Find the latest news from literary and alternative magazines including new issues, editorial openings, and much more.
The second issue of The Land-Grant College Review is an interesting thing to behold: it features some charming old-timey illustrations by Joy Kolitsky, but its ten stories are anything but old-fashioned. Continue reading “Land-Grant College Review – 2004”
To be lynx-eyed is to possess very keen sight, an attribute this magazine’s contributors bring to their considerations of (a sometimes remarkably disguised) human nature. Continue reading “Lynx Eye – Spring 2004”
A little thicker than Bridge’s double issue, PBQ is, for those of us not in the know (which includes me until recently), now entirely an online presence and then, once a year, published as a print anthology. I’ll fully admit to the prejudice: I love print journals, and am always somewhat nervous or anxious about online stuff. Continue reading “Painted Bride Quarterly – 2004”
The venerable grand-dame of literary journals has been through some major changes lately, with the recent sad passing of enthusiastic founder, George Plimpton. However, the quality of the journal has remained very high, as might be expected. This issue features interviews on the art of poetry with poet Paul Muldoon and Paris Review’s own Poetry Editor Richard Howard. Continue reading “The Paris Review – Spring 2004”
32 Poems once again impressed me, in its inimitable way, with the contrast between its modest appearance and superb content. The 32 poems (yes, hence the name of the magazine) in this issue lean heavily towards the lyric, and most have a playful sense of language that extends, at times, to their subjects. God, language, and poetry itself are interwoven in much of the work, including Heather McHugh’s clever “Ill-Made Almighty” and Lisa Gluskin’s wonderful “De Profundis.” There are so many exceptional poems I cannot quote from all of them. Do check out Daniel Nester’s “Prodigies” on the 32 Poems web site. Here are a few lines from Jill Osier’s melancholy “Kansas”: “The fields sweat into the air, a mild stew. / The ballplayer rolls over. His sheets are wet. Continue reading “32 Poems – Spring 2004”
Jim Meirose and Andi Diehn both are writers of at least one (presumably more, hopefully more) great story. G.C. Waldrep: thank you, again and for more—he is, dear reader, one of the poets whose work we may all, gladly, turn to, hopeful that people are still making language do strange tricks we can’t imagine. Also: Nancy Eimers—bravo, and I look forward to hunting down your two books. American Literary Review is another of those great reminders that literary journals can act as: there’s literally no limit to the number of these things, and the phrase “All boats rise together” has no stronger ledge on which to stand and preside over than the ledge above we scribblers the world over without contracts or even degrees. As ever, having heard of only one poet within, I come away, post-read, with a handful of new practitioners to mentally asterisk. Continue reading “American Literary Review – Spring 2004”
This issue of the newsprint bimonthly American Poetry Review features an essay on Hayden Carruth (“In Measured Resistance: On Hayden Carruth’s “Contra Mortem”), along with a special supplement of Carruth’s poems, and seven outstanding poems by Adrienne Rich, which in itself is enough to satisfy most poetry addicts. But it also includes multiple poems by other well-known poets such as David Wagoner and Donald Revell. APR is justifiably famous for its essays, and usually also features a large spread of international poetry in translation – in this issue, six poems from Viktor Sosnora translated by Dinara Georgeoliani and Mark Halperin. Even the ads make for fascinating reading – one touting the newest poetry releases from Wesleyan, another for a new MFA program seeking students, and Contests! Contests! Contests! – those holy grails for upstart poets such as myself. Continue reading “The American Poetry Review – July/August 2004”
This special issue of NDQ, more than three hundred pages long, covers Hemingway’s involvement with the theater, his 1935 trip to China, his relationships with nurse Agnes von Kurowsky and “spiritual kid brother” Arnold Samuelson, and much more. (Don’t miss Heidi Brotton Hudson’s linoleum-block print of a reflective Hemingway looking down, which seems somehow more essential than all the handsome hale fellow photographs we’ve seen.) There’s even a scholarly examination of why the film In Love and War (starring Sandra Bullock and Chris O’Donnell) failed so miserably (it jettisoned the “literary underpinnings” that might have given it weight and substance). Continue reading “North Dakota Quarterly – Fall 2003”
I urge you to check out, before even finishing this review, the website of Bridge Magazine, though I know the wish is sort of hopeless: there’s almost no way to conceive of the sort of madness and playful fun the magazine contains, promotes, inculcates, various other verbs. It’s sort of like McSweeneys, I suppose, though somehow more fun, grounded in a real world (perhaps this is the only magazine I can think of that’s made strangely more whole, more itself, because of advertisements [almost all of which are by/for Chicago-area businesses]). Continue reading “Bridge – Summer/Fall 2003”
This issue of Rattle contains a tribute to Vietnamese poets, enlightening conversations with poets Li-Young Lee and Naomi Shihab Nye (in which editor Alan Fox seems less interested in hearing his own opinions than in genuinely listening to theirs), Jessica Goeller’s funny and wise essay on writing with an infant daughter balanced on one arm (the miracle: it works better!), and “Fine,” Jack Grapes’ wonderfully tender-gruff piece on father-son love. Continue reading “Rattle – Summer 2004”
The American Scholar deserves applause for providing a loving home for the personal essay, a wonderfully egalitarian and pliant form that adjusts itself to any voice or subject matter, however refined or rough-hewn, fact-enamored or fanciful. Continue reading “The American Scholar – Volume 73 Number 3”
This summer the Olympics go home to Greece, and so does Atlanta Review in a “special commemorative issue for the Athens Summer Games, 2004” with a remarkable Greece Feature Section edited by formalist poet and Greek translator Alicia Stallings (Archaic Smile). Continue reading “Atlanta Review – Volume 10 Number 2”
Guest edited by writer Paul Maliszewski, this issue of Denver Quarterly is comprised entirely of brazen prose (the contents page does not distinguish fiction from non) that is often whimsically digressive, sometimes obtuse, but always daring. Continue reading “Denver Quarterly – 2004”
Occasionally I am provoked to mourn the insular, sometimes elite world of our nation’s literary magazines. Continue reading “Inkwell – Spring 2004”
isotope, Utah State’s journal of literary nature and science writing, is not content with the usual dichotomy between wonder and funeral song that characterizes our discourse on the environment, but strikes out fearlessly across new (and ancient) terrain with a backpack full of ceaseless questions and a full canteen of inspiration. Continue reading “Isotope – Spring/Summer 2004”
Dedicated to “exploring the experience of disability through literature and the fine arts,” Kaleidoscope subverts the usual categories of “normal” and “disabled” by bringing the reader inside the phenomenon of disability as it affects the life of one (normal) person at a time. Continue reading “Kaleidoscope – Winter/Spring 2004”
Knock-knock. Continue reading “Modern Haiku – Summer 2004”
Natural Bridge always has substantial offerings, but this issue has some stunners: Alice Ayers’ short story, “Barney,” is a gorgeous second-person evocation to a man about to submerge a profound part of himself in marriage to a woman whose maidenly abode featured lace doilies and was “so pointedly virginal it obviously covered something. Continue reading “Natural Bridge – 2004”
To review this publication for the first time is to tell as much about the concept as the content.
With a few small exceptions, PEN America, the annual journal published by PEN American Center, is peopled with the work of world-famous or much-published writers, both contemporary and posthumous. Here you’ll find such familiar names as Samuel Beckett, Edward Albee, Susan Sontag, Wallace Stevens, Rick Moody, and Rainer Maria Rilke. Continue reading “PEN America – 2004”
It’s easier, of course, to define the physical boundaries of an enormous space like the Great Plains than to come to an understanding of its essence, the unwalkable borderland where place meets person, where the geography of a region becomes home to a human heart. Continue reading “Plains Song Review – Spring 2004”
This issue of the eclectic and elegant Review features a refreshingly low key interview with poet X. Continue reading “The Evansville Review – 2003”
One of the most attractive journals I’ve seen in a great while, Louisiana Literature gets straight to the point – delivering prize-winning poetry in a range of styles, a nice helping of short fiction, and a few critical essays and reviews – all in a lovely, understated layout. Continue reading “Louisiana Literature – 2003”
Because nothing ruins art like an admirable cause, I was initially wary of Mizna, “a forum promoting Arab American culture that values diversity in the Arab community. Continue reading “Mizna – 2003”
In this issue, The American Scholar continues to prove it’s one of the best publishers of essays in the country (the poetry–by Rita Dove, etc. Continue reading “The American Scholar – 2004”
With this issue, Other Voices celebrates twenty years of publishing some of the finest fiction around. Continue reading “Other Voices – Spring/Summer 2004”
“Terrific” is how contest judge Robert Wrigley classifies the 49th Parallel Award-winning poem by Simone Muench, but this assessment could certainly apply to this whole special double issue. Sophisticated and polished, the work here (poems, stories, essays, interviews, Forrest Gander’s comments on work by Cole Swenson, and Lucia Perillo’s writing about photos by Scott Chambers) is never casual, yet it remains consistently accessible and, in the best sense, readable. Continue reading “The Bellingham Review – Volume 27”
This issue of Phoebe delivers a fresh, diverse selection of fiction and poems. Continue reading “Phoebe – Spring 2004”
A common approach mysteriously unites the short fiction in this spring/summer issue of Black Warrior Review. Each of the six stories here possesses a similar obliqueness, a diagonal narrative attack that lends the characters and events an alluring inscrutability. Continue reading “Black Warrior Review – Vol 30 No 2”
More poems than plays, the drama here consists of three short, one-act pieces. Continue reading “Poems & Plays – Spring/Summer 2004”
This ambitious and strikingly effective theme issue in which writers respond to film leaves me with the feeling that I ought to know more about film than I do, though I’ve always felt that, in comparison to others, I know quite a lot. Several of the pieces here feel as if they were written for those already in the cinema ‘know,’ but each piece is, nonetheless, highly enjoyable. Continue reading “Conjunctions – Spring 2004”
“Turn each page and imagine yourself out for a nice bicycle ride like the women on our cover,” advise the editors. Continue reading “Poet Lore – Spring/Summer 2004”
“High quality” and “serious intent” is what CutBank seeks, say the journal’s guidelines. Continue reading “CutBank – Spring 2004”
This is my introduction to the Montreal-based Scrivener Creative Review, and I find it mostly delightful—from Matthew Aaron Guyer’s metaphysical fiction, “The Theory of Doorways,” to a beautiful collection of photographs, especially those of Geoffrey Brown. The poems are worth returning to again, as well, and I look forward to doing so. Continue reading “Scrivener Creative Review – 2004”
This issue of Ellipsis, a long-time student-edited publication of Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah, contains prose, photos and an astonishing number of poems (forty-five!) for a journal of its type. Continue reading “Ellipsis – Volume 40”
Southern Humanities Review seems to have a little something for everybody. Continue reading “Southern Humanities Review – Winter 2004”
First, the time has come with this magazine to praise Sven Birkerts as an editor. He’s a ferociously intelligent author (most recently of My Sky Blue Trades), and he took the helm of Agni three issues ago, initiating his run with what was one of the single best printed journals of last year, Agni 57. Continue reading “AGNI – Number 59”
The work in Five Points boasts a consistently down-home earnestness. Continue reading “Five Points – 2004”
I don’t know spank about Italian, but I know a giant when I see one. Continue reading “Storie – April 2004”
Congratulations and gratitude to Columbia College in Chicago for offering a new journal of stunning poetry. Continue reading “Court Green – 2005”
Amidst all the sophisticated fiction and poetry, Green Mountains Review provides a nice regional touch: photos of the modest farmhouse owned by an old Vermonter until his death and the subsequent destruction of his “uninhabitable” dwelling. Continue reading “Green Mountains Review – Nov 2004”
I wish more magazines were like this one. This always-a-theme-issue journal features a spectacular theme this time, “off on a tangent,” and the pieces featured here are just what I like—tangential, surprising, rarely staying in one place for too long. Continue reading “THEMA – Spring 2004”
My first impression of Gulf Coast is not a particularly lofty one, but I’ll say it anyway: I can’t believe this thing is only eight bucks. Continue reading “Gulf Coast – Volume 16 Number 2”
“Humans love to lie,” notes editor Win McCormack of Tin House Magazine. Continue reading “Tin House – 2004”
The first issue of Small Spiral Notebook is a promising collection. Continue reading “Small Spiral Notebook – 2004”
This lovely issue of Hanging Loose features the amazing high-school-age poet Nathan Resnick-Day: “Listen to me as one listens to the rain. / It has been twenty years since the gas lamps flickered in Paris during a monsoon that took the beards off men. / […] / I was given a birdsong that loved me for what I was not” (“The Discourse of Hermeto”). Continue reading “Hanging Loose – 2004”
It would be difficult to find another journal this spring that demonstrates the immense possibilities of poetry more clearly, blatantly, and provocatively than The Hiram Poetry Review. Continue reading “Hiram Poetry Review – Issue 65”
First, thank god for Medbh McGuckian and her four beautiful poems within this small volume, and is everyone now clear, with each passion season and the crop of literary journals, that Canada is where it’s happening, literary magazine-wise? Should we list? Probably not (click, back on the main page on Literary Mags). Continue reading “Vallum – 2004”
This square journal is too much for me to really review – it’s a composite, compilation, collage of so many things, and the distances between each is too small for what I might be able to say make sense. Continue reading “Versal – 2004”
The Literary Review has an emphasis on international writing. Continue reading “The Literary Review – Spring 2004”
