“The cosmic spotlight isn’t pointed at you; it radiates from within you.”
Writer Spotlight
A place to celebrate upcoming publications from Grim & Gilded authors. Check back periodically for updates.
Interested in submitting to the spotlight? Email your inquiry to grimandgilded@gmail.com with the details of your publication. Please note: the Spotlight is reserved for authors who have been published with Grim & Gilded. Please do not submit work for issue consideration. All other submissions can be provided via our Submittable during our standard submission cycle here.
All Things Holy & Heathen
by Chelsea Jackson
Chelsea Jackson was featured in Issue Eighteen of Grim & Gilded, with their poem Death and Déjà vu.
In their debut collection, All Things Holy and Heathen, Jackson wastes no time in exploring the divine and cosmic threads that weave the universal frame of the human experience.
Opening with “The First Human,” Jackson muses on all the little and big and entirely unlikely things that came together to create us- and voices a question Nature has planted within us from inception: are we good? From here, Jackson sets down a winding path, walking with us as we pluck flowers for their familiar and just-on-the-tip-of-our-tongue aroma, and kick over rocks to inspect the slithering and crawling in the darkness underneath. It is impossible to feel entirely alone, however, and one gets the sense that Jackson leads with a tender hand, occasionally looking over at us with each new discovery, nudging our shoulders and saying “I know, right?!”
Jackson dances deftly between life and death, creation and destruction, and the beauty found in each, but there is rage here, too – for this is not simply a rumination of the cosmic divine and sacred in humanity, but of the humanity within nature and the cosmos. In the end, it is impossible to come away from the page without feeling as though having peered through a looking glass- reflecting both outwardly, and within- to our future, and throughout our past.
Chelsea Jackson’s collection comes out April 30th, 2024 through April Gloaming, and can be pre-ordered here.
Chelsea Jackson is a writer, editor, and consultant, and author of the forthcoming collection All Things Holy and Heathen (April Gloaming, April 2024). They use their poetry to ask hard questions, interrogate inherited social narratives, and explore what it means to be human. Chelsea has an MFA in Poetry from Drew University and is published Beyond Queer Words, Hearth and Coffin, Passengers Journal, Fatal Flaw Literary Magazine, Coffin Bell Journal, and Riverfeet Press, among other publications. They were also a finalist in the 2020 Driftwood Press In-House Poetry Contest and the 2022 Animal Heart Poetry Collection Contest. You can find them on Instagram, X, and TikTok @sea_c_j or at their website at chelsea-jackson.com.
Image from April Gloaming website
The Beautiful Losses
by Frederick Pollack
Frederick Pollack was featured in Grim & Gilded Issue Seventeen through his poem Ambience. As an incredibly prolific writer, Pollack’s most recent publication, The Beautiful Losses, is a collection that defines his talent of shining a bright light on seemingly minuscule, yet completely relatable experiences.
Pollack’s writing is grounded and present, easily following threads of poetic verse and narrative as they connect and diverge, a lens narrowing and widening between verse and storytelling.
It seems nearly impossible to be unable to find a connecting point between one’s self and the words on the page. This sheer relatability is due to the everyday, mundane, altogether human moments Pollack observes through his words, whether it be concerns of parenthood in Alright – ‘but are they socialized enough? she asks. Well / I observe interactions, and it seems to me / that everyone in their cohort / is more or less on the same wavelength.’ or the meandering thoughts conjured to mind when coming across the husk of a cicada in Late June – ‘There must be, across the universe / any number of species / that see themselves as tragic, but / at most bring to the faces / (if any) of the others / a rueful smile.’
The Beautiful Losses is poetry that deserves multiple readings and reflections. Available now from Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and Better Than Starbucks Publications.
Frederick Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS, both Story Line Press; the former reissued 2022 by Red Hen Press. Three collections of shorter poems, A POVERTY OF WORDS, (Prolific Press, 2015), LANDSCAPE WITH MUTANT (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018), and THE BEAUTIFUL LOSSES (Better Than Starbucks Books, September 2023). Pollack has appeared in Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Magma (UK), Bateau, Fulcrum, Chiron Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, etc. Online, poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Hamilton Stone Review, BlazeVox, The New Hampshire Review, Mudlark, Rat’s Ass Review, Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, etc. Website: frederickpollack.com.
Melancholic Parables
by Dale Stromberg
Dale Stromberg’s short story Et lux perplexua luceat eis was first featured in Issue Three of Grim & Gilded.
Available November 29th, Stromberg has released a collection of tales for your reading pleasure - Melancholic Parables.
Stromberg presents the collection best himself, perhaps, describing the tales as “whimsical and dolorous, ironic and absurd.”
See what others are saying about Stromberg’s work here.
Melancholic Parables is available for purchase as of November 29th on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, and Smashwords.
DALE STROMBERG grew up not far from Sacramento before moving to Tokyo, where he had a brief music career. Now he lives near Kuala Lumpur and makes ends meet as an editor and translator. His work has been published here and there.
A Girl / Woman / Teacher / Poet
by Candice M. Kelsey
Candice M. Kelsey was first featured in Grim & Gilded by the way of Persimmon-Leaf Sushi, a flash fiction piece published in Issue Three. Available now is Kelsey’s second full-length collection of poetry, A Girl / Woman / Teacher / Poet.
Kelsey’s collection is the female experience laid bare; a raging call to “ungovernable women everywhere,” as the author dedicates in the first few pages.
It is difficult not to peer into the pages and see one’s own face and history reflected back at them as Kelsey strides along lines belonging to both grief and happiness, anger and forgiveness:
She steps into the world
of deer hormones and is startled by the pairing
of two words - shedding and velvet. Life
is a series of odd pairings; paradox
has hardened her some.
From “A Woman Witnesses Velvet Shedding”
A Girl / Woman / Teacher / Poet (Alien Buddha Press, ISBN: 9798838855619) is available for purchase on Amazon.
CANDICE KELSEY is a poet, educator, and activist currently living in Augusta, Georgia. She serves as a creative writing mentor with PEN America's Prison & Justice Writing Program; her work appears in Grub Street, Poet Lore, Lumiere Review, Hawai'i Pacific Review, and Poetry South among other journals. Recently, Candice was chosen as a finalist in Iowa Review's Poetry Contest and Cutthroat's Joy Harjo Poetry Prize. Her third book releases September '22. Find her @candicekelsey1 and www.candicemkelseypoet.com.