Find the latest news from literary and alternative magazines including new issues, editorial openings, and much more.
The cover of the MacGuffin’s Vol. 37.2 is a postcard, painted by featured artist Kathleen Frank, sent from summer vacation. Travel stories abound: hike to ESSNWNAU-AL in Gracjan Kraszewski’s “First Impressions” and fly out to Saskatchewan on a brief hunt for truth and a certain mythological creature in Alexander Wentzell’s “Big Feet.” Check out what other pieces are in this issue at The MacGuffin website.
Jewish Fiction .net announces a beautiful new Rosh Hashana issue! Here you’ll find 12 delightful stories, as refreshing as apples and as sweet as honey, originally written in five languages: Czech, Hungarian, Yiddish, Hebrew, and English. The Czech story, “Luck,” is the first one we’ve published translated from that language, and this brings to 17 the number of languages represented in Jewish Fiction .net. See what else is in this issue at the Jewish Fiction .net website.
The September 2021 issue of The Dillydoun Review is here! Short stories by Chaya Kahanovitch, Amelia Kleiber, Liam Strong, and A. Whittenberg; flash fiction by Catherine Chang, Sarah Enamorado, Bob McNeil, Marcelo Medone, Mark Putzi, Gary Reddin, and Sky Sprayberry; flash nonfiction by Wendy BooydeGraaff, Marco Etheridge, Melanie Kallai, and Maggie Walcott. Find this issue’s poetry contributors at The Dillydoun Review website.
In this issue of Cutleaf, Peggy Xu remembers the joy of culinary whiplash that results when food and culture combine in “Yam’Tcha.” David B. Prather shares three poems beginning with one that takes us into the beautiful mind of “The Boy in the High School Science Room.” And Ray Trotter depicts a scene of speculation and frustration when two men wonder what’s inside a locked workshop in “Scavengers.” Learn about this issue’s images at the Cutleaf website.
Issue 27 on the theme of ‘Geography’ is now online. Poetry by D A Prince, Lynne Lawner, George Moore, Ruth O’Callaghan, Rebecca Gethin, Finola Scott, Phil Vernon, Grant Tarbard, John Grey, Simon Perchik, Alistair Noon, Kelley White, Kristine Johanson, Chris Pellizzari, Joe Crocker, Caroline Davies, Philip Burton, Paula Aamli, Stuart Mckenzie, Toby Jackson, and more. See a full list of contributors at the Allegro Poetry Magazine website.
Online literary magazine The Boiler has an exciting interview series “Under Pressure.” This series highlights previous contributors and focuses on elements of craft and process – excellent reading for both writers and readers.
You can currently find interviews with Dana Alsamsam, Esteban Rodriguez, Kayleb Rae Candrilli, Jenny Molberg, Stephanie Cawley, Alyse Bensel, Dorothy Chan, Anthony Cody, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Marlin M. Jenkins, Todd Dillard, K-Ming Chang, Michael Torres, Dorsey Craft, Tatiana Ryckman, Alan Chazaro, Malcolm Friend, Sara Lupita Olivares, Roberto Carlos Garcia, Melissa Wiley, Jody Chan, Naima Yael Tokunow, Kelly Grace Thomas, and Jessica Abughattas.
In this issue of Qu Literary Magazine: fiction by Sarah Starr Murphy and Andi Diehn. Nonfiction by Joseph Cuomo. Poetry by Ron Riekki, Sydney Haas, Katie Ellen Bowers, Darius Atefat-Peckham, Michael Buckius, Rae Hoffman Jager, Austin Garrett, Amanda Hartzell, and Hannah Cohen. See what else is in this issue at the Qu website.
“Moving On.” Inside: First fiction by Danica Li. Alex Ramirez on boxing, defeat, and Diego Corrales. Poetry by Bruce Campbell, Tiana Clark, V. Penelope Pelizzon, and Nancy Reddy. Stories by Samantha Xiao Cody, Shakarean Hutchinson, Daphne Kalotay, and Becky Mandelbaum. See what else you can find in this issue at the Missouri Review website.
The Summer 2021 issue of The Malahat Review features poetry by Elena Bentley, Patricia Caspers, Leah Callen, Christina Shah, Jamella Hagen, and Saeed Tavanee Marvi. See what else you can find in this issue at The Malahat Review website.
A new issue of The Dillydoun Review is only a couple days away, but don’t miss Issue 7 with poetry by Julie Benesh, Robert Beveridge, Eve Chilali, Robin Gow, Lily Mayo, Anita Nahal, and more; prose poetry by Cecilia M. Gigliotti; nonfiction by Jeff Lawenda; and more. See what else you can find at The Dillydoun Review website.
The Baltimore Review is pleased to present their Summer 2021 issue with poems, short stories, and creative nonfiction by: Jeffrey Bean, David Bergman, Stephen Cramer, Vishnas R. Gaitonde, Robin Gow, Claire Kortyna, Kelley J. P. Lindberg, Jarid McCarthy, and more. See a full list of contributors at The Baltimore Review website.
Issue 38 of The Adroit Journal is out! Poetry by David Hernandez, Mark Doty, Patricia Liu, Margaret Ray, Chris Santiago, Maja Lukic, Rachel Long, Mai Der Vang, Rebecca Morton, Rita Dove, and more; prose by Tucker Leighty-Phillips, Raye Hendrix, Krystle DiCristofalo, and Perry Lopez; and interviews with Rachel Yoder, Forrest Gander, Brandon Taylor, and Shangyang Fang. Read more info at The Androit Journal website.
Endings & Beginnings. Fiction by Sruthi Narayanan, Titus Chalk, Michael Nye, and others; creative nonfiction by Katie Culligan and Kirsten L. Parkinson; and poetry by Chelsea Wagenaar, Richard K. Kent, Grant Clauser, John A. Nieves, Chelsea Bayouth, Emma Aylor, Suzie Eckl, Magpie Miller, Christen Noel Kauffman, Carol Guess & Rochelle Hurt, and more. See more contributors at the Nimrod website.
In this issue: fiction by Kristi Humphrey Davis, Brett Dixon, Ankur Razdan, Babak Movahed, Douglas K. Currier, and David Sapp; poetry by Michael S. Glaser, Buffy Aakaash, Ellen Austin-Li, Rachel Barton, Anthony Butts, Ted Clausen, Richard Cole, John Cullen, Holly Day, John Philip Drury, Susan Entsminger, Craig Evenson, Ken Fifer, Kasha Martin Gauthier, Carol Hamilton, Ken Holland, William Snyder, Jr., William R. Stoddart, Maryfrances Wagner, Kari Wergeland, Nicole Walker, Richard Widerkehr, Beth Oast Williams, and more. See who else you can find in this issue at The Main Street Rag website.
See what Grand Little Things has published in the past month: poetry by Jane Kennedy Mitchell, Steve Mentz, Sean Patrick, David Russell Mosley, Evan Vandermeer, Ken Gosse, Tonya Walter, Amanda Ryan, Martin Potter, and Bob McAfee. Get more info at the Grand Little Things website.
In this issue, Vanessa Nirode deciphers the vague alteration notes left for the often-over-looked, behind-the-scenes tailors for television shows. Benjamin Woodard gives a breath-taking account of Barry, a man in his mid-50s, who acts impulsively while out for an evening stroll with his wife. Ohio Poet Laureate Kari Gunter-Seymour writes about what happens when you try to love someone who thinks he doesn’t deserve to be loved. Learn more about this issue’s images at the Cutleaf website.
Find Willow Springs Fall 2021 is out. New poetry by Roy Bentley, John Blair, Bruce Bond, Kathryn Hunt, Melissa Kwasny, Sandra McPherson, Melanie Tafejian, Lyuba Yakimchuk, and more; fiction by Robert Long Foreman, Amanda Marbais, and Wendy Elizabeth Wallace; and nonfiction by Andrew Farkas, Jeremy Alves da Silva Klemin, and Holly Spencer. Plus closing the issue: an interview with Kevin McIlvoy. Read more at the Willow Springs website.
Featuring some wonderful poetry, fiction, and narrative nonfiction from: Katie Berta, Krysta Lee Frost, Huan He, Laetitia Keok, Alyse Knorr, Kyle Liang, Zefyr Lisowski, lisa luxx, Livia Meneghin, Meghana Mysore, and more. See additional contributors at the wildness website.
The Summer 2021 issue of Snapdragon is out. This issue is filled with poetry, creative nonfiction, and photography from around the globe. This year, we’re focused on the stages of grief and using art to explore the various complexities of grief. This is our second issue of the series, and the theme is “anger.” But, rest assured, though the issue explores the raw pain of anger, it explores it beautifully and artistically. Read more info at the Snapdragon website.
The latest issue of Hole in the Head Review features work by Sheleen McElhinney, Cindy Buchanan,, David Dixon, Miriam N. Kotzin, Jocelyn Ulevicus, Kenneth Rosen, Cal Freeman, Jefferson Navicky, Julio Maran, Jill DeGroff, Lisa Bellamy, Tania Runyan, Jacklyn Hogan, JC Reilly, Cynthia Good, Christopher Rubio-Goldsmith, Dan McLeod, Jean Kane, and more. Find a full list of contributors at the Hole in the Head Review website.
The Louisville Review, Volume 89, Spring 2021, includes poetry, fiction, art essays, and book reviews from the following authors: Julie Beals, D. A. Becher, Carl Boon, Christopher Buckley, K. J. Bundy, Roger Camp, Peter Cooley, Todd Davis, Anastasia Dreval, Halina Duraj, Lynn Gordon, Lily Greenberg, Kathleen Gregg, Samina Hadi-Tabassum, Ken Holland, Elizabeth Hughey, Marcia L. Hurlow, Emily Jennings, Bonnie Omer Johnson, Hallie Johnston, Brandon Krieg, Peter Leight, Gabrielle LeJeune, Robin Lippincott, Elmo Lum, Sofia Machado, Melissa Madenski, and more. See what else you can find in this issue at The Louisville Review website.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas.
128 words. That’s what Cathy Ulrich gives us in “I Do Not Want to Live Without You.” Just 128 words. And somehow that’s exactly enough.
We’re introduced to characters in a motel and the motel’s swimming pool, a quick snapshot but a vivid one. The narrator says, “maybe later there will be consequences and police cars, maybe later it will be like our parents said,” and this is the perfect amount of information to allow readers to put together a backstory for this snapshot.
Is it the backstory Ulrich imagined when writing this piece of flash? Is the backstory you assign it the same as mine? Maybe or maybe not. And that’s what I love about it. There’s beauty in the language used and beauty in what’s kept from us.
“I Do Not Want to Live Without You” by Cathy Ulrich. Flash Frog, June 2021.
What if there existed a span in your memory that wasn’t really your memory at all?
Jeff Ewing goes through this in “Impermanence,” his account of experiencing Transient Global Amnesia (TGA), “a temporary condition marked by the sudden onset of anterograde amnesia, a disquieting inability for a period of 5-12 hours to make any new memories.” During this time, “the brain resets every 30 seconds or so, the slate is wiped clean, [ . . . ].”
Due to TGA, Ewing loses eight hours of his life. While his body moved around an ER and underwent tests, he doesn’t really remember it. And the faint memories he does have may not even be his. Ewing goes on to talk about the ways our memories fail us. We perform “memory thefts,” sometimes subconsciously taking someone else’s memory and believing it’s our own. What he remembers could actually just be what has been told to him. Suddenly intimately aware of this fallibility of memory, he tries to savor moments in his life post-TGA, to “fasten it all down for good.”
This piece of nonfiction is an interesting look at memory and TGA, something I had never heard of before. Ewing’s writing style is inviting, and he casually yet carefully explains TGA and memory, making sure the reader is following along. He doesn’t bask too long in the emotional, but leads us there gently, wrapping up this piece with a reminder to take stock of what it is we’d want to “fasten down” in our own memories.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
“Impermanence” by Jeff Ewing. Zone 3, Spring 2021.
This month’s feature includes a selection of Veronica Golos’s work. The poet is also interviewed by Amy Beeder. Sonia Greenfield reviews Finding Token Creek by Robert Alexander. In nonfiction: “The Only Critic” by J.T. Barbarese. Check out some of this issue’s poets at the Plume website.
River Heron Review Issue 4.2 has launched and is ready for you to read and enjoy. Issue 4.2 includes the work of 20 poets: J.I. Kleinberg, Tresha Faye Haefner, Dean Schabner, Wendy Steginsky, John Sibley Williams, Maliká Duff, Hannah Larrabee, Julie Cooper-Fratrik, and more. See a full contributor list at the River Heron Review website.
In this issue, John Davis, Jr. shares four poems beginning with a praise to the coast in “Inland: A Breakup Letter.” Matt Cashion relishes in the complexities of human nature that emerge when a mysterious light source appears in the sky in “See You Soon?” And Meredith McCarroll extols the virtues of packing lightly while always having precisely what you need in “Bags.” See what images are in store for you at the Cutleaf website.
In this issue: short stories by and interviews with Matt Jones, Vanessa Bernice De La Cruz, Jose Diego Medina, and Amanda Hartzell. New poetry by Eric Bodwell, Despy Boutris, Katherine Riegel, and Eric Wang. New nonfiction by Ashley Memory and Craig Coray. See what else is in this issue at the Carve website.
upstreet 2021 is out. New fiction by Sam Fletcher, David Hammond, Emily Lackey, Sarah Mollie Silberman, and more; nonfiction by Gail Hosking, Beth Kephart, Allen Price, Nadya Semenova, and others; and poetry by Katharine Coles, Jennifer Franklin, Jessica Greenbaum, Rachel Hadas, Richard Jones, Sydney Lea, D. Nurkse, Yehoshua November, Nicholas Samaras, Jason Schneiderman, Sean Singer, Mervyn Taylor, Anton Yakovlev, and more. Read more info at the upstreet website.
The Summer issue offers work by Ann Willms, Jamie Azevedo, Denise Rue, Melissa Mulvihill, Rebecca Villineau, Jesse Crosson, Justin Teopista Nagundi, Jack Bordnick, David Capps, Christine Andersen, Lawrence Bridges, Jessica Gould, Danny Rebb, Kristina Gibbs, Kathie Giorgio, Guilherme Bergamini, Walter Weinschenk, Karen Storm, Asha Edey, and more. Find a full list of contributors at the Months to Years website.
The August issue of The Lake is now online featuring Joe Balaz, Rachel Burns, Clive Donovan, George Franklin, Peter Grandbois, Nels Hanson, Sheila Jacob, Jennifer A. McGowan, Yvette Naden, Carlos Reyes, George Ryan. Check out this month’s reviews at The Lake website.
The Summer 2021 issue of Emerald City is out. New work by Brittany Ackerman, Dante Di Stefano, Melissa Feinman, Frenci Nguyen, Francesca Halikias, Liam Strong, T.D. Johnston, Sarah Rose Cadorette, and Michael Putnam. More info at the Emerald City website.
New on bioStories so far this year: Tim Bascom “At Ease,” Emma Berndt “Wisdom from the Alligator Purse,” Deborah Burghardt “Leaving Mum Behind,” Joe Dworetzky “Big League,” Patricia Feeney “Holy Mother,” Karen Foster “Carrying Sam,” J. Malcolm Garcia “The Reporter and the Reporter’s Mother,” and more. See a list of all of 2021’s contributors so far at the bioStories website.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas.
Shoshana Akabas begins “By the Creeks of Wyoming” with just a hint of what’s happening: “Aspen leans over and says, ‘You know, Natalie’s telling everyone about your brother,’ [ . . . ].” Who is Natalie and what’s going on with the narrator’s brother? Akabas hooks us into the story and then reels slowly, the answers appearing one by one, so brief they could almost be overlooked.
While the story of what happened to the narrator’s brother becomes distorted through the gossip of Natalie, the narrator’s friend who is slowly drifting in a different direction now that they’re in high school, it becomes clearer for the readers each time the narrator responds to the classmates who have heard the gossip. I loved this slow burn, the piecing together of the puzzle until the full picture is revealed.
The narrator’s brother plays a large role in the story, but Akabas chooses never to actually place him in the story. He’s always on the other side of the door or wall, an unreachable and almost legendary figure.
Melancholy and rife with the emotional ups and downs of high school, “By the Creeks of Wyoming,” is a quick yet beautiful read.
“By the Creeks of Wyoming” by Shoshana Akabas. AGNI, 2021.
Our first issue of volume three is ready and free to read on our site. Find work by Jenny Hykes Jiang, Jacqueline Staikos, Tara Isabel Zambrano, Lindy Biller, Christina Yoseph, Akhim Alexis, Richard Lingo, and more. Find a full list of contributors at the Chestnut Review website.
Stop by and peruse our ever-growing Summer Online Edition! Escape into the world of “Dispatches from the Poetry Wars” as presented in an interview with creators Michael Boughn and Kent Johnson. Turn a corner with Kent and enter the synchronous world of César Aira in “How I Became the Narrator of a César Aira Novel.” Reviews of poetry by Nico Vassilakis; nonfiction exploring Black Mountain writers John Wieners and Larry Eigner; and more. See what else is online at the Rain Taxi website.
The July/August issue of the Kenyon Review features work by two poets who piercingly explore race and historical memory at a time when these issues seem more urgent than ever before. The noted writer Paisley Rekdal offers three poems from the online project “West: A Translation.” The issue also includes two poems by Bryan Byrdlong, whose work interrogates the figure of the zombie as it relates to Blackness and Black precarity in the face of white supremacy, and as a general symbol for those struggling with marginalization. Plus work by Betsy Boyd, Perry Lopez, Christopher Blackman, Kelsey Norris, Austyn Gaffney, and more. Read more at the Kenyon Review website.
In this summer issue of Kaleidoscope, we have personal essays, poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, a book review, a dance feature, and information regarding the release of the documentary film Fierce Love and Art. Featured essay by Kimberly Roblin. Featured art by Diane Reid. Additional work by Mariana Abeid-McDougall, Dyland Ward, Carrie Jade Williams, and more. See a further list of contributors at the Kaleidoscope website.
In this issue, Jesse Graves delves into that complicated space where family connects with history and place in three poems that begin with “An Exile.” Ace Boggess tells the story of the winding road the carries eight men to a West Virginia penitentiary in “Welcome to Rock Haul.” Amy Wright remembers the summer after her brother died from cancer, and the line of communication that opened, in “Life After Death,” an excerpt from her forthcoming book Paper Concert: A Conversation in the Round. Read more at the Cutleaf website.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
Rage Hezekiah has three poems in the Summer 2021 issue of Colorado Review. Of these, “Not For Us” stuck out to me the most, visually grabbing my attention as I paged through the issue.
“Not For Us” is an erasure of rejection letters. I assume these were taken from publication rejections, and appreciated the poet’s ability to create new writing out of these. The reader takes in the sparse words left over and it’s interesting to see how similar the language is, the repetition leading the reader’s eyes over the two-page spread of rejections.
Hezekiah’s piece is a good reminder that just because something is “not for us,” doesn’t mean that’s the end.
“Not For Us” by Rage Hezekiah. Colorado Review, Summer 2021.
If you enjoy literary podcasts as well as ekphrastic writing and art appreciation, you may want to check out TERcets. This is the literary podcast of The Ekphrastic Review.
They just uploaded their 9th episode on July 15 to Spotify and in this episode they launched something new. Instead of the host Brian Salmons reading the work, they have the writers themselves reading their pieces. This episode brings you works by Courtney Justus, Anthony DiMatteo, and Sara Eddy. Past episodes have featured the works of Margo Davis, Faith Kaltenbach, Anita Nahal, and more. And these are short listens ranging from 10 to 20 minutes, so you can spend your coffee break or lunch listening to some works by amazing writers.
In Zone 3‘s Spring 2021 issue you’ll find poetry by Olivia Kingery, Kat Neis, Alyse Knorr, D.C. Leonhardt, Alice Turski, Naoko Fujimoto, John Allen Taylor, Emma Aylor, Jessica Hincapie, Alicia Mountain, Anthony Sutton, Benjamin Cutler, Camille Ferguson, Jennifer Maritza McCauley, Laura Walker, and more. See prose contributors at the Zone 3 website.
What’s new this month? Collagegraphs, phenomenal 3D modeling, hybrid landscapes, and more! Work by Manar Ali Hassan, Jasper de Beijer, Christine Crockett, N.R. Hills, Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough, and others. See a full list of contributors at The Woven Tale Press website.
This year’s issue of The Meadow features nonfiction by Shaun T. Griffin and John Ballantine; fiction by A.M. Potter, Saramanda Swigart, Karly Campbell, Oreoluwa Oladimeji, Alex Moore, Mark Wagstaff, Meredith Kay, Thomas Christopher, and Eileen Bordy; and poetry by Joseph Fasano, Lisa Zimmerman, Doris Ferleger, Nancy White, Savannah Cooper, and more. See more contributors at The Meadow website.
The July/August issue is live! Inside, you’ll find essays and flash CNF such as: “Lake of the Ozarks, Osage Beach, Missouri” by Dawn-Michelle Baude, “A Very Good Liar” by Erin Branning, “Sharp” by Vanessa Chan, “11,000 People Lying Facedown on the Burnside Bridge” by Benjamin McPherson Ficklin, “Warsaw Ghetto Boy” by Sharon Goldman, and more. See more content at the Hippocampus Magazine website.
This issue of Cutleaf is now at the Mag Stand. It features excerpts from Vanishing Point, Dirk Marple’s hybrid memoir on handwritten postcards with original images. The text and images were part of ninety-two numbered postcards mailed over time to Marple’s thesis advisor, Jenny Boully.
The Summer 2021 issue features work by Rage Hezekiah, Patricia Liu, Neha Mulay, Bradley Bazzle, and Sarah Curtis. Also in this issue: Tom Howard, Lance Olsen, Nikki Ervice, Jehanne Dubrow, Richard Zonnenmoser, Darren C. Demaree, and more. See a full list of contributors at the Colorado Review website.
A new issue is here featuring nonfiction by Tricia Park, Lindsay Rutherford, Courtney Elizabeth Young, and KC Pedersen; short stories by Kim Magowan & Michelle Ross, Lizzy Lemieux, Dylan Cook, and Marc Tweed; and a visual narrative by Emily Steinberg. See a full list of contributors at the Cleaver Magazine website.
New flash fiction by Andrew Kozma, Mary Beth Hines, Ben Umayam, Alyssa Kagel, Leslie Anne Mcilroy, Thomas Broderick, Salvatore Difalco, Kaylor Jones, Douglas DiCicco, and Paul Lamar. Read more at the Brilliant Flash Fiction website.
The summer issue includes fiction by L. Shapley Bassen, Grace Ford, David Henson, M.F. McAuliffe, and more; poetry by Carolyn Adams, J.R. Solonche, Torri Hammonds, Elizabeth Train-Brown, James Croal Jackson, and Matt Zachary; and nonfiction by Anita Kestin, Eve Müller, and more. Art by Ryan Heshka. See what else is in this issue at The Writing Disorder website.
Under a Warm Green Linden Issue 11 is live! Read new work by 21 astonishing poets and translators. Work by Hasan Alizadeh, James Dott, Payam Feili, Emily Franklin, Dennis Hinrichsen, and others. See a list of more contributors at the Under a Warm Green Linden website.
