The Lowell Review 2022

The 2022 edition of The Lowell Review is available for purchase on the Lulu.com print-on-demand publishing website. With contributions from across the United States plus Ireland, Morocco, Hungary, and the U.K., The Lowell Review 2022 contains writing and poetry about the pandemic, politics and other contemporary topics but also has other pieces that explore universal elements of the human experience. Some stories are deeply local like our long riff on the city’s storm boards. Others delve into the stories of remarkable people. This being the 100^th anniversary of the birth of Jack Kerouac, we included a special section in recognition of the author, who seems to have an unlimited capacity to make news. Taken as a whole, the journal is a smorgasbord of great writing and poetry.

The Lowell Review 2021

The second issue of a new publication is an important step because it signals readers and writers that the journal, in this case, is on its steady way. People are still talking about the inaugural issue with the orange cover and Chath pierSath’s wild line drawing of two heads. We expect the new issue to generate as much enthusiasm, starting with the cover image of rowers in the Merrimack River by Richard Marion, who picked up a beat-up cabinet door on the riverbank in 1978, painted it yellow, and added the figures and boats. Artistic recycling.

The full text of The Lowell Review 2022 is available for onscreen reading here on this site for free but we urge you to purchase a copy of the print edition to get the full impact of the splendid cover art and the marvelous design of the journal.

While you’re at Lulu.com, consider purchasing a copy of The Lowell Review 2021. That edition contains essays, short stories and poems from 50 contributors and includes sections dedicated to the pandemic and to the protests for racial justice that took place last summer.

The print-on-demand technology we’re using for The Lowell Review is new and remarkably affordable. The author/editor/publisher team creates a single document of the book’s content from start to finish and another file for the cover. Both are uploaded to the site where they are combined into a top-quality book. Only the book doesn’t exist in tangible form until someone orders a copy and then the print machines work their magic and a physical book emerges and is shipped to the customer. The author incurs no upfront costs from the printer and no longer needs to convert the garage or spare room into a miniature book storage warehouse.

But while The Lowell Review embraces modern technology, it also reaches back into our region’s history for inspiration and guidance. The journal’s mission statement, printed at the start of each edition, explains:

MISSION STATEMENT

The Lowell Review brings together writers and readers in the Merrimack River watershed of eastern New England with people everywhere who share their curiosity about and passion for the small and large matters of life. Each issue includes essays, poems, stories, criticism, opinion, and visual art.

In the spirit of The Dial magazine of Massachusetts, edited by Margaret Fuller and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 1840s, The Lowell Review offers a space for creative and intellectual expression. The Dial sought to provide evidence of “what state of life and growth is now arrived and arriving.”

This publication springs from the RichardHowe.com blog, known for its “Voices from Lowell and beyond.” In America, the name Lowell stands out, associated with industrial innovation, working people, cultural pluralism, and some of the country’s literary greats.

Here’s a list of the contributors to the 2022 edition:

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS AND TITLES

Sarah Alcott Anderson, Caution

Kathleen Aponick, Omen

Susan April, Another Turn

Alfred Bouchard, Patched Together in the Manner of Dreams

Paul Brouillette, A Pilgrimage to Selma and Montgomery
Patricia Cantwell, Kintsugi (A Radio Drama)

Sean Casey, Tom Brady

Ann Fox Chandonnet, A Postcard from Sandburg’s Cellar

Charles Coe, Twenty-Two Staples

Billy Collins, Lowell, Mass.

Pierre V. Comtois, Interview

David Daniel, Remembering a Friendship: Robert W. Whitaker, III (Nov 9, 1950 – Sept. 16, 2019)

Dave DeInnocentis, Marin County Satori

Joseph Donahue, Two Poems

Catherine Drea, Beginning Again

Janet Egan, Saturday Morning, Reading “Howl”

Sheila Eppolito, Hearing Things Differently

Kevin Gallagher, Dookinella Church of Our Lady of the Assumption

Charles Gargiulo, Marvelous Marvin Hagler and the Godfather

Bob Hodge, Our Visit with Bernd

Richard P. Howe, Jr., Protecting the Capitol: 1861 & 2021

Moira Linehan, Something Has Been Lost

Carl Little, A Hiker I Know

El Habib Louai, Growing up on a Hog Farm on the Outskirts of Casablanca

Greg Marion, Storm Boards photograph

Paul Marion, Interview: Commemorating Kerouac (1998)

Richard Marion, cover art

Elise Martin, An Abundance of Flags

Mike McCormick, Stumbling Upon The Town and the City

Neil Miller, How a Kid from the East Coast Became a Diamondbacks Fan

Helena Minton, Daily Walk in the Quarter

Amina Mohammed, Change

Carlo Morrissey, The Boulevard, July 1962
Dan Murphy, Two Poems

Joylyn Ndungu, Equilibrium

Dairena Ní Chinnéide, Filleadh on Aonach / Coming Home from the Fair

Bill O’Connell, Emily on the Moon

Christine O’Connor, Dreaming of a Canadian Jam Knot: Thoughts on Work, Thoreau and Living Deliberately

Stephen O’Connor, A Man You Don’t Meet Everyday

Mark Pawlak, New Normal

Chath pierSath, The Rose of Battambang

Emilie-Noelle Provost, The Standing Approach

Joan Ratcliffe, The Incessant

Tom Sexton, At the Fruitlands Museum, Harvard, Massachusetts

Malcolm Sharps, The Mask of Sorrow, A Tragic Face Revealed

Meg Smith, Ducks in Heaven

Michael Steffen, Arturo Gets Up

John Struloeff, The Work of a Genius

John Suiter, Interview of Paul Marion

David R. Surette, Favors: A Novel (an excerpt)

Bunkong Tuon, Always There Was Rice

Peuo Tuy, Saffron Robe

Simon Warner, Still Rockin’ in the Beat World: How Kerouac Cool Continues to Fuel Popular Music Passions as Writer’s Centenary Is Reached

Grace Wells, Curlew

Fred Woods, The Basketball is Round

Submission Guidelines

Do you have a story, essay or poem that might fit in the next edition of The Lowell Review? To submit work for consideration for future issues, please contact TheLowellReview@gmail.com