Grist: The Journal for Writers published out of the University of Knoxville English Department has a lot to offer readers and writers in support of owning its subtitle to be THE journal for writers.

A visit to its recently revamped website reveals a clean and easy navigation design, leading visitors to one of three areas: Grist Essentials (information about the print publication); The Writing Life; Online Companion.

Grist promotes The Writing Life as “a place to learn about, hone, and discuss your craft as a writer . . . a dynamic discussion of contemporary writing—thoughts on craft, publishing, and the life that both shapes and is shaped by the words we put on the page.” Features include news, craft essays, aspects of living the writing life, and Grist and writing-related events.

Grist Editors write that the Online Companion “allows us to showcase the highest quality writing we receive throughout our reading period while also allowing those less familiar with Grist and Grist’s content to get a feel for the wide variety of work we champion. Grist: The Online Companion is also a way to expand what we’re able to publish because the online arena is more hospitable to a wider formal variety than is often able to fit in the print issue’s 6 x 9 format.” The current issue, #8, features poetry, collaborative poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and collaborative creative nonfiction by Mary Jo Balistreri, Ashley-Elizabeth Best, Matt Cashion, Jacqueline Doyle & Stephen D. Gutierrez, Alex Greenberg, Jennifer Savran Kelly, Joseph Mulholland, Brianna Noll, Nicole Oquendo & Mike Shier.

Iodine Poetry Journal Editor and Publisher Jonathan K. Rice is also Poet and Visual Artist as well, and has been designing cover art for his iconic publication for the past 15 years. More of his work can be found here on the back list page for Iodine.

“Crow and Cloud,” photograph by Carolyn Guinzio, on the front cover of Cimarron Review Winter 2015 is a similar image to what I witness on my walks each morning – the birds coming back after a long winter, filling the tops of trees with their songs, the leaves yet to fill in the sky.

And another for the birds, Beloit Poetry Journal Spring 2015 features a lovely, dark, lush oil on linen by Eleanor Spiess-Ferris, “Shoreline” (2006). The cover does not reveal the entire image, so it’s worth a visit to the BPJ website to see what you’re not seeing in this pile of birds.

With its Spring 2015 issue, Boulevard celebrates 30 years of continuous publication. The editors write, “Since 1985, our aim has been to present the finest contemporary fiction, poetry, and essays on arts and culture in a variegated yet coherent ensemble—as a boulevard, which contains in one place the best a community has to offer.”

To celebrate, Boulevard has two special editions: an e-book anthology and this anniversary issue of the journal, which includes works by Alex Chernow, winner of the 2014 Poetry Contest for Emerging Writers, and a symposium on the artistic merits of contemporary television versus film. A full list of contributors for each volume can be found here.

Happy Anniversary Boulevard!

Chtenia: Readings from Russia issue #30 is themed Science Fiction. “Let’s be honest,” the editors write. “There really is something fundamentally different about Russian literature.”

In her issue introduction, Curator Yvonne Howell writes, “The first remarkable feature of Russian science fiction is the fact that it existed at all,” and goes on to discuss the historical context of 19th century Russia. While science fiction is generally understood to have come as a ‘hope and fear’ response for the “collective fate of humanity” at the turn of the twentieth century when science and technology were burgeoning, Russia, Howell explains, was “in a technologically backward empire at the margins of the Western world.” Yet, like all science fiction, Howell credits Russian writers, who faced with “conditions where practical tehcno-scientific improvements were lagging” were able to take “the scientific imagination . . . in unexpected directions.”

See a full list of the issue’s content here.

Founded in 2004 Arielle Greenberg, Tony Trigilio, and David Trinidad, Court Green has announced its newest issue, 12, will be the last.

The magazine was named after Court Green, the property in Devon, England, where Sylvia Plath lived and where she wrote her most famous poems, the Ariel poems. The editors say, “We wanted Court Green the magazine to be like Court Green the property in England: a space open and vulnerable to the world, sometimes restlessly so, and a space for intellectual, emotional, and linguistic experimentation.” And so it has, for over a decade. For its final issue, the editors have “decided that the best elegy for the magazine might be to break Court Green’s long-standing rule that the magazine never publish the work of its faculty editors. To celebrate the 12 years of imaginative energy that the editors brought to the magazine, we decided to create a space for the editors’ poems. On the occasion, then, of Court Green‘s final issue, we present a selection of recent work by all of our current and past editors.”

Work by Past and Present Editors: CM Burroughs, Two Untitled Poems; Lisa Fishman, “July-August, 2013”; Arielle Greenberg, “A Little Bit Lonely. (Money.)”; Tony Trigilio, “from Book 2. The Complete Dark Shadows (of my childhood)”; David Trinidad, “Anaïs.” Each of these can be read full-text on on Court Green’s website here.

Banipal Magazine of Modern Arab Literature 52 celebrates “New Fiction” and includes excerpts from the 2015 Shortlist of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction:

Ahmed el-Madini: Willow Alley, trans. Paul Starkey
Jana Elhassan: Floor 99, trans. Robin Moger
Atef Abu Saif: A Suspended Life, trans. William M Hutchins
Lina Hawyan Elhassan: Diamonds And Women, trans. Sophia Vasalou
Hammour Ziada: The Longing Of The Dervish, trans. Jonathan Wright
Shukri al-Mabkhout: The Italian, trans. Raphael Cohen

The winning entry will be announced May 6, 2015 in Abu Dhabi.

In addition to this and other great content, Banipal continues to include “Prison Writing,” which first started with the self-themed issue #50. The editors continue the feature with two “new and powerful testimonies in, and will remain open indefinitely for more contributions.”

I was thrilled to see Tuesday; An Art Project at the AWP Minnesota Book Fair. Tuesday is THE most gorgeous poetry postcard publication I had ever seen, each issue a neatly wrapped treasure of letterpress postcards featuring poetry on some and art on others (the flipsides are blank for writing/mailing). However, the publication ceased with issue 11 in 2013. Okay, well, not “ceased,” but perhaps worse, the H-word: Hiatus. This conjures up all kinds of wonderings of what went wrong, will the publication come back, if it does – for how long this time? From my view at NewPages over the past decade, I’ve seen a lot of hiatuses (hiati?) – some with reason, some not – but very few ever return. While “hiatus” to some might mean hope, I know it better as a long, drawn out death, usually finalized because someone stops paying the web site domain name bill.

Not so says Tuesday Founding Editor Jennifer S. Flescher, who has a Kickstarter campaign going to sell advance subscriptions to fund the publication (along with other premium goodies). [NOTE: Until 4/21 a donor will match all contributions!] When I met up with her at AWP, I was happy to talk with her, but also concerned about the whole hiatus thing. She was glad to offer me some clarity on her perspective, especially when I wouldn’t stop hammering her with questions.

NP: Why did you go on hiatus? No need to get personal, but for some, it is very personal (health issues, family issues, etc.), which I think is important for others to understand, since so many literary publications are small (very small) businesses. If one person can’t function for whatever reason, that can put the whole publication in jeopardy. You did allude to some reasons in your farewell note to readers, but nothing terribly specific. So, spill. Why hiatus?

JF: Of course, this is a very difficult question. It makes me go a little white and cold, though I know you are right, to hear you say that hiatus is often just a hasbeen rockstars comeback tour… I didn’t want to come back for a year; I don’t want to come back for a year.

In terms of why I stepped away, there are two answers.

The first was actually entirely personal. I’m not sure if this is of any interest to your readers, but I had a sick child and I really needed to be home with him. That had been taking a toll for a few years, and finally I simply needed to put absolutely everything aside and be home. There. For him. I am grateful every day this was an option for me, and I send love and compassion to all the mothers and children who do not have that luxury. That remains a decision I am very proud of, even if it cost me the journal.

The second is really the more on-point answer, I suppose. Yes, that darn domain bill. I had been paying for the magazine largely by myself for many years. This is my dirty little secret. I remember hearing a very young publisher years ago at AWP confess she had sold her car to pay for her press – I thought she was crazy! But I did too, truly; I still have my car, but I didn’t take my kids on vacation, I didn’t do a lot of things. In the beginning I felt like it was a lot like graduate school, and that it was money I spent to create something I believe in. Tuesday has a ridiculous business model simply because of the price of its physical parts. It simply didn’t feel sustainable anymore. I needed to take a few years to really decide where I wanted to go next.

I want to find a sustainable model now. I needed to decide to be a publisher. We start these things – in MFA programs, in the middle of the night – we don’t really know what we are getting into, and that’s a good thing: we dive. Diving is so important for creation. But then comes the moment when you have to look around – is this water clean? do I like swimming?

I think there are real issues to be addressed in publishing. About diversity, about voice. Beauty. Access. Funding. Tangibility. I don’t pretend Tuesday is big enough to tackle any of this, or the press I have a vision of will be, but I feel like that is the work I would like to address as an editor. Tuesday either needed to bigger or smaller. It’s time to go bigger.

NP: Your Kickstarter campaign is asking people to pre-subscribe for two issues. What about after that? I mean, I’m sure you hope to have enough subscribers to continue the support – but…

JF: This is the $15,000 question. I feel like this is just what it was created to be – a kickstart. To get us back on our feet. Re-establish our base. Get us going for the next year. After that I want to pursue both traditional and non-traditional funding. Non-profit status and grants. Fundraising. Some sort of advertising. My real dream is to find corporate sponsorship. I don’t like the model we have going now where poor poets pay more and more for the publishing of poetry. First off, they can’t afford it. Secondly it exacerbates the money/publication gap. It prevents us from making the types of shifts in publishing that will open up publication to reflect the diversity of the important poetry in this country.

NP: Well, I’m a huge fan of Tuesday, so I’m giddy to see it come back (and, yes, have kicked in on the Kickstarter!). Thank you for all you’ve said here; I think you make some important statements about poetry and publishing that could benefit others.

JF: Thank you so much for all the support.

Black Mountain Institute’s print issue of Witness, Spring 2015, begins with the Editor’s Comment on the theme of translation: “We always expect our themes to expand and change and present themselves in unexpected ways as we read submissions, but the theme for this issue – ‘Trans/lation’ – made itself felt everywhere. Seen broadly and metaphorically enough, any written work can be considered a translation, from a thought or an experience into a piece of writing, and so, a few times, we had to stop and refocus our intentions. We began with the roots of the word itself, which draw from actions like ‘to carry across’ or ‘to bring across,’ as well as the knowledge that translations are really transformations, new versions that are faithful to the original in many different ways.”

Along with other content, specific works of translation (or about translation) in this issue include:

Poetry
Dario Bellezza, from Nothingness, Glamour, Farewell; from Notes for a Novel in Verse. Translated from the Italian by Peter Covino.
Arthur Rimbaud, “Seven-Year-Old Poets.” Translated from the French by Donald Revell.
Maia Circe, “The Unfinished Spell”; “The Smallest Predictions”; “TV.” Translated from the Spanish by Jesse Lee Kercheval.

Fiction
Hossein M. Abkenar, “Classmates.” Translated from the Persian by Sara Khalili
Christos Chartomatsidis, “Alicia the Fat Witch.” Translated from the Bulgarian by Velina Minkoff, Rayna Rossenova, and Borislava Velkova.

Nonfiction
Douglas Unger, “Strange Voices, Subversions, Killer Tomatoes: Literature in Translation.”
Karl Ove Knausgaard, from My Struggle: Book Four. Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett.

Witness makes some works available in full text on their website.

Rachel Thompson’s Editor’s Note for the newest issue of Room Magazine (38.1) comments on the publication’s theme of In Translation: “In this issue of Room we explore literature from languages other than English, and the act of translation in all its senses. . . submerging ourselves into another language can give us a greater understanding of the world. When we try new tongues, our own becomes richer with infusions and transfusions of new elements, and foreign turns of phrase.

“But just reading a good translation in English—and we also have some of those in the issue—gives us a lens to look through and understand (if only briefly) how writers from other times and places may think and feel. Because we know the impact literature has on our humanity, we see the potential for reading to dissolve preconceptions or misconceptions we have about another culture. More than ever before, readers understand how crucial it is to expand our repertoires, to find stories and ideas outside of narratives that dominate prescribed reading lists and literary review pages.”

To read more from Thompson’s introduction and see a full list of contributors, visit Room‘s issue web page here.

The Bitter Oleander journal of contemporary international poetry and short story regularly features poetry translated into English published alongside the originals. The newest issue (21.1) includes the works of 20th century Italian poet Lorenzo Calogero (1910-1961) and an interview with his translator, John Taylor. An excerpt from the interview and one of Calogero’s poems can be read on the publication’s website here.

Editor Don Share says of the April 2015 issue of Poetry Magazine:

. . . this issue of Poetry, timed for National Poetry Month, features a selection of BreakBeat poets: in the pages that follow, readers will experience a “new American poetry in the age of hip-hop,” a resounding allusion to the resonant and groundbreaking 1960 anthology edited by Donald M. Allen, The New American Poetry 1945–1960. In fact, our feature is an excerpt from the book The BreakBeat Poets, published this month by Haymarket Books, and edited by Coval with Quraysh Ali Lansana and Nate Marshall. . . the work of the BreakBeat poets is crucially alive to our present moment. As the anthology’s editors say, this is work “for people who love Hip-Hop, for fans of the culture, for people who’ve never read a poem, for people who thought poems were only something done by dead white dudes who got lost in a forest, and for poetry heads.” In other words, it is for everyone.

Poetry’s full contents can be read online and in celebration of National Poetry Month can be downloaded for free – including audio and video content – on any iOS device.

NANO Fiction has put out the call to continue their State of Flash series with short essays about flash fiction in and out of the classroom. Do you have thoughts about flash fiction being published today? Which stories or authors have moved you or worked particularly well to generate classroom discussions? Which stories have inspired students? Which stories have inspired you? How has flash fiction changed the way you or your students view writing or the writing process? See full guidelines here.

Structo Editor Euan Monaghan starts the newest issue commenting on the work of editing a literary magazine, “. . . not always fun and games. Sometimes, when I’ve had enough of chasing invoices or wrestling software, I pull up on screen something that we are about to publish: a piece of writing so new that it’s not yet been committed to paper. Something only a few people have seen. And the excitement returns. I remember why I’m doing this – it’s because I want to share this feeling of excitement with the whole world. The writing we publish is really good.”

In addition to their own “really good” selections, the UK-based Structo has been invited by Faber & Faber and Arts Council English to publish one poem from each of the 2013-2014 Faber New Poet Award Winners. The Faber Poets receive mentoring, financial support, and a debut pamphlet published by Faber & Faber. The poets are Declan Ryan, Zaffar Kunial, Rachael Allen, and Structo‘s own Will Burns. Burns also talks with Kunial and includes the interview in this issue.