Free State Review is a literary journal that comes out four times every three years.
Want to know what we’re into? Peruse our site and/or order a copy, then hit us up!
Free State Review is a literary journal that comes out four times every three years.
Want to know what we’re into? Peruse our site and/or order a copy, then hit us up!
[Definitions to]
Words in Danger
[of Falling out of the Vocabulary]
by Eric Lindley and Joe Milazzo
Exodus
v. To aspire to a conventional sort of virtuosity.To fancify one’s language and / or conversation, and in the service of one’s own dickishness.To cloak with a contronym.To troll while pretending to prophesy, or vice versa. This is why we recommend the use of aPO box...
Present
adj.1. There is and must be a likeness at the heart of unlikeness, that is, to be like or comparable inone’s uniqueness; unlikeness as a measurable matter of degree rather than kind. You hear awoman’s voice and you imagine you can imagine her body from that voice....
Mercy
n. Self-beyond-self, the subjectivity defined as (not by) an intense, paralyzing yearning, as of asocket for what would grind against its insufficiency in a joint.Self-more-than-self, a vague prototype articulating in wands and runes and alembics thisheadlong...
Converse
v., intrans.1. To labor in such a way as to make a livelihood out of what, under conventional circumstances, would be a leisure activity.2. You don’t know, or you don’t say what that you know, or something aligned with a strong sense of sometimes, something...
“Blood Histories functions, in part, as an experiment in confession, interrogating how we are educated and educate others into and out of existence … There are lines in this collection that no one has written before—that, perhaps, no one has ever even thought but has only felt.”
– Brenna Womer, author of honeypot
The Bubbler

Katrin Arefy: Reflections
Friday, February 11th The piece has a quality of an unfinished work, almost dirty, almost messy, that makes it raw and vulnerable. The unpolished quality brings me closer to the...

THE HOPE PROJECT by Martina Reisz Newberry
for David Fite I like to think that the January muse is waiting for me–it is nearly the new year. I have, in the past, imagined that this musewould clear a path on my chaotic...

Latest Issue
Jesper Andreasson, Amy Bagwell, Nancy Christopherson, Marisa P. Clark, Cynthia Good, James Grinwis, Susan Haar, Alison Hazle, William Heath, Elizabeth Carrothers Herron, Matt Hohner, Cory Hutchinson-Reuss, Emily Hyland, Clara Jeske, Natalie Jill, Sheree La Puma, Lisa Lewis, Kathy McMullen, Pete Miller, Jose Oseguera, Gregory Pelley, Kimberly Ann Priest, Mary Lynn Reed, Michael Rogner, Batya Rossberg, Jacqueline Schaalje, Beate Sigriddaughter, Jocelyn Ulevicus, Austin Veldman
Cover art by Saraiya Kanning
How to Read Our Journal
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Free State Review is published in print every 8 months.
We are looking for poetry, fiction, personal essay, and one-minute plays. No more oyster poems, please.
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