Why You Should Collect Vincent Rendoni
Atticus Review is proud to present "The Suburbs"
Our third literary collection of the 2026 season is "The Suburbs" by Vincent Rendoni, a Seattle-based writer who cites Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts, and Looney Tunes as some of his literary influences. He describes his poetry as “pretty silly” and yet “deathly serious.” This kind of tension shows up in “The Suburbs,” an autobiographical poem about a family's first night in a new home. I love how this piece captures an underlying melancholy against a backdrop of what should be a hope in a new beginning. The first time I read the poem, I felt a sense of foreboding and it drew me in immediately. The narrative feels precarious, the characters in it on the verge of collapse. Adriana Quezada realizes this tenuous dynamic in her illustrations which portray a sitcom/stage concept.
Together, I think it will leave you with a lasting impression. But judge for yourself:
This is Vincent's second time in Atticus Review. We published “Frozen River,” a haunting piece of flash fiction, in 2015. Rendoni wrote it with his mentor, Abby Mendelson. You can read “Frozen River” here on the Atticus website.
Vincent told us that “The Suburbs” also started as flash fiction, but then it spoke to him, in a sense, and told him it did not want to be a story. And so it became a poem.
Vincent received an MFA in fiction at Chatham University in 2012. He drifted away from his writing practice over the next decade, but came back strong during the COVID pandemic, when he put together his debut poetry collection, A Grito Contest in the Afterlife, which won the Catamaran Poetry Prize for West Coast poets and was subsequently published by Catamaran Literary Reader in 2022.
Vincent’s rebirth as a poet was nurtured by the support of Seattle’s Jack Straw Cultural Center. Their writing program, and mentor Michael Schmeltzer, inspired Vincent to understand and present his work in a new way. His second collection Dead Chicano Mixtape is forthcoming in April 2027 from Red Hen Press.
Vincent attributes his recent streak of good fortune with publication to old-fashioned luck. “I feel like I just got very, very lucky!” he says. “Twice!” He adds that, “The thing I hate doing most is submitting, doing that part of the writing. But it's part of it.”
I’m sure a lot of readers can relate.
When we were talking about Red Hen Press, we got onto the topic of how important independent literary presses are, and how literary magazines and presses are up against steep financial challenges. This is the main push behind our efforts here at Atticus Review: to explore new digital models that can benefit both authors and magazines.
Red Hen Press has a Go Fund me campaign going on now. Check it out if you’re interested in supporting the survival of an influential, longstanding, and widely loved poetry press.
You can view or listen to a longer discussion we had with Vincent about “The Suburbs,” his experience with having two collections of poetry published, and how he stays active in a creative community in this podcast on our YouTube channel.
Support our Artists (and Decentralized Finance)!
Show support for Vincent (and this season’s artist, Adriana Quezada) by purchasing one of the pieces from this collection. When you buy one using a wallet, funds are automatically routed evenly three ways to Vincent, Adriana, and Atticus Review. Funds are delivered immediately to these three wallets and aren’t routed through any corporate third-parties such as Visa/Mastercard, a government, or a big bank.
We have tutorials to guide you through setting up a wallet on our Website. We are working on a second iteration of our model, which I envision will be kind of like a literary marketplace or bookfair, where work can be collected and traded even without a wallet.
To learn more about our new publishing model you can read our past newsletters and our blog.
Thanks for reading. Keep making good things.
David Olimpio
Publisher