Home » NewPages Blog » Page 110

NewPages Blog

At the NewPages Blog readers and writers can catch up with their favorite literary and alternative magazines, independent and university presses, creative writing programs, and writing and literary events. Find new books, new issue announcements, contest winners, and so much more!

The Boiler – Fall 2017

The art in the latest issue of The Boiler features paintings by Gloria Ceren and photography by Klara Feenstra. Ceren’s work evokes feelings of chaos and smoldering heat with warm colors and layered textures. Feenstra’s photography gives the sense of looking in from the outside, the overlaid image appearing like a reflection on glass as if the photographer took photos from the other side of a window. The writing in this issue of The Boiler echoes this: although we’re taking in the poetry and prose in this issue from the outside, the colors and chaos draw us in to examine it closer.

Continue reading “The Boiler – Fall 2017”

Carve – Fall 2017

Reading Carve, named for Raymond Carver, is a unique experience. The cover of the Fall 2017 issue is freshly-styled and modern, and the magazine format is a nice contrast to standard lit journal dimensions. This issue features the winners and Editor’s Choices of the 2017 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest, as well as an author interview following each piece. Though the interviews might disrupt the flow of the magazine for some readers, most of them are engaging and reveal important details about writing methods and inspiration. Carver fans will likely be delighted to discover that each interview is titled “What We Talk About.”

Continue reading “Carve – Fall 2017”

Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week

leaping clearOne of the cover images, “Lotus Buddha” by Christine DeCamp, for the online publication Leaping Clear is reflective of its mission, to promote “accomplished artists whose work is informed by dedicated meditative and contemplative practices.” There is more from DeCamp and other visual artists and writers in the Fall 2017 issue.

river teethThe cover image of the fall 2017 issue of River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative is a gorgeous waterfall photo from White Mountains, N.H. by David FitzSimmons.

concho river reviewTim L. Vasquez of Untamed Photography offers a seemingly surreal image for the cover of the fall/winter 2017 Concho River Review.

Lyric Voice, Politics and Difficulty in Poetry

In the Fall 2017 issue of The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, the regular feature 4X4, in which four of the contributor’s answer the same four questions, addresses questions about the concept of lyric voice, what the most “productive relationship” is between poems and politics, and the inherent (or not) difficulty of poems. James Longenbach, Sarah Gridley, Jonathan Moody, and Jennifer Moxley all weigh in, responding in turn to the four questions.

Speculative Fiction in Translation by Women

rachel s cordascoSpeculative Fiction in Translation (SFT) “often flies under the radar, despite the fact that it is an important part of the speculative fiction universe,” writes author and editor Rachel Cordasco in her introduction to a special section of “Speculative Fiction in Translation By Women” in Anomaly 25. While “SFT has been growing in popularity over the last few years,” Cordasco notes that, “like the publishing world as a whole, the world of SFT is often dominated by male authors.”

Her selection of included works highlights some of what she feels are the best female authors writing speculative fiction in languages other than English, offering readers a variety of stories and styles. In addition to this, Cordasco started SFinTranslation.com, a site on which she indexes SFT, reviews works, and posts news and interviews relative to SFT. Cordasco herself is working on translating Italian SF.

Poetry Celebrating The Prompt

st louis poetry centerThe December 2017 issue of Allegro Poetry Magazine online features poems that “celebrate that perennial feature of poetry workshops and courses: The prompt.” Editor Sally Long writes, “Poets were invited to describe the prompts that gave rise to their poems. The result is an issue that not only includes some amazing poetry but also a selection of ideas that will hopefully inspire new poems.” Contributors include Sarah Law, Bill Brown, Kersten Christianson, Rick Blum, Cathryn Shea, Lisa Stice, Charles Rammelkamp, Cat Campbell, Andrew Turner, Helen May Williams, Harry Youtt and more.

Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week

georgia reviewIt’s hard to get the full effect of the Fall 2017 The Georgia Review cover art, which features work by poet and photographer Rachel Eliza Griffiths printed on mirror metallic stock.  A portfolio of her work and essay, “What Has Changed,” is included in the issue, with an introduction by Jenny Gropp.

field

An untitled enamel on plywood by Mose ” Mose T” Tolliver attracts readers to the Fall 2017 issue of Field: Contemporary Poetry and Poetics.

cincinnati reviewLove love love Mary Jo Karimnia‘s work, which she describes in her Artist’s Statement, “I draw in the backgrounds and enhance certain areas with glass beads. Cropped purposefully to omit faces, the images – such as teenagers in costumes at cosplay conventions, dancers in Bolivia, and Catrina icons at a Day of the Dead festival – emphasize how costumes can allow us to explore alternative personae in an anonymous way, which helps us to learn about our past or to imagine a future in which the acceptance of eccentricities is the norm.” The Cincinnati Review Winter 2018 includes her work on the cover as well as a portfolio inside.

Tribute to Alden Nowlan

alden nowlanThe Autumn 2017 issue of The Fiddlehead features “Remembering Alden Nowlan.” Poet, novelist, and playwright Nowlan passed away in 1983, and this past fall, Goose Lane published the Collected Poems of Alden Nowlan. Fiddlehead  Editor Ross Leckie writes, “It is an occasion for a celebration of Nowlan’s remarkable achievement. In this issue of The Fiddlehead  readers will find a brief appreciation by David Adams Richards and a previously unpublished interview with Nowlan conducted just before his death by two intrepid high school students [Corinne Schriver and Carmen McKell].”

2017 Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction Winner

Katie FlynnKatie M. Flynn’s “Island Rule” is the winner of the 2017 Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction selected by Richard Bausch. Her work appears in the Fall/Winter 2017 issue of Colorado Review.

In her Editor’s Note, Stephanie G’Schwind writes, “Every fall, we have the true pleasure of publishing the winning story of the Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction. This year, it’s Katie M. Flynn’s ‘Island Rule,’ in which an environmental biology professor is haunted by memories of the surreally accelerated evolution and ensuing political violence that expelled her, as a child, from her island home. Final judge Richard Bausch calls it ‘a very strange, audaciously original and convincing story that arrives at metaphor; it partakes of Kafka, being so matter-of-factly realistic .’ It’s a wonderful, daring story, richly deserving of the prize.”

Playing with Dynamite

Parents can be strange and dichotomous creatures, and delving into their lives doesn’t always give us answers we expect. Sharon Harrigan, who teaches memoir writing at WriterHouse in Charlottesville, Virginia, discovered this when she set out to learn more about her father, Jerry. She compiled the results in her first book Playing with Dynamite: A Memoir.

Continue reading “Playing with Dynamite”

Cover Stories

Writer and editor Stefan Kiesbye believes that “every story leaves a multitude of stories untold.” He acted on this idea by inviting fifteen writers to each choose a favorite story, then write a cover for it. The resulting anthology is appropriately titled Cover Stories. Most of the favorites were pulled from the past, but contemporary writer ZZ Packer also made the list.

Continue reading “Cover Stories”

Havana Without Makeup

If you’re locked into learning about far off locations through TV, movies, or social media, it’s time to stimulate your brain with a different interpretation. Herman Portocarero fulfills that task with his latest book, Havana Without Makeup: Inside the Soul of the City. Portocarero was born in Belgium of Spanish and Portuguese descent, and for the past 20-plus years has been ambassador to Havana from Belgium and then for the European Union, completing his post in September 2017. His take on Cuba’s capital city offers unique insights.

Continue reading “Havana Without Makeup”

Autopsy

i am alive by luck at this point, I wonder
often: if the gun that will unmake me
is yet made, what white birth

will bury me, how many bullets, like a
flock of blue jays, will come carry my black
to its final bed, which photo will be used

                    “What The Dead Know By Heart”

Continue reading “Autopsy”

Our Sudden Museum

The word “museum” is usually associated with velvet ropes, alarms, roving guards. As Fanning introduces the word sudden into these carefully executed spaces filled with unfamiliar objects, he invites motion into a static world, redrawing the boundaries of artifact and observation. Though Our Sudden Museum is dedicated to the memory of his father, sister, and brother, and is filled with funny and painfully wrought elegies, unforeseen death reverberates his attention into new, unexpected places. Ultimately, with a broad range of forms and tones, Fanning ushers us into an elevated, enlightened space only reached through profound grief. Fanning’s delivery is charged with urgency and grace, since at any moment, the mundane or cherished could be taken away, suspended under glass.

While objects in museums travel and assume hefty historical weight through their membership in a rigid collection, Fanning tackles the transfiguration of emotion, the kinetics of memory. The book begins with “House of Childhood,” where, in a fluttering metamorphosis, the speaker is alternately a house, a bird, and the very seams holding artifact together:

Every dream I’m in its bones. Its bones
though hollow of me now. Its walls. What holds
the hallowed dust. The joists. The moans.
Oh Ghost, Oh Lady of Sorrows, I’m old.
I’m grown and gone. I’m a bird that can’t thrash free.

“The Bird in the Room” captures a similar dynamism that is quite original in a volume exploring grief. When faced with the challenge of listening to an aging parent, how many of us would invite such action, such ambiguity, into the scene?

As she speaks          I try to hear her
through another feather
falls
from her mouth
The shadow         of a wavering tree
covers the wall
Does she know
it’s in the room with us

In a volume chock full of confrontations with death, this speaker copes how most of us would:

What are you doing she asks

as I open
her door trying to let
the thought of her
death escape me

And yet throughout the book, we are offered the full gamut of methods of weathering death, and Fanning isn’t afraid of delving into sometimes vulgar or vividly morbid detail.

“I’d kick your coffin over / and piss the makeup off / your face, my sister says,” begins “Love Poem,” which catalogs the ultimately ineffective threats siblings hurled to keep a suicidal brother alive:

One week ago tonight, we stood over Tom
in his box, staring at his bad
cosmetic job, rouge on the flat
cheekbones, the lips sealed
a sick pink.

And yet the magic of Fanning’s work lies in the universal. Even if the reader hasn’t experienced the death of a sibling, who hasn’t joyfully perused items that don’t belong to us? “Sister, now I can tell you this: / how I’d steal // into your room / days you were gone,” begins the relatable “Flute.” The poem contains a breathtaking turn common in Fanning’s work:

I’d stare at the disassembled parts:
each silver tube snug in red

velvet, click of fingered keys
rubbed bronze.

I lacked the adequate prayer
my lips might blow across you,

kneeling over your open casket.

While the book is not broken into sections, the sequencing of poems slowly progresses toward the birth and rearing of children by the end, which provides a perfect counterpoint to such profound loss. In “Paper Dolls,” Fanning masterfully renders the joy and fear involved in an impending birth:

Since our news, the hours
wobble like bubbles from a playground

wand, every minute drifting, oblong
and sure to burst.

And what do children do but rewrite any conception of time we might have had before them? In “Saving the Day,” Fanning’s poetic imagination turns our orderly, painful adult world on its head when he shares discoveries “Upon finding my lost day planner on the floor of my daughter Magdalena June, age 2“:

Pages of my hours’
rigid grids splashed with your unruly hues,
my walls of stacked blank days splattered
by spilled giggles and curlicues. Sweet girl,
my year’s unwound by your fluttering hands.
With my future made so bright by you,
may I ever be ready for never.

Teaching Wallace Stevens

wallace stevens journalThe Fall 2017 The Wallace Stevens Journal is a special issue focused on “Teaching Stevens.”

The volume includes “Reflections by Poets” from Rachel Hadas, James Longenbach, and Lisa M. Steinman as well as poetry by Josepth Duemer, William Virgil Davis, Sharon Portnoff, Navlika Ramjee and more. Several of the essays focus on global contexts, such as teaching Stevens in Israel, Belgium, China, Sweden, and Portugal. Other essays include:

“Valuing Stevens’s Acts of Imagination” by Charles Altieri
“Stevens and Race: ‘Like Decorations in a Nigger Cemetery’ Revisited” by Marvin Campbell
“Stevens’s Poetics of Variation as a Guide for Teaching” by Lisa Goldfarb
“Casting for Keener Sounds: How to Make Difficult Poetry Fun Again” by Alex Streim, Zachary Tavlin
“As if Blackbirds Could Shape Scientists: Wallace Stevens Takes a Seat in the Classroom of Interdisciplinary Science” by David J. Waters
“Mountain Climbing in the Poetry Classroom in Malta: Teaching a Stevens Metapoem” by Daniel Xerri

The Wallace Stevens Project Muse website includes a full table of contents as well as previews of each article and full access for subscribers.

 

Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week

the boiler“Dying of the Already Dead” by Gloria Ceren is featured on the cover of the online fall 2017 issue of The Boiler along with additional works within the publication.

zone threeBilly Renkl’s “Watching the Sky #2” collage of antique British chromoolithographs is the cover art for v32 n2 of Zone 3 literary journal. Renkl says of his work, “Vintage and antique paper can be surprisingly beautiful, and I find the way that it carries its history with it moving.”

poet loreThe front cover of Fall/Winter 2017 Poet Lore features a photograph of Coyote Bluffs, Arizona by Ariel Body of Live Laugh Design.

Rattle 2017 Poetry Prize Winner

rayon lennonThe Winter 2017 issue of Rattle features the $10,000 winner of their 2017 Poetry Prize, “Heard” by Rayon Lennon [pictured]. The ten contest finalists also appear in this issue with the chance to be selected by subscribers for the $2,000 Readers’ Choice Award. Ballots, along with subscription information, are available in the publication itself. This year’s finalist poets are Barbara Lydecker Crane, Kayla Czaga, Emari DiGiorgio, Rhina P. Espaillat, Troy Jollimore, Nancy Kangas, Ron Koertge, Jimmy Pappas, Kirk Schlueter, and Alison Townsend.

The Slag Review – Fall 2017

In the “About Us” section of The Slag Review, the editors describe how the journal is “a little off-kilter,” and how the work they “accept will reflect that.” Readers can be thankful that the credo really shines forth in the Fall 2017 issue of the journal. There’s fiction, nonfiction, and poetry and they all, in their own ways, exhibit an off-kilter and unique sensibility.

Continue reading “The Slag Review – Fall 2017”

Prairie Schooner – Fall 2017

The Fall 2017 issue of Prairie Schooner is both slim and muscular, like the wrestlers in Sean Prentiss’s “Pantheon of Loss,” an essay about self-torture (high school athletics), discipline, and the drive to win despite the consequences. Twenty-two years after his wrestling career ended, when family members ask whether the starvation, pain, and risk of death were worth it, Prentiss still says, “Yes.” Wrestlers, he argues, are driven not by health and common sense, but by the desire to be the last man standing. He writes, “We starve to win.”

Continue reading “Prairie Schooner – Fall 2017”

2017 Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize for Young Writers Winners

kenyon reviewThe Kenyon Review Nov/Dec 2017 issue features winners of the 2017 Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize for Young Writers. This award “recognizes outstanding young poets and is open to high school sophomores and juniors throughout the world. The contest winner receives a full scholarship to the Kenyon Review Young Writers workshop.” Winning entries can also be read online here.

First Prize
Eileen Huang: “Movie Scene on a Highway Shoulder”

Runners Up
Daniel Blokh: “Family Portrait with Lost Map”
Isabella Victoria: “Clemente Curls”

The Malahat Review 50th Anniversary

the malahat reviewPublishing since 1967 from the University of Victoria, The Malahat Review is one of Canada’s leading literary journals. Editors since its inception have included Robin Skelton, John Peter, Constance Rooke, Derk Wynand, Marlene Cookshaw, and currently John Barton (since 2004).

Originally subtitled “An International Magazine of Life and Letters,” The Malahat Review  now focuses on Canadian and international poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. The publication’s website also features book reviews, interviews, contests, podcasts, and publishing tips – a bimontly guest column in which authors share how to improve professionals skills: “from the writing of cover letters, to what house style means, to choosing a rhyming dictionary, to having an author photo (as opposed to a selfie) shot.”

Happy Anniversary Malahat! Here’s hoping for another great half-century to come!

New Lit on the Block :: The Indianapolis Review

the indianapolis review fall2017The Indianapolis Review is a new online quarterly of poetry and visual art supporting the growth of new voices in the literary scene in Indianapolis and beyond. Founder and Editor in Chief Natalie Solmer and Associate Editor Rachel Sahaidachny started the publication “to give back to the poetry and art world by curating a platform to showcase poets and artists. We desire to create connections among writers and artists in our community and around the globe. In our own publishing experiences, we’ve seen there is always a need for venues to publish new work.”

Continue reading “New Lit on the Block :: The Indianapolis Review”

Books :: 2017 University of Iowa Press Fiction Award Winners

university of iowa press 2017 fiction winnersThe University of Iowa Press published the winners of the 2017 Iowa Short Fiction Award and the 2017 John Simmons Short Fiction Award last month.

Matthew Lansburgh’s Outside is the Ocean, winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award, was chosen by Andre Dubus III, who calls the linked collection “mesmerizing” as it “explores, among other things, the tenuous tie between mother and son, between the Old World and the New, between what was and what is.”

Winner of the John Simons Short Fiction Award, What Counts as Love by Marian Crotty, is “sensual, brave, and wonderfully evocative” as Crotty  examines“the seemingly tattered nature of love, taking us deeply into the varied lives of her characters and making us care for them all.” The nine stories follow people—most often young women—searching for human connection, their stories touching on themes of addiction, class, sexuality, and gender.

Stop by the University of Iowa Press website to learn more about the awards and winning titles.

Glimmer Train 2017 July/August Very Short Fiction Award Winners

Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their July/August Very Short Fiction Award. This competition is held twice a year and is open to all writers for stories with a word count under 3000. The next Very Short Fiction competition will take place in March. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.

chase burke1st place goes to Chase Burke of Tuscaloosa, AL [pictured], who wins $2000 for “That’s That.” His story will be published in Issue 101 of Glimmer Train Stories. This will be his first major print publication.

2nd place goes to Brian Yansky of Austin, TX, for “The Curse.” His story will also be published in an upcoming issue of Glimmer Train Stories, increasing his prize from $500 to $700.

3rd place goes to Ajit Dhillon of Singapore, for “Waiting.” His story will also be published in an upcoming issue of Glimmer Train Stories, increasing his prize from $300 to $700.

A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found here.

Books :: October 2017 Book Award Winners

October offered more treats than just candy this year. Readers, a handful of prize-winning books hit bookshelves last month, and if you haven’t already gotten your hands on them, now is your chance!

The grand finalist of the Vine Leaves Vignette Collection Award, The Walmart Book of the Dead by Lucy Biederman, draws inspiration from the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead. Biederman’s version includes shoplifters, grifters, drifters, and hustlers as they wander Walmart unknowingly consigned to their afterlives.

Stephanie Carpenter brought home the Press 53 Award for Short Fiction with Missing Persons. Selected by Press 53 Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Kevin Morgan Watson, the collection contains stories that are “diverse in setting, conflict, and style,” and it rose above over 230 other manuscripts to claim the prize.

Pleaides Press awards the Editors Prize for Poetry each spring. The 2016 winner, A Lesser Love by E. J. Koh, was published this month. “Love, war and recovered testimony from Korea’s unhealed border inform the formal and imaginative boundaries” within the debut collection, according to D. A. Powell’s advance praise. Learn more about the collection at the press’s website.

In Set to Music a Wildfire, Ruth Awad’s homage to her father “explores the violence of living, the guilt of surviving, the loneliness of faith, and the impossible task of belonging.” Winner of the Michael Waters Poetry Prize, Awad writes of family, country, and the Lebanese Civil War.

Be sure to stop by each press’s website listed above to learn more about the award-winning books published last month.

Gargoyle 40th Anniversary

gargoyleEdited and published by Richard Peabody, along with the work of Associate Editor Lucinda Ebersole, Gargoyle celebrates 40 years of publishing with a ‘two-sided’ issue: Issue 65 – Side 1 and Issue 66 – Side 2. Sadly, Lucinda passed away March 20, 2017, as Peabody notes, “I’m heartbroken that my literary partner in crime has passed away. My plan is to shepherd her short story manuscripts and novel into print over the next few years. She was one of a kind and the funniest human I have ever known.”

Gargoyle‘s impression on the literary landscape is vast, and it’s with great hope and support for Richard and his staff that they will continue well into the future. In celebration, from the Gargoyle website:

In our first 40 years, Gargoyle has published work by:

10 Acker Award winners,
6 National Book Award-winning authors,
3 PEN/Faulkner winners,
4 Pulitzer Prize winners,
2 MacArthur Fellows,
2 Nebula Award winners,
2 Yale Younger Poets,
1 Hugo Award winner,
1 Poet Laureate,
6 Iowa Short Fiction Award winners,
6 Flannery O’Connor Award winners,
3 James Laughlin Award winners,
2 Lamont Poetry Selection winners,
2 William Carlos Williams Award winners,
8 National Poetry Series winners,
5 Orange Prize Long List writers,
2 Orange Prize Short List writers,
2 National Book Critics Circle Award winners,
6 Lambda Literary Award winners,
1 Gertrude Stein Award winner, and
3 Firecracker Alternative Book Award winners, among others.

Saranac Review Seeks Visceral Response

ElizabethCohenIn her Editor’s Notes to Issue 13 of Saranac Review, Elizabeth Cohen begins by quoting Emily Dickinson: “If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.”

Cohen writes, “We are sometimes asked at Saranac Review  how we select the work we publish, and I think Dickinson’s words are applicable. Of course we seek work that has strong voice, craft and originality, but in the end, it is the visceral response that probably most informs our choices. We choose poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction and plays that make us feel and evoke in us a response that physically affects us, while simultaneously reminding us why we read in the first place. If you could read our notes to one another on Submittable, you would see a lot of this: ‘Made me tingle,’ ‘heart stopping,’ ‘took my breath away.'”

With such discerning criteria, writers have got to meet that bar, providing readers much to look forward to in each issue of Saranac Review.

American Life in Poetry :: Wesley McNair

American Life in Poetry: Column 657
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

I was deeply moved by this week’s poem, which shows us the courage of a person struggling with a disability, one that threatens the way in which she wishes to present herself. It illustrates the fierce dignity that many of us have observed in elderly people. Wesley McNair served five years as poet laureate of Maine, and his most recent book is The Unfastening, published by David R. Godine.

My Mother’s Penmanship Lessons

wesley mcnairIn her last notes, when her hand began
to tremble, my mother tried to teach it

the penmanship she was known for,
how to make the slanted stems

of the p’s and d’s, the descending
roundness of the capital m’s, the long

loops of the f’s crossed at the center,
sending it back again and again

until each message was the same:
a record of her insistence that the hand

return her to the way she was before,
and of all the ways the hand had disobeyed.

We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2016 by Wesley McNair, “My Mother’s Penmanship Lessons,” from The Unfastening, (David R. Godine, 2017). Poem reprinted by permission of Wesley McNair and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2017 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.

The Missing Girl

You soon may be the missing girl, you have taken the missing girl, you fantasize about the missing girl, you are the missing girl. In Jacqueline Doyle’s aptly-named The Missing Girl, we briefly take on all the roles before shucking the skin we’re in and donning a new one. Winner of the Black River Chapbook Competition through Black Lawrence Press, The Missing Girl draws us into the seedy darkness of everyday life in small bursts of haunting prose as Doyle forces us to consider being both the hunter and the hunted. Regardless of which position she leads us to, none is a comfortable role to be in.

Continue reading “The Missing Girl”

The Doll’s Alphabet

Camilla Grudova’s first collection, The Doll’s Alphabet, is causing a literary stir. It has been compared to the writing of Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter, and Franz Kafka—one of the authorial inspirations for the collection. Grudova’s stories inhabit a time and space that is unclear to the reader, but never so far off to be unbelievable. Her writing is haunting and humorous, and the attention to gender dynamics adds a layer of truth to these dark tales.

Continue reading “The Doll’s Alphabet”

Beautiful Flesh

The essays in Beautiful Flesh: A Body of Essays make up, collectively, a body, each essay on a single body part and so, moving from head to foot, the essays tell stories of the body, one that is multi-gendered, multi-ethnic, and multi-abled. The whole collection is, for me, summed up in a middle passage from Hester Kaplan’s essay “The Private Life of Skin,” a tale about her battle with psoriasis: “The heart beats faster when we’re scared, the chest clenches as we dial 911, the stomach flips with remorse, the head pounds with indecisions, the mouth waters for a kiss; we are our bodies.”

Continue reading “Beautiful Flesh”

In the Language of My Captor

When I began reading Shane McCrae’s In the Language of my Captor, an 86-page book of poems and prose highlighting racial prejudice in both historical and present contexts, I was not the least familiar with the story of Jim Limber, an octoroon (1/8 African ancestry) orphan taken in by Jefferson Davis and his wife, Varina, from 1864 to 1865. Growing up in the American north during the 80s and 90s, I learned Civil War history from a northern grade school perspective that celebrated the greatness of leaders like Abraham Lincoln, the importance of the Union, and that highlighted the incredible progresses made toward racial justice then and since. Limber was not part of that learned history.

Continue reading “In the Language of My Captor”

The Other Side of Violet

I figure most people who read book reviews are also writers. So let’s dig right into David Lawton’s interview with Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Harding, featured in a new anthology called The Other Side of Violet. Harding endured rejections with his first novel, Tinkers, but five years later it was published by a literary press. He was teaching at the time and happened to look online to see who won the Pulitzer. “Honestly, I sort of half fainted—‘swooned’ would not be inaccurate—onto the floor of the crummy grad student apartment I was staying in. Totally surreal,” he says.

Continue reading “The Other Side of Violet”

Planet Grim

Alex Behr has a wide-ranging resume which has served her well over the years, providing a cornucopia of material to feed her writing. During the 1990s, she contributed to underground zines while performing in bands. She moved up the West Coast from San Francisco to Portland, Oregon in 2003, and published all the while as she did stints in comedy.

Continue reading “Planet Grim”

Brevity Celebrates 20 Years!

Dinty W. Moore“Twenty years ago,” writes Brevity Editor Dinty W. Moore, “I had an idea for a magazine that combined the swift impact of flash fiction with the true storytelling of memoir, and Brevity was born. To be honest, I expected it to last a year.”

Instead, Brevity has aged into the most well-known publication of its kind, with a rich history of publishing new authors who have become some of the most respected in the genre, and guiding writers as they learn and practice their craft.

In celebration, Brevity reached out to authors who have appeared multiple times in Brevity over the years and commissioned their submissions for an anniversary issue. Authors includes Lee Martin, Diane Seuss, Brenda Miller, Sue William Silverman, Rebecca McClanahan, and Ira Sukrungruang. Moore notes that readers “may detect a common theme (or at least a common word)” among the works.

Read Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction as well as book reviews and craft essays online here.

Court Green is Back!

court green onlineAfter publishing 12 print issues from 2004-2015 in association with Columbia College Chicago, and a brief hiatus, Court Green is back with issue 13, “the first in its new incarnation as an independent online journal” edited by Tony Trigilio and David Trinidad.

Featured in this revival issue are poems by Matthew Burgess, Chris Green, Ginger Ko, Robert Siek, Kimiko Hahn, George Kalamaras, Annah Browning, Kimberly Lyons, Hafizah Geter, Megan Fernandes, Diane Seuss, Lynn Crosbie, Harlee Logan Kelly, Kenyatta Rogers, and C. Russell Price.

A special bonus features: “Robert Siek: 13 Instagram Photos”; Peter K. Steinberg, “‘A Fetish Somehow’: A Sylvia Plath Bookmark”; and “Radio Free Albion: Interview with George Kalamaras.”

Welcome back Court Green!

Glimmer Train 2017 July/August Fiction Open Winners

Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their July/August Fiction Open competition. This competition is held twice a year and is open to all writers. Stories generally range from 3000-6000 words, though up to 20,000 is fine. The next Fiction Open will take place in March. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.

AriannaReichePhCred LauraGallantFirst place: Arianna Reiche, of London, England, wins $3000 for “Archive Warden.” Her story will be published in Issue 101 of Glimmer Train Stories. [Photo Credit: Laura Gallant.]

Second place: Randolph Thomas, of Baton Rouge, LA, wins $1000 for “Heir Apparent.” His story will also be published in an upcoming issue.

Third place: Sharon Solwitz, of Chicago, IL, wins $600 for “We Enter History.”

A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found here.

Deadline soon approaching! Short Story Award for New Writers: October 31
This competition is held quarterly and is open to all writers whose fiction has not appeared in a print publication with a circulation over 5000. No theme restrictions. Most submissions to this category run 1000-5000 words, but can go up to 12,000. First place prize wins $2500 and publication in Glimmer Train Stories. Second/third: $500/$300 and consideration for publication. Click here for complete guidelines.

2017 Raymond Carver Contest Winners

carveThe fall issue of Carve Magazine features the winners of the 2017 Raymond Carver Contest as selected by Guest Judge Pinckney Benedict:

First Place
“Richard” by David J. Wingrave in Warsaw, Poland

Second Place
“Laughing and Turning Away” by Patrick Holloway in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

Third Place
“Homecoming” by Zachary Lunn in Raleigh, NC

Editor’s Choice
“The Anatomy of Todd Melkin” by Catherine Malcynsky in Chester, CT
 “Windfall” by Edward Hamlin in Boulder, CO

Read these winning stories online here. For a full list of semifinalists and information about the contest, visit Carve online.

Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week

cleaverThe cover image for issue 19 of Cleaver Magazine online is mixed media/map entitled “He had an Awkward Relationship With The Truth” by Emily Steinberg.
foliate oakPhotographs by street photographer J. Ray Paradiso are featured on the cover screen for the online Foliate Oak Literary Magazine.
hamilton arts lettersCatherine Heard’s work can be found on the cover of Hamilton Arts & Letters Magazine 10.1 as well as featured in an online portfolio. Her work “work interrogates the histories of science, medicine and the museum. Simultaneously attractive and repulsive, her works delve into primal anxieties about the body.”

Hayden’s Ferry Review Seeks Senior Editor

haydens ferry reviewThe Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing is seeking a Senior Editor for Hayden’s Ferry Review, a semi-annual international literary journal edited by the Creative Writing Program at Arizona State University.

In addition to general management and editorial duties, the Senior Editor will also be responsible for directing a special translation project and academic database using literature previously published in Hayden’s Ferry Review.

Applicants should have a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism or a related field and five years related experience; an MFA in Creative Writing, bilingualism, and experience working in a university setting and web development are preferred.

Salary range $41,976 – $50,000 DOE.

To view the full job description and apply, visit http://bit.ly/2hNxTGU or search openings at https://cfo.asu.edu/applicant by job title “Senior Editor” or requisition number “36507BR”. A pdf of the job description is also available at http://bit.ly/2fRlVLQ.

Individuals with any questions should contact the Piper Center at 480.965.6018 or pipercenter.info-at-asu.edu.

The position will close Wednesday, November 1st, 2017.

TriQuarterly – Summer/Fall 2017

TriQuarterly’s Summer/Fall 2017 issue is rife with writing of a high literary caliber. The pieces in this issue are all exciting in their own way, and I found myself quite taken by a number of them. Many of the fiction pieces in this issue are stellar. Though the stories range in style from straight-up literary realism to magical realism with a touch of the surreal, the one thing they share in common is a strong emotional core.

Continue reading “TriQuarterly – Summer/Fall 2017”

Brevity – September 2017

Celebrating their 20th anniversary, Brevity is a staple in both concise writing, and skillful nonfiction. An assignment in my first creative nonfiction class years ago was to browse the online journal’s website and pick out pieces we admired, and since then, Brevity is a magazine I revisit often, knowing I will never be disappointed by what I find there. As one might expect out of an anniversary issue, the September 2017 edition contains masterful nonfiction, exemplary of the quality work readers have come to expect.

Continue reading “Brevity – September 2017”