NewPages Blog :: Magazine Reviews

As always, The Briar Cliff Review makes a strong impression from the second it is placed in your hands. The journal’s large pages offer poetry, fiction, and nonfiction room to breathe and allow pieces of graphic art to be reproduced in flattering detail. In her introductory note, Editor Tricia Currans-Sheehan affirms her obvious desire to embrace the “print-ness” of the review. The magazine, she says, “is for holding and looking and for leafing through—with a treat for the eye and mind on each page.” Continue reading “The Briar Cliff Review – 2012”

Valparaiso Fiction Review, a sister publication of the Valparaiso Poetry Review, is from the Department of English at Valparaiso University in Indiana. What first struck me about the magazine was the format. Each piece of the issue appears in a separate PDF that needs to be downloaded to read. This seemed odd and discouraging, but I’m glad I took the time to work with the format. These longer pieces of fiction found within the issue were well worth it. Continue reading “Valparaiso Fiction Review – Winter 2012”

Camera Obscura is a journal devoted to both prose and photography. This issue contains eight stories and twenty-seven photographs. Continue reading “Camera Obscura – Autumnal 2012”

After clicking on the man’s face and having him wink at me to enter the site, I knew Miracle Monocle had to be entertaining. I scrolled down and first read “The Importance of Not Losing One’s Head” by Adam Krause and instantly knew I had to review this magazine, even if it was just to mention this one microfiction piece. Short, it invokes a sort of black comedy as the character quite literally loses his head. But no worries, he pantomimes in the street as he looks for it. This doesn’t earn him his head, but he does receive a quarter. That’s all I’ll say; just go read it. Continue reading “Miracle Monocle – Winter 2012”

Subtitled “The War and Peace Issue,” this offering considers the stated themes from a wide range of situations and viewpoints. Aside from an introductory editor’s note, Franklin Delano Roosevelt is given the first word. In an address given in Chautauqua, New York, Roosevelt lamented that he had seen “the dead in the mud” and “cities destroyed” and declared how much he hated war. Unfortunately, the nature of war is such that the same man was forced to wage one several years later. Continue reading “Chautauqua – 2012”

I can’t do much of a better introduction to this issue than Editor Jessica Bixel’s intro, so I’ll let her words speak as she invites you into the issue like she’s inviting you into a haunted mansion: “all manner of death and destruction, breakups and breakdowns, hook of rock and hank of hair. The orchards are swelling, the wolves are watching, and the city is haunted—everyone is waiting for you. Enjoy your stay.” Continue reading “Rufous City Review – 2012”

Copper Nickel states on the submission page that the journal publishes no more than 2% of the submissions it receives. After careful study of its October edition, I can easily perceive the appeal: the value proposition of this particular journal exceeds the usual draws—presentation, print and polish. The journal is intelligent in a bold way, showcasing surrealist efforts in at least three of the prose included, and I cage the statistic in “at least,” because the classification “surreal” has been thoroughly extended by popular vernacular: sometimes an exotic dragon making a holographic appearance truly tests the limits of the term. (See Leslie Rakowicz’s short story “Celia,” for an illustration of same.) Continue reading “Copper Nickel – October 2012”

Redheaded Stepchild, an exclusively poetry magazine, likes to play with the other magazine’s unused toys. “We know that a lot of kickass poetry gets rejected,” say the editors, “and we thought it would be fun to publish only previously rejected poems. We like rejects.” But that being said, poems aren’t necessarily rejected because of quality but rather because of fit for the particular magazine. Looking through the bios of this issue, it’s obvious that these writers are not lacking in publications. Continue reading “Redheaded Stepchild – Fall 2012”

Found Poetry Review features—you guessed it—found poetry. Borrowing text from anything from tweets to speeches and newspaper articles to books, the magazine is a fruitful collage of collages. Continue reading “Found Poetry Review – Spring/Summer 2012”

My first impression of Ontologica was that it published a lot of non-literary nonfiction, essays that take a strong bias or are very persuasive. And while I still have that impression, I now realize that it is part of their aesthetic. “Our journal is dedicated primarily to essays of philosophical work,” say the editors. In fact, two of their goals are “to publish provocative contemporary work” and “to challenge the status quo.” In this, they succeed (see Edward Lyngar’s “A Tale of Two Penises” which discusses why male babies should not be circumcised and Edward A. Dougherty’s “Lessons on Totalitarianism”). But for the purposes of this review, I will focus on the fiction. Continue reading “Ontologica – Winter 2012”

Can our literary senses be overwhelmed? Gargoyle #57 was “a 600-page doorstop of an issue!” Gargolyle 58 is another 470 pages. It’s been noted in previous reviews that there’s too much work available and accepted for Gargoyle, and it happened again with #58. But it’s all of great quality! Consequently, the editors decided to divide everything accepted for #58 and print two issues in 2012. Continue reading “Gargoyle – 2012”

Imitation Fruit welcomes you to the site with a number of googley-eyed fruit. Without a real aesthetic declared, it is hard to tell what the magazine is looking for without doing some reading first. And what I found is that it appears to be more about story, more about the message, than the style or bravado of the writing. Continue reading “Imitation Fruit – November 2012”

The Laurel Review is another solid literary journal from the “Show Me State.” The editors and interns present a collection of strong works without fanfare or pretension. They are simply looking for good writing, and that’s exactly what you can expect to see in their latest issue. Continue reading “The Laurel Review – 2012”

Literary Juice publishes literature in small sips. There are short stories, flash fiction, pulp fiction, and poetry. Continue reading “Literary Juice – December 2012/January 2013”

Two outstanding Canadian literary journals have collaborated on separate issues consisting of work from each other’s patch. This issue of Malahat, based in British Columbia (B.C.), features “Essential East Coast Writing” in collaboration with Fiddlehead, published in New Brunswick. Alternately, Fiddlehead published a West Coast issue. Malahat Editor John Barton traces the idea to a 2010 residency at University of New Brunswick and conversations with Fiddlehead Editor Ross Leckie. The result, at least by reading the Mahalat half, is a celebration of artistic vibrancy on both coasts. Continue reading “The Malahat Review – Autumn 2012”

Families in various stages of self-destruction or survival are a connecting thread for most of the prose in this issue of Carolina Quarterly. Fiction and memoir today are rife with stories about the unsettled, uncommitted young, so it’s refreshing to read strong writing about people who have tried to firm up some ground beneath their feet—even if the effort sometimes fails catastrophically. Continue reading “The Carolina Quarterly – Fall 2012”

As its name would indicate, the poems in this slender volume of Ekphrasis take another piece of art as their starting point, sometimes providing description or commentary but also pushing it further, igniting something transformative. Though there is no editorial statement to indicate any specific theme or thrust for the issue, the further one reads, the more unnecessary it becomes. The title is enough. Continue reading “Ekphrasis – Spring/Summer 2012”

Eleven Eleven is an exciting journal from the California College of the Arts. Founded in 2004, their goal is to provide an outlet for risk and experimentation from talented writers and artists. From the gorgeous cover art to the works of fiction and poetry from local and international talent, there is a lot to like about the current issue. Continue reading “Eleven Eleven – 2012”

Frequencies, a new biannual journal published by Two Dollar Radio, is dedicated to delivering artful essays for your reading pleasure. This first issue only contains four essays and an interview with Anne Carson, but the quality of each piece makes this journal heavy with literary weight. Continue reading “Frequencies – Fall 2012”

The Midwest Quarterly, published at Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas, is a no-frills, no-nonsense journal of scholarly essays and poetry. Continue reading “The Midwest Quarterly – Autumn 2012”

A journal dedicated to the nonfiction narrative, River Teeth celebrated its fourteenth year anniversary with its Fall 2012 edition. In many of the essays in this volume, the concepts of privacy and identity, which its editor Dan Lehman mentions in his notes, become a weighty trade-off for the benefit of nonfiction. The thirteen narratives that compose the volume are unique in subject matter and voice but share an artistic spirit, a deliberate frame of a world otherwise chaotic. Continue reading “River Teeth – Fall 2012”

Solo Café 8 & 9 is a volume written by teachers and students. It considers the relationships between teachers and students as well as the dynamic of an educational setting. Having such a diverse age range of writers with so many different experiences relating to education was enlightening. The writing follows a more autobiographical track filled with emotion, rather than being dominated by writers trained to excel as creative writers. The raw story takes precedence over any craft in storytelling. It made for a very interesting read, and there were some great contributions of poetry to dive into. Continue reading “Solo Café – 2013”

The Golden Key is a brand new speculative online journal, then name coming from the Grimm’s fairy tale with the same title. The Grimm’s story ends with a boy who lifts the lid of an iron chest without revealing what’s inside. Co-Editor Susan Anspach says, “The Grimms chose to end their collection of fairy tales with this story as a reminder that there exists an endless reserve of stories still yet untold. In the same spirit, our journal seeks to publish work that is open to strange and marvelous possibilities.” Continue reading “The Golden Key – 2012”

We read magazines for escape. At least, I do. Whether I’m sitting under the salon hair-dryer flipping through celebrity gossip or snuggling into a comfy chair with a novel that forces me to be the narrator (Look at me! I just killed a dragon!), I am an escape artist. I enjoy leaving reality far, far behind. So, for me, Stone Voices was a major wake-up call. Continue reading “Stone Voices – Fall 2012”

Another new magazine, Map Literary “is dedicated to celebrating quality works of new literature. Rather than aligning with any one aesthetic, we aspire to promote the finest provocative writing of our time.” Continue reading “Map Literary – Fall 2012”

Dear Structo: Continue reading “Structo – Summer/Autumn 2012”

Every Tuesday, Atticus Review publishes a few pieces of literature. The December 11th issue features the work of William Reese Hamilton, Marko Fong, and M. C. Allan. This issue, as the editors say, is about rejection. Continue reading “Atticus Review – 2012”

The journal subTERRAIN is published thrice annually by the sub-TERRAIN Literary Collective Society in Vancouver, British Columbia. Although the journal originated in 1988, to a reader in the United States, it appears to be a somewhat Northern combination of the 1970s Mother Jones magazine with its funky typeface and riotous paper and Harper’s Magazine with its editorial composition. Despite its funding from various governmental entities, I don’t think its writers or its editorial collective really tend to bow or mew to anyone in particular. Continue reading “subTerrain – Summer/Fall 2012”

Mead aims to make the magazine “small and explosive, writing we would want to read while waiting at the bar for our lover. Writing that is fermented, burnt, makes some kind of penance, offering, or sacrifice. Has breakage, but tooth. Writing with ropes, legs, residue. Writing that leaves ashes.” There are five sections—beer, wines, cocktails, pure spirits, and sparkling—in which the editor categorizes the pieces to be published. In this review, I choose to select my favorite for each of the drinks. Continue reading “Mead – Fall 2012”

The Arkansas Review features a blend of fiction, poetry, photography, and scholarly articles about the seven-state Mississippi River Delta. At fifty pages, the brief journal is an interesting study of this part of America, but at times feels claustrophobic in its geographic constraints. What sets this magazine apart from others is the chorus of Delta voices and its convincing local color. Continue reading “Arkansas Review – August 2012”

Jellyfish Magazine’s design is simple and fresh. The top of the page features a sketch of waves—and certainly this issue flows through like waves, ups, downs, and fluid, often touching on the topic of the water, the sea. Continue reading “Jellyfish Magazine – Fall 2012”

Once again, Richard Burgin and his team present a well-rounded collection of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that will appeal to the reader’s intellect and emotion alike. The impact begins with the journal’s very first piece: a new short story from Joyce Carol Oates. In “Anniversary,” Vivianne has retired from higher education and has decided to volunteer to teach writing in the State Prison Education Program. Vivianne has been paired with Cal Healy, a much younger and far less experienced teacher. Oates builds tension effectively and organically, taking a lot of time to explain all of the many rules one must follow to work in a prison. (Avoid blue clothing so you can’t be confused with an inmate, avoid delving too deeply into their personal lives . . . and keep an eye on that pencil sharpener.) The ending of the story alone is worth the read. Oates manipulates the reader’s understanding of the narrative, lending greater power and a more disturbing undertone to a simple ride home. Continue reading “Boulevard – Fall 2012”

Cerise Press, a well laid-out and professional looking online journal, publishes a variety of fiction, poetry, translations, essays, and art and photography in the latest issue. I started with the fiction, getting lost in the narratives and then dove into the endless (okay, not literally) amounts of poetry. Continue reading “Cerise Press – Fall/Winter 2012-13”

At its start, Brick was a collection of reviews, and at its heart still is. The editors say, “Brick’s mandate remains unchanged: to create a beautiful product filled with the most invigorating and challenging literary essays, interviews, memoirs, travelogues, belles lettres, and unusual musings we can get our hands on.” Continue reading “Brick – Summer 2012”

Before delving into discussion of the writing in Right Hand Pointing, it is worth noting that the magazine’s layout/design makes reading it easy. Such a simple design allows for full focus on the words rather than what they look like on the page. I read the issue entirely from my phone; at the end of each poem, I simply scrolled to the bottom and clicked the hand pointing to the right to continue on in the issue. Continue reading “Right Hand Pointing – 2012”

CALYX, a literary journal dedicated to celebrating women’s voices, never fails to delight. The expanded summer issue of 2012, with its collection of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, art, and book reviews, is by turns lyrical and raw, whimsical and powerful. We read about mothers, sisters, wives, and best friends in witty and imaginative language, glimpses into other lives that live on in the imagination long after the last page has been turned. Continue reading “CALYX – Summer 2012”

Created last Thanksgiving, Birdfeast aims to quarterly provide a feast of poetry; publishing all forms and styles. “Think of how you might see a dessert pudding sitting comfortably by a roast turkey on your Thanksgiving table,” the editors say. Continue reading “Birdfeast – 2012”

Now in its eighth issue, Canteen is a journal that “admires what writers and artists do” and wants “insight into how and why it’s done.” Continue reading “Canteen – 2012”

Before you read The Medulla Review, take everything you think you know about our world and throw it out the window; the stories contained within the issue will challenge new ways to think about the way it actually works. You’ll discover a world in which all men turn, quite literally, into pigs; you’ll meet a man who removes, again quite literally, the faces of women before he can sleep with him; you’ll be introduced, in biography form, to Judas Horse, the world’s greatest cheese artist (“he is best known for his map sculptures of each of the fifty United States and territories of Puerto Rico, Guam and the USVI done entirely in cheese, chewed into shape by his own unique teeth”); and you’ll even find yourself navigating a maze as a lonely lab rat. Continue reading “The Medulla Review – 2012”

What makes the lit mag experience special? Editor Vivian Dorsel provides one interesting answer in the short introductory essay that opens this issue of upstreet. Dorsel describes the experience of arriving in Bermuda for a vacation. The narrow Bermudan roads wind you “through a landscape both commonplace and exotic—simple cottages and family homes and forms and hues foreign to your native New England, palm trees in myriad sizes, shapes and shades of green whose fronds clatter in the gusty wind . . .” upstreet creates a similar experience, introducing the reader to unexpected people and places that are nonetheless familiar. Continue reading “upstreet – 2012”

Hear the name The Fib Review and you may think it is a journal dedicated to literature about lies. But actually, it showcases a unique form of poetry—the Fibonacci poem. Based off of the Fibonacci sequence (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 . . . or F_n = F_n-1 + F_n-2), the poems use the number of words or syllables on a line to build the pattern, making the journal a wonderful creative outlet for math-lovers. Continue reading “The Fib Review – October 2012”

Like the magazine, the alligator juniper tree is native to Arizona (the journal is a yearly publication of Prescott College), but, as its unusual name implies, the magazine “invites both the regional and the exotic.” What sets this journal apart from other lit mags is that the only avenue for submission—open to all levels, emerging, early-career, and established—is through their national contests. These include a general one for fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and photography, and a separate Suzanne Tito contest for fiction, CNF, and poetry. The prizewinners and finalists selected for this issue are supremely worth reading. Continue reading “Alligator Juniper – 2012”

Populated by winners of each contest, each issue of this magazine has a different premise. This issue includes three winners and three honorable mentions on the premise of time. At first, I wasn’t looking forward to the pieces, expecting the classic race against time scenario, but I was pleasantly surprised to see time handled in a much different way. Continue reading “On the Premises – November 2012”

American Letters & Commentary defines itself as “innovative,” “challenging,” “daring,” and “diverse.” In this issue, John Phillip Santos reviews the poetry of John Matthias, saying that his “work imbeds us in his mind’s ceaseless flow of intimate memories, archival citations, insurrectionary readings, free associations and liberated play that seeks to unsettle the unexamined phenomenology of the reader’s attention to the world.” These phrases characterize ALC 23 as a whole. Continue reading “American Letters & Commentary – 2012”

To set the feel for the rest of the issue, the editors of Goblin Fruit start it off with the haunting image of “The Vigil” by Mike Allen (for a visual of this “woman,” check out the art by Elisabeth Heller for the issue): “Where her eyes affix cannot be guessed. / Beneath a hat of iron wire / hang tattooed skins that veil her face.” Reading the rest of the issue, you’ll get the sense that she is watching you: Continue reading “Goblin Fruit – Autumn 2012”

In The Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (January, 2006), researchers argue that “emotion enhances remembrance of neutral events past.”1 Investigators speculated that the reason for this might have to do with more pointed attention during the coding process or enhancement after the event, but what they showed more centrally was that emotion enhances long-term memory, “determining what will later be remembered or forgotten.”2 Virginia Woolf wrote in her journal that there was a certain advantage to memory stripped of its emotional coloring, which doesn’t contradict the recent claim of the Academy, but adds to the complexity of the relationship between memory and emotion which would have considerable impact on literature and its sibling sciences—the law and psychology. Continue reading “American Literary Review – Spring 2012”

This issue of Halfway Down the Stairs, the “Chaos” issue, features poetry, fiction, and nonfiction that have been written, as Editor Joseph Murphy says, by overcoming “chaos, distraction, frustration and more.” Continue reading “Halfway Down the Stairs – September 2012”

Whenever I review a poetry journal, I look for one or two poems that stitch all the poems to each other and, ultimately, to the fabric of my conscience. I trust the editors, whenever possible, to produce a publication that ties itself together with a common theme, a certain style, or a period in literary history, to name a few of the devices at an editorial team’s disposal. If I leave myself open to all the ways that such a “stitching” can happen, I am almost always pleased—as I am with the Fall 2012 Beloit Poetry Journal, which is a gem of a journal. The poem “Above the Lake,” by Stephen O’Connor, manages to pull the journal together. Continue reading “Beloit Poetry Journal – Fall 2012”

If you’re looking for a great amount of reading packed into one issue, look no further than the latest issue of The Writing Disorder. And this issue is even larger than their typical issue, expanded to accommodate even more writing. Continue reading “The Writing Disorder – Fall 2012”