Literary Roundup: Washington Square Review's 2022 Staff Picks
In 2022, literary magazines showcased some of the most vibrant and affecting voices in fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. These works delved into ephemeral uncertainties and pervasive truths, grappling with hauntings, grief, ceremonies, and the craft of writing itself. Here are some of Washington Square Review’s favorite poems, short stories, and essays from 2022, selected by our staff members.
The Paris Review, Fiction / Issue 241
“Days, ate. It was something. Made me realize I had gotten too good at what I’d been doing. You can get too good at something that’s meant as a temporary solution, and then it becomes the problem.”
“Untranslatability” by James Yeh
The Drift, Fiction / Issue 6
"It’s an old story. Two people together, simple, straightforward. She’s a translator; he is, I am sorry to say, a writer."
“The Moving Target of Being” by Suzanne Scanlon
Granta, Essay / Issue 160
“When I was in the hospital, the belief in “recovered memories” was at its peak.”
"Bob Ross Paints Your Self Portrait" by Terrance Hayes
The Paris Review, Poetry / Issue 240
“Today we’re going to get to work on the details / of your expression. And believe it or not, / the only colors we’re going to use will be / blacker than most blacks.”
The Adroit Journal, Prose / Issue 41
“Now that it’s spring, the grave of the house has come uncovered. We all pretend not to see the barren agony of it, untouched by snowdrops or worms or robins.”
“Yellow Summer Rain” by Na Zhong
Guernica, Fiction / May
“No one knew where the FTs came from. Like the basketball that hit you in the nose out of nowhere, they just materialized in front of us and walked into our life with their long legs.”
HEAT, Fiction / Series 3 Number 2
“All I know is there’s a terrible wrongness sitting on my chest, mute and heavy like a stubborn cat. This happens sometimes. When I was in high school I would feel it the night before exams, as though the test had already happened and I was sitting with the uncorrectable idiocy of my mistakes, and nothing, not even doing the test, would set things right.”
“Peking Duck” by Ling Ma
The New Yorker, Fiction / July
“A boy, at best, can adore his mother, but a girl can understand her. When the doctor told me it was a girl, I thought, Now I will be understood.”
The Drift, Fiction / Issue 8
“I loved the grocery store! It felt like the kind of place where I could finally become the woman I was meant to be.”
The Paris Review, Fiction / Issue 240
“We could hear my parents shouting. They might as well have been growling at each other. I loved them, but they were both naive. They had no idea what was coming. The world. The wars.”
“The Complete” by Gabriel Smith
The Drift, Fiction / Issue 6
“I think, now, I want my stories to feel like being asleep in the back of a car, waking briefly, and thinking: o, I must be here. Then falling back asleep.”
“How to Wash Your Hands” by Stephen Ira
The Paris Review, Poetry / Issue 241
“When I was a girl in Beverly Hills, / and things were just beginning to get bad, / they brought handwashing experts to prep school / one day.”
Guernica, Essay / February
"We were all slamming our heads against different walls. Confrontation on its own isn't a feeling; it's another kind of loneliness."
“Meditations on Ghosts” by Felicia Zamora
American Poetry Review, Poetry / Volume 51, Issue 6
“Gloria, I too grope for words. My dustdevil heart. All this time, I chase my own ribs, each stair of bone, a climb. I chase my own innards. I am not alone.”
“Of Prayers and Orisons” by Benjamin Paloff
The Common, Poetry / Issue 23
“It means something to us, this refusal to admit our visceral understanding of the unity of space and time, when, honestly, we know them in no other way. Whereas your ruminations on what memory means to the birds have proven inconclusive.”