Now accepting submissions for Volume 65!

Submissions for Volume 65 (and the $100 John Latosi and Lena Vaughn awards for visual arts and creative writing) are now open!

Head on over to our Submissions page for our submission guidelines. This year's issue theme is PROPAGANDA. Though your submission need not adhere to the theme, Volume 65 will feature a special section for writing and artwork with a propaganda slant.

AUDIO: Jimmy Grist on K-ROO Word Up Episode 8

Listen in as Number One contributor Jimmy Grist discusses his award-winning comics (for more, visit http://jimmygrist.net), reads his poetry and fiction, and chats with host Ross Stinemetz on the K-ROO program "Word Up" Episode 8. This is the final episode of the series, so Number One extends a special thank you to Ross for his dedication and enthusiasm. Remember to listen to K-ROO for more series like this in the future! And look out for more online content from Number One in the coming months.

Jimmy Grist on K-ROO tonight

Jimmy Grist, Number One contributor, will discuss his award-winning comics (http://jimmygrist.net), read his poetry and fiction, and chat with host Ross Stinemetz at 10 p.m. tonight (May 16) on UMKC's student radio, K-ROO. A special thank you to Ross for creating such a wonderful reading series! We'll post the audio from the final "Word Up" Episode 8 on this website soon, so please check back!

AUDIO: Andrew Johnson on K-ROO Word Up Episode 7

Listen in as Number One contributor Andrew Johnson reads his creative nonfiction, poetry, and fiction and chats with host Ross Stinemetz on the K-ROO program "Word Up" Episode 7. There will be another episode from UMKC's student radio station posted next week, so please check back for another show. And remember to listen to K-ROO!

 

Andrew Johnson on K-ROO tonight and tomorrow

Andrew Johnson, Number One contributor, will read a diverse offering of creative nonfiction, poetry, and fiction as he chats with host Ross Stinemetz at 10 p.m. tonight and Thursday (May 9) on UMKC's student radio, K-ROO. We'll post the audio from "Word Up" Episode 7 on this website soon, so please check back!

AUDIO: Bradley Tyler Davis on K-ROO's Word Up - Episode 6

Listen in as Number One contributor Bradley Tyler Davis reads his poetry and chats with host Ross Stinemetz on the K-ROO program "Word Up" Episode 6. There will be more episodes from UMKC's student radio station posted here in the coming weeks, so please check back for more readings from other UMKC authors. And remember to listen to K-ROO!

Bradley Tyler Davis on K-ROO tonight and tomorrow

Bradley Tyler Davis, Number One contributor, will read some of his poetry and chat with host Ross Stinemetz at 10 p.m. tonight and 10 p.m. on Thursday, May 2 on UMKC's student radio, K-ROO. We'll post the audio from "Word Up" Episode 6 on this website soon, so please check back!

Come to the Launch Party today!

AUDIO: Anne Kniggendorf on K-ROO's Word Up - Episode 5

Listen in as Number One contributor Anne Kniggendorf reads her creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry and chats with host Ross Stinemetz on the K-ROO program "Word Up" Episode 5. There will be more episodes from UMKC's student radio station posted here in the coming weeks, so please check back for more readings from other UMKC authors. And remember to listen to K-ROO!

Anne Kniggendorf on K-ROO tonight

Anne Kniggendorf, Number One contributor, will read a diverse offering of creative nonfiction, fiction, flash fiction, and a prose poem and chat with host Ross Stinemetz at 10 p.m. on Thursday, April 18 on UMKC's student radio, K-ROO. We'll post the audio from "Word Up" Episode 5 on this website soon, so please check back!

AUDIO: Chell Navarro on K-ROO's Word Up - Episode 4

Listen in as Number One contributor Chell Navarro reads some of her poetry and chats with host Ross Stinemetz on the K-ROO program "Word Up" Episode 4. There will be more episodes from UMKC's student radio station posted here in the coming weeks, so please check back for more readings from other UMKC authors. And remember to listen to K-ROO!

 

Chell Navarro on K-ROO tonight and tomorrow

Chell Navarro, Number One contributor, will read some of her poetry and chat with host Ross Stinemetz at 9 p.m. tonight and 10 p.m. on Thursday, April 11 on UMKC's student radio, K-ROO. We'll post the audio from "Word Up" Episode 4 on this website soon, so please check back!

NUMBER ONE MAGAZINE LAUNCHING LATEST ISSUE AT UNIVERSITY HOUSE IN APRIL

Number One Magazine, the annual student-run literary journal at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, plans to celebrate the release of its latest issue with a launch party on Friday, April 19, at 3:30 p.m., during the alumni celebrations of UMKC. The free event will be held on the patio of the University House, 5101 Rockhill Road, Kansas City, the home of New Letters magazine, BkMk Press, and the public radio show New Letters on the Air. There will be music, light refreshments, short readings by contributors, and free copies of Number One Magazine.

In honor of UMKC’s 80th anniversary and a legacy of previous releases of Number One dating back to the 1940s, this new, expanded issue has more than 50 additional pages. The longer format extends its spectrum of voices and content, featuring comics for the first time and offering more creative nonfiction and plays. Included works on beauty, future technologies, parenthood and drug manufacture add to Number One’s exploration of the new literary pursuits of UMKC students.

Contributors Megan Cross and Jimmy Grist received two awards new to Number One. Cross’ short story “The Inn at Crescent Mountain,” a narrative about an innkeeper’s disintegrating marriage written in the style of magical realism, won the John Latosi Award for Creative Writing, named in memory of the New York poet and journalist. Grist’s collection of comics featuring stories of an interspecies friendship and the cultural critique of an intergalactic food critic, punctuated with their humorous final panels, won the Lena Vaughn Award for the Visual Arts, named in memory of the prolific Iowa painter. Attendees will be treated to a reading by Cross and will be able to view a display of Grist’s works. Both artists will be presented with their $100 prizes. The event will also feature the presentation of the Craig M. Workman Award for Performance Media to Teresa Leggard for her play about the competing values of education and maintaining a relationship.

Other contributors include Andrew Johnson, Alli Jordan, Rachael Coulter, Josh Hungate, Michael Wexler, Joseph DeLuca, Maureen Hirthler, Chell Navarro, Kara McKeever, Anne Kniggendorf, Kenneth Gerety, Bailey Grim, Bradley Tyler Davis, Brian Clifton, Anezi Uzendu, Brandi Handley, Anne Muccino, Jordan Williams, Seth Riddle and Morgan Reeves. The magazine was produced by co-editors-in-chief Nicholas Sawin and Liz Cook, online and nonfiction editor Christine Pivovar, poetry editor Barbara Varanka, fiction editor Liz Jacquinot, and associate editor Leanna Bales.

The April 19th event is being hosted by Number One Magazine, New Letters magazine, New Letters on the Air, BkMk Press, and the English Department. RSVP to numberonemagazine@gmail.com and include the number of guests attending. For more information about Number One, visit www.numberonemagazine.org or find the magazine on Facebook and Twitter under NumberOneMag.

AUDIO: Teresa Leggard on K-ROO's "Word Up" - Episode 3

Listen in as Number One contributor Teresa Leggard reads poetry, part of her award-winning play, and chats with host Ross Stinemetz on the K-ROO program "Word Up" Episode 3. There will be more episodes from UMKC's student radio station posted here in the coming weeks, so please check back for more readings from other UMKC authors. And remember to listen to K-ROO!

Teresa Leggard on K-ROO tonight and tomorrow

Teresa Leggard, Number One contributor, will read some of her poetry and chat with host Ross Stinemetz at 9 p.m. tonight and 10 p.m. on Thursday, April 4 on UMKC's student radio, K-ROO. We'll post the audio from "Word Up" Episode 3 on this website soon, so please check back!

AUDIO: Brian Clifton on K-ROO's "Word Up" - Episode 2

Listen in as Number One contributor Brian Clifton reads some of his poetry and chats with host Ross Stinemetz on the K-ROO program "Word Up" Episode 2. There will be more episodes from UMKC's student radio station posted here in the coming weeks, so please check back for more readings from other UMKC authors. And remember to listen to K-ROO!

Brian Clifton on K-ROO tonight and tomorrow

Number One contributor Brian Clifton will read some of his poetry and chat with host Ross Stinemetz at 9 p.m. tonight and 10 p.m. on Thursday, March 28 on UMKC's student radio, K-ROO. We'll post the audio from "Word Up" Episode 2 on this website soon, so please check back!

HISTORY: Remembering 66 Years of Number One

Take a look back at the history of Number One Magazine. We're sharing the names of those student editors, staff members, contributors, and faculty advisors who made this literary magazine such an integral part of the UMKC community since its debut in 1947. Though the cover designs have changed radically over the years, we still carry that deep-seated respect for literature and artwork that inspired the first issues of Number One. Tour the past with us here:
http://www.numberonemagazine.org/p/history_23.html.
If you have more information to contribute to our history, please contact us at numberonemagazine@gmail.com.

AUDIO: Bailey Grim on K-ROO's "Word Up" - Episode 1

Listen in as Number One contributor Bailey Grim reads some of her poetry about childhood, squirrels, and billiards and chats with host Ross Stinemetz on the K-ROO program "Word Up" Episode 1. There will be more episodes from UMKC's student radio station posted here in the coming weeks, so please check back for more readings from other UMKC authors. And remember to listen to K-ROO!

NEW! Number One on the air

To celebrate the launch of Number One Volume 64, several of our contributors recorded readings of their work for UMKC's student radio, K-ROO. First up is Bailey Grim, whose poetry will air at 10 p.m. tonight and again at 10 p.m. on Thursday, March 21. Tune in!

Volume 64 has arrived! 

...and it looks incredible! We're so excited to share the latest issue with you. Drop by the English Department (106 Cockefair Hall) during business hours to pick up your free copy, hot off the press. 

We'll be circulating copies campus-wide soon. If you'd like us to distribute copies to your class or group, send an e-mail to numberonemagazine@gmail.com

Congratulations to all of the talented writers and artists featured in this year's exceptional volume!

Baby Girl Monster Hunter

So after I finished college I started hunting monsters. Well—that’s not the entire story. First I got a temp job. But when I figured it wouldn’t put a ding in my debts, I stole the office’s mega-stapler and started hunting monsters. That’s the entire story.

My parents were like . . . shit.

They had rigid brains. Their point of comparison was my brother Dorkass (not his given name), a developmental psychologist who wowed them with retroactive criticism of their parenting. When he stopped by for holidays, they couldn’t really imagine their baby girl stalking grimy slimy lemon-limeys.

They couldn’t imagine me, sweatsoaked in the jungle, rocking the natives’ warpaint. The spearmint scent of a hunt unraveling among the brush like a ball of yarn, threaded through my nostrils like a septum piercing. Me, baby girl, peeling back a venetian frond and seeing—for the first and only time—a cryobaboon.

Can you imagine? My parents couldn’t. They would’ve lost their baby boomer minds to see its albino coat. Its icicle whiskers. The soil of the rainforest, thin and loose, tundrifying beneath his cryobutt. Frostbitten fruit all around. And me, seven-foot stapler locked, materializing from the foliage. Flipping my weapon to its blunt side and meeting his gaze. Bashing unabashedly at his shrunken, vulnerable testes, as he breathes his last chilly puffs.

They had a much easier time imagining Dorkass, feet on the dining room table, elucidating why he and I would’ve been better off with two daddys. Just to shift the conversation, I would try to say something like, “You know, Mom, there’s no such thing as a small monster. I once wound up astride a desert. . . ” But they would only roll their eyes and ask when I was going to run out of staples.

To date I’ve corpsed seventeen colossi, cretaceonids, and chthonianisms. You can always tell they’re mine by the lethal, crooked ladders running up their sides.

•••

"Kitty" by Nicholas Shea

My first job was for my landlord, and it was bad. Though not “rats in the basement” bad. We had this mangy-ass stray cat lurking around the property because someone kept slipping it lunchmeat. He paid me thirty dollars to wait in the parking lot and bag it up. This was before I stole my office’s mega-stapler.

I spent the afternoon in the shade of the building, reading a newspaper and counting bricks. When I saw the cat on the fire escape, I went up after it with a can of tuna, which had no pull-tab. I had to beat it open on the handrail. The landlord impounded the cat, and now I think it’s dead. But it wasn’t me that killed it.

My first real job was for a small suburb at the edge of rurality. I told my parents that I was going to spend the weekend with a friend, but this friend lived at the foot of a volcano, and if they didn’t hear back from me ever again then that was why.

Passion fruits

Colorist Fantasy

Topaz fruit resembling an old lace gourd
floats lazily along a salty green swell.
 
Down by a bayou filled with cold sauvignon,
serpentine women bathe in long yellow grasses.
 
A colorist stirs the bayou at high noon,
bubbles blink and break against the sun.
 
Alice blue men gather under baobab trees
and read narratives written on scrolls.

--by Mary Rogers-Grantham

The Citrus Grove
 
I curled in the lap of a citrus grove,
floated in the summer steam
of her perfumed blossoms, and dreamed
of orange marmalade from Seville
and verbena tea with honeyed milk,
 
and of the impossible hour when I
will lie below her bending limbs
(or will I be bending up to them?)
and suckle her ripened fruit until I feel
the juice trickle on my drunken cheek.

--by Gregory Van Winkle