Hawaii Writers Guild publishes winter issue of online literary review

The winter 2021 issue of Latitudes, the online literary review of the Hawaii Writers Guild, is now available to the public on the guild website. The magazine will remain online for the foreseeable future.

Publication culminates months of work by members of the guild led by managing editor Bob Lupo. Duncan Dempster, the guild’s webmaster and an editor-at-large, took on designing the format and laying out the issue.

Forty pieces written by 28 guild members were selected for the issue — five pieces of fiction; nine pieces of nonfiction, including one essay in praise of reading literary fiction; one dramatic monologue; and 25 poems.

“Quality, in my view, was very good — and in some cases, exceptional,” said Lupo, who also serves as the fiction editor for the journal.

The diversity of the pieces is broad and should appeal to many readers. The fiction pieces range from a story about a woman waiting to go blind to a chimera piglet that is raised to be sacrificed for a human heart transplant but is set free by a merciful keeper into the wilderness of Kauai’s mountains.

The nonfiction offerings range from memories of growing up with a herd of wild mustangs who roamed the Cedar Mountains of Utah to “Half a Dozen Reasons for Dancing the Hula” by one of the guild’s male members. Some poems and essays also deal with COVID-19 themes, including one that tells the story of a gecko named “Greenie.”

Guild members whose work appears in the winter 2021 issue live on Kauai, in California, Arizona and in Bosnia, as well as on the Big Island.

To find Latitudes on the guild website, visit www.hawaiiwritersguild.com/litreview-second-edition.html.