The Association for Library Services to Children has launched the new campaign Babies Need Words Every Day: Talk, Read, Sing, Play as an effort to bridge what is now being called the 30 Million Word Gap. A study conducted by Stanford University Researchers found that by age 3, there is a 30 million word gap between children from the poorest families compared to children from the wealthiest families.

The ALSC campaign has created downloadable resources that provide ways adults can help build children’s literacy skills. There are eight posters available for free download, in English and in Spanish. Print and share with parents of infant children, post in areas where parents gather or spend time – provide copies for your family doctor, local clinic, school – or just post around your neighborhood!

Morgan Laidlaw and Zan Giese are the editorial force behind the newly launched biannual PDF The Wild Ones: A Queer Literary Magazine. Publishing stories, essays, and poetry written by LGBTQ+ writers, for LGBTQ+ writers, that “depict life and the world as we see and experience it,” The Wild Ones means to create a space for queer authors.

“There are so many outlets that reinforce hetero-normative culture,” Morgan tells NewPages, “and we need more works and publications that cater to us as queers. Most people can name at least one gay magazine or one queer author who has been published in a major magazine. But magazines like ours? Where they are just queer magazines? Space is what we are all looking for. Space to fit in. Space to exist and space to create. There are gaps where queer people don’t quite fit into mainstream expectations and some queers who still don’t fit at all. It’s not that what’s already out there isn’t good enough, it’s that there isn’t enough. Period.”

Morgan and Zan combined this motivation with inspiration to create the magazine’s title. “The name is a hat-tip to Oscar Wilde,” Morgan explains, “but also to Where the Wild Things Are and Maurice Sendak and Thorton Wilder. It’s also a reference to the kinds of stories we’re looking for: wild stories that don’t conform to stereotype or convention.”

Their first issue is a reflection of this mission, featuring an amazing science fiction short story from B.R. Sanders and hard-hitting poetry from contributors like Mark Ward, Sea Sharp, and Alaina Symanovich. “Right now,” Morgan says, “we’re trying to establish ourselves as a source for high-quality literary work through our journal and cultural criticism through our website. In the future, we’d love to publish quarterly, and move into other publishing venues as well.”

The Wild Ones accepts submissions via their online form and welcomes pitches sent e-mail. The editors are also looking to grow their writing staff. If anyone is interested in writing for The Wild Ones website, send an email with a writing sample.

Eminent domain is the theme of the fall 2015 online issue of The Straddler – or rather “Eminence Domains,” as the editor’s note reads, opening the interpretation of the legal definition to the more creative. Content includes some truly intriguing articles and interviews:

“City with Walls: Another Look at Manhattan’s Luxury Towers” by Elizabeth Murphy, with photographs by James Wrona

“The Cost of Landscape: Looking Back at Some of Southern California’s Lawns” by Alison Kozberg

“For Whom and For What? The Birth of the Republican Party and the Makings of Modern America” in conversation with Heather Cox Richardson

“Gentrification of the Queer Bedroom” by Mathew Rodriguez

“Notes on the New Suburbs and the New City” in conversation with Kazys Varnelis

“Obstructing Innovation: The Case Against Patents and Copyrights” in conversation with Dean Baker

“Money over Everything: Charting Hip-Hop’s Cash Flow” by Marty Brown

Subprimal Poetry Art features audio components for many pieces in each online issue; audio that features the author reading with music accompaniment. Founding Editor Victor David Sandiego explains the basic process for this in his editor’s note, issue #4: “. . . we loop the author’s reading until a musical inspiration arrives. We work with the author’s cadence, pitch and rhythm to find the pitch and instruments to complement their delivery. The goal is to add the voices of various instruments to the author’s voice in order to bring another dimension to the words.” Simply adding “background music” can result in distraction rather than enhancement, but after listening to a number of these, I found each indeed unique and effectively sybmiotic. Sandiego himself is a musician who plays in music/poetry collaborations, bringing the form to a level of art.

Sukoon is an Arab-themed, English language, online literary magazine reflecting the diversity and richness of the Arab world. In her editor’s note in the most recent issue, Rewa Zeinati writes:

Has anything changed in the Arab world since the last issue of Sukoon? Yes. Things have changed. They’ve become more horrific, more complicated. Mind numbing. More and more people from all faiths have been forced from their homes, displaced; more beheadings and destruction and ruin. A new war is switched on. And the most important one of all, shelved. Postponed. Forgotten.

But this issue is not about war, or shelves, or forgetfulness. This issue, like every issue is about finding the beauty and showing it. Finding the love and singing it. Which is why I decided a beautiful art piece by Palestinian artist Ali Shawwa, of Umm Kulthum, the world’s most famous Egyptian singer, works best as a cover page. To indicate and remind us of song, because how else do we survive, through wars and shelves and forgetfulness? To sing about love and loss, but to sing about love. To sing about pain and life, but to sing about life. To simply sing. And sing and sing, as poetry and story and art. Through slaying and insanity and devastation And to continue singing, long after the lights go out and the guns disappear.

Located in Los Angeles, WriteGirl is a one-on-one mentoring and monthly creative writing workshop model for girls 13-18 years old. Started in 2001, WriteGirl has grown to become a recognized, and highly awarded, mentoring model for its efforts to promote creativity, critical thinking, and leadership skills to empower teen girls.

WriteGirl has published a dozen anthologies of writing from young girls and women of the WriteGirl project, as well as Pens On Fire: Creative Writing Guide for Teachers & Youth Leaders. Their most recent collection, Emotional Map of Los Angeles features the creative voices of 190 women and girls as well as writing tips, advice and inspirational prompts from the WriteGirl community.

For anyone who is interested in working with teens and writing, especially at-risk youth, WriteGirl provides a excellent model to follow and publications to inspire and guide.

The newest issue of Talking Writing is themed “Why YA?” Online content is added throughout the magazines publishing cycle, and currently features the theme essays “A Golden Age for Young Adult Books” by Stephen Roxburgh and “How Hollywood Screws Up YA Books” by John Michael Bell, an interview with graphic novelist Gene Luen Yang, and “The YA Conspiracy – And How I Grew Up: Or How I Became a Born-Again Reader,” a column by David Biddle.

From “Environmental Learning in the Anthropocene” by Robert Thomashow:

Forty-five years have passed since the first publication of the Whole Earth Catalog. How shall we conceive of environmental learning all these years later? And how can we build on some of the important concepts from the first phase of environmental studies—place-based learning, bioregionalism, wilderness conservation, ecological restoration, natural history education, environmental justice, ecological economics, global environmental governance—while we confront the Anthropocene reality?

I’ve been considering six dynamic challenges that must be incorporated, internalized, and activated to expand environmental learning:

The urban planet
A cosmopolitan culture
Ecological equity and social justice
The proliferation of information networks
Virtual natural history
Synthetic biology

These are by no means inclusive categories. There are countless ways to think about environmental learning in the Anthropocene. In my view, environmental studies is necessarily adaptive and the conditions that inform its structure are always in flux. Let’s launch the conversation.

Read the rest on Terrain.org.

Tuesday, October 20, 2015 is the seventh annual National Council of Teachers of English National Day on Writing. The day has been organized annually since 2009 “to draw attention to the remarkable variety of writing Americans engage in and to help make writers from all walks of life aware of their craft.” The day was officially recognized by Senate resolution in 2009. Read, Write, Think offers a variety of resources for teachers to celebrate this day with students, noting “It’s important for everyone to share their knowledge about writing, organize participating groups in our schools and/or communities, and transform the public’s understanding of writing and the role it plays in society today.”

I just coulnd’t pass this one up!  “From ​the modern Alice dumped in the Aquarian ​Age of the late sixties, to the ​present day Alice, tormented by body image and emotional issues, to the Alice of the future, launched forward through time and space, FALLING FOR ALICE offers five fresh takes on ​Lewis​ Carroll’s classic tale. For 150 years, people all over the world have fallen under Alice in Wonderland’s spell. ​Now, follow five Young Adult authors (Dawn Dalton, Shari Green, Denise Jaden, Kitty Keswick, Cady Vance) down the rabbit hole to discover Alice like you’ve never seen her before. One thing is certain—this is not your mother’s Alice.” Vine Leave Press

Pam Brown: “I find in writing a poem that it’s ‘difficult’ to get it right – to have it look, sound & read as I intend. I can spend ages adjusting punctuation & spacing & lineation. Also on keeping things clear. Sometimes having my fragments connect to my meanings is really a challenge. I live in my own private metonymy. I guess, with indirectness, which is how some of my poetry can operate, that good old representation is a kind of solution. I’m not a formalist. I don’t work within particular poetic forms. I’ve tried various forms and they usually fail to conform. I do think that it’s difficult to have formal poems retain a procedure & avoid seeming contrived & tight. I like content to work easily without being obstructed by the form. I don’t want that kind of structural difficulty.” Read the rest: Ottawa Poetry Newsletter “On Writing #73.”

In 2016, BOA Editions, Ltd. will celebrate their 40th anniversary. Founded in 1976 by A. Poulin, Jr., BOA has published more than 300 titles, releasing 10-12 new works each year. To celebrate their anniversary, the press will be introducing a newly designed website with a fully-integrated online bookstore and interactive author events page. The enhanced website will also include a year-long social media campaign using the hashtag #BOATurns40 for readers and writers to share their “ideal reading and/or writing experience,” with video content of BOA authors giving their answers. BOA has lots in store for AWP 2016 as well, from giveaways to an onsite reading.

With the help of the Lannan Foundation, BOA has kicked off a yearlong Major Gifts Campaign called “40 for 40” with a goal to raise a total of $80,000 for BOA’s celebration and future. To learn more about the 40 for 40 campaign, head over to the BOA blog.

Stay tuned for additional BOA annivesary events and activities to be announced in 2016.

American journalist and poet James Foley disappeared in November 2012 in Syria. He was beheaded in 2014, an act captured on a video released by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). He was the first American citizen known to be killed by ISIL.

Hinchas Press (the publishing arm of Hinchas de Poesia online literary magazine) is publishing a tribute to Robert Foley in Ghazals for Foley, a collection curated by Argentine-American poet Yago S. Cura, a personal friend of Foley.

Sliver of Stone online literary magazine has published a selection of these ghazals here.

The editors at Broadsided Press continually act on their belief that art and literature belong in our daily lives and that they inspire and demonstrate the vitality and depth of our connection with the world. Their latest effort is no exception to this. They write, “We have watched the news and images of people fleeing, in a large part, war in Syria (the Syrian Civil War)—nearly four million individuals—and the complicated reception of those refugees globally.”

Acting on this event, the editors hope to help writers and artists collaborate to create action outreach. “Five Broadsided Press artists have provided images they’ve created that, for them, speak to the Syrian refugees in a wide sense. We also reached out to artists abroad, and the Syrian artist Moustafa Jacoub offered one of his pieces. We now ask you to respond with words.” [Pictured: Janice Redman, “Buoyancy Study”]

If your piece is chosen, the editors will have a short question or two to ask you about your process and will ask for a photo of your collaboration up in your community. The broadsides will also be available for others to download and post in their communities as well.

The images and specific guidelines for submission can be found on the Broadsided website here. Deadline for submission is October 25, 2015.

It was only a matter of time before the Little Library idea got hijacked and starting showing up as other cool community Little House outreach. Three Pittsburgh poets, Sarah B. and Jeffrey Boyle [pictured] of Flashbang! Writing Studio and Tess Wilson, received funding from Awesome Pittsburgh to get the Pittsburgh Poetry Houses started.

The concept is simple: tiny wooden houses will be placed around town; inside will be four poems, each on its own postcard – poem on one side, artwork on the other. The poems will feature one local and one national student poet and one local and one national adult poet. Every two weeks, a new set of four poem postcards will be placed in the Poetry Houses. An archive of poems will be housed on the PPH website, and print collections (bound by a big rubberband) will be available for purchase as Summer and Winter volumes.

The current editors are also looking for readers to join their team, actively searching for “readers who are not: cis, straight, white.” Readers don’t have to live in Pittsburgh, and they should be willing to volunteer about an hour a week to the effort.

Submissions for poetry are currently being accepted, with previously published works considered. See the PPH website for full details.

This seems like another great way to share the love of poetry and reading that I hope will be as equally inspriational as the free libraries!

Still Point Arts Quarterly has released its first issue since it absorbed Stone Voices. With the new publication comes a new look (a brighter, more eye-catching cover), and plans to focus on “art, nature, and spirit” while connecting these themes to make a cohesive, enjoyable read. Regular readers will be comforted to know that columnists Peter Azrak, Vincent Louis Carrella, and Leslie Ihde, will continue to write for this version of the Quarterly.

This issue includes samples from Still Point Art Gallery’s current exhibition Rectangles, Triangles, Circles: The Shape of Life and includes more art than ever.

Grab a print copy or a digital subscription at the Still Point website.

Last month, Francesco Levato, a new media artist, poet, and director of The Chicago School of Poetics, started #pxc001 to create a collaborative, long-form poem using Twitter as the interactive platform for writers. Although Levato started the work and appears occassionaly throughout thusfar, the poem is driven by its participants, with some using previous entries to build continuing lines. The Poem Twitter Wrote by Emiko Jazuka on VICE Motherboard explains the project.

World Literature Today features “Bodies in Literature” for their September-October 2015 issue. The cover art is aptly chosen, and here’s what the editors have to say about their choice:

In a year marked by protracted conflicts over bodies—women’s bodies, black bodies, immigrant/refugee bodies, and even the body politic—we hoped to capture that zeitgeist in this issue’s marquee section “Bodies in Literature,” by featuring an original cover illustration from tattoo artist Rawb Carter, modeled by Synthia Haddad, and photographed by Shevaun Williams.

The 15-page “Bodies in Literature” features work by Laura Ruiz Montes, Yin Lichuan, Najwa Ali, Zsuzsa Takács, Joshua Bennett, Nausheen Eusuf, Jim Pascual Agustin, Zsolt Láng, and Lorenza Ronzano and has been curated by Sara Wilson who also pens an introduction to the section.

Poetry’s September 2015 issue celebrates Young Irish Poets, the first Irish-themed issue in twenty years. Editor Patrick Cotter reveals a note about the last Irish issue:

One notable difference between this issue and the Contemporary Irish Poetry issue of 1995 is how evenly women are represented. In 1995, out of forty poets and translators presented, only six were women.

Yikes. But it’s great to see a change throughout the years and have a more evenly represented section of young Irish poets in this issue.

And with the new Playlist feature on the Poetry Foundation blog, I’m hoping this issue has accompanying music available soon.

The Tampa Book Arts Studio has launched its first-ever Kickstarter campaign for a project that brings an unpublished story of notable American woodcut artist J. J. Lankes into print in a limited letterpress edition.

“In 1950, nearing the end of his career as an illustrator and woodcut artist, Lankes wrote an allegorical fable that takes place in the lives of two mice, a story that emphasizes the snares of materialism versus the redeeming strength of love and forgiveness. Lankes also completed two illustrations to accompany it, but both the story and the cuts were set aside. They were never published or even publicly known, and they were nearly lost.” (TBAS blog)

The TBAS is home to Lankes’s c. 1845 Hoe Washington hand press, No. 3126, on which he proofed and printed his blocks for Robert Frost and others. Now, Director Dr. Richard Mathews is overseeing theprint production of Lankes’s story, The Rich Mouse, with illustrations. The book will be set in a special casting “Village” private press typeface in celebration of the 150th anniversary of its creator, Frederic W. Goudy.

Clearly, there is much to celebrate here! And donors can get in on the celebration by contributing to the Kickstarter campaign and receiving some excellent premiums – including a limited letterpress edition of the book itself, broadsides, and a companion paperback copy The Rich Mouse.

Arroyo presents their first drama piece in their Spring 2015 issue: “Creation of Myself” written by the Costa Rican epic poet, Eunice Odio, and translated by Keith Ekiss. From The Fire’s Journey, a four-part epic poem, the selection follows poet-hero Ion as he prepares to enter the world.

The issue with this “first” for Arroyo also brings around a “last.” Editor Christopher Morgan says good-bye in his Editor’s Note, and Lenae Souza will be stepping in as Editor for Issue 8, set to come out in Spring 2016.

The newest issue of Tin House focuses on the theme of Theft. Kevin Young “looks at how thievery is done well (Bob Dylan) and not so well (Jonah Lehrer).” Mary Ruefle and Erika Metiner take and take apart writing in their erasure poetry and Sarah Dohrmann revisits the 1982 kidnapping of John David Gosch.

From the editor’s note:

We sent out a call for short essays about memorable thefts, and it is an honor to have the call answered by the doyen of crime writers, Mary Higgins Clark, alongside Alissa Nutting, George Singleton, and Laura Lippman.

And it’s only appropriate that Martin Wittfooth’s “Loot Bag” dons the cover of this issue: a pelican with its bill filled with the stolen treasures of trash and childhood toys.

It’s a great time for fans of Yeats to plan a visit to Ireland as 2016 marks the centenary of Ireland’s 1916 Easter Rising, a key moment on Ireland’s path to independence. Programs are planned throughout the year in seven areas: State Ceremonial; Historical Reflection; An Teanga Bheo (The Living Language(; Youth and Imagination; Cultural Expression; Community Participation; and Global and Diaspora. In addition, the government is “providing enhanced visitor experiences and access to important locations related to the Rising or to events and people of that time,” such as the GPO Interpretative Center, Richmond Barracks,  National Concert Hall, Military Archives and more. The website has a PDF download of the events planned as well as regular updates online.

The Poetry Foundation has a full entry on William Butler Yeats’ “Easter, 1916” in which Ange Mlinko explores “how the conflict of a nation was camptuerd by a plitically reluctant poet.”