NewPages Blog :: Magazines

Fractured West is a new, innovative journal for flash fiction. Although sponsored in part by a grant from Creative Scotland, it features writers from all over. Fractured West’s editor says, “We want readers to see things in a different way. For this, we need writers who write things in a different way,” and the intricate, precise prose found in this sleight journal, in a pocket-sized, compact format, proves that they have found writers who present different delight after different delight. Continue reading “Fractured West – 2011”

Tampa Review is a literary magazine published with glossy pages and hardcover binding. Elegant, but not exclusive, connections to the Tampa Bay region in Florida emerge. You can hear the brackish river boiling up in the valley in some of the poems, and taste the mist of the Gulf of Mexico estuary in some of the raw fiction. As for presentation, as the old joke goes about Playboy, “I read it for the articles,” but found the art to reflect a certain careful sensibility, an allegiance to the editorial insofar that there was a basic realism bearing with it the promise of extended interpretation. Continue reading “Tampa Review – 2011”

The Winter 2011 issue is something of a special one, special in two ways, actually. First, there’s the actual content, which is anchored by a nonfiction piece and a fiction piece by Harry Crews The opportunity for connection was too great to pass up, and rightfully so: the editors of The Georgia Review were able to treat readers with an excerpt from Crews’s novel The Gospel Singer, featuring a character inspired by the very events in Crews’s nonfiction piece. Continue reading “The Georgia Review – Winter 2011”

I’m the type of girl who crushes on poets, hard. If Robert Frost was still kicking, I’d be tripping through his shrubbery as we speak. So I was pretty excited to open the Fall 2011 issue of Tar River Poetry (TRP) and see Sherman Alexie hanging out in the contents. Yes, please, I thought. Little did I know I’d close this magazine with a handful of new love interests. Yup, I’m that girl. Continue reading “Tar River Poetry – Fall 2011”

The Winter/Spring issue of Gulf Coast is a pearl. This issue contains the 2011 Gulf Coast Prizes awarded to Brian Van Reet (fiction), Arianne Zwartjes (nonfiction), and Amaranth Borsuk (poetry), not to mention dozens of other poets, six other short fiction stories, and six nonfiction essays. This tome-azine also includes four interviews, seven translations, two reviews, and a collection of high-gloss color photographs including a centerfold of Cy Twombly work, which is also featured on the cover. Continue reading “Gulf Coast – Winter/Spring 2012”

Third Coast, “founded in 1995 by graduate students of the Western Michigan University English department,” invites its readers into personal narratives, imaginative lyricism, and in-depth interviews for its Fall 2011 publication. Editor Emily J. Stinson compiled a collection of creative poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, drama, an interview, and reviews that resulted in an experience that takes us through the fire of creative minds. Its features fiction first-place winner, Sarah Elizabeth Schantz, first-place poetry winner, Jennifer Perrine, and thirty-two other polished writers who leave the reader feeling closer to understanding the depth, cruelty, and beauty of human nature. Continue reading “Third Coast – Fall 2011”

The Iowa Review is one of the longer running literary journals in the U.S. It continually puts out excellent issues, and this edition is no exception. The editor’s note starts with a musing about St. Basil’s Cathedral and how its construction can be a metaphor for constructing each issue of the journal. That is, the people who do the shaping (editors, etc.) are kept in the background, but if a viewer scuttles close to the wall (or, a reader, the interior of the journal), its structure becomes palpable and its “shapes and colors” are made “that much sharper.” It seems that if one scuttles up close to the construction of this issue, two superb stories with a certain theme connected to misplaced or misunderstood sex become apparent. Continue reading “The Iowa Review – Winter 2011/2012”

A short story, a piece of flash fiction, and the winners of the magazine’s 16th National Poet Hunt are the cream of the crop in this issue of The MacGuffin, which comes out three times a year at Schoolcraft College in Livonia, Michigan. Continue reading “The MacGuffin – Winter 2012”

West Branch, the semiannual publication from Bucknell University’s Stadler Center for Poetry, features twenty of today’s hottest writers in its Fall/Winter 2011 issue. The literary journal “takes pride in its openness to a wide range of literary styles and in its pairing of new and established voices,” and this issue is no exception. Featured within are nineteen poems, four short stories, one nonfiction piece, and one translated work, all showcasing the publication’s literary range. Also included are eleven book reviews and recommendations from the editors, a regular feature of West Branch. Continue reading “West Branch – Fall/Winter 2011”

The Mid-American Review’s most recent volume seems to catch the reader in that moment between sleeping and waking, grieving and surviving, forgetting and knowing. A dream-like quality pervades the fiction, nonfiction, and poetry chosen by its editors, who claim to be “on the lookout for work that has the power to move and astonish us while displaying the highest level of craft.” Faculty and Masters students from Bowling Green State University’s MFA program in Ohio weave together each piece to create a state of reverie from the very first pages. Continue reading “Mid-American Review – Spring 2011”

In his editor’s note, Robert Stewart reveals that this most recent issue of New Letters may “expose idealists among us.” Those idealists certainly include the martyr poet Jose Domingo Gomez Rojas. His poetry inspired Pablo Neruda and, more recently, New Letters contributors Thomas E. Kennedy and Raymond B. Craib. Through their fiction, essays, and translation of Rojas’s poems, Kennedy and Craib give us the opportunity to hear the voice Chile’s prisons could not silence, the “tender cry that still beats in cradles, / Of the divine voices that vibrate in the pure / sky beneath the light of virgin moons.” Continue reading “New Letters – 2011”

Ninth Letter has a reputation. It’s the exuberant, popular-as-a-result-of-being-odd kid on this gigantic playground of literary magazines. It’s the kid you want to camp out with, eating cheese puffs and limeade, snorting over politically fueled fart jokes that are at the same time above your understanding and hilarious. The front and back covers offer photographic evidence of what this kid might look like at his senior prom, ironically carrying an orchid and non-ironically wearing a glittered turtleneck under a glittered blazer. But once you get past this exterior, this metaphorical playground persona, the brilliance of the work inside dominates all reputation. The fiction, nonfiction, poetry, art are some of the finest I have experienced all year. I read each piece with energy and took each one as inspiration and aspiration. Continue reading “Ninth Letter – Fall/Winter 2012”

Although it’s slightly twee, David J. Rothman’s Able Muse conversation with poet David Mason exemplifies the sort of experimentation that makes the magazine well worth reading. Rothman plays with the interview format by occasionally posing questions in poetry, wondering why “prose is what we have to use when we / Decide to have a conversation on / Why we write verse?” Continue reading “Able Muse – Winter 2011”

Ploughshares is one of the most prominent literary journals on the market because of its long tradition of quality and ability to publish and discover leading writers. The journal is also notable for its practice of working with guest editors for each issue. Alice Hoffman, the editor, has taken the reins of this issue and presents work unified by a simple but powerful theme: the glorification of the storyteller present inside each of us. Continue reading “Ploughshares – Winter 2011/2012”

Strong first lines. That’s the highly enviable trait shared by several of the pieces in Bacopa, the Writers Alliance of Gainesville-produced journal named after a family of aquatic plants with medicinal strength. Continue reading “Bacopa – 2011”

Themed “Beginnings & Endings,” this is a slim but tightly packed journal. Though fiction takes precedence, the overarching editorial preference is for strong character development, regardless of genre. This also lends itself to exploring relationships, but thankfully, the theme does not draw upon clichéd beginnings and endings. Instead, editors have selected works that blur these boundaries, reach for them but fall uncomfortably short, and force the reader to accept that there are rarely clean starts and finishes in life. Continue reading “The Quotable – Winter 2012”

After thumbing through, then devouring, the 2011 Fall/Winter issue of Black Warrior Review, I’m convinced that this publication is one I need to keep my eye on. Reading work from nearly thirty different writers and poets has simply impressed me with not only the quantity but also the quality, the originality, and the freshness of the prose and poetry in this magazine. Continue reading “Black Warrior Review – Fall/Winter 2011”

Although I had read some of well-known Christian author C.S. Lewis’s books, I didn’t realize until I watched the movie Shadowlands that Lewis wasn’t always a believer. The movie captures part of his struggle with faith in a simple, but striking quote: “I have no answers anymore: only the life I have lived.” The contributors to Ruminate come from a variety of Christian denominations, but their messages in the Winter 2011–12 issue all seem to resonate with this quote from Shadowlands. Whether they choose to address the magazine’s theme “Up in the Air” literally or figuratively, they rely on the authenticity of their experience rather than the authority of scripture to explain their devotion. Instead of offering answers, they offer us glimpses into every day, uncertain, and often uneasy lives. Continue reading “Ruminate – Winter 2011/2012”

What most distinguishes Poetry International from among other similarly sized (600 page) brick, behemoth literary annuals is the emphasis placed upon poetry alone. Unlike many others, there’s no fiction here, no interviews, and barely any critical commentary or other prose. This uniqueness is undeniably detrimental. There aren’t even any contributor bios! But there is good poetry, even if little of it manages to be surprising or challenging. Continue reading “Poetry International – 2011”

Toad Suck Review has exploded with success since its debut issue in 2011. Volume 2 is titled “Obey” and follows well on the heels of a remarkable first issue. The table of contents is enough to lure you into a very different and fun structure. Included are: Nonfixion, High-Octane Poetix, Artist-in-Residence Features, Fixion, Translation, Eco-Edge, Critical Intel, and much more. This magazine features not only current writers, but honors great past writers as well. Everything is woven into an incredibly enjoyable read that leaves breadcrumbs along the way to find more where that came from. Continue reading “Toad Suck Review – 2012”

In her acceptance speech for the 2011 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature, Virginia Euwer Wolff emphasized an enduring dialectic of human existence. She juxtaposed Homo sapiens and Homo ludens—what she described as “man the thoughtful and man the playful.” Daniel Simon picks up this pairing, in his editorial introduction to the January/February issue of World Literature Today, and uses it to frame to the experience of literature, play, identity, and thought—themes central to the work in this issue of WLT. Somewhere within Zapotec poetry, Burmese poetry, notes about post-Fukushima Japanese literature, interviews and book reviews, the reader is reminded that the shared experience of poetry and literature between and across culture ought to be beautiful and mindful. Continue reading “World Literature Today – January/February 2012”

Armchair/Shotgun is certainly one of the most intriguingly named new literary journals around. The name is a reference to a Bob Dylan lyric, but the journal is more straightforward and less twisted in its mission than the average Dylan song. Their mission statement, which claims that they read all submissions completely anonymously, lays it out succinctly: “At Armchair/Shotgun we do not care about your bio . . . Good writing knows only story.” And story would seem to be a focus for this journal: tight, compact, highly inventive stories. Even the layout of the prose on the page, with its slightly wide margins, adds to the compact excellence of this edition; the wide margins seem to squeeze the prose to the middle of the page, up front and center, where it belongs. Continue reading “Armchair/Shotgun – 2011”

Although Basalt is based in and linked to the state of Oregon—taking its name from the igneous rock prevalent in the northwestern U.S.—a number of the pieces in this latest issue seem interested in crossing or expanding borders. While the front and back covers feature photographs of Oregon’s geography, the roughly thirty pages in between discuss the idea of place, both literally and figuratively. Continue reading “Basalt- 2011”

It would be a greater justice to write an eight-word review of this volume of Bitter Oleander. Stating simply: “Read the volume! It’s worth your time!” would spare having to select a few pieces from a collection in which each and every piece offers something insightful, interesting, or beautiful. The volume contains sixty-nine poems (free verse or prose), four pieces of short fiction, and an interview. It features writers representing many cultures: American, Azorean, Canadian, Chinese, Estonian, Faroese, French, and Korean (which doesn’t even begin to recognize the complex multicultural heritage/experiences of many of the writers). Continue reading “The Bitter Oleander – Autumn 2011”

“No easy answers” is the watchword for this issue. Continue reading “Cimarron Review – Fall 2011”

Opening any collection of international literature and art always generates a bit of apprehension on my part. So much depends on the credibility of the editors (whom I don’t know), the quality of the translators (whose skill I’m being asked to trust), and the value of the selections (read on) and their creators (whom I probably don’t know—“unsolicited manuscripts are encouraged”). Continue reading “The Dirty Goat – 2011”

Before receiving my copy of Gargoyle 57, I had heard a lot about the magazine. I’d even ventured to their website a few times. When I actually received my copy, I had mixed feelings. Gargoyle 57 is gargantuan. It reaches nearly six-hundred pages. Unfortunately, due to its girth, I found it hard to invest myself into reading it cover-to-cover. The level of work inside also seems a bit unbalanced. Some pieces are great, while others don’t stand out. But putting aside my reservations about this issue, I did find some lovely work inside: “Dear Jimmy Connoll” by Patricia Smith, “Ye Ol’Fashioned Olfactory” by Alexander V. Bach, “Perfect, for You” by Susann Cokal, and “Jasper Owen Interview, 1957, Excerpt No. 6” by Benjamin C. Krause to name a few. Continue reading “Gargoyle – 2011”

For Inkwell’s Fall 2011 issue, the editors chose a super-charged theme: “Ripped from the Headlines.” Its poetry and prose takes subjects that range from crooked high school wrestling teams to private acts of heroism in the WWII Philippines. Because this material is “newsworthy” already, all of the writing has a pleasing urgency—none is here to play. Continue reading “Inkwell – Fall 2011”

The haunting cover art, an oil painting by Clint Carney titled “Humanity,” belies the diversity of content within this annual volume of Inscape. Inside, more full-color artwork and photography break up clean, airy pages of prose and poetry. One of the first observations I made was of the graphic design elements. It may be subtle, but the pages are laid out in a way that makes it easy to flip through the issue to find a particular writer. The writers’ names are underlined and aligned with the left margin, while the page numbers are set halfway up the page, close to the edge. This allows you to quickly find both writers’ names and page numbers. I’m not sure why this jumped out at me, but it did. Multiple-page stories also include a running title in the footer, which I thought was a nice touch. Continue reading “Inscape – 2011”

I’ve taught creative nonfiction writing many semesters, but I had never seen Memoir before this issue. Had never heard of Jacqueline May, whose “But All Can Be Endured Because . . .” is so perfectly satisfying a story about ordinary family and miraculous marriage, I think it must be fiction. Or Cindy Clem, who writes the flip side of May’s coin in words so beautifully measured—“My Husband Clive” is the title, but the first line is “Clive is not my husband”—I’m actually grateful not everyone’s relationship is terrific. Or poet Dianne Bilyak (“Reparation,” and “How He Described Her”), whose tone drops over youthful wounds a lightness that makes me smile. How could I have taught creative nonfiction (CNF) and not known these?

Continue reading “Memoir – 2011”

Coming from the low-residency Master of Fine Arts program at Murray State University in Kentucky, this issue of New Madrid includes several stories that show how powerfully style can be used to concentrate narrative force. Continue reading “New Madrid – Summer 2011”

Notre Dame Review is a sophisticated, erudite lit mag, not always an easy read, certainly not a quick one. “Our goal,” says the website, “is to present a panoramic view of contemporary art and literature—no one style is advocated over another. We are especially interested in work that takes on big issues by making the invisible seen.” This is an apt goal given the theme of the issue—The Gone Show—and how its contents reveal subject matter that seems to have disappeared, making it visible again. Continue reading “Notre Dame Review – Summer/Fall 2011”

What are the connections linking these three stanzas? Continue reading “Journal of Renga & Renku – December 2010”

It’s difficult to pick just one short story as a “favorite” in The Louisville Review’s 70th issue. I’d much rather suggest that a disproportionate number of them are beyond good and deserve accolades. However, a few stood out especially. Continue reading “The Louisville Review – Fall 2011”

In “Mothman’s Guide to the Here & Hereafter” Mark Wagenaar says, “All language is survival.” “All language is the revelation of our essence.” This 33rd prize issue of Nimrod cries out yes! yes! look here! in affirmation of Wagenaar’s lines. Every year, Nimrod awards the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction and the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry; Amy Bloom and Linda Pastan were the 2011 judges for these respective prizes, and the results are breathtaking. Even the non-prizewinners are winners, offering evidence of our survival beyond time, in language that sings the essence of temporal humanness. A few examples: Continue reading “Nimrod International Journal – Fall/Winter 2011”

The wintry cover of the 2011 issue of Prism Review projects two RVs squatting on a frozen landscape under an ominous clouded sky. I liked it immediately, and it urged me to open and begin reading. The editors at the University of La Verne (California) dispensed with any editorial pleasantries and let their contributors’ work spill forth from the get-go. Continue reading “Prism Review – 2011”

Puerto Del Sol is always inviting. The volumes flex and relax into the hand. Art wraps around both front and back covers. Inside, readers will find prose, poetry, and reviews from familiar and new writers alike. This issue of Puerto Del Sol contains the winners and runners-up of the Puerto Del Sol Fiction and Poetry contests, judged by Dawn Raffel and Julie Carr, respectively. Let me tell you, these ladies know how to pick strong, well-crafted writing. Continue reading “Puerto del Sol – Summer 2011”

This stellar, solemn issue of Agni begins with Sven Birkerts’s “The Golden Book,” a lament about certain things that have been lost in time, and certain things that can be rediscovered through writing, photography, and books. At the forefront of what has been lost, he implies, is the bookstore—in this case, a Borders that provided him with his first post-college job in Michigan. What can be gained from reading and looking at books is a sense of immersion, that each time one returns to an image, line, or story, there is more to be sensed, more meaning to be wrung out of it. Continue reading “AGNI – Number 74”

Forgive me. For some reason, I was expecting delicate. Reserved. Stuffy. Polite. But my assumptions about a journal of “metrical works, including well-rendered blank verse, sonnets of every variety, villanelles and triolets” were way off. The Raintown Review is kind of a badass. Continue reading “The Raintown Review – September 2011”

The 70th anniversary issue of The Antioch Review is mammoth. This 385-page issue serves up the best of the past ten years of The Antioch Review. Some of the luminaries chosen for this issue are Stephen Jay Gould, Daniel Bell, Clifford Geertz, Aimee Bender, Gordon Lish, Benjamin Percy, Eavan Boland, and Federico García Lorca. This best-of celebration is a wonderful place to turn for any who are looking for interesting pieces by established writers.

Continue reading “The Antioch Review – Fall 2011”

Lyrical essays and poetry rely upon the power of metaphor and associative thinking to create a deeper, more personal interpretation for the reader. The writers in this issue of the Seneca Review walk a fine line, hoping to tickle the reader’s imagination while providing enough detail to ground the piece in something resembling the real world. Most of the time, the authors are quite successful, providing delicious food for thought. Continue reading “Seneca Review – Spring 2011”

Tomatoes, children, cats, drinks, and boats. Reading a poetry journal in one sitting can be problematic. You notice odd, inconsequential connections between poems, like those listed above. An excellent categorization of this issue of Bateau is that which the editors put forth: transformation and morphology. Themes aside, the charm of Bateau is in its understatement and uniqueness. Including the work of thirty well-accredited poets, this issue is a mish-mash of inventive, quirky poems that play with form and content, impressively pinpointing elusive emotions and giving artistic value to the most banal moments. Continue reading “Bateau – 2011”

Dubbed “The Transitional Issue,” this first issue of Toad Suck Review, based at the University of Central Arkansas (UCA), follows the demise of the Exquisite Corpse Annual, which ended when founder and editor Andrei Codrescu retired. The team at the helm aims to carry on the Corpse‘s “experimental sense of humor and international enquiries” while at the same time staying true to its central Arkansan roots. With gaping shoes to fill, the Toad Suck crew delivers an impressive first shot of literary whiskey. Continue reading “Toad Suck Review – 2011”

It’s 424 pages long, weighing in at a chunky 1.75 pounds; Vlak cannot be called a little magazine. It is a literary magazine, though, launched from Prague and flashing through the reader’s consciousness like a bullet train. With works from eastern and western Europe, Australia, North Africa, and the United States (and a single nod to Brazil), the issue brings together ninety writers and visual artists. Continue reading “Vlak – May 2011”

Big Lucks, much like its name, has a quirky but earnest mission statement. “We at Big Lucks feel as if the most exciting and noteworthy writing lurks in the unlit depths of the ocean, amid the lifeforms and creatures humanity was never meant to see. It’s our goal to be the vessel—the nuclear submarine—that helps these new life forms breach the repetitive ebb-and-tide of this metaphorical ocean’s surface.” Continue reading “Big Lucks – 2011”

Published by Lake Superior State University, Border Crossing shows just how vibrant a small journal can be. Many of the poems stand out, but it’s the first two lines of George Bishop’s “Watching Dolphins In the Harbor With the Homeless” that really stand out in my mind: “I found myself / carving silence into a shelter.” Continue reading “Border Crossing – Spring 2011”