ISSUE 7.2: New Fools Are Here To Take Your Place, the Breece D'J Pancake Issue
A Breece D'J Pancake influenced, inspired, incited, infused issue.
"He hears false power in the preacher's voice, sees outsiders pretending. Old fool, he thinks, new fools are here to take your place."
“Well, when everybody's going this way, it's time to turn around and go that way, you know? ... I don't care if they end up shitting gold nuggets, somebody's got to dig in the damn ground. Somebody's got to.”
--Breece D’J Pancake
Herein
Nonfiction
I Have Left My Ghost in Those Hollows by Kirsten Reneau
Trendy Times by Jody Rae
Excerpt from The Orchard Is Full of Sound by Sheldon Lee Compton
Fiction, Flash, & Lyrics
Tomorrow is a Long Time by Daren Dean
3 Tiny Stories: Pickles; Ducks; One That Almost Got Away by Brian Beatty
The Road Up Ahead by Travis Cravey & Levi Faulk
Extra Dumplings by Justin Eells
Not Another Dangerous Clown by Eli Evans
Downtown Diner by Mitchell Toews
Cherry’s Dog by Craig Rodgers
Full by Colin Gee
Let the Slick End Slide, Let the Rough End Drag by Dan Townsend
Paper Dolls by C.W. Blackwell
Dustbin by Clem Flowers
Parked Car by Tim Frank
Exterminating Angel by Mark Blickley
Snake Mountain Hotshots by John Yohe
Conclave by John Denver-Drain
The Ticks Will Eat You Whole by Anthony Neil Smith
Contributors
Kirsten Reneau is a writer by way of West Virginia, living in New Orleans. She received her MFA from the University of New Orleans and has been nominated for a variety of awards, with a few wins along the way. Her first chapbooks, "Love Letters to the Heavens We Could Be In" (Bone and Ink Press) and "Meeting Gods in Basement Bars and Other Ways to Find Forgiveness" (Ethel Press) are both due in the next year. She can be found online at http://www.kirstenreneau.com.
Jody Rae was a 2021 Pushcart Prize nominee for her creative nonfiction essay, “Ice Chest” in Flyover Country. Her short story, “Beautiful Mother” was a finalist in the Phoebe Journal 2021 Spring Fiction Contest. Her work appears in various outlets, including X-R-A-Y, Rejection Letters, MASKS Literary Magazine, Sledgehammer Lit, Cowboy Jamboree, and Red Fez. Her work can be found at www.criminysakesalive.com.
Sheldon Lee Compton is a short story writer, novelist, and poet from Eastern Kentucky. He is the author of the short story collections The Same Terrible Storm (Foxhead Books, 2012), Where Alligators Sleep (Foxhead Books, 2014), and Sway (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2020), the novels Brown Bottle (Bottom Dog Press, 2016) and Dysphoria (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2019), the poetry chapbook Podunk Lore, part of the Lantern Lit series (Dog On a Chain Press, 2018), and the poetry collection Runaways (Alien Buddha Press, 2021). In 2021, Cowboy Jamboree Press published his entire short story oeuvre as The Collected Stories: Sheldon Lee Compton. His work has also been nominated for the Chaffin Award for Excellence in Appalachian Writing, the Pushcart Prize, the Still: Journal Award and the Gertrude Stein Fiction Award.
Daren Dean is the author of Far Beyond the Pale, I'll Still Be Here Long After You're Gone, The Black Harvest: A Novel of the American Civil War, and This Vale of Tears. He earned his MFA from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. He has been featured in Bloom, Huffpost, Kirkus Reviews, and Ploughshares. "Affliction" was a Finalist in the Glimmer Train Short Fiction Contest for New Writers. His short fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize three times. The Black Harvest was recently nominated for the Pen/Faulkner, the W. Y. Boyd Literary Award for Excellence in Military Fiction, and the Midlands Author Award. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Lincoln University of Missouri.
Brian Beatty is the author of five poetry collections: Magpies and Crows; Borrowed Trouble; Dust and Stars: Miniatures; Brazil, Indiana: A Folk Poem; and Coyotes I Couldn’t See. His jokes, poems and stories have appeared in numerous publications, including CutBank, The Evergreen Review, Exquisite Corpse, Gulf Coast, Hobart, Hoot, McSweeney’s, Monkeybicycle, The Quarterly, Seventeen and SoFloPoJo. Hobo Radio, a spoken-word album of Beatty’s poems featuring banjo and guitar improvisations by Charlie Parr, was released by Corrector Records in January 2021.
Travis Cravey is a mechanic and maintenance man in Southeastern Pennsylvania as well as an editor at Malarkey Books. His first collection, Manifold, was released last year by ELJ Editions. Find him on twitter @traviscravey.
Levi Faulk has been obsessed with reading and writing for as long as he could read and write. He still believes in the power of the written word to change lives.
Justin Eells writes and teaches in Minnesota. His work has appeared in Coffin Bell, Molotov Cocktail, Flash Fiction Magazine, and elsewhere. He tweets @rhymeswithbells.
Eli S. Evans has been littering the internet with his work since 2001 (recents include Maudlin House, Unbroken, Misery Tourism). A chapbook with Analog Submission Press, A Partial List of Things I Thought Might Kill Me Before I Started Taking a Daily Dose of Benzodiazepines, was published in August 2020, and a small book of small stories, Obscure & Irregular, is available from Moon Rabbit Books & Ephemera and other online retail behemoths.
Mitchell Toews is a writer, painter, avid windsurfer, and rower. Nearly 100 literary journals and anthologies have published Toews' "MennoGrit" fiction since 2016. The author is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a finalist in The 2021 Writers’ Union of Canada Short Prose Competition, and the 2022 J.F. Powers Prize for Short Fiction. Find him in the forest or at Mitchellaneous.com.
Craig Rodgers has published a few books and intends to publish a few more before he fakes his own death.
Colin Gee (@ColinMGee) is founder and editor of The Gorko Gazette (@GorkoThe), a humor daily that publishes headlines, cartoons, reviews, and poetry. Fiction in Misery Tourism, Expat Press, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Bear Creek Gazette, Exacting Clam, and elsewhere.
Dan Townsend lives in Birmingham, Alabama. His stories have appeared in Barrelhouse, Necessary Fiction, and most recently, Misery Tourism.
C.W. Blackwell is an American author from the Central Coast of California. His recent work has appeared with Down and Out Books, Shotgun Honey, Tough Magazine, and Fahrenheit Press. He has been a gas station pump jockey, a rock musician, and a crime analyst. He is a 2021 Derringer Award winner. His debut poetry collection, River Street Rhapsody is available from Dead Fern Press. His fiction novellas Song of the Red Squire and Hard Mountain Clay are also forthcoming.
Clem Flowers (They/ Them) is a poet, soft-spoken southern transplant, low rent aesthete, & dramatic tenor living in a mountain's shadow in Home of Truth, Utah. Author of chapbooks Stoked & Thrashing (Alien Buddha Press) & Two Out of Three Falls (Bullshit Lit.) Publication credits include: Olney Magazine, Blue River Review, The Madrigal, Pink Plastic House Journal, Corporeal, Holyflea, Anti-Heroin Chic, & Warning Lines Magazine. Nb, bi, and queer as the day is long, living in a cozy apartment with their wonderful wife & sweet calico kitty. Found on Twitter @clem_flowers
Tim Frank’s short stories have been published in Bourbon Penn, Eunoia Review, Menacing Hedge, Maudlin House and elsewhere. He is the associate fiction editor for Able Muse Literary Journal. Twitter: @TimFrankquill
Mark Blickley grew up within walking distance of New York's Bronx Zoo. He is a proud member of the Dramatist Guild and PEN American Center. His latest books are the text-based art collaboration with fine arts photographer Amy Bassin, Dream Streams, and the flash fiction collection, Hunger Pains, (Buttonhook Press).
Born in Puerto Rico, John Yohe lives in northwestern Colorado. He has worked as a wildland firefighter, wilderness ranger and fire lookout. Best of the Net nominee. Notable Essay List for Best American Essays 2021. Find him at
@thejohnyohe and www.johnyohe.com.
John Denver-Drain is a writer and professor of media theory and sociology. He lives in Texas.
Anthony Neil Smith is the author of fifteen novels, with his latest THE BUTCHER'S PRAYER out now from Fahrenheit 13. His short fiction has been published widely in crime fiction and literary journals. A professor at Southwest Minnesota State University, Smith lives in Marshall with his wife and 2 & 3/4s cats. He likes cheap red wine, Italian exploitation flicks, and Mexican food.
Cowboy Jamboree Editors
Adam Van Winkle was born and raised in Texoma and currently resides with his wife and two sons in South Carolina. In addition to publishing his short fiction and creative nonfiction online and in print at places like Pithead Chapel, Cheap Pop!, BULL Magazine, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and Red Dirt Forum, he has published several novels and plays with Red Dirt Press, Cowboy Jamboree Press, and Leftover Books. Van Winkle is named for the oldest Cartwright son on Bonanza. Find him and his publications online at www.adamvanwinkle.com and @gritvanwinkle.
Constance Beitzel is former lead editor and writer for The Buzz Magazine, a weekly culture rag in Champaign, IL. Currently she teaches college writing and literature at York Tech College and is a PhD candidate studying American Literature and Women's Studies at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Non-fiction:
http://readbuzz.com/author/constance-beitzel/
Kassie Bohannon holds a B.A. in Writing & Linguistics from Georgia Southern University. She edited for BULL Magazine for three years and has designed interiors for Cowboy Jamboree Press. You can read Kassie's fiction in Call Me [Brackets], her forthcoming review in Heavy Feather Review, and her personal writing on her website: https://kassiebohannon.wixsite.com/kassiebohannon. You can find Kassie on Twitter @imnotkassie.
"He hears false power in the preacher's voice, sees outsiders pretending. Old fool, he thinks, new fools are here to take your place."
“Well, when everybody's going this way, it's time to turn around and go that way, you know? ... I don't care if they end up shitting gold nuggets, somebody's got to dig in the damn ground. Somebody's got to.”
--Breece D’J Pancake
Herein
Nonfiction
I Have Left My Ghost in Those Hollows by Kirsten Reneau
Trendy Times by Jody Rae
Excerpt from The Orchard Is Full of Sound by Sheldon Lee Compton
Fiction, Flash, & Lyrics
Tomorrow is a Long Time by Daren Dean
3 Tiny Stories: Pickles; Ducks; One That Almost Got Away by Brian Beatty
The Road Up Ahead by Travis Cravey & Levi Faulk
Extra Dumplings by Justin Eells
Not Another Dangerous Clown by Eli Evans
Downtown Diner by Mitchell Toews
Cherry’s Dog by Craig Rodgers
Full by Colin Gee
Let the Slick End Slide, Let the Rough End Drag by Dan Townsend
Paper Dolls by C.W. Blackwell
Dustbin by Clem Flowers
Parked Car by Tim Frank
Exterminating Angel by Mark Blickley
Snake Mountain Hotshots by John Yohe
Conclave by John Denver-Drain
The Ticks Will Eat You Whole by Anthony Neil Smith
Contributors
Kirsten Reneau is a writer by way of West Virginia, living in New Orleans. She received her MFA from the University of New Orleans and has been nominated for a variety of awards, with a few wins along the way. Her first chapbooks, "Love Letters to the Heavens We Could Be In" (Bone and Ink Press) and "Meeting Gods in Basement Bars and Other Ways to Find Forgiveness" (Ethel Press) are both due in the next year. She can be found online at http://www.kirstenreneau.com.
Jody Rae was a 2021 Pushcart Prize nominee for her creative nonfiction essay, “Ice Chest” in Flyover Country. Her short story, “Beautiful Mother” was a finalist in the Phoebe Journal 2021 Spring Fiction Contest. Her work appears in various outlets, including X-R-A-Y, Rejection Letters, MASKS Literary Magazine, Sledgehammer Lit, Cowboy Jamboree, and Red Fez. Her work can be found at www.criminysakesalive.com.
Sheldon Lee Compton is a short story writer, novelist, and poet from Eastern Kentucky. He is the author of the short story collections The Same Terrible Storm (Foxhead Books, 2012), Where Alligators Sleep (Foxhead Books, 2014), and Sway (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2020), the novels Brown Bottle (Bottom Dog Press, 2016) and Dysphoria (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2019), the poetry chapbook Podunk Lore, part of the Lantern Lit series (Dog On a Chain Press, 2018), and the poetry collection Runaways (Alien Buddha Press, 2021). In 2021, Cowboy Jamboree Press published his entire short story oeuvre as The Collected Stories: Sheldon Lee Compton. His work has also been nominated for the Chaffin Award for Excellence in Appalachian Writing, the Pushcart Prize, the Still: Journal Award and the Gertrude Stein Fiction Award.
Daren Dean is the author of Far Beyond the Pale, I'll Still Be Here Long After You're Gone, The Black Harvest: A Novel of the American Civil War, and This Vale of Tears. He earned his MFA from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. He has been featured in Bloom, Huffpost, Kirkus Reviews, and Ploughshares. "Affliction" was a Finalist in the Glimmer Train Short Fiction Contest for New Writers. His short fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize three times. The Black Harvest was recently nominated for the Pen/Faulkner, the W. Y. Boyd Literary Award for Excellence in Military Fiction, and the Midlands Author Award. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Lincoln University of Missouri.
Brian Beatty is the author of five poetry collections: Magpies and Crows; Borrowed Trouble; Dust and Stars: Miniatures; Brazil, Indiana: A Folk Poem; and Coyotes I Couldn’t See. His jokes, poems and stories have appeared in numerous publications, including CutBank, The Evergreen Review, Exquisite Corpse, Gulf Coast, Hobart, Hoot, McSweeney’s, Monkeybicycle, The Quarterly, Seventeen and SoFloPoJo. Hobo Radio, a spoken-word album of Beatty’s poems featuring banjo and guitar improvisations by Charlie Parr, was released by Corrector Records in January 2021.
Travis Cravey is a mechanic and maintenance man in Southeastern Pennsylvania as well as an editor at Malarkey Books. His first collection, Manifold, was released last year by ELJ Editions. Find him on twitter @traviscravey.
Levi Faulk has been obsessed with reading and writing for as long as he could read and write. He still believes in the power of the written word to change lives.
Justin Eells writes and teaches in Minnesota. His work has appeared in Coffin Bell, Molotov Cocktail, Flash Fiction Magazine, and elsewhere. He tweets @rhymeswithbells.
Eli S. Evans has been littering the internet with his work since 2001 (recents include Maudlin House, Unbroken, Misery Tourism). A chapbook with Analog Submission Press, A Partial List of Things I Thought Might Kill Me Before I Started Taking a Daily Dose of Benzodiazepines, was published in August 2020, and a small book of small stories, Obscure & Irregular, is available from Moon Rabbit Books & Ephemera and other online retail behemoths.
Mitchell Toews is a writer, painter, avid windsurfer, and rower. Nearly 100 literary journals and anthologies have published Toews' "MennoGrit" fiction since 2016. The author is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a finalist in The 2021 Writers’ Union of Canada Short Prose Competition, and the 2022 J.F. Powers Prize for Short Fiction. Find him in the forest or at Mitchellaneous.com.
Craig Rodgers has published a few books and intends to publish a few more before he fakes his own death.
Colin Gee (@ColinMGee) is founder and editor of The Gorko Gazette (@GorkoThe), a humor daily that publishes headlines, cartoons, reviews, and poetry. Fiction in Misery Tourism, Expat Press, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Bear Creek Gazette, Exacting Clam, and elsewhere.
Dan Townsend lives in Birmingham, Alabama. His stories have appeared in Barrelhouse, Necessary Fiction, and most recently, Misery Tourism.
C.W. Blackwell is an American author from the Central Coast of California. His recent work has appeared with Down and Out Books, Shotgun Honey, Tough Magazine, and Fahrenheit Press. He has been a gas station pump jockey, a rock musician, and a crime analyst. He is a 2021 Derringer Award winner. His debut poetry collection, River Street Rhapsody is available from Dead Fern Press. His fiction novellas Song of the Red Squire and Hard Mountain Clay are also forthcoming.
Clem Flowers (They/ Them) is a poet, soft-spoken southern transplant, low rent aesthete, & dramatic tenor living in a mountain's shadow in Home of Truth, Utah. Author of chapbooks Stoked & Thrashing (Alien Buddha Press) & Two Out of Three Falls (Bullshit Lit.) Publication credits include: Olney Magazine, Blue River Review, The Madrigal, Pink Plastic House Journal, Corporeal, Holyflea, Anti-Heroin Chic, & Warning Lines Magazine. Nb, bi, and queer as the day is long, living in a cozy apartment with their wonderful wife & sweet calico kitty. Found on Twitter @clem_flowers
Tim Frank’s short stories have been published in Bourbon Penn, Eunoia Review, Menacing Hedge, Maudlin House and elsewhere. He is the associate fiction editor for Able Muse Literary Journal. Twitter: @TimFrankquill
Mark Blickley grew up within walking distance of New York's Bronx Zoo. He is a proud member of the Dramatist Guild and PEN American Center. His latest books are the text-based art collaboration with fine arts photographer Amy Bassin, Dream Streams, and the flash fiction collection, Hunger Pains, (Buttonhook Press).
Born in Puerto Rico, John Yohe lives in northwestern Colorado. He has worked as a wildland firefighter, wilderness ranger and fire lookout. Best of the Net nominee. Notable Essay List for Best American Essays 2021. Find him at
@thejohnyohe and www.johnyohe.com.
John Denver-Drain is a writer and professor of media theory and sociology. He lives in Texas.
Anthony Neil Smith is the author of fifteen novels, with his latest THE BUTCHER'S PRAYER out now from Fahrenheit 13. His short fiction has been published widely in crime fiction and literary journals. A professor at Southwest Minnesota State University, Smith lives in Marshall with his wife and 2 & 3/4s cats. He likes cheap red wine, Italian exploitation flicks, and Mexican food.
Cowboy Jamboree Editors
Adam Van Winkle was born and raised in Texoma and currently resides with his wife and two sons in South Carolina. In addition to publishing his short fiction and creative nonfiction online and in print at places like Pithead Chapel, Cheap Pop!, BULL Magazine, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and Red Dirt Forum, he has published several novels and plays with Red Dirt Press, Cowboy Jamboree Press, and Leftover Books. Van Winkle is named for the oldest Cartwright son on Bonanza. Find him and his publications online at www.adamvanwinkle.com and @gritvanwinkle.
Constance Beitzel is former lead editor and writer for The Buzz Magazine, a weekly culture rag in Champaign, IL. Currently she teaches college writing and literature at York Tech College and is a PhD candidate studying American Literature and Women's Studies at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Non-fiction:
http://readbuzz.com/author/constance-beitzel/
Kassie Bohannon holds a B.A. in Writing & Linguistics from Georgia Southern University. She edited for BULL Magazine for three years and has designed interiors for Cowboy Jamboree Press. You can read Kassie's fiction in Call Me [Brackets], her forthcoming review in Heavy Feather Review, and her personal writing on her website: https://kassiebohannon.wixsite.com/kassiebohannon. You can find Kassie on Twitter @imnotkassie.