West Branch

a thrice-yearly magazine of poetry, fiction, essays, and reviews

Guest Editor Susan Nguyen: A Special Feature

"I've been thinking and dreaming about the failures of language lately. How it has the power to make me feel small, to forget myself. This may sound strange coming from a writer and a poet – so often I talk about the possibilities of language."
Featuring poetry by:
Chelsea B. DesAutels
Nicole Arocho Hernández
Carlina Duan

Slow Violence

"There are costs to our living on this small, terminable planet. Daily these costs bear down on each of us, but their severity, visibility, and immediacy depend on who and where one is in the world."
Featuring poetry by:
Emilia Phillips
Natalie Eilbert
Rachel Edelman
Leigh Sugar
Benjamin Voigt
Hajjar Baban
Mona Kareem, tr. Sara Elkamel
Mira Rosenthal
Makshya Tolbert
An Interview with Daniel Torday

"When the bigotries grow loud enough in a culture, but the only people articulating those bigotries are the bigots themselves—that’s like a half-step away from fascism. If fiction can go a teensy way to helping forestall that last half-step, it should surely try."

This Print Issue:

Cover Art: Math Homework, by Kaylie Kaitschuck (2022); yarn embroidery on felt, 18" x 24".

This Digital Issue:

Fiction

Brian Conn
Griffin

Creative Nonfiction

Juliana Gray
Lizzie Borden and the Forty Whacks: Notes on a Rhyme

Back of the Book

BOOK REVIEW:
Like It Or Not
on John Keene, Jesse Nathan, and Rachel James
by Amelia Ada

BOOK REVIEW:
On Colonialism and Climate Crisis
on Yesenia Montilla, Paula Hlava Ceballos, and Valerie Martinez
by Laura Villareal

      In This Digital Issue: West Branch 103, Fall 2023

      Math Homework, by Kaylie Kaitschuck (2022); yarn embroidery on felt, 18”x24”

      Guest Editor Susan Nguyen: A Special Feature

      Slow Violence: A Poetry Selection Edited by Sarah Ghazal Ali

      Fiction

      Creative Nonfiction

      The Back of the Book

      Features

      Bucknell University

      Archives