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'River Mammals’ had close competitors, but I was persuaded by its rich imagery, its dynamic use of language, its apt and expressive metaphors, its complete vision of the strange world created, and the ease with which it moved from scene to scene.

Lydia Davis on our Fiction Winner, "River Mammals"

#lydia davis #fiction #fiction prize #plain china

Laughter on the Streets of Istanbul

As a student completely addicted to photography, Anna Blue likes to think that she observes the world through a wide-angle lens. On the side, she studies international relations and marine biology, and hopes to spend her days after college capturing her travels around the world through photography. Her work first appeared in Stanford’s journal, Leland Quarterly.

#plain china #undergraduate art #art #Istanbul #Photography

Trees in Darkness by Taylor Clock

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT OSWEGO

Taylor Clock is a graphic design major at the State University of New York at Oswego. His concentration is in photography; he draws inspiration from the beauty of nature and the processes required to capture such beauty. His artwork first appeared in SUNY Oswego’s journal, Great Lake Review.

#art #photography #night #trees #dark #suny oswego #Great Lake Review #plain china

Lydia Davis Picks 2013 Plain China Fiction Winner

Congratulations to Zachary Frank of Boston College! His short story, "River Mammals," was selected by Lydia Davis as the best undergraduate fiction of 2013.

#winner #fiction #Fiction prize #fiction contest #undergraduate writing #bennington #boston college #lydia davis

of women and gods (of learning how to pray)

"II. There is an Indian woman who lives across from our house, I see her in between the gates: she is wearing a purple shirt, taking out the trash, her hair up in a bun, and a red bindi on her forehead. She is so so big, colossal, I cannot stop looking, I think, she must be God. (even after all these years, I hope she is, still.)"

-From "of women and gods (of learning how to pray)" by Lily Jamaludin of Grinnell College. Read the whole thing here.

#plainchina #plain china #poetry #undergraduate writing #god #women #prayer

The Grocery Store

"My grandmother prays to Santa Guadalupe, the one embalmed on her nightstand candle. I wonder what she prays for. I would wander through crowds of these candles in grocery stores,

shelved into congregation, with the saints’ faces contorted in phrase. I looked into the eyes of decapitated lambs behind glass. They stared lifelessly back, and I walked quickly

down the aisle. Near the milk and the juice, a blue aura inhaled my words into mist. Piñatas floated in the ceiling like stars wearing masks of confetti and wax."

-Read the rest of "The Grocery Store" by Geo Gomez of Grinnell College

#poetry #undergraduate writing #grinnell college #grinnell

On October blacktop poured over limestone, the hard ghost of an inland sea, farmland, then floodplains now emptied by whistle, we tumble, small and tough under wind. Over me, Jacob Dearborn is all stonewashed jeans and potato hands, but I, too, am a scuffling-hard kid

-Read the rest of "Missouri Shells" by Clara Lee of the University of Minnesota

#plain china #undergradate writing #University of Minnesota #Missouri #Poetry #college

"Untitled" by Megan Gildea of the University of Pittsburgh

#undergraduate art #photography #childhood #plain china

I was seven when my father told me that Sodom and Gomorrah deserved to be burned down. There had been a deal with God, didn’t I see? But there were kids there, I said. They hadn’t done anything wrong. Anyone under five living there was corrupted, he said. Five is when your values grow. Like a garden, I guessed, all the carrots nodding politely to each other. It’s a lot to hold in your head when you are seven. You twist it and turn it like a key or a lock or a rock just slightly too large to skip with one hand. Something is too big about a statement like that. That there is a course set for you before five that you have no hand in, but your parents work hard to make sure you do not steal or break or hurt. It seems impossible. This is what I think of when my seventh-grade history teacher says, Manifest Destiny.

-Read more of "Ceelie" by Bryce Bortree of Susquehanna University

#undergradate writing #plain china #susquehanna university

Clara Lee, Poet

Clara Lee is a student of the Dakota language at the University of Minnesota. An upbringing in suburban Missouri and the Hubei province of mainland China by Cantonese immigrants informs her work in language and identity. Her work was first honored by the Wednesday Club of St. Louis, earning her, for a short time, the nickname “Tennessee Williams.” “Missouri Shells” was first published in Ivory Tower. It is an honorable mention in the August Issue of Plain China.

#plain china #Poetry #honorable mention #undergradate writing

Our cover photo, "You Are Nowhere," comes from Lydia Smith of Rice University.

Check out more of Lydia's work here, or on her Tumblr.

#undergraduate art #plain china #Lydia Smith #Rice University #Rice #art #yellow

"All Aboard" by Katheryn Gillon of American University

#art #photography #undergraduate art

Read it here.

"Beach Tree"

Brittany Kleinschnitz

BENNINGTON COLLEGE

#bennington #bennington college #plain china #photography #june 2014

Arsenic Possibilities by Aleah Goldin

"They say never yell help in New York. Screaming “fire” is the only true means of attention seeking, because the buildings are like toothpicks, all lined up in a row. The triangle shirt factory fire happened seven buildings down from my dorm in 1911. The factory is now a converted building for NYU Arts and Sciences. A single metal plaque discusses the lives that were ended. It doesn’t mention the two men who used their bodies as ladders, so girls could climb out over them. It doesn’t confirm the fact that the policemen held out a picnic tablecloth as a trampoline to cushion the fall, and the bodies fell through it, hitting like pancakes."

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