Greenwich Academy Student-Driven Stardust Gazette Shines

Feature image: “The Dimension of Pain,” by Rebecca Deegan.

One of The Stardust Gazette’s main cover photos. Credit: Alex Currie.

The largely Greenwich Academy student-driven Stardust Gazette’s third issue was released this morning.

Featuring a New York Times-recognized artist, 4 Pushcart Prize nominees, and contributing writers from Italy, New Zealand, Ireland, Canada, and the United States, this issue of the international online neo-literary magazine boasts a masthead of 18 high school and undergraduate students from the United Kingdom and all corners of the United States. In particular, the gazette’s Founder, Editor-in-Chief, and Art Editors attend Greenwich Academy, and one of its Journalism Readers graduated from Brunswick School in 2014.

More artwork The Stardust Gazette features. Credit: Alex Currie.

This reporter’s personal favorite from the issue was Rita Anderson’s “Vermeer’s Pomegranate,” which begins:

The most beautiful nights should be lived, not painted (or painted through living, as if electric moments were a book of moving portraits). Last night, the moon could have made me forget my name, amazing how long I’d refused its impact and, yet, time always slows when we’re in-between memories.

Recognized by the Academy of American Poets, Anderson has been a recipient of the Gerreighty Prize, the Robert F. Gibbons Poetry Award, and the Cheyney Award.

“Lauren,” a photograph The Stardust Gazette showcases. Credit: Alex Currie.

Another standout piece was 3-time Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee Steve Klepetar’s “Werewolf Stands,” which ends poignantly:

I am patient and silent because I love how waiting feels in muscle, lungs and veins, the long, slow pull of blood rising. Summer’s green distances have shrunk to this: a fist and white breath exploding in the cold.

The Stardust Gazette’s third issue’s cover photo. Credit: Alex Currie.

New Zealand-hailing author Craig Foltz’s “Diaspora Enthusiasts” was also a highlight. A haunting piece written in the second-person about arborists, “Diaspora Enthusiasts” begins:

What seems like a diaspora is actually the pruning of evergreen shrubs with dull superstitions. What seems like spirals are actually biomes of flesh… You know you have been urged to transform, but you have already chosen to be omitted from the page. It started on a Monday and on a Monday it shall end. Shaped like a W and adorned with the waves of the sea.

“Hanging On,” one of The Stardust Gazette’s previously featured pieces. Credit: Sheri Wright.

In previous issues, The Stardust Gazette has featured artists published in The New Yorker and featured in Vogue Italia, The Guggenheim Museum, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and The Hirshhorn Museum. Countries past contributors reside in include Lithuania, Mexico, China, the Philippines, India, Scotland, and England.

The Stardust Gazette has cumulatively received around 600 submissions and counting from over 100 artists around the globe. Its staff-run blog, Starlight, has featured Greenwich Academy alum Courtney Maum, author of “I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You,” as well as Ira Joel Haber, a recipient of three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, two Pollock-Krasner grants, and the Adolph Gottlieb Foundation grant.

The Stardust Gazette is currently open to staff applications as well as regular submissions for Issue 4. To view application pages or any of the gazette’s previous issues, visit The Stardust Gazette’s website or its Facebook page.