Jo Varnish

Jo Varnish, originally from England, lives outside New York City. Her short stories and creative nonfiction have recently appeared, or are forthcoming, in PANK, Jellyfish Review, Pithead Chapel, JMWW Journal, Barren Magazine, and others. Jo is a 2021 Pushcart Prize nominee, has been a writer in residence at L’Atelier Writers for two years, and is studying for her MFA. She can be found on twitter @jovarnish1.

INTERVIEW WITH JAMES McADAMS by Jo Varnish

May 25, 2020 · Interviews & Reviews

James McAdams’s Ambushing the Void is released this month by Frayed Edge Press. I caught up with him for a chat about his book, his writing process, and his inspirations. JV: Ambushing the Void is a collection of stories drawn together by themes such as relationships, loss, and nostalgia, and told through truly memorable characters. Professor Pankova and Teo are two of many that will stay with me. Did you draw from real life counterparts for these and other characters? JM: It’s pretty easy for me to look at a person, or read/hear about a person on a podcast or Tweet,…

x-r-a-y magazine

RAW MEAT by Jo Varnish

June 27, 2019 · Fiction

She was eighty when being eighty meant being eighty. It meant grey hair and dark colored calf length skirts, tights and rounded toed court shoes. It meant a green felted coat and patent leather black purse shaped like the queen’s, with a shiny silver clasp that snapped shut. It meant that purse held, at a minimum: a checkbook, a hairbrush, rouge, a lipstick, tissues (a pack, unused, and at least one folded, used), a pair of spectacles and a variety of pens. It meant she walked slowly, tutted at ill mannered children and grew African violets in mismatched pots along…

x-r-a-y magazine