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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!

Books :: The End of Absence

end of absence michael harris“I wanted to remember the absences that online life had replaced with constant content, constant connection.  I’ve remembered what it is to be free in the world, free from the obliterating demands of five hundred ‘contacts.’” 

Author Michael Harris shares this journal entry near the end of an “Analog August” (a self-enforced month without a smartphone and other internet devices) in his 2014 book, The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We’ve Lost in a World of Constant Connection (The Penguin Group).  Mr. Harris examines the loss of absence from the perspective of the digital immigrant generation—those of an age to recall life both before and after the ubiquitous online world.  Do you remember what it was like to cast an empty gaze out the window of the car on a long family trip?  To vaguely wonder what the couple down the street was discussing as you waited for your bus?  Do you remember being alone with your thoughts and just . . . being?  Mr. Harris takes a digital immigrant journey of exploration through our technology-infused society and technology-induced angst, culminating in his own attempt to recapture absence.

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

CutBank 2016 Contest Winners

CutBank Literary Journal #85 features the winners of the 2016 genre contests:

cutbankMontana Prize in Fiction
Selected by Claire Vaye Watkins
“Crick” by Terrance Manning, Jr.

Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction
Selected by Amanda Fortini
“Meme” by Tracy Fuad

Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry
Selected by Oliver De La Paz
Three Poems by J.R. Toriseva

Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week

black warrior reviewI think Black Warrior Review covers make the pick every issue, with Luanne Redeye’s (Self)Image on the Fall/Winter 2016 cover just another example of why. More from her “Genre Paintings 2011 – ” series can be found inside the publication, as well as here on her website.
mssachusetts reviewThe cover of The Massachusetts Review (v57 n3) features Nina Chanel Abney’s What, 2015 (unique ultrachrome pigmented print, acrylic, spray paint on canvas). More of her work is also featured in the publication and can be viewed in her online portfolio here.
subprimal poetry artThe cover of the seventh issue of Subprimal Poetry Art features Three Shadows by Kate Viola, who says the painting was “inspired by the haunting arias often found in operas.” Subprimal Poetry Art is a open access online publication of words with music, words alone, and artwork.

Poem :: Erica Goss

Father Fragments
by Erica Goss

Once a week I wipe the dust from the lid,
tilt the little jar of ashes

and watch them settle. Where
is his giant bark of a laugh,

his hand smacking the table
so hard my plate jumped?

Night after night he voiced
all the parts in Huckleberry Finn. . .

[read the rest and more on gravel]

Craft :: Translating Feelings into Writing

claire rudy foster“Nobody wants to feel everything, just as nobody wants to read work by a writer who is emotionally incontinent. In real life, I may be strung out on anxiety, or aching from bad news, or jubilant, or missing someone I love. However, I know that my job is not to directly transmit those emotions to the reader. My job is to live my life, feel my feelings, and then learn to translate what I’m feeling without making it about me.”

From “Emotion is Not Plot: Using Detachment to Create Powerful Fiction” a craft essay by Claire Rudy Foster in the online journal Cleaver Magazine.

Brilliant Flash Fiction Contest Winners

paul beckmanPublished online quarterly the last day of January, March, June, and September, Brilliant Flash Fiction holds several writing contests per year, often with a prompt, none with a fee, and each with a cash prize. The most recent was “Special Delivery” judged Paul Beckman [pictured]. Of the 287 international writers who entered, the top three prize winners and shortlist can all be read online here.

Winners
First: “It Came in the Mail” by Damhnait Monaghan
Second: “Princess Party” by Jennifer Stuart
Third: “The Secret of the Snoring Time” by Elizabeth Fisher

bioStories – Winter/Spring 2016

It’s overwhelming to think of the number of people we see daily and try to imagine their individual lives, their hidden stories. John Koenig calls the sudden realization of everyone having their own story “sonder,” and bioStories lends a hand in coping with sonder by giving readers nonfiction glimpses into the lives and stories of those around us. New work is added to the website weekly, with two PDF anthologies of this work released per year.

Continue reading “bioStories – Winter/Spring 2016”

The MacGuffin – Spring/Summer 2016

Alfred Hitchcock once said: “No film is complete without a MacGuffin” because that’s what “ . . . everybody is after.” A MacGuffin, which is a literary device originating from Victorian England, is an object that moves the plot forward in a work of fiction. The MacGuffin, which is a literary magazine published out of Schoolcraft College in Michigan, is an impressive collection of poetry and fiction for your reading pleasure. The collected works of this issue explore a wide range of voices examining the human experience. Editor Steven Alfred Dolgin says: “I have long believed that there is a correspondence between our internal, subjective landscape and that of our external, objective landscape. The selections in this MacGuffin issue do nothing to deter from that perspective.” The landscape within this magazine is vast and exciting to explore.

Continue reading “The MacGuffin – Spring/Summer 2016”

TQ Review – June 2016

The first issue of TQ Review defines itself as “a journal of trans and queer voices.” These are authors speaking from their experiences and divulging their fears. The authors don’t share victim stories or stories of triumph, but everything in between. These are the stories of people within the trans and queer communities laying bare their fears and vulnerabilities.

Continue reading “TQ Review – June 2016”

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet – July 2016

Nicole Kimberling has done the research and found that “some pumpkins would rather not be pie. Four out of ten gourds interviewed [ . . . ] stated they would much rather be processed into a savory dish.” Kimberling’s recipe for Pumpkin Mushroom Moussaka is just one of the ways Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet (LCRW) expands the definition of speculative literature. This issue combines dark themes with lighthearted wonder, and stunning world building with bizarre absurdism.

Continue reading “Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet – July 2016”

Brevity Special Issue: Race, Racism, and Racialization

xu xiIssue 53 Fall 2016 of Brevity is a special issue on Race, Racism, and Racialization and includes such essays and authors as “Black in Middle America” by Roxanne Gay, “A Pop Quiz for White Women Who Think Black Women Should Be Nicer to Them in Conversations about Race” by Deesha Philyaw, “How to Discuss Race as a White Person” by Samuel Stokley, “Things People Said: An Essay in Seven Steps” by Sejal Shah, “How to Erase an Arab” by Julie Hakim Azzam, and “Mexican Americans and American Mexicans: An Etymology” by Sarah A. Chavez.

The online journal also includes guest editors for this issue Joy Castro and Ira Sukrungruang in conversation with one another about “what they hoped for and what they learned” in putting this issue together, as well as the accompanying craft essay “Three Commandments for Writing About Race” by Xu Xi [pictured].

3Elements Review

3elements review3Elements Review is an online quarterly literary journal publishing fiction, nonfiction, poetry, art, and photography. Unique to this publication, submissions for each issue must include the three elements the publishers post in advance. Past issue elements include: labyrinth, trace, reflex; measure, cleaver, silver; mania, tower, exposure.

The most recent issue (Fall 2016 #12) features the elements passageway, relic, kiss. “When we first chose the elements for this issue . . .” write the editors, “we worried that this specific trio of words would be a bit too leading. Would we get dozens of submissions about alluring, illicit affairs, kisses stolen along the shadowy hallways of castles and cathedrals? As it turned out – the answer was no. This issue is filled with writers and artists who surprised us, who made us see and consider the elements in ways we never had before, and we are honored to be able to share their work with you all.”

The elements for Issue 13 are THREAD, GLAZE, MURMUR with a submission deadline of October 31.

October 2016 Get Broadsided

Drone Confessional“Drone Confessional” a collaborative broadside with a poem by Kim Garcia and art by Helen Beckman Kaplan is the Broadsided poster for October 2016. Broadsided Press provides the opportunity for writers and artists to come together to create a work to share with Vectors – people who then download the free PDF and post it around their neighborhood, workplace, or travel destination. Each month’s writer and artist also provide commentary on their pieces and the collaborative process.

If you’d like to be a Vector, all you need to do is print and post the broadside. Broadsided Press would also like to encourage colleges and universities to start their own broadside collaborations! Visit their website here for more information.

Hotel Amerika Transgenre Contest Winners

Hotel Amerika promotes itself as a publication for “writing in all its forms. . . traditional work alongside the experimental. We strive to house in our pages the most unique and provocative poetry, fiction and nonfiction available. Work with a quirky, unconventional edge—either in form or content—is often favored by our editors. Hotel Amerika is an eclectic journal that attracts an equally eclectic audience.” To that end, last year they held a Transgenre Writing Contest, the winners featured in their Spring 2016 issue.
hotel amerika
1st Place
Sarah Minor, “Nest”

2nd Place
Dana Curtis​,​ ” Two Films”

Honorable Mention
​adrian nichols​,​ “lexicon of anarchy, no. xxii”​
Sophie Monatte​,​ “Fragments”

Other writers who works are included in the Transgenre section: Jessica Hollander, Julia Brennan, Katherine Riegel, Elizabeth Bryer, Lisa Samuels, Amy Newman, and Sara Biggs Chaney.

Books :: 2016 Akrilica Series

you ask me to talk about the interior carolina ebeidSince 2013, Noemi Press and Letras Latinas (the literary imitative at the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame) have been co-publishing under the Akrilica Series to showcase innovative Latino writing.

You Ask Me To Talk About the Interior by Carolina Ebeid joins the ranks of the Akrilica Series, published in September 2016. Ebeid’s first book, You Ask Me To Talk About the Interior has been called “a book of listening and responding and listening again” (Shane McCrae) that uses “[t]he voice of a mother, of lover, of friend” (Julie Carr).

More information about the book and the series can be found at the Noemi Press website.

Ruminate 2016 Prize Winners

The Fall 2016 issue of Ruminate features winners and select honorable mentions and finalists from their 2016 contests:

2016 Janet B McCabe Poetry Prize
Judge Alice Fulton
FIRST PLACE: “Yellow” by Melissa Reeser Poulin
SECOND PLACE: “Small Implosions” by Barbara Ellen Sorensen
HONORABLE MENTION: “The Lord, Walking in the Evening” by Michael Schmidtke and “Deer Apples” by Sally Thomas

Books :: October Award Winners

of this new world allegra hydeWith October here, it’s time to announce a couple of the award-winning books slated for publication this month.

Winner of the 2016 John Simmons Short Fiction Award, Of This New World by Allegra Hyde, hit the shelves earlier this month. The collection starts at the Garden of Eden and ends on a Mars colony, each story wrestling with “conflicts of idealism and practicality, communal ambition and individual kink,” and asking the fundamental human question: “Is paradise really so impossible?” Of This New World is Hyde’s first collection, and it’s now available at the University of Iowa Press website (now currently on sale for the frugal reader!).

Love Give Us One Death: Bonnie and Clyde in the Last Days by Jeff P. Jones is the winner of the 2015 George Garrett Fiction Prize. Final Judge Tracy Daugherty says the book of the two famous outlaws shows “larger dimensions: the spiritual shadows and compulsive needs from which our nation springs and through which it has found its many forms of speech.” This is Jones’s first book, and copies are available from the Texas A&M University Press website.

Able Muse New Poetry Editor

nicole caruso garciaAble Muse has announced that Nicole Caruso Garcia has joined their staff as Assistant Poetry Editor, replacing the departing Richard Meyer. Nicole Caruso Garcia was born grew up in New Jersey and Connecticut, earned her B.A. in English from Fairfield University, and an M.S. in Education from University of Bridgeport. She was a 2006 Summer Institute Fellow of the Connecticut Writing Project and currently teaches poetry and creative writing at Trumbull High School in Connecticut. Her poetry has appeared in Mezzo Cammin, Willow Review, The Raintown Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Soundings East, The Ledge, Poetry Midwest, and Small Pond Magazine of Literature, and she received the Spring 2010 Willow Review Award. But, to show her ability to flex poetic styles, while she tends toward formalist poetry, “her rapping alter ego, Capital G, often visits to bust a rhyme for her students.” We at NewPages can dig it.

CNF 3rd Readers’ Choice Theme Issue

creative nonfictionContinuing an annual tradition started three years ago, Creative Nonfiction presented a list of topics to its newsletter subscribers and social media followers and had them vote for the ones they liked best. “Mistakes” was the first issue (#53), followed the next year by “Waiting” (#56), and now, for 2016, “Childhood” (#60), with the subtitle: “It’s not all fun and games.” Each Readers’ Choice issue also includes a Best Essay contest. Readers can access on the CNF website the winning essay, “The Walk Home” by Judith Barrington, and an interview with Barrington; “Before We’re Writers, We’re Readers” by Randon Billings Noble – 15 nonfiction authors on the true (or mostly true) stories they read as kids; Lee Gutkind’s introduction; and two additional pieces: “I Survived the Blizzard of ’79” by Beth Ann Fennelly and “Writing Motherhood” by Marcelle Soviero.

Nimrod 38th Awards Issue

The Fall/Winter 2016 issue of Nimrod Magazine includes the winners, runners-up, and numerous finalists from thier annual literary awards.

Nimrod Literary Awards: The Pablo Neruda Prize in Poetry
FIRST PRIZE: Markham Johnson, OK, “Greenwood Burning, 1921”
SECOND PRIZE: Bryce Emley, NC, “Thesis/Antithesis” and other poems

Nimrod Literary Awards: The Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Fiction
FIRST PRIZE: Chad B. Anderson, D.C., “Maidencane”
SECOND PRIZE: Ruth Knafo Setton, PA, “Swamp Girl”
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Susan Finch, TN, “My Friends, My Sisters, My Doppelgangers”
Daniel Hamilton, KY, “Dragonslayers”

Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week

crabfat magazinePhotographer John Chavers’ kaleidoscope image is featured on the October 2016 online issue of Crab Fat Magazine, a journal “founded on the principles of inclusive & diverse writing/publishing.” And they mean it.
georgia reviewThe Georgia Review has been turning heads for 70 years and will be celebrating through the year with a variety of special events that they will update on their website. The Fall 2016 cover art (“#1637”) is by Masao Yamamoto, whose work is also featured with an introduction and full-color, twelve-page portfolio within.

Copper Nickel Translation Folios

copper nickelCopper Nickel, the national literary journal housed at the University of Colorado Denver, features several Translation Folios in each issue, spotlighting the works of several writers in translation. The Fall 2016 (#23) issue includes five poems by Jerzy Ficowski introduced and translated by Jennifer Grotz and Piotr Sommer, three prose poems by Shoba introduced and translated by Paula Gordon, and four poems by Grzegorz Wróblewski introduced and translated by Piotr Gwiazda.

Believe What You Can

Marc Harshman is the current poet laureate of West Virginia, a prolific author of children’s books, and a 1994 recipient of the Ezra Jack Keats/Kerlan Collection Fellowship from the University of Minnesota for research on Scandinavian myth and folklore. In this collection of poems, Harshman creates poetic/folkloric myths around the “ordinary” lives of everyday people. But as C.S. Lewis once wrote in The Weight of Glory: “There are no ordinary people.”

Continue reading “Believe What You Can”

Night Sky with Exit Wounds

I didn’t know that Ocean Vuong was merely 23 years old upon publishing Night Sky with Exit Wounds when I read the book’s opening lines: “In the body, where everything has a price, / I was a beggar.” I didn’t know this, and I’m glad I didn’t. For if I had, the lines of this first poem, “Threshold,” might have been emptied of their testimony to life experience and the whole manuscript’s maturity as reflected in tempered openness and exquisite poetic craft. But art comes to the artist without regard for time, and maturity is as much an act of will as it is a product of experience; this artist has embraced both in his youth, as evidenced in these poems. To date, he is already the recipient of several national awards including a Pushcart Prize and the author of two previously published chapbooks. Simply said, he has not suddenly risen to celebrity status in the world of poetry (if such a thing can be claimed), but has achieved this status gradually through multiple shorter publications and recognitions.

Continue reading “Night Sky with Exit Wounds”

Coulrophobia & Fata Morgana

Usually I’m well into reading a book before I have to look up a word. Not so with Coulrophobia & Fata Morgana. This time I hadn’t even opened the book. I thought maybe these were stories about ancient mythological characters, but Google informed me that coulrophobia is fear of clowns, and fata morgana is a form of mirage seen right above the horizon.

Continue reading “Coulrophobia & Fata Morgana”

Death of Art

Death of Art, 31-year-old Chris Campanioni’s memoir, is an amalgam of prose, poetry, and text messages. His name might not be familiar to you, though he’s appeared in commercials, numerous print ads and occasional acting gigs. If you look for Campanioni’s photo at the end of the book you’ll be disappointed. But fear not, there are plenty of pictures of him on the internet. Among his writing credits, Campanioni’s 2014 novel Going Down won the International Latino Book Award for Best First Book, and a year earlier he won the Academy of American Poets Prize. He teaches literature and creative writing at Baruch College and Pace University, and interdisciplinary studies at John Jay.

Continue reading “Death of Art”

Marketa Lazarová

Czechoslovak citizen Vladislav Vančura was executed by the Nazis in 1942. He’d been a novelist, playwright, and film director, and he left behind a corpus of work that includes ten novels, five plays, a children’s book, and an unfinished chronicle of Czech history. He studied law and medicine at Charles University in Prague, and was a founding member of an avant-garde association of artists. When Nazi Germany occupied Bohemia in 1939, he was active in the Czech resistance. He was arrested in 1942, tortured and imprisoned. After the assassination of a high ranking Nazi official during World War II, Vančura was one of thousands of Czechs who were murdered in reprisal.

Continue reading “Marketa Lazarová”

I’ll Tell You in Person

If truth be told, I simply wasn’t prepared for my reality to shift. My perspective, my worldview, suited me just fine. Yet, upon encountering I’ll Tell You in Person, a collection of essays by Chloe Caldwell, which appears deceptively unassuming at first glance, I rediscovered a lushness within the human experience that had somehow slipped from my grasp over the course of four decades plus three intentionally subdued years with hopes of merely staying afloat.

Continue reading “I’ll Tell You in Person”

Monsters in Appalachia

A mix of darkly funny and shockingly somber stories, Sheryl Monks’s Monsters in Appalachia is an outstanding short story collection. She masterfully draws readers into many lives in Appalachia through setting, characters, and, most importantly, dialogue. Some stories are fantastical, others are more traditional, and all are worth reading, either one right after another or, slowly, one at a time.

Continue reading “Monsters in Appalachia”

The End of Pink

There is an abiding anguish that swells like a tidal water through Kathryn Nuernberger’s new book, The End of Pink. It’s an emotional force that takes a little while to establish, not yet fully evident while reading through the table of contents or perusing the first few poems, which seem at first like relatively straightforward engagements with historic books of science and pseudoscience, poems that are the result of the purposeful taking of a subject of study.

Continue reading “The End of Pink”

SHR 2015 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize Winners

Southern Humanities Review 49.4 includes a special poetry section of the winners, runners-up, and finalists of their 2015 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize honoring Jake Adam York. In addition to publication, the winner, Mark Wagenaar [pictured] received $1,000 and travel to Auburn, Alabama in October 2015 to read his award-winning poems at the Julie Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art alongside Richard Tillinghast, the final judge of the 2015 prize. This event kicked off the 2015 Auburn Writers Conference. The contest is held annually in honor of Jake Adam York, poet, fifth-generation Alabamian, and an undergraduate alum of Auburn University, whose works “examined race relations in the South, celebrating the triumphs of the Civil Rights movement and questioning, as a native son of the South, his own complicity in its tragedies.”

wagenaar mWinner
Mark Wagenaar

First Runner-up
Susan O’Dell Underwood

Second Runner-up
Doug Rutledge

Finalists
Mehul Bhagat
Ryan Black
Cortney Lamar Charleston
Meghan Dunn
Jennifer Givhan
Pamela Hart
Susanna Lang
Ansley Moon
Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib

Antioch Review Celebrates 75 Years Part I

antioch reviewThe Antioch Review, “one of the oldest, continuously publishing literary magazines in America,” celebrates 75 year of publishing fiction, essays, and poetry from both emerging as well as established authors. The celebration begins with the Summer 2016 issue, Part I, with a selection of “firsts” and a few “favorites” from the 40s – 60s. Editor Robert S. Fogarty includes the first poem and first story published in the journal, as well as the “most downloaded” essay which was first published in 1943.

Also shared within this historical collection is the “Preamble and Statement of Principles” collectively written by The Association of Literary Magazines of America when those 19 magazine organizers first met in 1961. It begins: “Resolved, that we form an association, the purpose of which is to increase the usefulness and the prestige of the literary magazines in the United States and Canada,” and later makes the following statement that still rings true today: “A nation’s body of literature does not depend wholly on a the great, and since the magazines have served as a seedbed for each generation of creative writers they have also helped to preserve the very impulse to literary creation. The literary magazines of the present generation are continuing this indispensable tradition.”

American Poetry Review Featured Works

american poetry reviewThe American Poetry Review provides readers a glimpse inside their bi-monthly publication by providing featured works of poetry on their website. From the September/October 2016 issue, readers can enjoy works by Marie Howe, Afaa Michael Weaver, Nicole Steinberg, Jane Wong, Carlos Pintado, and Beth Ann Fennelly. Available in the print edition is the full content, which includes Michael Dowdy’s commentary “Reading Latina/o Poetry in the Summer of Trump” and Edward Hirsch’s “What is the Task?” – a version of an essay which appears as the introduction to The Best American Poetry 2016.

Lit Mag Covers Picks of the Week

raleigh reviewThe Raleigh Review Fall 2016 issue features “Red Madonna” by Geri Digiorno on its cover, an appropriate welcome to its contents, which Editor Rob Greene comments: “Many of us enter the arts as a way to heal . . [the arts] is about real people trying to make a better world. We hope the work in this volume guides you a better understanding of humankind.”
carolina quarterly“Jenna’s First” by William Paul Thomas adorns the cover of The Carolina Quarterly Fall 2016, with a full-color portfolio of his work within. “I paint representations of disembodied heads of people in my social circle and sometimes scrawl text directly over their likenesses,” Thomas writes in his Artist’s Statement. “As it relates to my portraits, whatever the viewer derives from looking is the correct interpretation. I embrace symbolic ambiguity while clinging to observational specificity.”
haydens ferry review“My work explores narratives that recognize the urgency and conflict in our continuing attempts to connect to the world around us,” writes Hanna Dansie in her Artist’s Statement. Her work is featured both on the cover of the Spring/Summer 2016 Hayden’s Ferry Review and with several internal pages as well.

Amercian Life in Poetry :: Barbara Crooker

American Life in Poetry: Column 601
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Barbara Crooker, who lives in Pennsylvania, has become one of this column’s favorite poets. We try to publish work that a broad audience of readers can understand and, we hope, may be moved by, and this particular writer is very good at that. Here’s an example from her collection, Gold, from Cascade Books.

Grief

is a river you wade in until you get to the other side.
But I am here, stuck in the middle, water parting
around my ankles, moving downstream
over the flat rocks. I’m not able to lift a foot,
move on. Instead, I’m going to stay here
in the shallows with my sorrow, nurture it
like a cranky baby, rock it in my arms.
I don’t want it to grow up, go to school, get married.
It’s mine. Yes, the October sunlight wraps me
in its yellow shawl, and the air is sweet
as a golden Tokay. On the other side,
there are apples, grapes, walnuts,
and the rocks are warm from the sun.
But I’m going to stand here,
growing colder, until every inch
of my skin is numb. I can’t cross over.
Then you really will be gone.

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 ©2013 by Barbara Crooker, “Grief” from Gold, (Cascade Books, 2013). Poem reprinted by permission of Barbara Crooker 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.

Gina Myers On Writing

gina myers“On Writing” is a series of guest posts written by writers for the Ottawa Poetry Newsletter, curated by Rob McLennan. On Writing #107 features former NewPager and poet Gina Myers. Entitled “Is there room in the room that you room in?,” borrowed from the opening sonnet in Ted Berrigan’s The Sonnets, Myers explores the concepts of community and inclusivity as place in poetry. Read the full post here.

Saranac Review – 2015

If you’ve not yet been introduced to Saranac Review, consider this your opportunity. Published by the Department of English and its Writing Arts Program of SUNY College at Plattsburgh, I’m not sure what preconceived notions that might give writers and readers, but my first response after reading a good chunk of it was ‘surprising variety.’ Many of the works were surprising—either as non-traditional in their form or in leaving me pleasantly surprised by the feeling of satisfaction at the close of my reading.

Continue reading “Saranac Review – 2015”

Lalitamba – 2015

Instead of an editor’s note, Lalitamba begins: “This journal is an offering. May all beings be joyful and free.” Lalitamba (meaning Divine Mother) features nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and art speaking to a diversity of religious and spiritual traditions. Lalitamba opens us up to belief in all its forms, especially our connection to other beings across difference.

Continue reading “Lalitamba – 2015”

Nimrod International Journal – Spring/Summer 2016

Nimrod International Journal has a history of devoting issues to underrepresented voices; Mirrors and Prisms continues this work, featuring only writers of marginalized sexual orientations and gender identities. But queer authors does not always mean queer subject matter. Editor Elis O’Neal states, “In this issue, you’ll find work on all subjects [ . . . ] we wanted to honor the breadth and depth of writing by our contributors, rather than limit their writing to a single aspect of their lives.” Nimrod takes a person-first approach to queer authorship.

Continue reading “Nimrod International Journal – Spring/Summer 2016”

The 3288 Review – Winter 2016

“Authors, take note,” suggests John Gillikin. “Write. Submit. Rinse. Repeat. Hone your craft [and do] not be ashamed of a rejection letter.” This piece of advice appears in a long editorial “From the Corner Office” at the end of the Winter 2016 edition of The 3288 Review, a lit magazine still in its infancy and boldly asserting its preference for works written by West Michigan authors. As a Michigan native myself (though not West Michigan), I was prepared to trudge through yet another literary forest of deer hunting tales, great blue herons reigning over marshlands, lake lore, fish lore, winter lore, how a tree is a metaphor for everything and the spirituality of an autumn leaf, or the typical boy-meets-woods-meets-boy-meets-a new version of himself on the journey and now he has written something equal to Thoreau’s Walden.

Continue reading “The 3288 Review – Winter 2016”

2016 Baltimore Review Print Issue

baltimore review 2016The annual print issue of Baltimore Review allows readers to catch up on a full year of reading in one volume. The 2016 print issue includes poems, stories, and creative nonfiction from the Summer 2015, Fall 2015, Winter 2016, and Spring 2016 online issues, as well as contest winners for the Summer 2015 and Winter 2016 issues.

New on NewPages :: September 13, 2016

mi grand rapids books mortarThe NewPages Guide to Independent Publishers grew by five today, welcoming Hohm Press, Measure Press, Oneworld Publications, 3 Mile Harbor Press, and SolsticeLit Books (the book publishing arm of Solstice magazine).

Bookstore fanatics will find two new independent bookstores, Old Books on Front Street in Wilmington, North Carolina, and Books & Mortar in Grand Rapids, Michigan (shown right).

And finally, readers and writers can find three online literary magazines newly added to our Big List of Lit Mags: Starwheel Magazine, a short-works publication of The Riding Light Review; Cede Poetry, a new Canadian poetry magazine; and Beech Street Review, with submissions currently open for their second issue.

2015 Boulevard Short Fiction Winner

boulevardBoulevard #94 features the winner for their 2015 Short Fiction Contest for Emerging Writers who has not yet published a book of fiction, poetry, or creative non-fiction with a nationally distributed press. Joshua Idaszak’s “The Last Laz of Krypton” was awarded $1,500 and publication. Honorable Mention “Mrs. Lana Greer” by Chloe Packer is also included in this issue.

New on NewPages :: September 12, 2016

Check out the new sites added to NewPages today.

In Literary Links, the Second Hand Stories podcast showcases writing and writers from all around the world, stories read by Jim Szabo and Colleen Stewart. Heartbeat Literary Magazine, on the Big List of Lit Mags, publishes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and artwork in frequent, online issues.

On the Big List of Alt Mags, find VIDA Review, the newly named section of the VIDA website that features interviews, articles, and essays on intersectional feminist and womanist thinking.

New on the Publisher’s Guide, Nomadic Press publishes chapbooks, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry; and in Independent Bookstores, Wisconsin sees the addition of Downtown Books – Bought & Sold, a used bookstore located in Milwaukee.

And of course, it’s a Monday, so our Magazine Stand features blurbs of fresh, new magazines issues.

Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week

lalitambaLalitamba, which means Divine Mother, calls itself a “journal of international writings for liberation” and was inspired by a pilgrimage through India. Each issue, the cover is meditaion on the publication’s focus and inspiraiton. [No photo credit.]
michigan quarterly reviewMichigan Quarterly Review Summer 2016 cover photo is a rich perspective on the beauty of summer. “A Patch of Green” photo by MIchael Owen, 2014.
subprimalCynthia Low’s artwork appears both on the cover and is featured inside Subprimal Poetry Art, an online journal. See the full print and Low’s commentary here.

Rattle Tribute to Adjuncts

rattleIn addition to work by 17 poets that opens the issue, Rattle #53 features a Tribute to Adjuncts. The editors write, “Over 65% of U.S. college faculty now work as adjuncts, facing low wages, limited hours, and high instability. We wanted to highlight their writing, while also showing support for recent efforts at gaining better treatment by the university system. As always, the goal was to show the wide range of creative work that the featured group is producing, so while many poems address their careers, others cover a variety of subjects. All of them share their thoughts on adjuncting in the contributor notes section.”

Every one of us who teaches in higher ed should buy copies of this issue to give to our dean, provost, vice president, president. board of trustees – whomever is responsible for the decision-making that retains, and continues to increase, these miserable working conditions for adjunct faculty. Perhaps better still, assign this issue in your classes, have students read it; the real change will need to come from dissatisfied “customers.” If they are outraged about egregious labor practices and refuse to buy their products from certain companies, they should be as equally outraged about the education for which they are paying a premium price to support an oppressed working majority. [Rattle cover artist Allison Merriweather]