At the NewPages Blog readers and writers can catch up with their favorite literary and alternative magazines, independent and university presses, creative writing programs, and writing and literary events. Find new books, new issue announcements, contest winners, and so much more!
The Greensboro Review Spring 2015 issue (97) includes the winners of their annual Robert Watson Literary Prize:
Fiction
Leigh Camacho Rourks [pictured], “Pinched Magnolias”
Poetry
Juliana Daugherty, “Aubade”
Each winner receives $1000 plus publication. The deadline for this year’s contest is September 15, 2015. The entry fee includes a one-year subscription to the publication. See the publication’s website for more details.
Publisher and editor Neil Astley, founder of Bloodaxe Books, guest-edits Ploughshares special transatlantic all-poetry issue, featuring poets from North America, Great Britain, and Ireland. The issue contains a stirring diversity of work, with writers who have roots everywhere from Guyana to Pakistan to Zambia, and also features poetry in Welsh, Irish, and Scottish Gaelic. Much of the work is from accomplished British and Irish poets who are still little-known in the States. As Astley writes in his introduction, the issue aims to break down “the illogical divide between readerships on either side of the Atlantic,” and spark a conversation that will enliven and invigorate both poetic traditions. (Text from the Ploughshares website.)
Robert Fanning, professor of creative writing at Central Michigan University, shares his manuscripts in process as well as the methods and sources of inspiration he used to draft them. His advice for burgeoning writers, poets in particular, is not the standard cookie-cutter words of wisdom you’ve heard elsewhere, and his refreshing approach to publishing will help you rethink Submission Sundays. And if you need a new playlist for writing, we have it.
Afterglow
by Cynthia Pelayo
As soon as I wake the sun is dying
No matter what you believe that orb is the ultimate trickster
Making you promises that its brilliance will give you solace
It moves from you, slipping away and falling behind
. . .
Read the rest and several others by Pelayo on Danse Macabre #90 online.
Two aspects of the annual Crazy Horse NaPoMo issue (17.2) caught my attention. The first was the editor’s note in which Carrie Jerrell comments on the annual Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference and compares attending this event to writing poetry. Really. Read her comments in full here.
The second was just the titles of some of the poems in the table of contents. These would grab the attention of even the most reluctant poetry reader: “For Sale: Positive Pregnancy Test, Used”; “The Morning Police Found You in a Green Recycling Bin”; “Encounter in East Coker”; “Looking for God in a Panel of Stained Glass”; “Your Presence Was the Question”; “A Kite Addresses Benjamin Franklin”; “Eighteen Photos of Me Holding Up a Boulder”; “[If You are Squeamish]”; “We Were Warned” – and many more.
The poems behind these titles do not disappoint, though the Crazy Horse NaPoMo issue never has!
Pulp Literature Spring 2015 features the winner of the 2014 Raven Short Story Contest, “The Inner Light” by Krista Wallace. The editors comment that this story is “a chilling tale of the theatre, and the sacrifices made for art.” The story is followed by an interview with the author in which Wallace comments on places to find humor in writing, how her winning story came to be, current works in process, and advice for writers.
Both Lillian Li and Cristine Sneed offer advice on writing characters in their Glimmer Train Bulletin #100 craft essays. The GT Bulletin allows writers published in Glimmer Train Stories to offer their advice to other writers in short essays availble free monthly.
Li’s essay “I Want You Bad: Can Nice People Make for Good Characters?” shares advice she’s received – and broken away from – about creating ‘interesting’ characters without navel gazing: “I’ve started creating characters first, without wondering how they’ll benefit the pace of the story. I write the characters I want, and because I want them around, I also want to get to know them.”
Sneed’s essay “What a Character! Incorporating a Living Person into a Work of Fiction” explores that very complicated issue, sharing the one – and only time – she included a real life friend as a character in her writing.
Also included in the May 2015 GT Bulletin is Courtney Sender’s essay “Narrative Arc in the Novel,” rounding out a great installment of craft essays to guide writers in their work.
Trouble Sleeping by Abdul Ali, winner of the 2014 New Issues Prize, was published this past March.
From the foreword, written by Thomas Sayers Ellis: “Like a projection of testimony, like the shadows that run-off from the plan-projector-tation immediately after you’ve lived and left the theater, like the dark figures moving through the haunted noirs of Aaron Douglas, the widescreen stare of Trouble Sleeping is a mighty mise-en-concern.”
Ali’s poems have previously appeared in Gargoyle, A Gathering of Tribes, and New Contrast, among others. To learn more about Trouble Sleeping, check out the New Issues website.
Heavy Feather Review 4.1 includes the winning entry of the publication’s annual chapbook contest, Facts About Snakes & Hearts by Flower Conroy. Judge Kristina Marie Darling, author of The Arctic Circle, had this to say about the winning entry: “Formally dexterous and luminous in its imagery, Flower Conroy’s Facts about Snakes & Hearts skillfully situates the age-old tradition of the love lyric in a postmodern literary landscape. Presenting us with ‘flames,’ ‘a wishing bell,’ and ‘a brass bed made of not,’ Conroy shows us ‘how longing is mapped,’ restoring a sense of wonder to a familiar narrative arc. She offers us poems that are as sure of their singular voice as they are diverse in style and metaphor. This is an accomplished sequence and Flower Conroy is a writer to watch.”
Grist: The Journal for Writers published out of the University of Knoxville English Department has a lot to offer readers and writers in support of owning its subtitle to be THE journal for writers.
A visit to its recently revamped website reveals a clean and easy navigation design, leading visitors to one of three areas: Grist Essentials (information about the print publication); The Writing Life; Online Companion.
Grist promotes The Writing Life as “a place to learn about, hone, and discuss your craft as a writer . . . a dynamic discussion of contemporary writing—thoughts on craft, publishing, and the life that both shapes and is shaped by the words we put on the page.” Features include news, craft essays, aspects of living the writing life, and Grist and writing-related events.
Grist Editors write that the Online Companion “allows us to showcase the highest quality writing we receive throughout our reading period while also allowing those less familiar with Grist and Grist’s content to get a feel for the wide variety of work we champion. Grist: The Online Companion is also a way to expand what we’re able to publish because the online arena is more hospitable to a wider formal variety than is often able to fit in the print issue’s 6 x 9 format.” The current issue, #8, features poetry, collaborative poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and collaborative creative nonfiction by Mary Jo Balistreri, Ashley-Elizabeth Best, Matt Cashion, Jacqueline Doyle & Stephen D. Gutierrez, Alex Greenberg, Jennifer Savran Kelly, Joseph Mulholland, Brianna Noll, Nicole Oquendo & Mike Shier.
Crazyhorse Spring 2015 includes the winner and runners-up of the publication’s Crazy Shorts! Short-Short Fiction Contest:
Winner
Emily Pease [pictured], “Foods of the Bible”
Runners-Up
Landon Houle, “The Exterminator”
Caitlin Scarano, “Sick Day”
Lee Conell, “Matt’s Comics”
The deadline for this annual contest is July 31 and the entry fee includes a subscription to the magazine. In addition to publication, the first-place winner receives $1000.
In case you missed it yesterday, the May 2015 Book Reviews have been posted! This month, our reviewers tackled The Door by Magda Szabó translated by Len Rix, Fallen Attitudes by Patricia Waters, Fanny Says by Nickole Brown, Gephyromania by TC Tolbert, My Very End of the Universe: Five Novellas-in-Flash and a Study of the Form from Rose Metal Press, The Night We’re Not Sleeping In by Sean Bishop, Pilgrimly by Siobhan Scarry, That That by Ken Mikolowski, and Wolfman Librarian by Filip Marinovich.
What’re you waiting for? Go find your next favorite book.
Patricia Waters’s Fallen Attitudes beautifully betrays her artistic and intellectual maturity. This is not novice poetry, but poetry in which scenes, locations, history, and memory are culled for what they cannot possess rather than for epistemological revelations. Waters is not attempting to prove anything, to justify a life lived a certain way; this is a memoir of letting go of proof and justification, of finding peace with whatever remains, and what remains seems to be a love. Continue reading “Fallen Attitudes”
Haiku is excessive. What luxury. In five mere words, Ken Mikolowski can do what the ancients needed seventeen syllables to accomplish in his book That That. Take the poem “No more / and / no less.” This says it all. It says everything that is needed to be said. It is a commentary on the state of the art and on the personal lives that we all carry in ourselves. Math uses simplification to produce elegant equations. In this same vein, Mikolowski uses reduction to get to the heart of the issue. These poems take on enormous universal equations by mimicking tiny proverbs. It is a great read for the age of Tweets. It reaches hearts and minds with the wisdom of Solomon using the tactics of a Facebook advertisement. Continue reading “That That”
During the Occupy Movement in New York City when The People literally took over Zuccotti Park, poet Filip Marinovich was right there in the mix, helping to set up and run the People’s Library and reading his poems over the People’s Mic, “the people’s mic is intoxicating / that’s why I am its pauper king” (“Zuccotti Park Fugue State”). The poems gathered in Wolfman Librarian stem directly from Marinovich’s experience with Occupy. Continue reading “Wolfman Librarian”
“Somebody pour me / a fresh Pepsi?” Fanny Says is an amalgam of the south. A woman striving for class in a society that worked hard against her. The author Nickole Brown peels away the caricature that could be Frances Lee. What is revealed is Fanny, an archetypal southern woman, yes, but a participant in a modern and changing world. There is a universalism at work in Fanny Says that Brown allows and directs rather than forms and shifts. It is a dense work of poems, functioning as a memoir and a history lesson by way of the comedian. Brown is always tender but does not shy from exposing faults and social problems. Her ability to record and recreate the things her grandmother said is a prowess far beyond her. The reader is so immersed in Fanny it is as if we know her. Getting to know Fanny is like examining America, first the shoes, then the belt, and finally the hair-do. Continue reading “Fanny Says”
The poems in Sean Bishop’s elegiac debut collection The Night We’re Not Sleeping In seethe with animosity—sometimes humorously, sometimes righteously—toward all manner of received wisdom about life, death, grief, and consolation. Selected by Susan Mitchell as the winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize for Poetry, the collection centers around the death of the speaker’s father, with several longer poetic sequences throughout the book’s four sections interrupting and elaborating on similarly turbulent themes. Continue reading “The Night We’re Not Sleeping In”
Magda Szabó wrote this well-known Hungarian classic in 1987, and fortunately The New York Review of Books reissued it with an excellent introduction by Ali Smith. The novel is about the relationship between a young writer (the narrator) and her husband with their housecleaner Emerence, who proves to be so much more than that. The book could be viewed as autobiographical because the narrator, now a famous writer, is looking back on herself as young when she first met the old woman Emerence who announces, “I don’t wash just anyone’s dirty laundry.” She arrives at the apartment wearing, as she always does, a headscarf covering her hair and face like a veil. Hiding herself, the headscarf serves as the equivalent of Emerence’s locked door at her own villa. Continue reading “The Door”
Editors Abigail Beckel and Kathleen Rooney have assembled, edited, and published this brilliant collection of specialized coming-of-age novellas—each one special because it is composed entirely of cohesive, yet stand-alone works of flash fiction—defined in the introduction as stories of 1,000 words or less. Helpful, informative essays by each of the five authors whose stories appear in this collection expound upon their creative process in birthing these works. Part craft-of-writing book and part novellas-in-flash collection, this unique text is both educational and entertaining: an excellent textbook or self-instructional manual on the form. Continue reading “My Very End of the Universe”
In Gephyromania, which means the love of building bridges, we are given a “subtextual consciousness of queer” per the author, TC Tolbert, who is a genderqueer feminist poet and teacher. S/he is co-editor for The Feminist Wire and a curator for Trickhouse, an online cross-genre arts journal. Tolbert also founded Made for Flight, a youth empowerment program using writing and kite building, commemorating murdered transgender people, to bring awareness about homophobia and transphobia. Continue reading “Gephyromania”
Iodine Poetry Journal Editor and Publisher Jonathan K. Rice is also Poet and Visual Artist as well, and has been designing cover art for his iconic publication for the past 15 years. More of his work can be found here on the back list page for Iodine.
“Crow and Cloud,” photograph by Carolyn Guinzio, on the front cover of Cimarron Review Winter 2015 is a similar image to what I witness on my walks each morning – the birds coming back after a long winter, filling the tops of trees with their songs, the leaves yet to fill in the sky.
And another for the birds, Beloit Poetry Journal Spring 2015 features a lovely, dark, lush oil on linen by Eleanor Spiess-Ferris, “Shoreline” (2006). The cover does not reveal the entire image, so it’s worth a visit to the BPJ website to see what you’re not seeing in this pile of birds.
The Iowa Review 45.1 features winners and runners-up of their second Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award for Veterans writing contest, judged by Anthony Swofford, author of Jarhead and former U.S. Marine. This creative writing contest for U.S. military veterans and active duty personnel is hosted by The Iowa Review and made possible by a gift from the family of Jeff Sharlet (1942–69), a Vietnam veteran and antiwar writer and activist. The contest is open to veterans and active duty personnel writing in any genre and about any subject matter.
First Place ($1000)
Katherine Schifani, “Pistol Whip” (nonfiction)
Second Place ($750)
Brian Van Reet, “The Chaff” (fiction)
Runners-up ($500)
Terry Hertzler (poetry)
M.E. Hope (poetry)
James Walley (fiction)
The issue also includes two photo essay features, Stacy L. Pearsall Veterans Portrait Project and Mary F. Calvert The Battle Within: Sexual Assault in America’s Military. Both are exceptional contributions to our culture’s understanding of military community and the effects of foreign war and domestic violence.
Editor Katherine Mayfield and Intern Bonnie Irwin bring readers and writers The Maine Review, a new print/e/Kindle quarterly publishing short fiction, CNF, poetry, essays on writing, and black-and-white interior art. They also publish annual collections of short fiction (summer) and poetry (winter).
While the name, The Maine Review, seems obviously to represent the location of the publication, Mayfield tells me it was inspired “in the tradition of reviews like The Missouri Review and The Iowa Review. We felt that Maine needed a literary review representing the beauty and ruggedness of the Pine Tree State. Though we publish well-known and new and emerging authors from around the world, we feature the work of Maine artists on each issue’s cover. The Maine Review is a proud member of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, a nonprofit membership organization that works to enrich the literary life and culture of Maine.”
With such great role models already influencing this new publication, I asked Mayfield what motivated her to start her own journal, “Throughout my many years of writing and editing, I’ve seen so much excellent writing that never finds a home, and I wanted to give more writers the opportunity to be published. I also thoroughly enjoy putting the issues together – it’s like working a jigsaw puzzle, moving pieces around to get a good ‘flow.’ The Maine Review also provides a wonderful opportunity to showcase Maine artists.”
Mayfield also commented on what readers could expect to find in the publication: “Our mission is to publish quality writing that touches readers and engages their hearts, minds, and imaginations, expanding their view of the world and of life as a human being.” While the publication remains fairly “traditional” – not publishing genre horror or fantasy – Mayfield says they do look to feature humor in every issue.
Some recently featured authors include Author’s Guild President Roxanne Robinson, Maine Senior Poet Laureate Roger Finch, award-winning poets Annie Finch, Jason Michael MacLeod, Claire Scott, David Sloan, and Sean Sutherland.
In addition to the annual collections of short fiction and poetry, in the next year Mayfield says she’d like to publish an annual collection of CNF/memoir. Just now nearing the end their first year, The Maine Review looks forward to expanding the size and scope of the publication over the next few years.
The Maine Review holds contests and open reading periods. The next contest, for the Fall 2015 issue, will open in late May with a June 30th deadline. The contest for the annual poetry collection will open in autumn. The publication also has two open reading periods (no fee) each year for the Winter and Summer issues with submissions for those issues only accepted during the reading periods. See the publication’s website for more specific information. Submission is via the website and there is also a form available on the website for mailing submissions via USPS.
For there is something to be said for the even spacing of certain
kinds of structures.
For it is important to love the spaces in between—Remember the
interstitial bins and shapes that accommodate.
– “Jubilate: Burden, Kansas”
I admit, it wasn’t until I came across the above lines, 20 pages into the book, that I began to feel some affinity for Siobhan Scarry’s poetry. Continue reading “Pilgrimly”
With its Spring 2015 issue, Boulevard celebrates 30 years of continuous publication. The editors write, “Since 1985, our aim has been to present the finest contemporary fiction, poetry, and essays on arts and culture in a variegated yet coherent ensemble—as a boulevard, which contains in one place the best a community has to offer.”
To celebrate, Boulevard has two special editions: an e-book anthology and this anniversary issue of the journal, which includes works by Alex Chernow, winner of the 2014 Poetry Contest for Emerging Writers, and a symposium on the artistic merits of contemporary television versus film. A full list of contributors for each volume can be found here.
Happy Anniversary Boulevard!
Chtenia: Readings from Russia issue #30 is themed Science Fiction. “Let’s be honest,” the editors write. “There really is something fundamentally different about Russian literature.”
In her issue introduction, Curator Yvonne Howell writes, “The first remarkable feature of Russian science fiction is the fact that it existed at all,” and goes on to discuss the historical context of 19th century Russia. While science fiction is generally understood to have come as a ‘hope and fear’ response for the “collective fate of humanity” at the turn of the twentieth century when science and technology were burgeoning, Russia, Howell explains, was “in a technologically backward empire at the margins of the Western world.” Yet, like all science fiction, Howell credits Russian writers, who faced with “conditions where practical tehcno-scientific improvements were lagging” were able to take “the scientific imagination . . . in unexpected directions.”
See a full list of the issue’s content here.
Winner of The 2014 Green Rose Prize from New Issues, My Multiverse by Kathleen Halme was published last month. The Green Rose Prize is awarded to poets who already have published one or more full-length collections of poetry.
Of the new collection, poet John Brehm says, “In poems that are both intricate and expansive, Kathleen Halme’s My Multiverse takes readers from the City of Roses, with its Shanghai traps and tunnels, to a hummingbird ‘tracing the missing shape of a feed,’ to the neural pathways of the mind itself. These poems do what all great poems do: they make the world seem strange again, shimmering with questions, ‘the mirror ball of meaning strung without a thread.’”
Founded in 2004 Arielle Greenberg, Tony Trigilio, and David Trinidad, Court Green has announced its newest issue, 12, will be the last.
The magazine was named after Court Green, the property in Devon, England, where Sylvia Plath lived and where she wrote her most famous poems, the Ariel poems. The editors say, “We wanted Court Green the magazine to be like Court Green the property in England: a space open and vulnerable to the world, sometimes restlessly so, and a space for intellectual, emotional, and linguistic experimentation.” And so it has, for over a decade. For its final issue, the editors have “decided that the best elegy for the magazine might be to break Court Green’s long-standing rule that the magazine never publish the work of its faculty editors. To celebrate the 12 years of imaginative energy that the editors brought to the magazine, we decided to create a space for the editors’ poems. On the occasion, then, of Court Green‘s final issue, we present a selection of recent work by all of our current and past editors.”
Work by Past and Present Editors: CM Burroughs, Two Untitled Poems; Lisa Fishman, “July-August, 2013”; Arielle Greenberg, “A Little Bit Lonely. (Money.)”; Tony Trigilio, “from Book 2. The Complete Dark Shadows (of my childhood)”; David Trinidad, “Anaïs.” Each of these can be read full-text on on Court Green’s website here.
Based out of The William Paterson University of New Jersey Department of English, Map Literary aspires “to promote the finest provocative writing of our time, publishing semiannual issues of original fiction, poetry, and nonfiction in online format.” As part of this promotion, the website features a page under Pedagogy called Map Literary for the Classroom. Here, teachers can find examples of poetic themes and techniques from among contemporary authors published in Map Literary. Examples such as Alliteration/Consonance/Sound: Aaron Anstett, “Actionable” and Genevieve Kaplan, “(I’m) seated, or imagining”; End-stopped vs. Enjambed Line Breaks: Joe Lennon, “Part I” and Christopher Liebow, Excerpts from Riparia Suite. In all, there are 16 techniques with 24 examples linked to the full text. A great teaching resource!
“Eleven Stories of Water and Stone” by Aurvi Sharma is the winner of the 2014 Prairie Schooner Summer Creative Nonfiction Essay Contest, selected by judge Judith Ortiz Cofer.
Sharma’s essay is featured in the Spring 2015 issue of Prairie Schooner print edition and can also be read full-text online here.
Each year from May 1 to August 1, Prairie Schooner accepts submissions to the Summer Creative Nonfiction Contest, open to all types of creative nonfiction essays, up to 5,000 words. The entry fee is $18 and gets entrants a one-year subscription to the publication. Winner receives $250 and publication in the following Spring issue. See more specific guidelines here.
The Literary Review: An International Journal of Contemporary Writing Winter 2015 is “The John le Carré Issue” and features this striking image of a Philippine Eagle. Photo by Klaus Nigge for National Geographic Creative (2008). Editor’s introduction and full list of content can be found here.
Storm Cellar tackles “substantive topics,” the editors write, “directly or indirectly. But Storm Cellar is not wholly serious; whimsy and humor are recurring features in its pages.” If covers are any indicator, Storm Cellar persists with issue 4.2, themed “As Body is to Fetish,” featuring “Mrs. Miller Believed She Was Allergic to Everything But She Hadn’t Always Been This Way” by Andrea Joyce Heimer.
Heavy Feather Review 4.1 features “Little Bear – Honey Eater” by Michael McConnell, with equally intriguing “Little Zebra – Balanced Individual” on the back cover. Some of us here at NewPages have a thing for bears, so this one could not escape selection.
Banipal Magazine of Modern Arab Literature 52 celebrates “New Fiction” and includes excerpts from the 2015 Shortlist of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction:
Ahmed el-Madini: Willow Alley, trans. Paul Starkey
Jana Elhassan: Floor 99, trans. Robin Moger
Atef Abu Saif: A Suspended Life, trans. William M Hutchins
Lina Hawyan Elhassan: Diamonds And Women, trans. Sophia Vasalou
Hammour Ziada: The Longing Of The Dervish, trans. Jonathan Wright
Shukri al-Mabkhout: The Italian, trans. Raphael Cohen
The winning entry will be announced May 6, 2015 in Abu Dhabi.
In addition to this and other great content, Banipal continues to include “Prison Writing,” which first started with the self-themed issue #50. The editors continue the feature with two “new and powerful testimonies in, and will remain open indefinitely for more contributions.”
Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their February Short Story Award for New Writers. This competition is held quarterly 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 May. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.
1st place goes to Lillian Li of Ann Arbor, MI [Photo credit: Christopher Wang]. She wins $1500 for “Parts of Summer” and her story will be published in Issue 96 of Glimmer Train Stories. This will be her first print publication.
2nd place goes to Alex Wilson of Cardiff, CA. He wins $500 for “I Come from Killers.”
3rd place goes to Camille Baptista of New York, NY. She wins $300 for “Hide and Seek and Hide.”
A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found here.
Deadline soon approaching for the Very Short Fiction Award: April 30
This competition is held quarterly, and 1st place wins $1500, publication in the journal, and 20 copies of that issue. It’s open to all writers, with no theme restrictions, and the word count must not exceed 3000. Click here for complete guidelines.
The Breathe Book is a simple but powerful concept. The creators, a collective of healers, artists, athletes, programmers, designers, and friends, say, “It was made by us, but it belongs to everyone.” The online version is available here.
When you visit the site and click the play button on the homepage, the word BREATHE enlarges then vanishes on the page while natural birdsong plays on the soundtrack. The word vanishes and appears four times, then the media loops and begins again automatically.
While the idea is simple: breathe in, breathe out, the creators write, “Because we know how difficult that can be sometimes, we created a place online that understands that. It is a place on the internet where there is only one word and only one thing to do: breathe.”
The Breathe Book can be used on any computer or personal device, as a daily meditation itself or with other meditation practices, or just run in the background.
There is also a print version of our site — a tangible Breathe Book that consists of 50 pages, each page with just one word: BREATHE. The book is $11 with discounts available for bundles.
In his debut collection, Matthew Siegel explores his body’s fight with Crohn’s Disease and the struggle to remain one’s self in the face of illness. Winner of the University of Wisconsin Press’s 2015 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry, Blood Work was selected by Lucia Perillo. About her selection, Perillo states, “These poems resist the dualities of lyric versus narrative, confessional versus impersonal, real against surreal, formal/improvisational, comic/sad. Matthew Siegel manages to tick off all the boxes at once, while remaining compulsively readable. The trick that he’s pulled off is to make a book that simultaneously tickles you and shakes you by the scruff of your neck.”
Siegel’s writing has appeared in Indiana Review, The Rumpus, Tusculum Review, and Southern Humanities Review. Blood Work was released March 12, 2015.
Poetry Now Program is a free online resource for educators from Trio House Press. “In order to promote the understanding and appreciation of poetry, our Poetry Now program provides educational materials and resources for use within classrooms, book clubs, or for individual usage. Utilize our poetry lesson plans or poetry prompts.”
There’s only a few contributions to this page, but it’s a nice addition to lession plans and discussion points. “Discussion Links” provide lesson plans that encourage analysis, reflection and discussion about poems published by Trio House Press as well as influential public domain works and the “Write It” section encourages the writing process by providing prompts and writing exercises developed in conjunction with our Trio House Press poetry and other influential public domain works.
Each spring, Michigan Quarterly Review welcomes applications for new blog contributors. They are looking for writers with backgrounds in various disciplines to create unique, thought-provoking posts of interest to MQR’s online readership. Love to interview authors? Review books? Talk about the craft of writing or storytelling as it relates to some other discipline? Maybe you’ve got a great idea for a regular comic about the writing life—MQR is open to your pitches. Deadline for application is Wednesday, April 22. (Yes, now. Don’t you work better under short deadline?) See full guidelines here.
NewPages is looking to take on a few more literary magazine reviewers for both online and print journals. If interested, please follow this link to review the guidelines.
Those interested in reviewing magazines should contact Review Editor Katy Haas at katyhaas[at]newpageswork[dot]com.
Editor Stephen Corey opens the Spring 2015 issue of The Georgia Review commenting on Erin Adair-Hodges, whose work “Of Yalta” won the 2014 Loraine Williams / Georgia Review Poetry Prize:
“The pleasant kicker for us here in the Review office came after we contacted Adair-Hodges last August to apprise her of the good news, and she wrote back to say we had just given her the first poetry acceptance of her writing career. (Three resulting side notes: newer writers, take heart in the democracy of our evaluation process; veteran writers, take the same; . . . )” The third note: The third annual contest is open to submisisons until May 15. See full guidelines here.
The Spring 2015 online issue of Nat. Brut carries a lot with it: fiction, flash fiction contest winners, poetry, art, film, animation, photographs. No matter what readers are looking for, they’re sure to find it somewhere in this issue. Continue reading “Nat. Brut – Spring 2015”
Oh literature, oh the glorious Art, how it preys upon the marrow in our bones. It scoops the stuffing out of us, and chucks us aside. Alas! ~ D.H. Lawrence
The works of poetry, memoir, and story in the 2015 issue of PMS: poemmemoirstory aspire to and achieve Lawrence’s requirements of literature. The pieces are finely crafted, yes, but, more, are significant in that they strive to reach readers on deep levels. This journal, publishing women writers for fifteen years, continues to showcase literature that is art, and that matters to readers of any persuasion. Continue reading “PMS poemmemoirstory – 2015”
Lovers of poetry, readers, and writers alike, will find much to swoon over in the Winter issue of Spoon River Poetry Review (SRPR). The issue opens with the winner, the runners-up, and the honorable mentions of the Editors’ Prize for 2014. I suggest that readers take in the prize winners and all of the poems in the issue as if drinking quality wine and measure each poem for the appropriate acid, body, and finish it exhibits, for each has the right structure, power, and lingering aftertaste that makes reading poetry so satisfying. Continue reading “Spoon River Poetry Review – Winter 2014”
Without question, Prairie Schooner is one of the top American literary magazines, as measured by quality, presentation, and longevity. It began in 1926, and it continues as a print quarterly and online blog at the University of Nebraska, in Lincoln. Poet Kwame Dawes is editor-in-chief, and the magazine has a staff of 47 assistant editors, editorial assistants, and alumni readers. A well-established publication indeed. The current issue musters an impressive roster of contributors, most with advanced degrees, publications, awards, and residencies. More than a few teach writing at a college or university. Continue reading “Prairie Schooner – Winter 2014”
The slim, new issue of Parcel is filled with experimental poetry and fiction, about half and half. The magazine’s website, however, says it has “international aspirations and an interest in a broad range of poetry, prose and art.” And though this issue has no essays, the editor’s note: “we have a special interest in lyric essays and essays that explore innovative forms and structures.” Continue reading “Parcel – Fall/Winter 2014”
I was thrilled to see Tuesday; An Art Project at the AWP Minnesota Book Fair. Tuesday is THE most gorgeous poetry postcard publication I had ever seen, each issue a neatly wrapped treasure of letterpress postcards featuring poetry on some and art on others (the flipsides are blank for writing/mailing). However, the publication ceased with issue 11 in 2013. Okay, well, not “ceased,” but perhaps worse, the H-word: Hiatus. This conjures up all kinds of wonderings of what went wrong, will the publication come back, if it does – for how long this time? From my view at NewPages over the past decade, I’ve seen a lot of hiatuses (hiati?) – some with reason, some not – but very few ever return. While “hiatus” to some might mean hope, I know it better as a long, drawn out death, usually finalized because someone stops paying the web site domain name bill.
Not so says Tuesday Founding Editor Jennifer S. Flescher, who has a Kickstarter campaign going to sell advance subscriptions to fund the publication (along with other premium goodies). [NOTE: Until 4/21 a donor will match all contributions!] When I met up with her at AWP, I was happy to talk with her, but also concerned about the whole hiatus thing. She was glad to offer me some clarity on her perspective, especially when I wouldn’t stop hammering her with questions.
NP: Why did you go on hiatus? No need to get personal, but for some, it is very personal (health issues, family issues, etc.), which I think is important for others to understand, since so many literary publications are small (very small) businesses. If one person can’t function for whatever reason, that can put the whole publication in jeopardy. You did allude to some reasons in your farewell note to readers, but nothing terribly specific. So, spill. Why hiatus?
JF: Of course, this is a very difficult question. It makes me go a little white and cold, though I know you are right, to hear you say that hiatus is often just a hasbeen rockstars comeback tour… I didn’t want to come back for a year; I don’t want to come back for a year.
In terms of why I stepped away, there are two answers.
The first was actually entirely personal. I’m not sure if this is of any interest to your readers, but I had a sick child and I really needed to be home with him. That had been taking a toll for a few years, and finally I simply needed to put absolutely everything aside and be home. There. For him. I am grateful every day this was an option for me, and I send love and compassion to all the mothers and children who do not have that luxury. That remains a decision I am very proud of, even if it cost me the journal.
The second is really the more on-point answer, I suppose. Yes, that darn domain bill. I had been paying for the magazine largely by myself for many years. This is my dirty little secret. I remember hearing a very young publisher years ago at AWP confess she had sold her car to pay for her press – I thought she was crazy! But I did too, truly; I still have my car, but I didn’t take my kids on vacation, I didn’t do a lot of things. In the beginning I felt like it was a lot like graduate school, and that it was money I spent to create something I believe in. Tuesday has a ridiculous business model simply because of the price of its physical parts. It simply didn’t feel sustainable anymore. I needed to take a few years to really decide where I wanted to go next.
I want to find a sustainable model now. I needed to decide to be a publisher. We start these things – in MFA programs, in the middle of the night – we don’t really know what we are getting into, and that’s a good thing: we dive. Diving is so important for creation. But then comes the moment when you have to look around – is this water clean? do I like swimming?
I think there are real issues to be addressed in publishing. About diversity, about voice. Beauty. Access. Funding. Tangibility. I don’t pretend Tuesday is big enough to tackle any of this, or the press I have a vision of will be, but I feel like that is the work I would like to address as an editor. Tuesday either needed to bigger or smaller. It’s time to go bigger.
NP: Your Kickstarter campaign is asking people to pre-subscribe for two issues. What about after that? I mean, I’m sure you hope to have enough subscribers to continue the support – but…
JF: This is the $15,000 question. I feel like this is just what it was created to be – a kickstart. To get us back on our feet. Re-establish our base. Get us going for the next year. After that I want to pursue both traditional and non-traditional funding. Non-profit status and grants. Fundraising. Some sort of advertising. My real dream is to find corporate sponsorship. I don’t like the model we have going now where poor poets pay more and more for the publishing of poetry. First off, they can’t afford it. Secondly it exacerbates the money/publication gap. It prevents us from making the types of shifts in publishing that will open up publication to reflect the diversity of the important poetry in this country.
NP: Well, I’m a huge fan of Tuesday, so I’m giddy to see it come back (and, yes, have kicked in on the Kickstarter!). Thank you for all you’ve said here; I think you make some important statements about poetry and publishing that could benefit others.
JF: Thank you so much for all the support.
American Life in Poetry: Column 525
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
Here’s a fine poem about two generations of husbands, by Pauletta Hansel of Ohio.
Husbands
My mother likes a man who works. She likes
my husband’s muddy knees, grass stains on the cuffs.
She loved my father, though when weekends came
he’d sleep till nine and would not lift
his eyes up from the page to move the feet
she’d vacuum under. On Saturdays my husband
digs the holes for her new roses,
softening the clay with peat and compost.
He changes bulbs she can no longer reach
and understands the inside of her toaster.
My father’s feet would carry him from chair
to bookshelf, back again till Monday came.
My mother likes to tell my husband
sit down in this chair and put your feet up.
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 ©2011 by Pauletta Hansel from her most recent book of poems, The Lives We Live in Houses, (Wind Publications, 2011). Poem reprinted by permission of Pauletta Hansel and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2015 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. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
On Writing: An Occassional Series curated by rob mclennan [pictured] on the Ottawa Poetry Newsletter blog celebrates two years of publishing craft essays by writers. Some recent posts include:
Sarah Burgoyne : a series of permissions-givings
Anne Fleming : Funny
Julie Joosten : On Haptic Pleasures: an Avalanche, the Internet, and Handwriting
David Dowker : Micropoetics, or the Decoherence of Connectionism
Renée Sarojini Saklikar : No language exists on the outside. Finders must venture inside.
Ian Roy : On Writing, Slowly
Monica Kidd : On writing and saving lives
Robert Swereda : Why Bother?
mclennan is planning forthcoming new essays by Catherine Owen, Peter Richardson, Sky Gilbert, Priscila Uppal, Carolyn Marie Souaid, Angie Abdou, Arjun Basu, Laisha Rosnau, Gail Scott and George Fetherling.
Press 53 has awarded Rebecca Foust the winner of the 2015 Press 53 Award for Poetry with her collection Paradise Drive, chosen by Tom Lombardo. Of his selection, he says, “Rebecca Foust has created a Pilgrim who leads us from the hardscrabble existence and despair of Altoona, Pennsylvania, where she was raised, to the ultra-wealth and despair of Marin County, California, where she lived in the first decade of this century. The poems of Paradise Drive are powerful and figurative, with a very strong voice. Though the judging was close for this contest, Foust clearly stood out among the excellent finalists.”
Foust was also the recipient of the 2008 Many Mountain Press Poetry Book Prize for All that Gorgeous Pitiless Song, the winner of the 2010 Foreword Book of the Year Award with God, Seed: Poetry & Art About the Natural World, and the winner of Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook prizes in 2007 and 2008 with her two chapbooks Mom’s Canoe and Dark Card.
Paradise Drive will be released at the end of the month. For more information or to order a copy, check out the Press 53 website.
Black Mountain Institute’s print issue of Witness, Spring 2015, begins with the Editor’s Comment on the theme of translation: “We always expect our themes to expand and change and present themselves in unexpected ways as we read submissions, but the theme for this issue – ‘Trans/lation’ – made itself felt everywhere. Seen broadly and metaphorically enough, any written work can be considered a translation, from a thought or an experience into a piece of writing, and so, a few times, we had to stop and refocus our intentions. We began with the roots of the word itself, which draw from actions like ‘to carry across’ or ‘to bring across,’ as well as the knowledge that translations are really transformations, new versions that are faithful to the original in many different ways.”
Along with other content, specific works of translation (or about translation) in this issue include:
Poetry
Dario Bellezza, from Nothingness, Glamour, Farewell; from Notes for a Novel in Verse. Translated from the Italian by Peter Covino.
Arthur Rimbaud, “Seven-Year-Old Poets.” Translated from the French by Donald Revell.
Maia Circe, “The Unfinished Spell”; “The Smallest Predictions”; “TV.” Translated from the Spanish by Jesse Lee Kercheval.
Fiction
Hossein M. Abkenar, “Classmates.” Translated from the Persian by Sara Khalili
Christos Chartomatsidis, “Alicia the Fat Witch.” Translated from the Bulgarian by Velina Minkoff, Rayna Rossenova, and Borislava Velkova.
Nonfiction
Douglas Unger, “Strange Voices, Subversions, Killer Tomatoes: Literature in Translation.”
Karl Ove Knausgaard, from My Struggle: Book Four. Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett.
Witness makes some works available in full text on their website.
The winner of