In the editor’s note of the latest issue of Pleiades, Wayne Miller announces that this will be his last issue with the journal. He will be teaching in the fall at the University of Colorado Denver and work on the staff of Copper Nickel. “I’m very grateful to the many extraordinary authors I’ve had the privilege to publish over the last twelve years,” he writes, “and I’m indebted to the wonderful editors I’ve worked with…” Phong Nguyen and Kathryn Nuernberger will be in charge of most managerial items. “I have no doubt Pleiades will continue to be a vibrant and important voice in the world of contemporary literature under their stewardship, and I feel privileged to have played a role in the journal’s history and development during my time here,” he said.

Awesome Tapes from Africa is exactly as it proclaims. Ethnomusicologist and DJ Brian Shimkovitz curates this collection of hundreds of cassette tape recordings from various regions of Africa dating back to the 70s. Shimkovitz recently contributed a mix-tape of popular 50s Egyptian music for New Directions Books in celebration of the US release of Stealth by Sonallah Ibrahim, Egyptian activist and novelist.

Motion collage artist and poet Nathaniel Whitcomb had already created a mini-animated trailer to celebrate the book: “Inspired by vintage View Masters, Whitcomb flips through photos taken by Don Church of 1950s Cairo to let the viewer ‘peek in with care’ to Ibrahim’s childhood world. Accompanying the animation is music by the great 20th century Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum.”

New Directions also interviewed Shimovitz about his work with Awesome Tapes from Africa, his creation of a mix tape ins
pired by Stealth, and the future new label created for ATFA.

Paul Nelson writes: It is almost August once again and this means POSTCARDS!

The August Poetry Postcard Fest is an exercise in responding to other poets. You write a poem a day for the month of August, write it directly onto a postcard and send it to the next name on your list. When you receive a postcard poem from someone, the idea is that the next poem you send out will be a response to the poem you just received, even though it will be sent to a different person. Ideally you will write 31 new poems and receive 31 postcard poems from all over the place.

To participate, send your name, mailing address, and email to [email protected]. Use the word “postcard” in the subject line.

Again, one long list will go out this year this year instead of individual lists of 32 names. You can send postcard poems to the 31 names below your name, please do not use this list for advertising or for any other purpose than postcard poems. DO NOT SPAM THE LIST.

I [Paul] will send out the list twice. Our international participants often require an earlier start due to longer delivery times, so I will send the incomplete list out on July 16th and the final version around July 26th. The 26th is the cut off date, I will not be adding any more names to the list after that, the list sent out on the 26th will be the final list for this year. Really. I’ll be out of the U.S. myself. Please be sure to send in your information before that. I will email the list to the participants in a google document as well as in the body of the email.

If you know anyone who would like to participate, feel free to forward them this message! Hope you enjoy the Poetry Postcard Fest!

Directions:

On or about Sunday, July 27th, look at the list to see the three people listed below your name. Write them each an original poem on a postcard, put their address on the card and affix the necessary postage. $1.15 for international cards leaving the U.S. Consider scanning your cards or photographing them to document each poem/card before you send them out. Do not recycle old poems for this. Do not compose a long poem in advance and cut it up into hunks for this. It is an experiment in composing in the moment and your poem has an audience of one. This is designed in part as a conversation.

(If you are near the bottom of the list, send a card to anyone below you then start again at the top.) Ideally, you would write 3 different short poems — remember they are being composed on a postcard and please keep your handwriting clear. If your handwriting is lousy, typing the poems is ok. If you have folks outside your own country on your list, you can start sending poems early…)

Write about something that relates to your sense of “place” however you interpret that, something about how you relate to the postcard image, what you see out the window, what you’re reading, a dream you had that morning, or an image from it, etc. Like “real” postcards, get to something of the “here and now” when you write. Present tense is preferred… Do write original poems for the project. Taking old poems and using them is not what we have in mind. You may want to use epigraphs. One participant last year used his daily I Ching divination to inform his poems.

This is also an experiment in community consciousness. Try to respond to cards that you get with subject, image or any kind of link if possible. Often newsworthy events happen in August. How would our community respond? Letting a card that you receive linger for a while before you respond to the next person on your list is the preferred method. When you go to your mail box each day, put the bills aside, read the poems you get and think about them as you compose to the next person on your list.

A GREAT story about one man’s conversion from being a postcard CHEATER is here: http://changeorder.typepad.com/weblog/2010/08/sending-postcards-to-strangers.html

A workshop handout for the poetry postcard writing exercise is here: http://paulenelson.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Postcard-Exercise.pdf

You may also view that handout at this link: http://paulenelson.com/workshops/poetry-postcard-exercise/

Monsterama is an Atlanta convention that celebrates the fantastic in film, literature, and art. It takes place from August 1-3, 2014. The convention will feature celebrity, artist, and author guests, screenings, programming on film, literature, and art, as well as other fan related events and panels.

From Running Press, Tequlia Mockinbird should be every readers compendium volume! Author Tim Ferdale “Broadway actor, word nerd, and cocktail enthusiast” (and author of the YA comic novel Better Nate Than Ever) offers readers/drinkers 65 literary themed recipes along with commentary on the source novels, drinking games, food recipes, and illustrations.

A few examples: One Flew Over the Cosmo’s Nest; Rye and Prejudice; The Cooler Purple; Frangelico and Zooey; A Midsummer Night’s Beam; The Old Man and the Seagram’s; The Sound and the Slurry – and I could go on! The book is divided into sections Drinks for Dames and Gulps for Guys (why the gender divide, I don’t know – I found BOTH lists appealing!), and Bevies for Book Clubs, Refreshments for Recovering Readers, Bar Bites for Book Hounds, and Games for Geeks (with games for Drinking All by Your Lonesome as well as Drinking with Friends).

I’m only sorry I didn’t have this book when I was in grad school – it would have made all those novel-a-week classes a lot more fun! A definite must have for literary lovers, a great gift for bookies on your list, and required reading for anyone heading off to English grad programs this fall!

And to look forward to: Federle’s Hickory Daiquiri Dock is due out December 2014. Nursery rhymes made even more fun? Who knew!

Get the latest issue of Iron Horse Literary Review, then read Anne Valente’s fiction piece “Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down,” and be rewarded with both the excellent prose and the interview with her that follows. Valente discusses her inspiration for the piece: “This story did develop from so many recent news stories about school shootings, as well as the difficult of even imagining the pain for everyone involved. From the remove of watching on television or reading the newspaper, I felt overwhelmed but also guilty for feeling this, as if I had no right. After the Sandy Hook shooting in particular, I couldn’t stop thinking about the unbearable weight of that kind of grief and where that pressure can even go. From there emerged the image of a sorrow-turned-to-fire, of grief having no outlet but to burn everything down.”

More generally, you also learn about Valente, that she has always wanted to be a writer, and if she wasn’t a writer, according to the career aptitude test in her high school, she’d be a tree surgeon: “In retrospect, this doesn’t seem to far off the mark; when I’m not writing, I’m usually outside or wanting to be outside.” Currently, she is working on a full-length novel that grew out of this published story as well as a collection of short stories about the city of St. Louis.

Right from the front cover (her passport) of the new issue of Brick, you can tell that this issue means to celebrate Mavis Gallant. And as you open the issue, you get a quote from her before you delve into the issue itself: “I have lived in writing, like a spoonful of water in a river.”

It starts with a short piece by the editors that discusses “Working with Mavis Gallant” as in 2007, they published an interview with her, conducted in French and then translated. Gallant called many times to make corrections and work on editing the interview, eventually relinquishing the care of the work to Tara Quinn. “There would be no more auspicious a start to life at Brick than to be show by Mavis Gallant how to edit an interview,” Quinn and Nadia Szilvassy write. “The experience informed how we edited all interviews in issues to come. The voice had to come through wit ha force equal to that of Mavis on that first phone call. We’d all do well to keep listening.”

The issue continues with four more pieces “For Mavis Gallant” from Michael Helm, Francine Prose, Alison Harris, and Michael Ondaatje.

Paula Carter writes that, “live nonfiction storytelling is hitting a nerve. Audiences are showing up all over the country, and even more are listening online, looking to enjoy some real-life struggle vicariously—or, for that matter, to tell their ow personal stories. As the scene continues to grow, it is becoming clear that this is a golden age of storytelling, and it is something to relish—maybe even to love.” This is part of her contribution to a section in the current issue of Creative Nonfiction called “Under the Umbrella: Getting Intimate with a Crowd of Strangers.”

Creative nonfiction doesn’t have to just be on paper. Carter explains it this way: “Like the narrative nonfiction essay, live stories reveal the truths of who we are. They air the unspoken, make fun of idiosyncrasies, and demonstrate our common humanity. Unlike at a comedy show, or even a theater production, audiences are asked to connect directly with the person on stage. Spectators fail and fall in love and overcome obstacles along with the storytellers. We see ourselves in the stories. We’ve been there.”

In the next section, Graham Shelby takes us on stage with him as he goes through the experience of performing at The Players, The Moth Mainstage: “My story will be recorded and maybe someday broadcast to the roughly one million weekly listeners of The Moth Radio Hour,” he writes. Shelby tells us that there is something very rewarding with this type of nonfiction:

“I love writing. I do. But it can be isolating. When we’re writing in our rooms, it’s easy for our eventual readers, unknown in name or number, to remain abstract. So easy to focus on what we want, rather than what they need. Live storytelling never lets you forget about the audience. The form offers one more gift, as I see it, one that springs from the very aspects of storytelling that sometimes keeps writers away: it’s public, it’s interactive, and you have to go somewhere to do it. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, that means you leave the house with one story, but you come home with two.”

Both pieces are insightful and great reads. Editor Lee Gutkind writes in his opening note, “Storytelling is our oldest, most powerful art form; we use it to entertain, to inform, and to inspire. A good story can change the world. That is what his issue is all about.”

The Broadsided art/poetry collaboration for July features “A Poem by Brian McGuigan,” which is actually a poem by Kate Lebo, and art by Sarah Van Sanden The website features a collaborators’ Q&A, in which Artist Sarah Van Sanden notes, “The poem immediately evoked the yin/yang symbol for me and everything followed that lead by drawing forms from the poem.” Poetry lovers and those who simply love postering the neighborhoods are encouraged to download the broadside and “vectorize” your quadrant! Also of interest, it would seem Kate Lebo is something of a pie aficionado. Check out her Pie School, “a cliche busting pastry academy.”

In honor of the 75 years The Kenyon Review has publishing, they are putting out credos from writers who have been previously been published within their pages. In the current issue, they invite George Saunders to contribute his credo, to which he starts, “I don’t know that I really have a credo, unless it’s ‘Trust the process.'”

“For me, the process is to take some tiny scrap of text,” he writes, “as unladen with ‘meaning’ or ‘theme’ or ‘intention’ as possible, and see what it wants me to do. The way I prompt it to tell me what to do is to revise it, and the means by which I revise it is, more or less, ‘to ear.’ I look at it, read it internally—and see how I feel about it. Often a slight rearrangement (a cut, a reordering, the insertion of a new phrase) will suggest itself instantaneously. Other times, a next sentence or small narrative beat will appear (‘Oh, she should follow him into the store.’) And I do mean ‘appear’—ideally this next bit of text alteration or froward movement does not come willed, exactly00it arrives on its own, instantaneously, unstoppable. This is where the mystery comes in—from where do those strong impulses-to-improve come? … This is also where a terrifying idea presents itself: the difference between a good writer and a so-so writer is the quality of these unwilled intuitions.”

Read the rest in the Summer 2014 issue.

Janice N. Harrington’s The Hands of Strangers: Poems from the Nursing Home come from her experience working as a nurse’s aide: “It was work; it was a way of life, and I wanted people to understand who the people are who are helping the elderly . . . Even when I read some of the poems in public, people will assume they’re nurses, but these are the nurses’ aides. These are the people who do the grunt work, the underpaid work. I wanted to tell those stories.”

The latest issue of New Letters features an interview with this author, where the quoted text above comes from. And as Editor Robert Stewart asks how she kept the details from so long ago in her mind, she responds, “I never forget the people I worked with. Even now I know what their conditions were . . . I still remember their names . . . I think we were in that intense, compressed situation, and their stories somehow became a part of my memory.”

The interview deals with the inspiration behind the book, her background in writing, and her writing process. “If I’m writing a poem,” she says, “I’m writing it for a reader; I’m writing it for another human being. I want the reader to understand me. I want there to be some communication. I know that there’s argument about being too simplistic. It’s not that I think poems are just about communication. Sometimes when I’m writing something, because I appreciate the sound of it, that’s what I want you to pay attention to.”

High Desert Journal was founded ten years ago by Elizabeth Quinn whose vision was “to create a platform for the artists and writers of the interior West, a place to showcase their talents, and by doing so bring to a wider audience the art and stories that come from the place they call home.” And the first eighteen issues (the journal is now on issue 19) were all designed by Thomas Osborne. Editor Charles Finn writes, “There is not a better looking, classier, more visually engaging literary magazine on the stands today. Period. Thomas put a look to Elizabeth’s vision, and between the two they created one of the most respected journals in the country.” And due to the many thanks that Finn has to these to for making the journal what it is, it is with a heavy heart that he announces that both of them will no longer be working with the journal on the day-to-day. They will remain, however, as advisors.

And the torch of a vision will be carried on: “High Desert journal can’t help but change, evolve as all endeavors such as this do, but I’d like to take this opportunity to say what it will not do is cease to be the visual and artistic voice Elizabeth and Thomas foresaw, a journal built to be a witness to the West,” Finn writes.

To carry on this vision, Sheryl Noethe, previous poet laureate of Montana, and Joe Wilkins, award-winning author of The Mountains and the Fathers, will join the team along with new Art Editor Kerrie Rosenstein and new Fiction Editor Jane Carpenter. The new design team will consist of Benjamin Kinzer and Chloe Frommer.

Previously founded in Farmington Hills, Michigan, Absinthe has announced that they will be moving to Ann Arbor, Michigan where The Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan will assume editorial leadership. Here’s more information from the announcement:

“The relocation of Absinthe to the Department of Comparative Literature will allow the journal to benefit from the expertise of one of the strongest comparative programs in the nation, and provide a sustainable publishing model to continue Absinthe’s commitment to promoting foreign literature in the United States. At the University of Michigan, Absinthe will provide a space of encounter between new voices in foreign literature, experienced translators, as well as translators in training.

Starting in summer 2014, Absinthe will serve as a platform from which to expand the Department of Comparative Literature’s ongoing engagement with translation activities across the Michigan campus and beyond. The magazine will offer graduate students the opportunity to gain professional experience in editing literary translations and identifying important new trends in contemporary world literature. It will also provide opportunities for collaboration with colleagues across departments, both within and beyond the University of Michigan, on topics for special issues.

In the fall of 2014, The Department of Comparative Literature will resume Absinthe’s biannual print publication as well as create an entire new online presence for the magazine. Two doctoral students in Comparative Literature will serve as co-editors for the first two transitional issues. Their task will consist of maintaining the legacy of Absinthe as established by Hayes, while broadening the magazine’s current focus on European literature to include texts that reflect the very wide range of geographical interests, talents and affinities present in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan. “

As a special feature in the latest issue from Green Mountains Review, Vermont Double Laureate Team-Up” is an illustrated collaboration between Poet Laureate of Vermont Sydney Lea and Cartoonist Laureate of Vermont James Kochalka. It’s a “strip” they title “Laureate Power.” Here’s a sampling from the first included page:

Under the Gum Tree has been making some changes to their staff. Six months ago, assistant editors Kathryn DeJarnette and Becca Litman joined the team. Robin Martin became senior editor. Now, Aimee Steffen Taber is taking Natana Prudhomme’s place as designer. Prudhomme helped launch the magazine in 2011 and designed the logo and page layout. “I can’t tell you how lucky I was to find Natana (and would you believe it was all thanks to a Craigslist ad?),” Editor Janna Marlies Maron writes, “seriously, Under the Gum Tree would not be the gorgeous magazine that it is without Natana. When we started working together, all I had was the title and an idea and Natana executed that idea more beautifully than I could have imagined. As sad as I was to see Natana go, I was so honored to have worked with her for two years and am excited to see her pursuing her goals as an artist.”

There has also been a transition in the editorial interns. Janna thanks Elizabeth Kroll for her contributions with the newsletter and social media and welcomes aboard the new intern, Katie Walker. You can read more here.

NANO Fiction has just announced that they are now able to pay their contributors: “Starting with issue 8.1, all writers who have work published in NANO Fiction (including reviewers and contributors to our State of Flash series) will not only receive two copies of the issue in which they are published, but they will now also be paid $20 per published piece!” Submissions will remain free, but there is now an optional tip jar to help support the magazine.

The Summer 2014 issue of Rattle has some great poems. I only skimmed through a few of them, but each one I read made me happy I did. Here’s a snippet of Nic Alea’s “River,” which opens up the issue:

I think I am in the back of
the car slamming my head against
the seat, I think I am screaming, no,
careless, maybe, I think I am too fast
over this canyon, I think my tape player
is stuck singing about the rain or
a field or no, this is a canyon and canyons have the once upon a river stuck to
the bottom, I’m going to hit the bottom
and it’s going to burn like the summer
and we feel good peeling the dead skin
off our shoulders and I press my thumb
into your chest to watch my imprint glow
against you, I think you forgot about me,
maybe we kissed goodbye on your bed with
the windows open and the orange house across
the street steamed like a fat sun and I feel all over
the wood floor…

Frank X Walker, the first African-American Kentucky poet laureate (2013-2014), is featured within the current issue of The Louisville Review. The magazine hails from Spalding University, and so the editors are especially pleased to welcome him to the issue as he is a graduate of the Spalding University low-residency MFA in Writing. “In this issue,” writes Sena Jeter Naslund, “we are proud to include the work of three of Frank’s teachers while at Spalding: Molly Peacock…Greg Pape…and Jeanie Thompson…” Here is a sample of his first included poem, “Thanks,” after Yusef Komunyakaa:

thanks for the tug at my heart string
and each beat that skipped
every time you were close enough
to be touched or touch but didn’t.
thanks for the light that came on
and the sirens and storm warnings
after the tequila flavored kiss
and the inhibitions that took flight
joining the flock of sky gods
just outside our windows.

The issue also features poetry from Michael Fulop, Robert Fernandez, Joel W. Nelson, Okla Elliott, Jesse DeLong, John Blair, Roy Bentley, Natalie Price, Aaron Crippen, Andrew Payton, Drew Pomeroy, Brandon Rushton, Jessica Pace, Helen Tzagoloff, and Simon Perchik; fiction by Cailin Barrett-Bressack, Megan E. Calhoun, Ed Taylor, Margaret Hayertz, Kirby Gann, Gayle Hanratty, and Chervis Isom; and more.

In a second post in her series “My First Book of Poetry: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Independent Presses,” one of Gulf Coast‘s poetry editors, Frances Justine Post writes advice on submitting your manuscript to small presses on the magazine’s blog. “Independent poetry presses are publishing the most daring, mind-blowing work,” she writes. “As a whole, they are not concerned with making money like the publishing behemoths of yore. They are interested in finding voices that speak to them. One of those voices may be yours”

She also suggests submitting during an open call instead of for a book contest. The publishers will select their favorites, but when it comes down to it, the final judge makes the decision. It may not be the publisher’s top choice, but they support it. However, if you submit during an open submission, you’ll know that they are backing your book one hundred percent. “They have chosen you because they believe in you,” she writes. “In my experience, this makes all the difference. They want your voice in the world, so they will work really hard to make that happen.”

In the rest of the blog post, she offers more advice. And in the post before that, she discusses putting your poetry manuscript together. There is also promise of part III. Read Gulf Coast’s blog here.

Ascent, an online magazine publishing fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, has just finished a website redesign. “Founded by Dan Curley at the University of Illinois, Ascent … provokes and entertains the head as well as the heart,” they write. “Now housed at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, and edited by W. Scott Olsen, each issue features dramatic poetry, thoughtful essays, and fiction with a solid narrative. We publish as many first-time authors as well-known names. We promise good company to our authors, and work that matters to our readers.” The screenshot on your left is their old design and the one to the right their new design. Check out the magazine and the redesign at readthebestwriting.com.

Last year, World Literature Today posed a question on their blog, “Now we must write as if the planet were dying. What would you say to a planet in a spasm of extinction?” In a special section of the latest issue (May-August 2014), eleven writers share their responses from essays to poetry to booklists. Writers include Kris Saknussemm, Maya Khosla, Niyi Osundare, Wu Ming-yi, Michael Cope, Liu Ka-shiang, Ava Chin, Tom Zoellner, Eduardo Mitre, Pedro Shimose, and Amarsana Ulzytuev. Here is a sample from Cope’s “The Stream”:

How quickly the rain will cease

and the stream go back to sand,

the blooms wither to dust

in the wind, the diligent ants

bringing in their stores curl up

to be blown away, the shades

on the other shore dissolve into light;

and how lightly we will cross over,

with a single pace, our children

beside us or on our backs.

And here’s the opening of Zoellner’s “The Mountain That Eats Men”: “Come see the mountain. It dominates the Bolivian city of Potos