Elizabeth McKenzie

A pinkish-orange magazine cover of Chicago Quarterly Review, volume 42, Fall 2025

The Richest Kid in the World By Olga Zilberbourg I was stuck at home for the second week in a row. I had what I always had, bronchitis. My breathing was back to normal, mostly, and I was so well rested that I started waking up at the crack of dawn to read before going back to sleep. When I woke up again, the apartment was quiet. My parents were at work; my brother, at school; my grandmother, out shopping. Only grandfather was home, peeling potatoes in the kitchen to the dull drone of the radio. It seemed like the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union was always presiding that year, and if it wasn’t the Supreme Soviet, it was the Congress of the People’s Deputies of the Soviet Union. I knew important things were happening in my country. Every week, I received a youth newspaper where I read about the mistakes of the Communist party and the country’s turn toward openness and democracy. I saved the most important bits for the school wall newspaper. But enough was enough. I didn’t understand how my grandparents could listen to those debates from morning to night. I wanted to do something. I had my books, my record player, my notebooks, my colored pencils and my collection of paper dolls, the view of the yard from my third-floor window and the maple tree that I considered my friend, the flurry of snowflakes that were entertaining to watch for a few minutes while listening to Tchaikovsky on my record player… I had my homework, for goodness’ sake. But no, no. My heart yearned for something else. A battlefield, a sailboat, a ballroom, a surprise phone call, a piece of chocolate candy, anything.

Huge thanks @elizabethmck.bsky.social and @chicagoqreview.bsky.social for publishing my personal essay "The Richest Kid in the World." It's about the fall of the USSR as told through the eyes of a pre-teen, censorship, & the way end of censorship in the USSR affected different generations.

Thank you @chicagoqreview.bsky.social and @elizabethmck.bsky.social for giving “Dead and Buried” the most wonderful home.

Fall ‘25 issue is amazing. Pick up yours today! (chicagoquarterlyreview.com)

#writingcomminity
#storysky
#booksky

Happy to receive this wonderful endorsement from the great @elizabethmck.bsky.social, author of one of my favorite novels, The Portable Veblen. When I meet someone who also loves that book, it’s like a delightful secret we share. Please read it!
@acrebooks.bsky.social

Catamaran Literary Reader Catamaran Literary Reader is a quarterly literary and visual arts magazine.

Check out the new @catamaranlit.bsky.social with my Halloween-themed story, "A Kiss." 🎃

Many thanks to @loubeard.bsky.social & @elizabethmck.bsky.social

catamaranliteraryreader.com/fall-2025

Proud to have a new essay ("Trillium") in the latest issue of the Chicago Quarterly Review! Really honored to be included with so many incredible writers. 🙏 @chicagoqreview.bsky.social #litmags #essay #writer #nowreading #booksky

Summer Issue Launch Event: Cowell Ranch Historic Hay Barn — Catamaran Literary Reader Join us in celebrating the launch of Catamaran’s 48th issue!

✨Join us June 24th to celebrate the launch of our Summer 2025 Issue!
🎤Readings by John Briscoe, @williamwardbutler.bsky.social, @susanmgaines.bsky.social, Charles Hood, Annie Holdren, @elizabethmck.bsky.social, @davidrompf.bsky.social, Patrice Vecchione.
catamaranliteraryreader.com/events-2025/...

Hey Santa Cruz friends, this should be fun!
#litmag #SantaCruz

From "Henriette's Trick" by Signe Ratcliff, ‪CQR 30th Anniversary Issue:
"Mason sometimes pretended that Mom drove to the Hardee’s and spent the day eating hamburgers, instead of driving into Germantown, where she cut hair at the Klassy Kut..."
#fiction @signeratcliff.bsky.social‬

From "Walking Along The Point" by Jake Young, CQR 30th Anniversary Edition:
"The lake is choppy today,
and clear, blue-green waves
crash against the concrete sea wall
like bottles thrown against the ground."
#poetry

From "Mr. Hundred Hands" by Shawn Andrew Mitchell, CQR #41:
"Mr. Hundred Hands is building fifty birdhouses to attract fifty or more birdsongs to the branches and limbs of one tree." #fiction

From "A Dog's Life" by Yanan Wang, CQR #41:
"I was twenty-four years old when my family had the conversation about reincarnating Dad. We were seated around the dinner table, my mother, my grandmother, and me, shoveling stir-fried pea shoots and braised pork belly into our mouths."
#fiction

From "Chicken Man" by Elizabeth McKenzie, @elizabethmck.bsky.social CQR 30th Anniversary Edition:
"The chicken man cleans like no one else. Got his beak in everything, a tornado of order, a machine with feathers, but mostly a friend."

Foreground: A magazine with a multicolored tapestry cover ; background: orange bricks covered with green moss.

Front cover of a magazine: Weavers Literary Review A Home for Writings by South Asian Americans and Others Vol. 1, Number 1 2025 Weavers Press, SF

The beginning of a story called A Woman of Learning, by Olga Zilberbourg A seven-year-old girl falls in love with a book and tells herself, I want to read every book in the world. The book she falls in love with is a love story between a fox and a chicken. She can’t stop thinking about it. She wants her friend to read it so that they can talk about it. The fox rebels against his family who are all liars and cheaters. But how is it possible for the fox to be so different from the rest of his family? How could this be? She yearns for the kind of love that the fox and the chicken share and worries about them. Where could the fox and the chicken live together in peace, in a way that nobody harms them? In the morning, the girl looks for this volume on her desk to pack into her backpack to take to school, but the book isn’t there. It’s not on top, below, or behind her heavy, wooden desk. It’s not on any of the shelves. She asks her parents. She asks the teacher. She asks the librarian at

Welcome a new magazine by Weavers Press, edited by Moazzam Sheikh and Amna Ali. Thank you for including my story A Woman of Learning in your inaugural issue.
1/2

Announcing the release of our Spring 2025 issue!

From "So Many Promises And So Many Lies" by S. Afzal Haider, CQR 30th Anniversary Edition:
"After four days and three nights in Paris, Joyce and Ved headed toward the sun-drenched south of France for four nights and three days. From the Gare de Lyon they boarded an afternoon train for Avignon."

From "2013 (Lydia Fanny Lupita) by Christina Drill, CQR 30th Anniversary Edition:
"That was the year we moved in across from the Lydia Fanny Lupita hair salon, in a neighborhood of Chicago far from the lake."

It’s here! My story “Council Rock” is out in Chicago Quarterly Review, vol. 41, available now from booksellers. Big thanks to editor Elizabeth McKenzie and the other good folks at ChicagoQuarterlyReview.com. I'm truly honored to be in such great company!

@irisdunkle.bsky.social is signing her book at 1pm at booth 926. Come by if you are at #AWP!

Announcing the Spring 2025 issue of the CQR! Featuring work by: Genevieve Abravanel * Alison Braid-Fernandez * Christine Byrne * Roger Camp * William Virgil Davis * Sarah Dunphy-Lelii * Dawn Dupler * Brian Ellis * Julie Esther Fisher * Patty …

I have a short story in the Spring issue of the @chicagoqreview.bsky.social

My thanks to @loubeard.bsky.social & @elizabethmck.bsky.social

www.chicagoquarterlyreview.com/2025/03/11/a...

Book Review: ‘Hunchback,’ by Saou Ichikawa Saou Ichikawa’s award-winning novel, “Hunchback,” is narrated by an heiress with a rare genetic disorder and a brilliant, cynical mind.

My review of this unforgettable novel:
While Her Body Struggles to Stay Alive, Her Brain Writes Porn www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/b...

While Visiting Babette by Kat Meads Cover Art

YIV contributor Kat Meads has a new novelette that you won't want to miss!
“Kat Meads is among the most original writers of our time. While Visiting Babette is bizarre and beautiful, an exquisite literary escape into an absurd and aberrant realm.”
—Elizabeth McKenzie, author of The Dog of the North

Thank you Litmags! I am nothing w/o you!
@karenebender.bsky.social @karenrile.bsky.social @thirdcoastmagazine.com @riverstyxmag.bsky.social @elizabethmck.bsky.social @valleyvoices.bsky.social @alliumjournal.bsky.social @grantamag.bsky.social @hypertextmagazine.bsky.social @superpresent.bsky.social

Funny literary books that I love, a random list/thread, because if we don't laugh, we cry:
1. Tenth of December (George Saunders)
2. Where'd You Go, Bernadette? (Maria Semple)
3. Nothing to See Here (Kevin Wilson)
4. The Portable Veblen (Elizabeth Mckenzie)
5. Lessons in Chemistry (Bonnie Garmus)

In honor of his birthday, the extraordinary last paragraph of Charles Portis's TRUE GRIT:

I like to lose control of language, including consistency, sometimes, as a byproduct of trying to get somewhere different and, also, better characterization. You can also edit back the chaos of that, but still gain something. Language is fluid, people are inconsistent, the world is chaotic.

From "Unfathomable" by Vikram Ramakrishnan, CQR 30th Anniversary Issue:
"I was barely in school when Oscar died, my first experience of loss that wasn’t temporary. There were moments in the first days when he was still there, a black-and-gray-and-white blur in the corner of my eye..."

From "Teach A Man To Fish" by James K. Zimmerman, CQR 30th Anniversary Issue:
"Give a man a fish and he will
crave the subtle flavor of sole
scallions and garlic, salmon’s
oily meat glazed with soy
and maple syrup, or soft
catfish flesh within the crunch
of deep-fried corn" #poetry

My story "Lambs" is out with the wonderful journal "One Story." Thanks to Karen Friedman, amazing editor, and Patrick Ryan for choosing it and making it so much better.

From "Hazy" by Paul Skenazy, CQR 30th Anniversary Issue:
"Where do I start? I’d ask why, but I know why. I write. Writing got me through adolescence and coming out. It gave me a byline, paid me to watch baseball all my life and introduced me to Kurt..." #literature

From "Composing The End Note" by Kat Meads, CQR 30th Anniversary Issue:
"For a little while (in the big scheme of things), I composed obituaries—or, rather, recast obituaries, condensing first-run obituaries to an accepted word count..."