mag, Joyland Magazine, The Columbia Review, Copper Nickel, and The Harvard Advocate.
She attended Yale and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Christine Kwon
The Emperor of Rain
For two years father lived in a car
I didn’t call
On Christmas and New Year’s I didn’t call
When it rained I thought of him
When it was cold I thought and didn’t think
My mind was a frozen finger
For a long time father was a taxi driver
Circling JFK LaGuardia and Newark
Old Asian men remind me of my father
I see him between two strands of rain
Between the rain and the street
Dripping down the window
Father lives in a blue crystal geode
He used to have an interest in fossils
His tie stashed on top of my closet
In Barcelona he bought me a necklace
A cluster of blue flowers
I lost it at a glitter party in college
The next morning I went back and looked
Only I notice the lime blossoms
That my father’s hair's all white
Walking down the street I avoid
Every outstretched hand
Author Q&A
december: Tell us a bit about this poem: where did it come from? What does it mean to you?
Christine: This poem is autobiographical. Sometimes it’s difficult for me to put ‘real’ things in poems because it suddenly sounds ‘fake’ when I write about it. But I think this poem somehow captures the tone of my father.
december: What’s a standout moment you remember from the process of working on it? A stroke of inspiration, a generative brainstorm, a revision challenge, an a-ha moment, a time you shared it with a reader who loved it? Give us a window into the way this piece came to life.
Christine: Most of my poems are born from a phrase. It’s rare that a poem stems from an idea. I think this poem emerged from the mind/frozen finger phrase.
december: This year, we’re celebrating 10 years of publishing december. Can you tell us how literary magazines like december have been important in your literary career? What do you think the importance of the lit mag is to literary culture at large?
Christine: Lit mags are beautiful objects. I like when they have a point of view and particular taste, rather than being a catch-all. When lit mags have a point of view, readers can come to them the way they go to certain publishers. For instance, I know I like most things that New Directions or Pushkin Press publish. In that way, there are some literary magazines that I go to because I know their taste is the better version of my own.
december: What are you working on now?
Christine: My second book of poems! My first book, A Ribbon the Most Perfect Blue, came out this year. I am also working on my first collection of short stories.
december: What’s something else you love to do or are passionate about outside of writing?
I like antiquing, my cats, very small objects, delicate objects, the rain, snow, and my baby, Louis, who was born in October and very beautiful.
december: Where can people find out more about you?
Shannan Mann writes poetry, essays, and is currently working on a novel. Her novel is “set across India, Canada, the U.S. and New Zealand. Also, across time. Also, one of the chapters is narrated by a frying pan.” She is a mom to a cricket-loving three year old, and she runs OnlyPoems.net, a beautiful on-line lit mag, with her partner.
shannan mann
ABECEDARIAN FOR Ka
somewhere between the american and british version
almost always the and is hummingbird
you never truly consider anything
as being other from anything else
b
you love babies books birds
don’t care much for but and because
you place a blindfold over my eyes chant kiss and vanish
I’m left biting the lower lip of breeze
c
came a mountain crowned in lightning
called me calf
come back to bed everywhere you turn
you will find our children
d
an abandoned hand
darling dearest darkburst
I doubt grace demand passion
you with a hand on the doorknob
open for me
e
everything even the rain
ffalaq sky
furqat separation
you feather
your you flame
g
when it comes to god
you spew the word
like your spit on my face mid-orgasm
h
hitchhiker
how many hours
will we keep
our thumbs in the air
forget home
say hello to here
i
rare in your poems
everywhere in your speech
j
jupiter where I built
our first house
k
begins your name
before you step
into the silhouette
of mine
l
you love la lala la lala la in any song
wish you were born a musician
who could lull hurricanes
m
more please
always more
n
my name overtaken by n’s
kneels behind your teeth
white and a small gap
to let the light in
o
over this vase of snow
over Ana’s rainbow
over my love for you?
over my dead body
p
you inherited poetry
from your parents’ piss
q
quiet night
sleep with me
until sleep arrives
r
rainfall all morning
I’ll reach into sun
and bloom you sunflowers
s
you had an ex whose name you erased
called her s a secret from your mother
and then found
well what’s the opposite of ex
hex next vortex
t
taboo tryst trust
we trainwrecked
our way through this trinity
and now we’re together
u
if we reach the end
please make a u-turn
v
we shape words into vessels
to melt in the volcano of culture and colour
which is to say you often pronounce
v as a w and w as a v
because our mother tongue
does not think in double you’s
but you love evolvevalleyvalvevulva uvula so much
I echo them back as love
wwhere are you now
who sleeps beneath your spell tonightx
sexier than an eagle with a rose in its beak
y
why daybreak
why hope
why plucking stars
why eyes in a mirror
why visa
why millions of years
why the slow blue flow of clouds against sun
to reveal a body in the wings of the wind
why all night I moan an opera of why’s for you
z
please whisper
something like zephyr
so I can finish this poem
which won’t ever finish
unless you stop singing
but please don’t
Author Q & A
december: Tell us a bit about this poem: where did it come from? What does it mean to you?
Shannan: This poem was written over the course of several months. I was playing around with the abecedarian but felt it limiting in its constriction of beginning each line with the consecutive letter. The poem began from attempting to deconstruct the form. But in order to do any kind of deconstruction, you need a good reason. And what better reason than love? I was away from Karan (Kapoor), my partner, then. Away like…many oceans away. The long-distance was wearing us down in more than ways than one even though there was (and, I’m happy to tell you, is) so much love. Due to the time difference and our individual responsibilities, we were hardly able to speak to each other for more than a minute or two. So, I began writing to him, for him — and also for the form, beyond the form. Love is contained in many forms that makes sense to the world. Karan’s and my love often didn’t make sense to people. This was my way of understanding something weird and surreal and beautiful and impossible. Categorizing how and who and why I love.
december: What’s a standout moment you remember from the process of working on it? A stroke of inspiration, a generative brainstorm, a revision challenge, an a-ha moment, a time you shared it with a reader who loved it? Give us a window into the way this piece came to life.
Shannan: The standout moment was sharing it with Karan. He is also a poet and a very accomplished one at that. He loved it of course, wept also hearing me read it to him. But after the initial emotional and loving reaction, he got his editorial hat on. Karan and I first “met” (digitally) as lovers of poetry. We liked each other’s styles and decided to workshop our poems together. Ever since the beginning, this has been the bedrock of our relationship: our poetry, our work. It’s not so much a specific moment that stands out for me, then, but rather the very weird and beautiful situation itself. The one I love for whom I’ve written the poem is also the first who “critiqued” it and helped me make it a better portrayal of my love by making it a better poem.
december: This year, we’re celebrating 10 years of publishing december. Can you tell us how literary magazines like december have been important in your literary career? What do you think the importance of the lit mag is to literary culture at large?
Shannan:december is a stunning and carefully crafted magazine with editors that connect with you on a personal, individual level. This is so deeply necessary. Literary magazines are indispensable for writers both beginning to get their feet wet in publishing and those already established and desiring to reach new readers. People sometimes say that “no one reads lit mags” or that “lit mags are dying”. But then how is it that every year there are more lit mags than the last? The truth is that both writers and readers want more places for their work. And they deserve those. december is a shining example of such a befitting place. And I also love the culture of encouraging subscriptions that you unabashedly espouse. Sure, we all can’t afford subscriptions to every single place…but this community engagement, even if for one or two months, allows us to open our world a little wider — something sorely needed in the chaotic condition of things as they are right now.
december: What are you working on now?
Shannan: I’m writing a magic-realist horror novel set across India, Canada, the U.S. and New Zealand. Also, across time. Also, one of the chapters is narrated by a frying pan.
december: What’s something else you love to do or are passionate about outside of writing?
Shannan: Karan and I love watching cricket together. Our daughter, Anasuya (who is 3 now), sometimes joins in with shouts of “catch! catch!” when the ball is clearly going past the boundary.
Besides this, I’m also really passionate about the lit mag Karan and I have started this year. It’s called ONLY POEMS, and y’all should totally check it out! (onlypoems.net)
december: Where can people find out more about you?
Instagram: @shannanmania
Twitter/X: @shannanmania
Website: shannanmann.com
Other: onlypoems.net (the litmag I run)
ufology [noun, “the study of ufos”] by albert goldbarth — featured poem
welcome to the team — isabelle stillman, editor/publisher
Posted on November 27, 2023
We are thrilled to announce that, come January 2024, Isabelle Stillman will take the reins as the Editor/Publisher of december magazine, marking an exciting new chapter in our publication’s rich history. Isabelle, originally from St. Louis, MO, and currently based in Long Beach, CA, brings a wealth of experience and a fresh perspective to the december team.
Isabelle’s journey with december began as a submission reader for the magazine’s revival issue in 2013, where she nurtured her literary eye and her dedication to nurturing emerging voices. Since then, she has played a pivotal role as december‘s Prose Editor, contributing to the magazine’s commitment to showcase exceptional literary work. She has a graduate degree from the Chapman University MFA and MA program, solidifying her foundation in the literary arts.
Isabelle is a highly accomplished fiction writer in her own right. Her work has appeared in esteemed publications such as Narrative, Ninth Letter, Epoch, and others. As she assumes the role of Editor/Publisher, Isabelle brings not only her editorial acumen but also a deep passion for storytelling. She is currently working on her first novel.
Isabelle Stillman’s appointment comes as december magazine proudly celebrates its 10th anniversary, marking a decade of literary excellence and community engagement. We believe that Isabelle’s vision and dedication will usher in a new era of literary exploration, ensuring that december remains a platform for diverse voices and compelling narratives.
Please join us in welcoming Isabelle Stillman to her new role, as we look forward to the exciting literary endeavors that lie ahead under her guidance. Stay tuned for the 2024 Spring/Summer issue under her editorial leadership, promising an inspiring blend of tradition and innovation.
december in December
Posted on November 21, 2023
Join us for a fabulous reading event at the Contemporary Art Museum
Join us for an evening of poetry
Posted on October 19, 2023
New name, same great contest!
Posted on August 24, 2023
We’re excited to announce that our poetry contest, previously known as the Jeff Marks Memorial Poetry Prize, has been renamed the Marvin Bell Memorial Poetry Prize. This change honors Marvin Bell, who was our beloved Advisory Editor since 2013 until his death in 2020.
As many of you are aware, Bell’s poetic mastery and groundbreaking contributions to the literary world have left a profound impact on the world of contemporary poetry. His personal yet universal poetic style resonated deeply with readers worldwide. Moreover, his dedication to teaching poetry for over four decades, most notably as the Flannery O’Connor Chair of Letters at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, his service as Iowa’s inaugural Poet Laureate, and his tenure at Pacific University’s MFA program are testaments to his impact on the poetry community.
The poetry prize will continue to foster a nurturing and inclusive environment for poets from all walks of life, providing them with a platform to showcase their talent and creativity. By commemorating Bell’s legacy, we hope to inspire a new generation of poets and elevate the power of poetic expression.
We’re honored to have the remarkable Dorianne Laux steer the inaugural competition as the first judge. Many of you will recognize her as a Pulitzer Prize finalist and the author of celebrated poetry collections like Only As The Day Is Long and The Book of Men. Her newest collection, Life on Earth, will be available in January 2024. Additionally, she was a dear friend and colleague of Marvin’s.
For those interested, please find all necessary details regarding submissions, deadlines, and prizes on our website: decembermag.org/december-awards.
Dorianne Laux will judge the 2024 Marvin Bell Memorial Poetry Prize
Posted on August 24, 2023
It is with great appreciation and much excitement that we announce Dorianne Laux as our next poetry contest judge! Laux will select the winner, honorable mention, and finalists for our poetry contest this fall. Submissions will open on October 1, 2023.
Dorianne Laux’s sixth collection, Only As the Day is Long: New and Selected Poems, was named a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Her fifth collection, The Book of Men, was awarded The Paterson Prize. Her fourth book of poems, Facts About the Moon, won The Oregon Book Award and was short-listed for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Laux is also the author of Awake; What We Carry, a finalist for the National Book Critic’s Circle Award; Smoke; as well as a fine small press edition, The Book of Women. She is the co-author of the celebrated text The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry. Her latest collection, Life On Earth, will be released in January of 2024. For more information visit https://www.doriannelaux.com.
