News for DIAGRAMMers:
- Issue 26.1 is LIVE
- 2026 Chapbook Contest deadline: 4/30. Speaking of, maybe pick up the new Chapbook Series? They are awesome!
- Check out the Significant Objects project, like this story/object by fiction editor Sarah Blackman
1a.
Hey there readers, a quick note to let you know the new issue came out this AM. You can find the whole thing here: http://thediagram.com/26_1. Give it a read.
IN ISSUE 26.1 YE WILL FIND:
TEXT / IMAGE by Stephen Danos, Anna Drzewiecki, Melissa Eleftherion, Jennessa Hester, McCall Hollister, Andrea Jurjević, Noah Kucij, Sydney Lea, Arro Mandell, Landon McGee, karlie michele, Andrew Pilet, Hannah Schoettmer, Martha Silano, Aaron Smith, Erick Verran, Jackson Watson, and Grayson Wolf
REVIEWS: Will Cordeiro on Henry Goldkamp, Jeffrey Grunthaner on William Lessard, irene cooper on Kristine Langley Mahler, Katherine Beaman on Liesl Ujvary
SCHEMATICA: Configuration Item Selection Methodology, Diagram of the Vibrator Assembly, MacKensie's Concept of the Irritable Focus in the Spinal Cord, Rank Order of Body Parts for Three Measures of Tactual Sensitivity, Schematic Diagram of the Gate Control Theory of Pain Mechanisms, Subsystem Principal Engineer Views
OH YEAH.
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1b.
A sample from the issue, from 2 poems by Martha Silano, which, sadly, we present to you posthumously:
DON'T MAKE ME GRAB YOU BY THE ROSTRUM
Who doesn't want to be visited by the dead, who doesn't want
their dead father to rise like a cabbage moth from the zucchini bed?
This is something better not shared in public, something to suppress
like your longing for the stranger in the Pontiac Le Mans.
Wishing he'd surprise me in my Twitter feed, with a bolt of lightning,
an image of a boxing glove. Since he's done it before, why not do it again?
Because I was designed with the same blueprint, because faith
is like those high-tension wires on Stampede Pass, surging with the power
to light up every plasma screen and electric tea kettle in Seattle,
with a force that hums on rainy days but cannot be seen or explained.
A year before he died, he told me my husband couldn't possibly
love me as much as he did. Talk about crossing a vine.
Show me you're having a party out there, bopping around
from nebula to nebula, from Tarantula to Triangulum,
from Prawn to Lagoon, then back down here to mess with me
like you said you would. In me are your passions for physics,
basil, stargazing, salami, a word like rostrum, which found
its way into your wacky lexicon every chance you got.
Only later did I learn it wasn't only a weevil's snout, a mollusk's
proboscis, but a beaked section of the Roman Forum,
a place for public speaking, where a senator named Eppio Silano,
our great-great-great-great-great ("18 greats, kids!") may have stood.
How narrowly you missed being on that D-Day beach in Normandy.
How can I not believe it was you who possessed my online course calendar,
making every day of summer term a VIRTUAL POETRY PARTY?
Something like I forgive you, something like I wish you weren't dead.
Read this one and another one from Martha Silano in the new issue here.
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2a.
A reminder that the 2026 Chapbook Contest Deadline is 4/30/26. Details here! This is how we acquire most of our chapbooks each year, and your entry fee goes to support the work of DIAGRAM and New Michigan Press and the work we continue to publish.
2b. The 2026 Chapbook Series is out, featuring Jacob Griffin Hall's CHIVO, Harrison Candelaria Fletcher's COMFORT OF STONE, Karla Myn Khine's QUASI-METALLOID. Josh Russell’s COMMONPLACES, and Rachael Wilson's THE KAREN HORNEY PROGRESSIONS. You can pick them all up here at the merch store.
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3.
We wanted to share a cool experimental lit publishing project some of us associated with DIAGRAM are doing with our friends over at Tucson Essay Club for the last month: Significant Objects 2026:
Beginning in March 2026 Ander Monson’s Advanced Fiction Workshop at the University of Arizona and a number of other writer friends are conducting an experiment in narrative value. Writers purchase an essentially valueless object (less than $5, typically secondhand), write a story or essay or poem about it, and we auction the object and the writing off on ebay. Josh Russell (from this year's chapbook series) has an essay for you about a Tufts College Stein. Fiction editor Sarah Blackman has a great one about a Papier Mache Baby. And so on.
The winning bidder receives the object and a printed copy of the story (or essay or poem) in an edition of one. We will track any profits and donate them to the Hermitage Cat Shelter in Tucson, one of our favorite nonprofit organizations.
The stories will be published as part of the ebay listings, so anyone can read them. They will also be archived on the website thereafter and printed in a limited edition booklet in May 2026.
Significant Objects 2026 is based on the 2009 Significant Objects project, which you may enjoy reading more about.
If you like this idea and want to do one, be in touch with Ander at [email protected].
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And hey, thanks for keeping on reading DIAGRAM. If you want to support the magazine and what we do, which you should, best option is to buy merch, all of which you can find over at the merch store, or enter the chapbook contest. And of course send us new work! We're always reading (though not always as quickly as we'd like).
Ander Monson, Editor
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