Review

This year, I started working on the marketing desk for SJSU’s Reed Magazine and thought I should do my due diligence and read last year’s edition. Reed is the longest-running literary journal in California and features submissions from around the world. They work with various mediums, including visual art, poetry, and short- to long-form fiction and nonfiction. The visual art and textual components are cohesive and really helped to bring these stories to life. As someone aspires to get their own work published, this was a good primer for what lit mags might be looking for. I don’t typically gravitate toward nonfiction, but there were some excellent features that reminded me how the genre can serve as a medium for narrative storytelling. My favorite nonfiction piece was “Blank Spaces, Black Frames” by Kathryn Trueblood. The author uses observations, quotes, and fragments from her mother’s journal to illustrate the final years of her life. Using strategic omission and nonlinear chronology, the arc follows the internal state of Trueblood’s mother as she becomes more disconnected from life. These are interwoven with small, tender moments to convey death as an organic process, a rite of passage, and an act of coming home. I was also incredibly impressed by the Emerging Voices Contest winner, “Sparrows” by Crystal Zhu. The piece uses repetition, sound, and vignettes of seemingly mundane objects to reminisce on the times she spent at her grandmother’s home in childhood. Zhu has such a unique voice and respect for narrative conventions, which is rare for her young age. In just two pages, she paints a vivid picture of this golden time in her life, immortalizing these cherished moments through language. As anthologies tend to go, some pieces spoke to me personally more than others. Overall, this was a very dynamic read and I look forward to reading our upcoming edition in May.