Able Muse-literary journal

Able Muse is a literary journal founded in San Jose, California, in 1999 by Alexander Pepple. Able Muse started as an online journal (ISSN 1528-3798), winter 1999, publishing poems, short stories, essays, book reviews, art and photography from authors worldwide. Able Muse includes the sister organizations of Eratosphere, an online workshop forum for poetry, fiction and art; and Able Muse Press, a small press that publishes poetry and fiction collections by established and emerging authors.

Able Muse transitioned into a print journal  with the tenth release, the Winter 2010 Inaugural Print Edition, accompanied with the publication of the Able Muse Anthology, edited by Alexander Pepple with a foreword by Timothy Steele.The anthology culled the best of more than the first decade of published material. In his blurb for the anthology included in it, Dana Gioia, the former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts states that “Over the last twelve years, Able Muse and its extraordinary companion website the Eratosphere have created a huge and influential virtual literary community . . . Able Muse has now gathered the best of their works in both prose and verse in an ink-and-paper anthology. This book fills an important gap in understanding what is really happening in early twenty-first century American poetry.” Able Muse still maintains its online presence where it simultaneously releases a digital edition that mirrors the corresponding issue of the print edition.

The Able Muse’s editorial board of acclaimed poets and writers includes X. J. Kennedy, A.E. Stallings, Rachel Hadas, and Deborah Warren. Able Muse has been edited, since its inception by Alexander Pepple.

Able Muse has been featured in major American reviews, such as a poem from the Winter 2010 issue, “The Cricket in the Stump” by Catherine Tufariello, featured in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry; and from the Winter 2013 issue, “Sawhorses” by Greg Williamson, the issue’s featured poet, was featured in Verse Daily.

Contributors to Able Muse are international in scope and include Ted Kooser, Turner Cassity, X. J. Kennedy, Mark Jarman, A.E. Stallings, Annie Finch, Rachel Hadas, R.S. Gwynn, Richard Percival Lister, Willis Barnstone William Baer, Deborah Warren, Greg Williamson, John Whitworth, Stephen Edgar, Catharine Savage Brosman, Kim Bridgford, Ned Balbo, Rory Waterman, Lyn Lifshin, Amit Majmudar, R. S. Gwynn, Michael Palma, Jay Hopler, Rhina P. Espaillat, Mark Jarman, Thomas Carper, A.M. Juster, J. Patrick Lewis, Dolores Hayden, Geoffrey Brock, Lewis Buzbee, Marly Youmans, Tamas Dobozy, Adel Souto, and Thaisa Frank.

Able Muse hosts a series of annual awards designed to bring recognition to emerging poets and writers or enhance the prestige of established authors. Poets compete, with a handful of their best poems, in the Able Muse Write Prize for Poetry, and writers compete with a couple of their best flash fiction pieces in the Able Muse Write Prize for Fiction. Past judges for these contests include Rachel Hadas, Alan Cheuse, Ellen Sussman, John Drury, Thaisa Frank, Kelly Cherry, Amit Majmudar, Dick Allen. The Able Muse Book Award is held annually in collaboration with the sister organization Able Muse Press, where poets compete for the publication of a full-length collection of poetry. Past judges include Andrew Hudgins, Mary Jo Salter, X. J. Kennedy and Molly Peacock.