Liz Laribee is an artist and organizer. Her illustration work has appeared in Occasionally Accurate Science (Nomadic Press, 2017) and Colonial Comics (Fulcrum Press, 2017). She has taught writing and art-making to children in and out of the classroom for her entire career. She was granted the Spectrum Arts Award, the YWCA Emerging Leader Award, and the title of Artist in Residency for the City of Harrisburg. She launched The MakeSpace Arts Collective, Sprocket Mural Arts, and DCBA Lawyers for the Arts in pursuit of arts advocacy. Currently, she is a Graduate Assistant in the College of Information at the University of Maryland where she is pursing a master’s in Library and Information Science. She lives in Washington DC, happily.
“Winner Megan Merchant's poetry has the sudden fall into dream, tenderness, awakenings and delicate and crystalline images - the tone and lines are just right and seem to be in the language of a forest at night and the unseen eye in the wave."
“Go somewhere. Do something. If you don't have a life, how are you going to tell a story about one?"
READ
FICTION
The Body Is a Wild, Wild Thing
Benjamin Woodard
What Did the Boy Do When He Came Back to Life?
In honor of February, a singularly short month, we have dedicated the Issue 6 Fiction section entirely to short works.
COG also honors Black History Month: we continue to publish and spotlight stellar black authors and artists whose work has earned our utmost respect.
COG thanks the dazzling black voices of Young Gifted and Black for contributing, with such elan, to the global conversation.
You can hear them in this issue's episode of Cogitate, on our LISTEN page.
POETRY
Megan Merchant
Hunting in These Woods, Overnight
Dexter L. Booth
Porky Pig Sits Next to a Boy in the Street
Jacob M. Appel
Maria Hamilton Abegunde
Juba, South Sudan: What I Choose to Remember
Scott Coykendall
July Westhale
NONFICTION
T. Coraghessan Boyle
(T.C. Boyle)
Benjamin Hale
What is "Experimental" Literature?
Arisa White
She read the cards and they said a king would bring her roses and fruits (—whatever)
WATCH
LISTEN
INTERVIEW WITH
DANIEL HANDLER
Against our better judgment, we sent COG's editor into the trap-door-riddled home of "Lemony Snicket" series author Daniel Handler - armed only with a janky, borrowed camera and a busted microphone. Listen closely: hear the lens cap whirring. Look closely: see the fear in her eyes. Will she emerge unscathed, or will this be COG's last issue?
COGITATE 5 - "Deep"
In this episode, we go deep: discover what it's like to fall in over one's head and emerge unscathed from a risky deep web experiences, and more... Featuring Willow (not her real name), American Book Award winner Jeff Chang and the voices of Oakland, California's Young Gifted & Black.
CHRIS BAKER IS BACK!
COG is honored to present Part I of II:
Prologue, and Gun Contemplates Methods of Execution. Tune in next week for Part II: Burial Possibilities, and Epilogue: Anubis Speaks.
"The Last Gun" opens with smoke and closes with a bang. These poems toggle between the spirits of the living and the spirits the living carry into death “to ask questions, to contemplate a state of being that is no more.” ... The Last Gun is “a gathering place for… admirers, rememberers, the once-armed,” and this poet has prepared us both “for the journey…where it will be judged,” and for the “deeds on earth.”
- A. Van Jordan
2015-2016 COG Poetry Awards Final Judge
Former WIRED Magazine Angry Nerd Chris Baker is back to pwn n00bs, declaim verse and drink tea. And he’s all out of tea.
In this episode of COG's game and lit review series, Chris – broadcasting from an underground bunker – contemplates Walt Whitman. Oh, and he also reviews Mafia III and its compelling snapshot of 1968 America as experienced by protagonist Lincoln Clay: an orphan, Vietnam vet and black man contending with his threatening surroundings.
GAME & LITERATURE REVIEW
The Last Gun, PART I: Prologue, Gun Contemplates
COG Interview with Daniel Handler
