The webiste Writer’s Relief has made Forge their first lit mag spotlight of 2012! Writer’s Relief is out there to help creative writers effectively target their submissions, and is a great resource for anyone in the writing business. Check it out.

We are now taking submissions for the Annual Forge Cover Art Contest. The winning artwork will be used on our covers for one year, and the winning artist will receive a prize of $50. Submissions must fulfill the following:

1. Address the theme of “little people opening things”

2. JPEG format, print quality (at least 300 dpi)

3. Size: 5.5 x 8.5 inches

Deadline: March 30, 2012

Email submissions to forgejournal@gmail.com with the subject line “COVER ART CONTEST”

The winner, selected by our editorial staff, will be announced May 1 and will have their art featured prominently on the website, as well as on print copies of the journal. The winner will also receive our prize of $50. The cover will be implemented starting with our July 2012 issue.

Forge shifts and jukes like a prize fight boxer. Here are some of the changes you can look forward to in the coming year.

Our first, and biggest, project is to overhaul the archives in order to make past issues more accessible. If you wander over to the Archives section at them moment, you’ll discover a nifty layout of thumbnails of the covers from the past issues. Our goal is to catalog the extensive, and mostly invisible, backlist of stories and poems and reviews and such and give them each an interactive table of contents like you see on our home page for the current issue. These TOCs will be accessed through the issue cover. This will take a while, so bear with us.

We are also introducing a Store with merchandise featuring more of our past cover artwork (“Past Cover Artwork” is really looking to be the popular pre-season choice for MVP…). We will be splitting the profits from sales with the artists.

My own New Year’s resolution is to post more on the blog. I say it every year (not out loud, to anyone in particular — let’s be clear about that), but just like my resolutions to eat more green vegetables and finally read Moby Dick, this one may be hit and miss. But I’ll try. Possible blog entry titles: “Disappointment with LOST, or, Why Its Fine with Me If George R.R. Martin Takes Another Ten Years to Complete his A Song of Ice and Fire Series.”

Brevity is the soul of … something, I think. Or maybe not.

As the sun sets on 2011, it’s a great time to reflect on the year. We were thrilled with another great vintage of fun, challenging, and beautiful contributions to Forge; as always, the Pushcart nomination season requires very hard decisions. We are proud to have offered the works listed below as our 2011 nominations.

Thanks to all of the very many talented artists who shared their work with us last year, and special congratulations to the nominees. We hope you’ll take the time to look over these great stories and poems, if you did not see them when they were originally published.

Happy holidays!

Truth Thomas “What the Snake Whispered in Eve’s Ear”

JP Dancing Bear “Pueblo”

Robert P. Kaye “Learning to Fail in the Cadaver Archipalego”

Sondra Friedman “If a Tree Falls”

Charles LaFave “The Man Who Hides the Future in Apples”

Caroline Misner “A Necessary Sadness”

We’re happy to announce that we’ve submitted three of our stories to the storySouth Million Writers Award.

The Million Writers Award is a yearly award recognizing works published online. It’s a great institution and strives to highlight the excellent writing that takes place in the many journals who publish their work on the web.

Here are our three entries, published in 2010:

“The Kindness of Strangers” by Tad Crawford

“The Minds of Boys” by Luke B. Goebel

“Not Even Jail” by Sean Jackson

I’m not sure how I’ve missed this for so long.

The website www.rice-boy.com contains several storylines set within a created fantasy world, a clear labor of love by artist (and writer) Evan Dahm.

Wikipedia describes his stories as surrealist, fantastic, epic. Those are all true, but don’t quite capture the awesomeness. Add to that Dahm’s innovative and original artistic designs for landscape, cities, characters (it sometimes brings Dr Seuss to mind …), all surrounding compelling storylines, and you have something that must be experienced.

Two primary stories exist: Rice Boy (now finished) and Order of Tales (ongoing, and in black and white). Both are set in the same world, but have very different qualities of tone and design. Both are equally impressive. Rice Boy is striking for it’s artistic vision and use of color and design. Order of Tales moves in a drastic new direction, abandoning color for black and white. It employs a strong focus on story and character, and is a well-paced adventure narrative with a satisfying conclusion.

Dahm uses deceptively simplistic artwork in a sophisticated way to tell his stories, and the visuals he is able to achieve are often quite stunning. (Just check out one of the opening pages … it’s almost like something out of a Vincent Van Gogh painting.) It soon becomes clear that Dahm is using the artwork exactly as he wants to set the tone. He often propels the story with nothing but images.

If you haven’t seen this site before. I’d highly recommend checking it out.

www.rice-boy.com

UPDATE: A third storyline is now in progress, entitled Vatu, and is quite good. Don’t miss it!

My sister recently introduced me to the artwork of Michael Burton, and I have to share it because it’s so incredibly cool. Among other things, he creates short videos called paintamations. These are achieved through a painstaking process where the artist photographs a painting, changes it slightly, and photographs it again, etc. Thus the title – it’s animation, through painting. You have to see it to appreciate how amazing it is. Here’s one entitled “Channel.”:

Here’s Michael Burton’s website: http://www.burtonworldart.com/index.html

Forge has nominated three of its stories from 2009 for the Million Writers Award. This award recognizes stories published in online journals, and was created to show that quality stories are not exclusive to print. The Award’s mantra is expressed much more elegantly on the website.

Here are our three entries:

“Sarah and the Enchanted Forest” by Maria Pavlova (Translated by Juliana Chakarova)

“The Precious Thing” by John Riebow

“Honey, You’ll Be Wanting My Autograph” by Mary Creech Gulledge