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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!

My Radio Radio

Within our world, ripe with the over-thinking of experience, it’s rare to encounter a coming-of-age story quite as visceral or unselfconsciously honest as that found within Jessie van Eerden’s My Radio Radio. Perhaps it’s the subtly surrealist thread that weaves its way through the tale that disarms the reader, setting her up, even readying her, for the unpacking of whatever symbolic gifts of meaning might emerge from the text. Wings. Radio. A baby chick. The click whirr, hiss hmm of a dying man’s machine. Yet, in spite of all that is foreshadowed, in spite of every ounce of allegory, it is within the journey of twelve-year-old Omi Ruth that each of the answers reside, should one choose to listen.

Continue reading “My Radio Radio”

The Dead in Daylight

Melody S. Gee’s new book of poems is a compelling catalog of inheritance and family history—of trying to make a home in a world divided between incarnation and separation, life and death, past and future. The book itself is divided into two sections: “Separate Blood” and “Bone.” So not surprisingly, the poems here deal with bodies and their relation to other bodies, particularly the mother-daughter relationship, but other heritages as well.

 

 

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Take This Stallion

You and I are filthy but it is / our filth” — “The Flying Phalangers”

Popping with pop culture. Zinging with Net slang. Formless yet formed. Slick and rough. Dating-sites and Netflix and Martha Stewart and Kendrick Lamar and Kim Kardashian and TMZ and ENVY and funerals and coke and religion and love and names become algebra and no one knows where they stand except on the cusp of a new paradigm, a new aesthetic—Take This Stallion is a force of poetic nature.

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The Loss of All Lost Things

Amina Gautier’s third collection of short stories The Loss of All Lost Things is an accomplished reflection of our terrible reality. Abducted children, rent-boys, old maids, drop-outs, mourning parents, aging-regret filled parents, widowers eating uncooked Thanksgiving turkey with canned stuffing, the ugliest faces of divorce riddle each page with regret and melancholia.

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A Poet’s Dublin

When I was a teenager my grandmother gave me an Irish Writer’s poster. Shaw. Synge. Swift. Behan. Yeats. Joyce. Beckett and O’Brien. It hung on the back on my bedroom door, right between The Republic of Ireland’s national soccer squad photo and the iconic red swim-suited Farah Fawcett. I was too young and isolated to know just how chauvinistic and linked to politics, often violently, the world of Irish letters and publishing was at the time. I had a vague idea about the struggle for political freedom, but was blind to gender issues that seem all too blazing now.

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The Old Philosopher

Vi Khi Nao, born in Long Khanh, Vietnam in 1979, came to the United States when she was seven years old. In her book, The Old Philosopher, she has given us poems in vigorous experimental language. Reading through the book the first time, there is a feeling of a balanced worldly eye, even as the pervasive indistinctness of mixed and matched images/metaphors leaves a sense of no orientation. By the third reading, the seemingly unmoored fragments begin to come into focus: the book feels like the interlacing of two cultures initiated by the wreckage of the Vietnam War.

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Books :: November 2016 Award-Winning Books

life as it daneen wardropWith November practically over, let’s take a timeout to look back at award-winning small press and university press books published in the past few months.

In September, Rules for Lying by Anne Corbitt was published by the Southeast Missouri State University Press. Winner of the Nilsen Prize for a First Novel, Rules for Lying follows characters through a police investigation that makes them question their memories, allegiances, and actions, all while hiding secrets of their own. Check out the publisher’s website for more information.

Earlier in November, The Ashland Poetry Press released Life As It by Daneen Wardrop. The collection was selected by David St. John as the winner of the 2015 Snyder Memorial Prize Contest. The collection of prose poems (Wardrop’s third collection) features themes of music, family life, spirituality, and more. Check out the publisher’s website for multiple ways to order copies.

Also out this November is The Expense of a View by Polly Buckingham, winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction. The stories explore the psyches of characters, most displaced and disturbed, under extreme duress. Judge Chris Offutt called the collection “a carefully rendered examination of memory, loss, and sadness.” University of North Texas Press’s website has a preview of Buckingham’s collection and ways to order.

Check out these three award-winning books and show your support to small and university presses.

2017 Typewriter Calendar

writing disorder calendar januaryThis has got to be the perfect gift for at least one person on your holiday list: a 2017 calendar featuring 12 vintage images typewriters and the women who wield them. The Writing Disorder online quarterly literary journal of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, art, interviews and reviews is offering this custom-made item, and right now at a 20% discount. Proceeds support the publication – a win-win all around!

Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week

fiddlehead“to pursue the unattainable” (2011; mixed media on paper; 22″ x 30″) from Carol Collicut’s  Marcus Aurelius Series is featured on the autumn 2016 cover of The Fiddlehead: Atlantic Canada’s International Literary Journal and looks similar to a form of asemic writing.
into voidPublished out of Dublin, Ireland, this second issue of Into the Void Arts and Literature features “In the Dream I’m Falling” by Zach Moroney on its cover.
southeast reviewNewPages will always favor any lit mag cover that features the Detroit Tigers “D” on its cover. Though the black and white rendition of “An Ode to Farad #1” by Jamea Richmond-Edwards doesn’t quite do it justice, readers can find the full-color image inside The Southeast Review v.34 n.2, as well as and interview with the artist by Jessica Reidy.

2016 Far Horizons Award for Poetry Winner

yusuf saadi malahatYusuf Saadi is the winner of The Malahat Review 2016 Far Horizons Award for Poetry. Judge Steven Heighton selected “The Place Where Words Go to Die” from 519 poems entered in this year’s annual contest. Read Heighton’s comments about Saadi’s work here. Malahat poetry board member Samantha Ainsworth interviewed Saadi and explores questions like “Which comes first, the poet or the poem?” and “Do you have readers in mind when you write poetry?”

Lilly and Rosenberg 2016 Poetry Fellows

2016 lilly fellowsNovember 2016 Poetry Magazine features works from the 2016 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellows: Kaveh Akbar, Jos Charles, Angel Nafis, Alison C. Rollins, and Javier Zamora [as pictured]. The Poetry Magazine website includes the full content from the publication, in addition to recordings of several of the Fellows reading their works. The Poetry Foundation selects five poets between the ages of 21 and 31 years annually for the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellows, each of whom receives $25,800 to support their further pursuits in writing. Read more about each of the Fellows here.

Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week

new guardThis whimsical “Dinosaur Feeding Frenzy” by Robert C. Jackson on the cover of Vol. V of The New Guard is an oil on linen, three panels sized 48″ x 36″ or 48″ x 108″. The issue itself is a contest winners frenzy, featuring winners, finalists and semifinalists of the The New Guard Vol. V Knightville Poetry Contest and the Machigonne Fiction Contest.
catamaran literary readerI couldn’t look away from this child’s searching expression on the fall 2016 cover of Catamaran. “Via Mal Contenti” by Bo Bartlett is an oil on linen (82 x 56; 2006) is as haunting as Founder and Editor in Chief Catherine Segurson’s closing words in her editor’s letter: “. . . please remember to vote this November, because we are responsible for the world our children will inherit.”

New Lit on the Block :: Sink Hollow

sink hollowSink Hollow is a landmark of Logan Canyon, at the mouth of which stands Utah State University and its iconic Old Main Building bell tower. In the canyon, Sink Hollow refers to a series of depressions that trap cold air, causing the hollows to be noticeably colder than the rest of the canyon. Visitors can expect to find frost on a July afternoon in the sinks.

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WLT Women Writers Issue

michelle johnson wltThe November-December 2016 issue of World Literature Today is dedicated “cover to cover” to women writers.

Managing Editor Michelle Johnson [pictured] writes in the Editor’s Note: “. . . several months ago [the editors at WLT] decided to dedicate the November 2016 issue exclusively to women writers—and women reviewing women writers. The editorial team briefly considered creating such an issue without comment—as if WLT existed in a utopia of parity where all writers in a literary magazine might just happen to be women. But in 2016, giving women the whole issue is still noteworthy even for a magazine like WLT with a strong track record of publishing women writers.”

The collection opens with Alison Anderson’s “Of Gatekeepers and Bedtime Stories: The Ongoing Struggle to Make Women’s Voices Heard,” part of The Puterbaugh Essay Series. See a full list of contents here.

True Story – October 2016

If I’m being honest, what drew me in to the first issue of True Story, brought to you by the editors of Creative Nonfiction and In Fact Books, is that the inaugural story, “Fruitland” by Steven Kurutz, sounded intriguing, mysterious, and—well—like a fiction story I’d like to read. Two brothers, Donnie and Joe Emerson, recorded an album together in the late 70s. While a flop at the time, it was rediscovered by chance in 2008, catapulting them into belated fame and inevitably stirring up ghosts. As a true story, “Fruitland” ends up offering more to readers than a fictionalized “inspired by” story ever could.

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Carve Magazine – Summer 2016

It’s been quite some time since I have been able to write a review for Carve—in fact the last issue I did review was Summer 2012, their final issue before moving to and including the new[ish] premium print edition—but I’ve been itching to do so for quite some time as I follow along with the places it is going. Although all stories are still available to read online for free, “because good honest fiction should never disappear into obscurity,” trust me when I say you’ll want to go ahead and purchase the premium edition.

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Conduit – Summer 2016

Humanity has always been fascinated with death and invented stories to explore the possibility of life beyond death. Gilgamesh, distraught over Enkidu’s death in one of the world’s oldest bromance stories, dives into the underworld to unlock the secret to eternal life, but is outsmarted by a clever snake. Orpheus nearly resurrects his dead lover Eurydice after a private concert for Hades and Persephone, but fails because he can’t resist sneaking a peek over his shoulder at the last minute. Our fascination with death and resurrection continues to this day in popular culture, where superheroes are killed and brought back to life more times than that fellow from Nazareth. The summer 2016 issue of Conduit magazine, Digging Lazarus, presents a selection of talented writers who add their voices to the ongoing exploration of death and resurrection.

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Hayden’s Ferry Review – Spring/Summer 2016

Chelsea Hickock, editor of Hayden’s Ferry Review dedicates this issue to ego. As Hickock explains, writers must be gutsy to believe that someone cares enough to “sit down with our words for hours at a time and live inside the worlds we create.” For all the ego these authors must have in their words, the heart of this issue is told through silences. It takes ego to believe what you write matters, but it takes greater ego to believe what you write will be heard in a pause and understood in a lack of words.

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Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine – April 2016

Like all good storytellers, the authors published in Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine invite the reader to come close and listen carefully. Only, these authors do so in 360 words or less. David Swann best captures the feeling of storytelling in his piece, “The Story of Her Eye” when he writes, “strangers are the best audience. But stories hate distance.” Flash bridges this distance. The journal is at its best through humor and sometimes fantastical pieces that pull you close.

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Poetry Northwest – Summer/Fall 2016

Co-editor Aaron Barrell asks “And what force can a magazine of poetry have in this world?” and later promises that “each poem in these pages will offer sustenance.” I am inclined to agree. I would add to that the visual art on the pages of this issue of Poetry Northwest. Commanding and stunning, the images strike with a bold knowledge of beauty, joy, and heartbreak. Joe Wankelman’s photograph “Lines” arrests with cautious veracity. The works of photography and artwork in this issue are acute in their understanding of different realities.

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Southern Poetry Review – 2016

If I were to give this issue of Southern Poetry Review a title, it might be “Profound Perspectives” or “Meaning in the Moment.” The poems in this issue find moments of awe in life events and transport them from the mundane through reflection to the place where art lives in all its weighty insightfulness and magic. The poets accomplish this with rich imagery, carefully controlled lines and stanzas, and an attention to the natural rhythm of language.

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Poet Lore – Fall/Winter 2016

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Robert Frost knew all too well that home is not always the place where one has chosen to be but is the place where one is, if not welcomed, at least allowed in. The poems in this issue of Poet Lore were meant to be together and fall under an umbrella theme of home; they deal with relationships of people and places inspired by or in reaction to the word home and all of its connotations. They explore the many manifestations of home in memories and observations tinged with bitter nostalgia, unapologetic and raw.

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2 Bridges Review – Spring 2016

In her extended interview with George Guida featured in this volume of 2 Bridges Review, poet Kim Addonizio references Macbeth’s speech about how life is a poor actor, strutting and fretting about the stage for his brief moment of fame before fading away to nothingness. With these words, Addonizio seems to have set the unifying theme of this volume; on its pages, beginning with the cover, readers find writers and artists exploring the ways in which people strut and fret.

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The Antioch Review – Summer 2016

Let’s go back seventy-five years and meet ourselves again—because, as The Antioch Review has proven in its special anniversary edition, we did not hold the mirror closely enough back then, and we did not hear the message presented so clearly in the writings of people like Ralph Ellison, who laid before us in no uncertain terms our racial disparities and injustices, and in the poetry of that age. As Sidney Alexander explains in the poem “Prologue to Bolivar,” originally published in the autumn of 1944, we must “Roll back the dusty scroll, for no man lives / without his past: no man moves alone: / No man skates on time as if it were a film, but sees below him when the waters clear / the endless processionals of the dead.”

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Kestrel – Spring 2016

The Spring 2016 issue of Kestrel, a journal of literature and art out of Fairmont State University in West Virginia, includes a broad selection of poetry, an entertaining collection of short stories, and a fascinating group of art works. I know, that sounds like a pretty clichéd opening; the content, however, does not permit using novel exaggeration and false praise. It’s just good work that needs noting quickly and energetically. The work is definitely energetic.

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The Louiseville Review Celebrates 40 Years

louisville reviewThe Louisville Review celebrates 40 years of continuous publishing with its Fall 2016 issue. In her Editor’s Note, Sena Jeter Naslund writes, “When I first held the newborn literary magazine in my hands, with great joy and satisfaction in 1976, and placed it alone, upright and wobbly on my office shelf, I thought, Someday there will be a whole row of this journal. That vision has come true, thanks to the initial support of the University of Louisville, the diligence of Karen J. Mann and myself in fundraising and cost-cutting, and to the generous continuing support of both the magazine and our Fleur-de-Lis Press by Spalding University. I thank these institutions, and Karen, the writers who have contributed their work to these eighty issues, and the enthusiastic readers over the last forty years.” Thank you TLR and congratulations!

Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week

fieldJorge Mayet’s De Mis Vivos y Mis Muertos (2008, electrical wire, paper, acrylics, fabric) is featured on the cover of the poetry journal Field‘s fall 2016 issue. Inside, readers can find a symposium on the work of C.D. Wright, with essays by Jenny Goodman, Laura Kasischke, Pamela Alexander, Sharon Olds, Kazim Ali, and Stephen Burt.
river teethThis fall 2016 cover of River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative features the photography of David FitzSimmons, “Sweet Gum and Moon, Ashland, Ohio.”
the gettysburg reivewIn keeping with what seems to be a ‘tree’ theme, this acrylic on panel by Eric Green, entitled “Pole,” is just sample of the kinds of stark yet lush images included in his full-color portfolio inside The Gettysburg Review, winter 2016.

Books :: 2016 WWPH Fiction Prize Winner

strivers robert j williamsAt the beginning of the month, Washington Writers’ Publishing House published the winner of the 2016 Fiction Prize: Strivers and Other Stories by Robert J. Williams.

From the publisher:

Set between the 1920s and the present day, Strivers and Other Stories explores a range of African-American and Southern voices reflecting characters striving towards their versions of the American dream. In 13 stories, we meet teachers and doctors, train porters and factory workers, soldiers and musicians; mothers, fathers, children and spouses; mentors and mentees. With a mix of humor and heart, satire and sentiment, this collection captures their everyday struggles for better lives and their hopes for promising futures.

Learn more at the publisher’s website. 

Books :: Fall 2016 Book Award Winners

The fall season seems to be flying by, so let’s hit pause to look back at the award-winning books published in the past few months.

Back in September, Truman State University Press published Daughter, Daedalus by Alison D. Moncrief Bromage, winner of the 2016 T. S. Eliot Prize Winner. Jennifer Clement, contest judge, calls the collection “both original and very often masterful,” with an “elevated High Church intention [ . . . ] that T. S. Eliot would have recognized.” Copies are available digitally and in print at the press’s website.

Also published in September was the winner of Southeast Missouri State University Press’s Nilsen Prize for a First Novel: Rules for Lying by Anne Corbitt. Rules for Lying is a timely novel that explores the accusations and characters involved in an alleged rape, and how the families and the town they live in react, incriminate, and take sides. More information is available at the publisher’s website.

Moving on to October, Allegra Hyde’s Of This New World, winner of the John Simmons Short Fiction Award, was released. Judge Bennet Simms calls it “an ambitious and memorable debut.” In twelve stories, Hyde writes with a mix of lyricism humor, and masterful detail. Check out the University of Iowa Press website for more information.

And finally, Josh Rathkamp won the 2016 Georgetown Review Press Poetry Manuscript Contest with his collection A Storm to Close the Door. Terrance Hayes calls the collection stunning with poems that “are often quick-witted and charming, but they never shy away from their meditations and quotidian American blues.” SPD has A Storm to Close the Door available for purchase.

Books :: 2015 Noemi Press Poetry & Fiction Award Winners

uncountry bone confetti blog postThis past October, Noemi Press released the winner of the 2015 Noemi Press Poetry Award: Bone Confetti by Muriel Leung. Leung’s first poetry collection, Bone Confetti  reveals “there are two types of survivors at the end of the world.” Ash confetti “floats between funeral and parade, wedding and hell. When all that is left is the terrible residue of memory, lovers and ghosts try their best to make do [ . . . ] in an attempt to fashion a new sense of humanity.” Check out the Noemi Press website for more information and copies.

Looking ahead to December, the 2015 Winner of the Noemi Press Fiction Award will be released. Uncountry: a mythology by Yanara Friedland. The novel is “a collection of narratives that aim to expand creative pathways into historical space, particularly histories of migration and displacement.” Divided into four sections, each section explores “The gaps bweteen ‘remembered’ official history and the more unreliable spaces of private memory and unspoken unofficial history.” Copies of Uncountry are available for pre-order at the Noemi Press website.

[Quotes from SPD website]

Books :: Pint-Size Publications First Book

proficiency in billiards lance masonPint-Size Publications, publisher of literary magazine Sport Literate, introduces their very first nonfiction, single-author book: A Proficiency in Billiards: Reflections from a Well-Traveled Life by Lance Mason. Mason first came to the editors’ attention with his essay “In the Lair of the Red Dragon,” published in an issue of Sport Literate earlier in the year.

A Proficiency in Billiards, Mason’s first essay collection, takes readers from his home base in South California where he stood “eyewitness to pool hustlers and drag racers in the 1960s” to travels throughout the world, including New Zealand, Ireland, Greece, and Yugoslavia, just to name a few. Readers are invited along Mason’s travels, all from the comfort of their homes.

Keep an eye on Pint-Size Publications to see what they’ll have on tap next, and head to their website to order copies of A Proficiency in Billiards.

Books :: The World According to Star Wars

world according to star wars cass sunsteinAuthor Cass R. Sunstein introduces his 2016 book, The World According to Star Wars (HarperCollins) humbly enough:

I’m going to be covering some diverse topics here, including the nature of human attachment, whether timing is everything, how to rank the seven Star Wars movies, why Martin Luther King Jr. was a conservative, how boys need their mothers, the workings of the creative imagination, the fall of Communism, the Arab Spring, changing understandings of human rights, whether The Force Awakens was a triumph or a disappointment, the limits of human attention, and whether Star Wars really is better than Star Trek.

With the exception of that last point, which I still find open to debate, one of the joys of this book is that Mr. Sunstein accomplishes the tasks he sets out in a quick reading, well-documented short book that combines playful romps of unabashed Star Wars fandom with high level reviews of politics, psychology, sociology, behavioral economics, and film critique.  The book is engaging for nerfherders and Jedi Knights, alike.

[Guest post by Chris Curtis. Chris teaches psychology at Delta College: www.delta.edu/clcurtis.]

Glimmer Train July/August 2016 Fiction Open

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.

Mark FishmanFirst place: Mark Fishman [pictured], of Paris, France, wins $3000 for “Songwad Road.” His story will be published in Issue 100 of Glimmer Train Stories.

Second place: Jessica Johannesson Gaitán, of Bath, England, wins $1000 for “Bad Language.”

Third place: Jill Rosenberg, of Montclair, NJ, wins $600 for “16 Days of Glory.”

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

Deadline soon approaching for the Short Story Award for New Writers: November 10
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.

American Life in Poetry :: Emilie Buchwald

American Life in Poetry: Column 606
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Emilie Buchwald was the co-publisher and founding editor of Milkweed Editions in Minneapolis going on forty years ago, and that press grew up to become one of the finest literary publishers in our country. Today she edits children’s books at Gryphon Press, which she also founded. Here’s a lovely remembrance from her new book, The Moment’s Only Moment, from Nodin Press.

My Mother’s Music

emilie buchwaldIn the evenings of my childhood,
when I went to bed,
music washed into the cove of my room,
my door open to a slice of light.

I felt a melancholy I couldn’t have named,
a longing for what I couldn’t yet have said
or understood but still
knew was longing,
knew was sadness
untouched by time.

Sometimes
the music was a rippling stream
of clear water rushing
over a bed of river stones
caught in sunlight.

And many nights
I crept from bed
to watch her
swaying where she sat
overtaken by the tide,
her arms rowing the music
out of the piano.

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. 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 Emilie Buchwald, “My Mother’s Music,” from The Moment’s Only Moment, (Nodin Press, 2016). Poem reprinted by permission of Emilie Buchwald and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2016 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.

Why Don’t We Say What We Mean?

Lawrence Raab poses the question Why Don’t We Say What We Mean? as the title of his newest book. To answer the question, he dissects various poems and comments on their authors. The title was pulled from a 1931 essay by Robert Frost called “Education by Poetry: A Meditative Monologue.” Frost wrote: “People say, ‘Why don’t you say what you mean?’ We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets.”

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Lost Words

Those who have read Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog might see echoes in Nicola Gardini’s Lost Words in that this later novel has main characters of a concierge, here called a “door woman” and an adolescent, here a thirteen-year-old. Chino/Luca is the doorwoman’s son and like in Barbery’s book, he finds inspiration for his intellect in someone living in the apartment building, here on the outskirts of Milan instead of Barbery’s Paris. Lost Words, however, is a darker view of the apartment dwellers and the labors of the narrator’s mother, which makes the unusual inspirers who enter the scene that much more exciting. In addition, the contrast between the intellectual newcomers and the backbiting and hypocritical tenants makes for drama and humor.

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The Myth of Water

To undertake a cycle of poems on the life of Helen Keller is to throw oneself at an interesting poetic problem: how to capture the perspective of one who lived in a wholly different perceptual world than most other people. To be sure, there are plenty of fine collections on the experiences of disability—Nick Flynn’s startlingly original Blind Huber comes to mind—but Helen Keller is a singular historical figure who, in our cultural imagination, bears a particular burden as the standout radical subject who, as if through magic, was able to speak from beyond an impassable veil.

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The Grass Labyrinth

Charlotte Holmes’s The Grass Labyrinth weaves an equally heartwarming and heartbreaking path through the intertwined lives of its characters. It explores the consequences of passion and the difficulties of an artistic life. The stories span thirty years and the consequences we read about unfold through generations of one painter’s wives, lovers, and children.

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The Borrowed World

The title of Emily Leithauser’s debut poetry collection, The Borrowed World, hints at the theme of impermanence that runs throughout the book. Whether it is the fleeting nature of childhood in the poem “Chest of Dolls” or the dissolution of a marriage in “Haiku for a Divorce,” Leithhauser gestures toward the price we pay as finite beings living in a world that is on loan to us. What is borrowed must eventually be returned. There is sadness in this, but sweetness and nostalgia too, for such fleeting moments of experience can be treasured precisely because they cannot be repeated.

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They Could Live with Themselves

They Could Live with Themselves by Jodi Paloni is a strong collection of short stories linked by the rural town of Stark Run, Vermont. The stories range in point of view and voice, from first-person perspectives of children to third-person point of view closely following a grandfather. Each story is self-contained yet enhanced by the others so that the collection ends with a clear picture of the New England town. Full of quiet tensions and unforgettable characters, Paloni’s collection presses into the daily conflicts and triumphs of the characters in ways that are both familiar and new.

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Deep Singh Blue

One of the gifts of great literature is to allow us passage into the lives of others unnoticed. Such is the case with Ranbir Singh Sidhu’s novel, Deep Singh Blue. His story takes us to a small town in northern California during the mid-1980s. It is the type of community where anyone “different” is sometimes cruelly focused upon. Being neither Hispanic nor African American, Sidhu’s hero, Deep Singh, is Indian. He is different from the usual different, which does not make his sixteen-year-old life any easier. He must come of age in a geography and culture very different from his land of origin, with parents who unabashedly refuse to adapt to their new country. Theirs is still a land of arranged marriages and caste systems and Deep Singh is plunged between two worlds.

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Sixty

If you’re lucky, you’ll get to experience your 60th birthday. Ian Brown did in 2014 and decided to begin a year of journaling he turned into a memoir titled, Sixty: A Diary of My Sixty-First Year. Here’s what he wrote on February 4th, his birthday: “At sixty [ . . . ] you are suddenly looking into the beginning of the end, the final frontier where you will either find the thing your heart has always sought, which you have never been able to name, or you won’t.” Then in May he wrote: “Lying in bed, I couldn’t overcome the fear that I have wasted my life, wrecked it, spoiled it.”

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Whiskey, Etc.

Forever keen on unearthing the wisdom within a tale, I embarked upon the reading of Whiskey, Etc. with the intention of gleaning some unmitigated truth, some absolutist’s insight into the complexity of the human condition. I even hoped to contain the elements of Sherrie Flick’s style within a box that was compact enough to easily carry. Yet, whatever it was that I deemed certain within one story dissolved the moment I turned the page to begin the next. The tangible was superseded by the ethereal; literality became symbolism. Just when I determined that Flick had set out to present snapshots of a single moment in time, unencumbered by the weight of meaning, I’d encounter a piece laden with melancholy or reminiscence. Plot was usurped by character, then character by plot.

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The Analyst

The person referenced in the title and pages of Molly Peacock’s book of poetry The Analyst is Joan Workman Stein, a New York practitioner who had a stroke in 2012 and later was able to resume her love of painting. Over a span of close to 40 years, the initial therapist-patient relationship between Peacock and Stein became a close and enduring friendship.

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Glimmer Train July/August 2016 Very Short Fiction Award

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.

Zehra Nabi1st place goes to Zehra Nabi of Baltimore, MD [Photo credit: Summer Greer], who wins $2000 for “Cow Killer.” Her story will be published in Issue 101 of Glimmer Train Stories. This will be the first print publication of her fiction.

2nd place goes to Mark Watkins of Lawrenceville, GA, who wins $500 for “What I Know About Where I’m From.”

3rd place goes to Hank Snelgrove of Nordland, WA, who wins $300 for “Fire in the Foam Bin.”

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

Deadline soon approaching for the Short Story Award for New Writers: November 10
This competition is held three times a year 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.

The Bitter Oleander Features Katherine Sánchez Espano

katherinesanchezespanoThe newest issue of The Bitter Oleander: A magazine of contemporary international poetry and short fiction, features an interview with and a selection of poetry from Katherine Sánchez Espano.

Espano received her MFA from the University of Florida and has taught English and creative writing classes at several colleges. Her poetry has appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Green Mountains Review, The Bitter Oleander, Sycamore Review, and Spoon River Poetry Review, among others. Her work has also been included in the American Diaspora: Poetry of Displacement and Like Thunder: Poets Respond to Violence in America anthologies. In 2015, she published her first book of poetry, The Sky’s Dustbin, the winner of the 2014 Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Book Award.

She is also a poet with the We Are You Project, an international organization “created to inform, enlighten, stimulate, and educate the public on the many facets and realities of Latino identity as it emerged over the past four centuries and continues to evolve in this, the 21st Century” through art exhibits, documentaries, poetry, lectures, and seminars.

Read an excerpt from the interview and one of her poems here.

New Lit on the Block :: Heather

heather 2016“Heather is your friend. Heather is your girlfriend. Heather is your girlfriend’s girlfriend. Heather is leaning against the wall at your neighbor’s house party. Heather is next to you in bed, naked.”

Enticed? I certainly was, which is why I contacted Kelsey Mars, founder and sole editor of Heather, a new online indie literary publication, to learn more about this nakedness next to me in bed.

First – the name. “Heather,” Kelsey tells me, “is a unique feminine name, as well as being a shade of purple and a color generally associated with alternative sexuality. I wanted Heather as a publication to embody all aspects of this, to draw up images of bad girls in pleated skirts and the back row of the movie theater.”

Publishing fiction, non-fiction and poetry as well as digital art, photography and film, readers can determine whether or not the content stands up to its namesake. The free, online PDF features poems “about subjects that might make you uncomfortable,” Kelsey warns, as well as “erotica, film to chew on, stories about robots, flash fiction to make you cry a single diamond tear.”

While new to this venture, Kelsey is a seasoned literary professional. “I’ve been published in Huffington Post: Queer Voices, Thought Catalog, Miscellany, Meat For Tea and am upcoming in Painted Bride. You can read my original screenplay, Gotham Summer, as I tweet it out: @gothamsummer. I studied Media Theory and Communications at the College of Charleston, where I was first introduced to flash fiction writing. Since then, I’ve written two novels and more poems and flash fiction than is healthy for one person. In the light of day, I work on the Customer Experience team at Casper Sleep and preach the good word of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic: Never ask your art to pay for you.”

While involved in so much of her own writing,I asked Kelsey the motivation for adding this responsibility. “So many of us get rejection after rejection, often without knowing why. So many voices go unheard in this industry and it’s a damn shame. I started Heather to publish the weird stuff, the stuff that other publications might not see as ‘premium’ or literary enough. I wanted experimental stuff, the weirdest thing someone has ever written. I wanted a home for that stuff.”

Writers looking to home their works should know that Kelsey manages submissions on a rolling basis, accepting works as they fit the arc of each issue, offering the work more than one shot, but releasing it if it hasn’t found its fit after two issue cycles. Heather accepts simultaneous submissions, which keeps the editorial process timely.

Already, Heather has been made home by authors such as Maggie Cooper, whose first published pieces of fiction appeared in Heather and, as Kelsey notes: “totally blew my mind”; Monique Quintana, a fiction editor herself “whose shit haunts my dreams” Kelsey says; and Kirsten Bledsoe, a filmmaker whom Kelsesy knew prior to Heather, who has made both a feature length series about queer women of color and a prodigious ode to Marilyn Monroe’s poetry (which Heather published).

The future for Heather is boundless: “I want to go to Mars, dude,” Kelsey tells me with an edge of seriousness. “I want to see what’s outside of our solar system. Send me poems, fiction, art about that stuff. The stuff that we don’t even know yet. Let’s go to uncharted territory and live to brag about it.” Back down on earth, Kelsey hopes to publish Heather three times this year and keep the publication going well beyond that.

In addition to the regular publishing cycle, Kelsey is planning a special holday issue. The publication is not holiday themed, “but rather what you actually want to be reading when you’re avoiding your family over the holidays,” Kelsey says. “I’d like to publish more creative nonfiction in this issue, poetry about our fears, things like that.” Submissions accepted via Submittable; deadline November 27 to be published December 11.

As a final word, Kelsey encourages writers: “The most important thing I want people to take away from Heather is that you can do it to. You can publish the stuff YOU love. And if more of us do that, more of us will realize we’re someone’s favorite thing.”

NER German Poetry in Translation

new england reviewCrossing Through the Present: German Poetry in Translation is a special section in the current issue of Middlebury College’s New England Review (v37 n3). “The selection of writing from Germany assembled here,” writes Carolyn Kuebler, “came about as the result of both intention and accident—NER ’s ongoing intention to offer an inspiring, provocative range of literary voices, and the happy accident of our own Ellen Hinsey’s living for a time in Berlin. While there, Ellen read a particularly intriguing essay about poetry, notebook-keeping, and Hannah Arendt, and she suggested it would be worth translating for NER. . . She also met the essay’s author, the writer Marie Luise Knott, who offered to share her familiarity with the scene to help us choose a selection of new German poetry. Add to that a call for submissions, a series of meetings in Berlin cafés, and several time-zone-jumping phone calls, and the result is that this issue contains not only a multitude of voices from the English-speaking world, as always, but also a multitude of voices from the German-speaking world. They meet here in our pages.”

Two works, “Zakid’s Delicatessen, Bremen” by Peter Waterhouse (trans. Iain Galbraith) and “on classification in language, a feeble reader” by Uljana Wolf (trans. Sophie Seita), are available to read on the NER website along with Kuebler’s Editor’s Note for this issue.