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!
With a plethora of online magazines at our fingertips, it’s hard to know where to begin reading. Sometimes it’s best to go with something small and easy to digest, something like the quarterly Spartan magazine. Publishing works only 1500 words or less, and only three pieces per issue, Spartan offers readers engaging writing without requiring tons of commitment.
Travel. I can’t think of a lovelier thought as, here in the northeastern US, I look out the window to see snow blasting by with below-zero wind chills and FEMA storm warnings chirping through my phone. I can hunker down indoors, curl up with my iPod and a cup of hot tea, and travel the globe and the deepest inner reaches of emotion by reading Editor Sally Long’s selections in the December issue of Allegro.
After reading this issue of Epoch produced by Cornell University, it is clear why many stories published here will later be accepted for compilations like The O. Henry Prize Stories or The Best American Short Stories. This issue of Epoch contained many interesting short stories, several poems, and a beautifully written essay.
As someone who truly enjoys reading short stories, American Short Fiction literary magazine provides a real treat. I could not put it down, too eager to read each new short story. This Fall 2016 issue celebrates 25 years and, as a commemoration, the front and back covers are covered with the names of every author that has been included in its 63 issues.
The Spring 2016 issue of Mid-American Review from Bowling Green State University is a serious jackpot for readers. Not only does this issue include the regular quality content, but it also features a translation chapbook with poems from Slovenian poet Meta Kusar. And this issue includes the winners of the 2015-2016 James Wright Poetry and Sherwood Anderson Fiction Awards. Looking back through notes, I’m aware that the main phrase for such a collection is “and then . . .”
“autumn / taking a dirt road / to the end of it ” —from A Dictionary of Haiku (1992), Jane Reichhold, 1937-2016. The fall issue of Modern Haiku contains a tribute in memory of Jane Reichhold, “a prolific author, editor, and translator” who made her mark as a writer and scholar of the haiku form.
It may not seem that far a stretch for a literary journal published at Mississippi Valley State College to theme an issue on the Mississippi Delta, but indeed, since its inauguration in 2000, Valley Voices has been a publication renown for presenting a global perspective of thought and voice. Past issues have focused on New York School and Diaspora, Michael Anania, Perspectives on African American Literature, Poetic Translation in a Global Context, and issues on southern writers. So, indeed, it is a ‘special issue’ of Valley Voices when the content is fully dedicated to the Mississippi Delta. Editor John Zheng writes in his introduction to issue 16.2, “The Mississippi Delta isn’t a region where tourists can easily seek out natural beauty as they do in Yellowstone or in the Smoky Mountains; its beauty remains to be discovered with a little exploration. . . . We run this special issue for literary or artistic expression, for doumenting the region, for people deeply rooted here or having moved elsewhere. It is hopeful that these voices, literary or visual, will tell interesting stories.” See a full list of the issue’s content here.
Arroyo Literary Review recently announced an exciting addition to their website. A new Excerpts page has arrived with selections from past issues now available as PDFs, and with more on the way. Read six pieces from the current Spring 2016 issue, or travel back in time a few years for Pushcart Prize nominees and other noteworthy work. Writers considering submitting to the magazine can now get an idea of what the editors are looking for without a physical copy. There’s a lot there to keep both readers and writers busy as more winter weather rolls in.
This week’s theme for covers seems to be ‘the fantastical from the literal.’ Philippe Pirrip‘s “Curved Plan” is featured on the cover of Zone 3 Fall 2016. Pripp describes his artistic approach as “a visual play of identities” and “a resistance to conform to literal figurations of what is and what has been depicted as being queer.”
Of the cover of Winter/Spring 2017 The Southampton Revi Editor-in-Chief Lou Ann Walker comments: “Because this issue’s theme is the muse, all of the art in this issue was chosen for its emphasis on story and the fantastical places imagination can go. Take, for example, the cover, ‘Stopping by Woods,’ created by Corinne Geertsen. How did that ballerina in her tutu come to be juxtaposed with that extraterrestrial spaceship?” Indeed.
The Chattahoochee Review Fall2016/Winter2017 cover art “War Bonnets: Never Out of Style for Long” by Lucy Julia Hale is representative of her artistic approach, which she describes: “I am drawn to see deeply into paper artifacts / mass-produced photographic images of our interiors and exteriors – / where we have lived.”
“Why our continuing attraction to Greece?” writes Keith Taylor in his introduction to the newest issue of Michigan Quarterly Review. “There is something in that small country out there on the edge of Europe that doesn’t feel like the rest of the continent. Part of the attraction is certainly to the very different modern history, and to a landscape shaped by human use yet still oddly wild. . . . And, at the risk of belaboring the obvious, we continue to be drawn to Greece by the weight and presence of the classical tradition. We have tried to expand our canon and assume the influence of other traditions, but whether we like it or not, Western ideas continue to reflect the ideas first thought on those dry hills.”
Michigan Quarterly Review Fall 2016 presents Returning to Greece: A special section of poetry on Greece with work by Lauren K. Alleyne, Christopher Bakken, Natalie Bakopoulos, Nickole Brown, Jessica Jacobs, Adrianne Kalfopoulou, and Allison Wilkins.
With its Fall 2016 issue, The Wallace Stevens Journal celebrates 40 years of publishing scholarly articles, poems, book reviews, news, and bibliographies. In his Editor’s Column, “The Wallace Stevens Journal in the Age of Electronic Reproduction,” Eeckhout is able to quantify the popularity, and correlating usefulness, of the journal being made accessible via Project Muse five years ago. Sifting through massive amounts of data, Eeckhout is able to distill numerous points of meaning and their impact on the journal’s continuing success. What works have been most downloaded, from which institutions – and finding among the names Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda and North Hennepin Community College, which are the top-most universities downloading, the popularity of specific issues (often themed), full-issue download vs. table of contents only, and more. Eeckhout comments on the how this data provides insight into, not only the world’s continued interest in Stevens’s work, but in the impact of The Wallace Stevens Journal in providing a place for a community of like-minded people to share their interests, explore them, and perhaps discover them for the first time. Four decades of worthwile effort we hope to see continued long into the future.
With their Winter/Spring 2017 issue, Gulf Coast celebrates its 30th anniversary. “Preparing for this milesone issue,” write the editors, “we too tracked the past, interviewing Phillip Lopate and exploring the works of Donal Barthleme. We lingered over Barthelme’s collage. They are inventive and uncanny, encouraging you to look closer and see differently. In that spirit, Digital Editor, Michele Nereim, embarked on the project of creating the small art-pieces featured throuhout this issue, scouring the Library of Congress digital archives, combining and refashioning old images so they might say something new, connect to now. Like how the wedding of unfamiliar words can forge new ideas. Or bring to light what’s already there.” Readers can enjoy these contributions along with a full content of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, interviews – including a Q&A with Phillip Lopate – and the section “Art Lies: Art & Critical Art Writing.”
Thrice Publishing, from the editors of literary magazine Thrice Fiction, have published their first book: Our Dolphin by Joel Allegretti. In an interview with Thrice Publishing’s Editor-at-Large RW Spryszak, Allegretti discusses the inspiration for the novella, naming it a tribute to a few of his literary obsessions, including the works of Gabriel García Marquez, Jorge Luis Borges, Paul Bowles, William S. Burroughs, and Fellini.
In Our Dolphin, Emilio saves a dolphin that’s trapped on the beach, an act of kindness the dolphin does not forget. To learn more, check out the Thrice Publishing website for the full interview and ways to pick up some copies of the debut collection.
The most recent issue of Concho River Review: Literature from Texas and Beyond features a photograph by Tim L. Vasquez, Ziva-Gato Impressions, that provides me with a ray of warmth during just the start of our coldest months of winter here in the north.
With cover art by Ric Best, the color scheme of issue 19 of Skidrow Penthouse is another kind of warming image – one that invites readers into what Editors Stephanie Dickinson and Rob Cook consider “our best issue yet.”
The reproduction can’t quite seem to do justice to the vibrancy of the blue, red, and orange hues on the Fall 2016 cover art of Crazyhorse. “City” by W. Case Jernigan provides a unique perspective, as does the content of this publication. A full list of contents for the current issue can be found here.
Buy a broadside; plant a tree.
I can’t imagine a more unique approach to both printing poetry to share with the world and planting trees to renew the planet. It is the creative genius of Under a Warm Green Linden, an online journal of poetry and poetics which publishes poetry (including audio recordings of poets reading their work), interviews with poets, reviews of poetry books, and poetry broadsides. Reviews and interviews are published throughout the year while the poetry journal featuring 24-30 poets is published twice a year, on summer and winter solstices.
Continue reading “New Lit on the Block :: Under a Warm Green Linden”
Next month, readers can look forward to the publication of two award-winning books: Small Crimes by Andrea Jurjević and When He Sprang From His Bed, Staggered Backward, And Fell Dead, We Clung Together With Faint Hearts, And Mutely Questioned Each Other by Christopher Kang.
Andrea Jurjević won Anhinga Press’s 2015 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry with Small Crimes, which begins during the early 90s, the speaker living their adolescence during the Croatian War, and then moves on to post-war years and life in America. Judge C. G. Hanzlicek says the collection “is often dark but just as often beautiful” with language that “crackles with energy.” Learn more at the publisher’s website.
Christopher Kang’s When He Sprang From His Bed . . . is a daring book that challenges on every read. Made of 880 stories, the collection won the Green Mountains Review Book Prize, selected by Sarah Manguso. From the publisher: “Each story contains a world, tilted on its own axis, strange, remarkable and bursting with heart.” Read more about the book and Kang at SPD.
Mudish 19 features the winner and honorable mentions for their 12th Mudfish Poetry Prize judged by Edward Hirsch:
Winner
“Wallis-Wallace” by Myra Malkin
1st Honorable Mention
“Letteromancy” by Mark Wagenaar
2nd Honorable Mention
“Visiting Emily” by Michael Miller
A full list of finalists can be found here.
“The very concept of food, the physical presence of it, the way it triggers all of the senses is a central part or live, human and otherwise. Whether abundant or scarce it occupies a part of our daily lives. The pleasure of it, the struggle for it, the fast from it, the feast in it, the joy of it, the worry for it, the nourishment from it, the gift of it, and sadly, in these times, the poison of it. It is, simply put, the inescapable commonality for all living things.” So opens Guest Editor Matthew Shenoda’s introduction to the Food Portfolio in the Winter 2016 issue of Prairie Schooner.
“In the following pages of this portfolio, each of the contributors approaches the topic with stunning attention in an exploration of the nuanced realities of food and the roles it plays in our lives. . . . To be sure, this topic is largely unending, woven so deeply into our very existence that we may never have enough to say about it. But here you will find a small sampling of the myriad ways we can understand the food of life through the food of language.”
Authors whose works are featured in the portfolio include Craig Santos Perez, Uoumna Chlala, Evie Shockley, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Quincy Troupe, Chris Abani, LeAnne Howe, Aimee Nuzhukumatathil, Patricia Smith and Afaa Michael Weaver among others.
In 1984, Phillip Lopate, then 41, recorded his mother, then 66, tell her life story for 20 hours over three months. He then put the cassette tapes in a shoe box for three decades before he transcribed them. A Mother’s Tale, is the result of this project. Lopate writes in his prologue, “I entered a triangular dialogue involving my mother, my younger self, and the person I am today.” In the final chapter, he summarizes his mother’s life and how his project fits into the larger scheme of America.
The Mysterious Islands and Other Stories is a collection of stories that feels like dream within a dream within a nightmare. A.W. DeAnnuntis uses eloquent language and out of this realm imagery to give life to a world that that skirts back and forth between reality and imagination. The stories in this collection will leave you wondering if you can trust the sanctity of your own mind.
If you are looking for a contemporary, kooky, relatable read, look no further than Alice Kaltman’s Staggerwing. This collection of short stories is reminiscent of that ‘I can’t remember why I walked into the room’ feeling, something everyone can relate to. The characters are original and full of life, while also exhibiting off-the-wall characteristics. Staggerwing will have you barking out a laugh as its characters attempt to look graceful while walking across a tightrope.
Whether we view our lifetimes as a series of clearly delineated chapters, isolated incidents, developmental stages or something akin to a tangled ball of fraying yarn, the journey from our youth to the ripe weariness of middle age somehow seems to leave us mystified when we come to consider how we got from a place of such innocence and naivete to, well, here, in this room where we lie, wracked with disappointment, betrayal, disillusionment and an all-too-hefty dose of loneliness. We tend to remember the important scenes in which we were featured within the great cosmic film of life, but the connections elude us, as though the imprints from our experiences are processed only after the screen fades to black.
Until picking up Julie Hensley’s Landfall: A Ring of Stories, I had never heard linked short story collections described as a “ring.” But Hensley’s book is exactly that, and it makes me hungry for more collections of stories so craftily connected. Taut with tension and carefully ordered, the stories follow characters as they move in and out of Conrad’s Fork, Kentucky. Landfall: A Ring of Stories makes good on its titular promise by leading the reader in a complete circle, back to the family farm where the collection begins.
Gleah Powers counts being an actor, model, bartender and teacher of alternative therapies among her many careers. Recently, she’s chosen to add fiction writer to the list with her first novella, Edna & Luna. Powers’s writing style is peppy and easily readable as she tells the story of two diverse women whose lives intersect in the American Southwest.
When Roselee Blooston’s husband Jerry Mosier started working as a media consultant in Dubai, she worried he might come to harm. But she never expected her 53-year-old husband to be brought down not by a threat from without, but by an aneurism in his brain.
The 2016 Gult Coast Prize winners can be found in the Winter/Spring 2017 issue of Gulf Coast:
Fiction selected by selected by Ayana Mathis
“Destiny” by Mike Alberti
Nonfiction (Essay) selected by David Shields
“Witness Trees” by Cassidy Norvell Thompson
[pictured]
Poetry selected by Rick Barot
“Calisthenics” by Brandon Rushton
Winning author bios and a full list of honorable mentions can be read here.
Beginning January 2017, you will no longer see the familiar blue cover of The Sewanee Review on your bookstore or library shelves or in the mail. The fall 2016 issue features an Homage to George Core [pictured], editor of The Sewanee Review since 1973, overseeing the continuation of one of the longest-continuously published periodicals in the United States – dating back to 1892. Robert Benson offers an introduction to the selection of essays and notes in honor of Core’s retirement, with contributing authors including Dawn Potter, Floyd Skloot, Donald Hall, Jayanta Mahapatra, Sam Pickering, Wendell Berry, B. H. Fairchild, Kathryn Starbuck, Gladys Swan, and many more.
Author Adam Ross has assumed editorial responsibility for the publication and plans to roll out a number of changes beginning in 2017. These include moving away from the traditional blue-covered publication to a cover that will vary with each issue, photo content inside the publication, and more online content for subscribers and purchasers to supplement the print copy. The staff has also expanded from three to five, and submissions are now being accepted online via Submittable.
Readers can most certainly depend upon the quality of the publication to remain high end, with content enhanced from contributors with Sewanee connections – both graduates and writers affiliated with the School of Letters and Sewanee Writers’ Conference.
Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their September/October Short Story Award for New Writers. 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 greater than 5000. The next Short Story Award competition will take place in January: Short Story Award for New Writers. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.
1st place goes to Toby Wallis [pictured] of Haverhill in Suffolk, United Kingdom, who wins $2500 for “The Sudden End of Everything.” His story will be published in Issue 100 of Glimmer Train Stories. This will be his first publication.
2nd place goes to L. E. Rodia of Allston, Massachusetts, who wins $500 for “Always Arriving.”
3rd place goes to Josh Randall of Las Cruces, New Mexico, who wins $300 for “Pump Head.”
A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found here.
Deadline soon approaching for Family Matters: January 2
Glimmer Train hosts this competition once a year, and first place has been increased to $2500 plus publication in the journal, and 10 copies of that issue. It’s open to all writers for stories about family of any configuration. Most submissions to this category run 1000-5000 words, but can go up to 12,000. Click here for complete guidelines.
Southeast Missouri State University Press announces the winner of the third annual Cowles Poetry Book Prize, held in honor of Vern Cowles: James Crews of Shaftsbury, VT with his winning manuscript Telling My Father.
Readers may recognize James Crews’s work which has appeared in Ploughshares, Raleigh Review, Crab Orchard Review and The New Republic, among other journals. No stranger to writing award-winning books, his first poetry collection The Book of What Stays won the 2010 Prairie Schooner Book Prize and received a Foreword Magazine Books of the Year Award. Telling My Father will be published by Southeast Missouri State Press.
Winners of the 16th annual Carve Magazine Raymond Carver Contest can be found both in the Fall 2016 print issue of Carve as well as online here. Guest Judge Caitlin Horrocks selected the following works:
Winners of the 2016 Raymond Carver Contest
1st place
“And It Is My Fault” by Janet Towle
2nd place
“Come Down to the Water” by Emily Flamm
3rd place
“A Working Theory of Stellar Collapse” by Sam Miller Khaikin
Editor’s Choice
Selected by Anna Zumbahlen
“Mostly Sunny (With a Slight Chance of Rain)” by Chelsea Catherine
Editor’s Choice
Selected by Claire Schadler
“A Wave Breaking” by Phoebe Driscoll
Ohio State University Press has announced Mad River Books, their new literary imprint. Mad River Books will publish diverse and creative literary writing that’s both artistic and daring as they push boundaries, explore uncharted areas, and generate new ideas.
One of the first books under this imprint is Don’t Come Back by Lina María Ferreira Cabeza-Vanegas, who won the 2016 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. The collection of lyrical and narrative essays, experimental translations, and reinterpreted myths explores home, identity, family history, and belonging while examining what it means to feel familiarity but never really feel at home.
Copies of Don’t Come Back are available for pre-order at the Ohio State University Press website, or readers can sign up to be alerted when the book is published without pre-ordering. While at the website, readers can also check out the other books forthcoming from the Mad River Books imprint.
Back in September, we let you know about Zeina Hashem Beck’s prize-winning chapbook 3arabi Song. Fans of Beck’s chapbook, chosen out of 1,720 entries to the 2016 Rattle Chapbook Prize, may also enjoy the chapbooks of the three runners-up: Kill the Dogs by Heather Bell, exploring an overarching metaphor of women fighting dog; Ligatures by Denise Miller, revealing the honesty and depth that is lost when the media reports on murders of black people by police; and Turn Left Before Morning by April Salzano, about the daily struggles when parenting a child with autism.
Subscribers to Rattle received 3arabi Song with their copy of the literary magazine earlier in the year, and then received one of the three runners-up with the latest issue, good motivation for subscribing to magazines.
Submissions to the 2017 Rattle Chapbook Prize are now open until January 15, so consider submitting while you’re picking up copies of last year’s four chosen chapbooks.
Encouraging sophomore- and junior-aged writers around the globe, the annual Kenyon Review’s Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize for Young Writers awards one writer publication and a full scholarship to the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop. Two runners-up receive publication. The Nov/Dec 2016 Kenyon Review features Winner Alyssa Mazzoli, “Death Uses a Lot of Laundry Detergent,” and Runners-Up: Carissa Chen, “Parable,” and “Annalise Lozier “f(x).” Editor at Large Natalie Shapero offers an introductory comments on the poems as well. Each of the works can be read on the Kenyon Review website along with past winning entries. The contest is open annually from Nov 1 – 30. There is no entry fee.
The annual Rattle Poetry Prize is one of the best-known both for its prestige and for its prize. The winner recieves $10,000 plus publication, and ten finalists also receive publication and the chance to be selected by subscribers for the $2000 Reader’s Choice Award (voting takes place December 1, 2016 – February 15, 2017). The Winter 2016 issue of Rattle (#54) includes:
2016 Rattle Poetry Prize Winner
Julie Price Pinkerton, “Veins”
Finalists
Noah Baldino
Ellen Bass
C. Wade Bentley
Rhina P. Espaillat
William Fargason
Ingrid Jendrzejewski
David Kirby
Craig Santos Perez
Emily Ransdell
Patrick Rosal
In addition, six other poets’ works were offered standard publication in future issue: Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, Leila Chatti, Chera Hammons, Liv Lansdale, Christine Potter, and Wendy Videlock.
It is no surprise that the Paterson Literary Review was named the best journal in 2008, and has been in publication since 1979. The journal shares the talents of many amazing poets, prose writers, reviewers, interviewers, and memoir authors. I particularly liked how the poetry section often provides more than one poem from each poet so that the reader can experience a variety of work from each poet. In addition, this issue includes the poems from the 2015 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards.
shufPoetry’s logo represents the work the magazine brings to its audience: colorful graffiti splashed across a computer screen. The Fall 2016 issue brings together a collection of visual and audio work that draws the reader’s eye (and ear) and keeps interest through flashes of color and creative formats.
In this issue of Southern Humanities Review, the editors include a selection of poetry from the 2015 Auburn Witness Poetry contest, held in honor of Jake Adam York. In addition to other poems and short stories, this issue features poems from the winner, the first and second runners-up, and the nine finalists. Each of these poems shares a witness’s perspective on issues like race relations, poverty, and humanity in honor of Jake Adam York, an award-winning poet that focused on the triumphs and tragedies of the Civil Rights movement.
To wrap up 2016, WomenArts Quarterly Journal decided to run an Editors’ Choice issue of the best pieces published in recent years. Among those chosen are two fictions, Midge Raymond’s “Side Effects” and Stephanie Selander’s “The Exchange.” These women couldn’t be more effective in their storytelling.
No one who regularly reads university journals is going to be surprised that the Michigan Quarterly Review contains quality short work from some of the best authors. The Summer 2016, issue is certainly no disappointment. Twelve authors have provided us with the level of work we have come to expect and respect. It is always difficult to select one author’s work over another, especially in a respected collection, so your pardon if I don’t mention everyone.
Recently I was fortunate enough to attend a reading by Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Cunningham (The Hours, The Snow Queen, A Wild Swan and Other Tales). The reading was inspirational not only for the works read but for the Q&A period following. Responding to a question about process and the willingness to pursue writing in spite of setbacks or crises of confidence, Cunningham made clear the importance of writers and their works to the world and how engaging in the pursuit is next door to alchemy. One begins with the same words accessible to everyone and creates something new on a page where there was nothing before. This is what each of the poets represented in this issue of the Columbia Poetry Review have done.
One of the many joys of my high school creative writing class was anticipating the daily writing prompt. Our teacher would surprise us every day with a unique topic to write about for five to ten minutes. The excitement and challenge of responding to these daily writing prompts showed me how skillful writers can take any theme and craft it into a well-written essay or poem. If you also know and appreciate the joy of exercising creative writing muscles, then you would enjoy reading THEMA, the theme-related journal. Every issue of THEMA has a distinct theme, which, according to their website, serves three goals: “One is to provide a stimulating forum for established and emerging literary and visual artists. The second is to serve as source material and inspiration for teachers of creative writing. The third is to provide readers with a unique and entertaining collection of stories, poems, art and photography.” The theme of the autumn 2016 issue is “The Neat Lady and the Colonel’s Overalls,” which was inspired by the poetry editor’s visit to a shopping mall. Talented writers answered the call to this quirky theme and present an offering of exciting short fiction and poetry. Continue reading “THEMA – Autumn 2016”
Judge Gish Jen has selected Farah Ali’s “Heroes” as the 2016 Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction, which is published in the newest issue of Colorado Review (43.3 Fall/Winter 2016). A finalist in other contests, this is Ali’s first published story, and she has a collection of short fiction in the works.
Dylan D. Debelis’s poetry and vignette collection The Garage? Just Torch It. was published earlier this week from Vine Leaves Press. A semi-finalist in the Vine Leaves Annual Vignette Collection Award (submissions currently open until February 28), this collection is, according to the Vine Leaves website, a “rally cry for the healing power of wonder and the disarming catharsis of grief.” Debelis “balances themes of belonging, love, politics, illness, family and forgiveness with stunning imagery and an intense playfulness.” Paperback and e-book copies are available at the publisher’s website.
Published by BkMk earlier in the month was Bonnie Bolling’s The Red Hijab. The poetry collection won the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry, selected by H.L. Hix in 2015, and is written from the perspective of an American poet living in the Middle East. In his foreword to the collection, Hix says it “does not pretend divine perspective, and does not purport to have an answer to the conflicts reported in the news. It does, though, adopt an alternative form of attention and offer an alternative kind of account.” This results in a “more complex portrait than the news presents.” Stop by the publisher’s website to learn more about The Red Hijab.
New from Creative Nonfiction is the monthly True Story, a pocket-sized (4.25×6.75) paperback featuring one long-from essay. Spotlighting one author per month, CNF aims to provide readers the widest possible variety of styles and content in their selections. Steven Kurutz’s Fruitland headlined Issue 1 (39pp; read excerpt here), and just out, Issue 2 delivers Steven Church’s Trip to the Zoo (25pp; read excerpt here). Available in one- and two-year subscriptions, this is a great holiday gift idea for the readers and writers on your list!
The 2016 Terrain.org contest winners and finalists have been awarded with comments from the judges on winning entries available here.
Fiction
Judged by Kate Bernhiemer
Winner: “Varya’s Black Suede Shoes” by Peter Justin Newall
Finalist: “Everest” by Scott Spires
Nonfiction
Judged by Lauret Savoy
Winner: “Geography of the Self” by Catherine Mauk
Finalists: “Life After Life” by DJ Lee and “The Fursuit of Happiness” by Meg Brown
Poetry
Judged by Eamon Grennan
Winner: “Boyhood Trapped Between Water and Blood”, a long poem by William Wright
Finalists: “Smoke and Miracles” by Kevin Miller, three poems by Cecily Parks, and three poems by Katie Prince
The next Terrain.org contest is open for submissions in January 2017. Winners receive $500, finalists $100.
The Winter 2016 (38.2) issue of Indiana Review features the winners and runners up of their annual poetry and fiction contests:
Winner 2015 Fiction Prize
Judge Laura van den Berg
Simon Han, “Be Tanly”
Winner 2016 Poetry Prize
Judge Camille Rankine
Alicia Wright, “His Father’s Wake”
Finalists 2016 Poetry Prize
Anna Leigh Knowles, “The First Year We Lived Underground”
Talin Tahajian, “Hibernation”
In addition to the December 2016 Broadsided Collaboration: Burn Barrel, art by Sarah Van Sanden, poem by Todd Davis, Broadsided Press is offering the community “a powerful collaboration of defiance and hope in the face of difficulty”: NoDAPL Responses Feature.
“We want your writing and art in response to the Action at Standing Rock,” write the editors. “In the past, we’ve provided art for you to spring from. This time, we want to open our submissions to visual artists as well as writers. Guest editor Tiffany Midge will help select final pieces. We waive submission fees for those directly involved in the resistance. Please help share the word.”
Broadsided Press was founded in 2005 and publishes an original literary/artistic collaboration each month for download with the mission, quite simply, “to put literature and art on the streets.”
The 2016 Profane Nonfiction Prize winner is “The End of the World” by Kat Moore. She will receive the $1,000 honorarium and publication in the Winter 2017 Issue 3.
Judge Dinty W. Moore [no relation] comments on the winning work: “‘The End of the World’ is a powerful, intricate, and compelling memoir essay. While other writers might have sensationalized the lurid aspects of heroin use and addiction, Kat Moore uses intimate detail and a matter-of-fact narrative to show just how quotidian the day-to-day life of a junkie can be. Superb writing and voice.”
Contest Finalists: “Full Count” by Devin Kelly; “This is a Test of the Emergency System” by Jill Kolongowski; “Newmom” by Molly Pascal; “Pruritus” by JD Schraffenberger.
Profane is a winter annual print and audio journal of poetry, creative non-fiction, and fiction. Every published poem and piece of prose is recorded in the author’s own voice.
Issue #9 of the monthly online journal The Woven Tale Press features the steel scupture “Facing the Elements Blindfolded” by Ruud Schrijvershof, with addtional images of his works included inside the publication. The Woven Tale Press is a fine arts and literary magazine with the mission to grow Web traffic to noteworthy writers, photographers, and artists.
“Lion” by Cesar Valtierra draws readers in to Issue 6 of The Sounder Review, an online and print jounral of art, short fiction, and creative nonfiction. Based in Upstate New York, TSR “strives to question, redefine, and challenge conventional viewpoints; to usurp the definition of reality and truth.”
The seventh season of Motion Poems has begun. If you’re a ‘series’ watcher and love getting your installment fixes – then tag onto Motion Poems. This season’s installments are being produced in partnership with Cave Canem, “a home for the many voices of African American poetry.” Motion Poems combines works from great poets with outstanding contemporary filmmakers to create free films for everyone to enjoy. This season, Motion Poems will be releasing each new film monthly via Facebook and posting announcements of the release on Twitter and Instagram, so LIKE and FOLLOW Motion Poems to stay up-to-date with the series. You can also sign up for their quaterly newsletter which includes links to the films as well as other news and updates. The first film in the series is the stunning and leave-you-speechless “How Do You Raise a Black Child?” by poet Cortney Lamar Charleston and filmmaker Seyi Peter-Thomas.
