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NewPages Blog

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

Ricochet Review

ricochet-reviewStudent poets guided by faculty and editorial editors at Chicago’s Von Steuben Metropolitan Science Center comprise the editorial board of Ricochet Review, an annual poetry magazine that strives to publish both established and emerging writers who work in poetry and/or poetry translations from various languages and various forms of art. The newest issue (#3) features translation from both underrepresented and major languages, as well as through ekphrasis.

Ricochet Review is unique among literary magazines because of its “Apprentice Poet and Master Poet Mentorship Exchange.” This is an opportunity for high school poets to hone their craft through a guided, workshop-style collaboration between experienced, published, and talented master poets, who understand the art of poetry and how to convey it. High school students who wish to be mentored should highlight their interest in their cover letter when submitting their poems. The editorial board will then contact chosen participants.

Ricochet Review is currently accepting national and international submissions from high school students, college students, and non-students. The theme for their next issue: “Macabre and Grotesque.” The editors write, “We are looking for any type of poetry and translation directly or indirectly inspired by the macabre and/or grotesque.” The reading period ends February 1, 2016.

Poetry Resource for Teachers

The Teacher’s Lounge on the League of Canadian Poets website offers some great resource essays and lesson plans:

Encouraging Amazing Writing by Dawna Proudman
Inspiring Writing that Makes You Stand Up and Cheer by Dawna Proudman
Performing your Work: Finding the Actor Inside of You by Penn Kemp
Get Rhythm: teaching students to hear rhythm and metre by Katherine Parrish
Keep it Simple: Concrete Imagery in Poetry by Michael Mirolla
Dispelling the 5-7-5 Myth: A Haiku Lesson for Elementary Students by Naomi Beth Wakan
Canadian Poets Across the Curriculum: Al Purdy and the Dorsets by Kathryn Bjornson
Canadian Poets Across the Curriculum: Fred Wah and Joy Kogawa by Kathryn Bjornson
Digital Spaces, Reading, and Poetics by Aaron Tucker
Identity and Autobiography by Aaron Tucker
Teaching Form Poetry by Yvonne Blomer

Writing Dialogue – Or Not

samsun-knightWriter Samsun Knight explores the role of conversational dialogue in fiction: “…in reality, nobody ever talks to anyone else. What speech actually achieves is a communication between one person and that person’s idea of the other. Most of the time there is no difference, no discernible difference, between such verisimilitude and the truth. But the best dialogue will manifest this disparity in subtle, slender ways. It will show how, in speaking, we fail to speak.”

Read the rest of his commentary in Glimmer Train Bulletin #102 along with other craft essays from authors recently published in Glimmer Train Stories.

It’s Time! August Poetry Postcard Festival!

august-po-poPaul Nelson, poet and lead organizer of the August Poetry Postard Festival has sent the first update for this year’s event!

For you newbies, the August PoPo Fest goes like this: You sign up. You get a list of 31 names/addresses of other people who signed up. Starting late June, you write a poem a day on a postcard and mail it off to the next person on the list, so by the end of the month, you will have (hopefully) written and sent 31 poems and (hopefully) received 31 poems.

The poems are not supposed to be pre-written or something you’ve been working on for months. This is an exercise is the spontaneous, the demanding, the gut-driven, the postcard inspired – whatever it is that gets you to write once a day, each day, and send it off into the world.

I’ve done this event since it began, and it is now in its ninth year! I don’t always keep to a poem a day; sometimes I get ahead one day, or catch up another, with several poems in one day. But I try my best. The event does get me thinking of poetry in my every day, when I rarely have time for it, and writing it down – something I have time for even more rarely.

I’ve received poems from across the state, the country and around the globe. I’ve gotten postcards made from cereal boxes, some with gorgeous original artwork, and lots of the lovely tacky tourist cards from travel destinations. I have cards from “famous” poets, and some who have since become more famous, and some never signed, so I’ll never know, and it hardly matters. I’ve gotten poetry. Sent to me directly. From strangers. Lovely, strange, absurd, and funny. Poetry.

It’s an amazing event, and I hope you will take the challenge and join in this year. For the first time EVER, the organizers have decided to charge a nominal fee for the event ($10). I can only imagine the amount of work it is to run this (with up to 300 people participating), and keeping up virtual space to promote it. I’m not dissuaded by the fee, knowing the extraordinary event that it is, and knowing I’ve spent 100 times that on conferences from which I’ve gotten a great deal less inspiration…

So, please writers, wanna-bes and needs-a-kick-in-the-arsers, poetry lovers, postcard lovers – this event is for you. Join us!

Gulf Coast 2014 Barthelme Prize Winners

gulf-coast-summer-fall-2015The winner and honorable mentions of the 2014 Barthelme Prize are featured in the Summer/Fall 2015 issue of Gulf Coast:

2014 Barthelme Prize
Amy Hempel, Judge

Winner
Emma Bolden, “Gifted”

Honorable Mentions
Patty Yumi Cottrell, “No One Makes Plans”
Susan Lilley, “Delmonicos”

The Barthelme Prize for Short Prose is open to pieces of prose poetry, flash fiction, and micro-essays of 500 words or fewer. The contest awards its winner $1,000 and publication in the journal. Two honorable mentions will receive $250, and all entries will be considered for paid publication on the Gulf Coast website as Online Exclusives.


Books :: John Simmons Short Fiction Award

excommunicados-charles-havertyThe John Simmons Short Fiction Award is open to any writer who hasn’t previously published a volume of prose fiction. Charles Haverty is the 2015 winner with his forthcoming collection Excommunicados.

From the University of Iowa Press’s website: “By turns haunting, hilarious, and heartbreaking, Charles Haverty’s debut collection charts the journeys of men, women, and children cast out of familiar territory into emotional terra incognita where people and things are rarely what they seem. . . . There are secrets at the center of each of these daring and original stories—secrets that separate these characters from one another but grow in the mind and the heart, connecting them with all of us.”

To be available in October 2015, copies of Excommunicados can be preordered from the University of Iowa Press website.

Quiddity: Some Changes

quiddity 8 1Quiddity, the international journal and public radio program enters into its eighth year with a couple notable changes. Managing Editor Jim Warner will be handing over the role to John McCarthy, and the partnership with Benedictine University at Springfield has come to close. Quiddity will continue with a new relationship with NPR member/PRI affiliate WUIS, Illinois Public Radio’s hub-station. As Warner writes, “Sharing our contributors’ work with the public-radio audience is a crucial element to our mission at Quiddity and we look forward to sharing more work with you.”

 

Sea Level Rising

I read half of the poetry in John Philip Drury’s newest book of poems Sea Level Rising while situated on a large towel on St. Augustine Beach along the Atlantic in Northern Florida. It was the ideal setting for contemplating as Drury expressed his love for the sights and sounds of the ocean. “I miss the rising tides,” he reminisces in the book’s title poem, “that bash the docks / and spatter brackish water in my face.” Continue reading “Sea Level Rising”

Overwinter

Overwinter, Jeremy Pataky’s debut poetry collection, examines the speaker’s isolation and solace in the vast, untamed nature of the Alaskan wilderness. Throughout the collection, the speaker spends his time between a developed city, with its electricity and human companionship, and the natural Alaskan landscape filled with its braided streams, unpredictable wildlife, and endless illusions of light and depth. Continue reading “Overwinter”

Travels in Vermeer

A little bit travelogue, a little bit art history, and a little bit heartbreaking memoir, Michael White’s Travels in Vermeer explores the author’s fascination with the paintings of Johannes Vermeer, a fascination that takes him around Europe and America. Traveling to Amsterdam, The Hague, Delft, Washington D.C., New York, and London in the course of a year—while at the same time dealing with a painful divorce and custody battle, remembering the difficulties of his childhood and the alcoholism of his early adulthood, trying to get back into the dating scene, and remembering the brief, passionate romance with his first wife, who died of cancer—White gives long meditations on Vermeer’s paintings in lyric detail, becoming an intense eye through which we the readers also get to see them. Continue reading “Travels in Vermeer”

Bottle the Bottles the Bottles the Bottles

Lee Upton’s Bottle the Bottles the Bottles the Bottles is a dense work wrapped in a short body. Originally from Michigan, the Midwest comes through Upton’s poetry in a similar way to a classic James Wright poem. It is there when she wants it to be, but she has the control to stray from it when necessary. Many of these poems are closer in scope to Charles Wright, the current Poet Laureate, and readers of her 2005 publication Defensive Measures: The Poetry of Niedecker, Bishop, Gluck, and Carson will see how they’ve influenced her writing throughout this collection. Continue reading “Bottle the Bottles the Bottles the Bottles”

Dear Herculine

“This letter is about our lives simultaneously, and the mess of memories and body parts that emerges from our selves.” Thus writes the contemporary narrator to Herculine Barbin, an intersexed person born 1838, given a surgical sex reassignment which led to his/her suicide at twenty-nine in 1868. There are about fifteen ways to have an intersexed body, from not XX (female) and not XY (male) to complete gonadal dysgenesis. An intersexed body automatically makes one an intersexed person. The intersexed person does not fall within the guidelines of the social organization based on the clear-cut sexes, male and female, which, in turn, is amenable to the prescribed roles of gender. Continue reading “Dear Herculine”

The Parish

“This is not the story of Katrina, of flood waters rising and then receding,” the prologue of The Parish: An AmeriCorps Story lets readers know. One could argue that it’s not even “An AmeriCorps Story” either. The Parish is a story of finding purpose and direction in a place that feels devoid of nearly everything—a story of finding purpose and direction in one’s self. Continue reading “The Parish”

New Lit on the Block :: Tishman Review

tishman-reviewThe Tishman Review gets its name from Tishman Hall, located on the campus of Bennington College where co-founding editors Maura Snell and Jennifer Porter gave their graduate lectures and readings as students in the Bennington Writing Seminars. They are joined by Joanne Nelson, editor for creative nonfiction.

Publishing quarterly fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and art, including cartoons, the current issue of The Tishman Review is available for free online. All issues are available to purchase as an e-book and in print-on-demand.

Porter tells me they started a magazine “to be DIFFERENT. We wanted to pay our contributors, we wanted to be hands-on editors—not only reading everything that comes in (and often providing feedback) but also editing accepted pieces, we wanted to be open to what authors are creating rather than having pre-determined ideas of what they should be writing.”

As a result of their up-to-elbows approach, readers can expect to find a selection of poetry, prose and art that “speaks to the human condition” and “hopefully elicits a response, whether it be emotional or intellectual.”

There have been no preset themes for submissions, though themes have appeared from among the works once they have been selected for publication. The editors shared, “We do like to publish work that challenges the ‘isms of sex, race, age, etc.”

Among those writers whose works have been selected, in poetry: Lauren Davis, Ace Boggess, Barrett Warner, Karla Van Vliet and Jennifer Martelli; in fiction: Tamas Dobozy, Amanda Pauley, Laura Jean Schneider, Lee L. Krecklow, James English, and Mercedes Lawry; in creative nonfiction: Robert Vivian, Jayne Guertin, and Kerrin O’Sullivan.

For the July issue, The Tishman Review will begin mini-contests in which readers (on our website) and the staff vote for their favorite piece in each genre and contributors will win prize monies. The editors hope to continue working on the publication’s financial standing so as to increase contributor payments.

All poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction submissions can be made through Submittable. There is a fee to submit works, which the editors felt a need to comment on: “There is a lot of controversy surrounding submission fees. On our website we’ve posted a Code of Ethics for our journal as we do charge a submission fee. We want each submitter to see what they are paying for. We also host regular no fee submission days that we announce through social media. We do not charge a submission fee for art or craft blog posts.”

The Tishman Review also accepts submissions of book reviews and craft essays for the Craft Talk Blog (there is no pay for these contributors, but the byline is worth it – the blog already has some excellent content that has been featured on NewPages), as well as cover art, interior black and white art, and cartoons.

2014 Ginsberg Poetry Award Winners

The 2015-2016 annual issue of Paterson Literary Review generously features all the winners and honorable mentions of their 2014 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award:

paterson 43FIRST PRIZE (shared)
Linda A. Cronin, Cedar Grove, NJ, “Because It’s Mine”
and
Linda Hillringhouse, Englewood, NJ, “The Bristol Plaza Hotel, Wildwood”

SECOND PRIZE (shared)
Dante Di Stefano, Endwell, NY, “A Morning Prayer While Pumping Gas at the Gulf Gas Station”
and
Abby E. Murray, Endicott, NY, “A Poem for Ugly People”

THIRD PRIZE (shared)
Jason Allen, Binghamton, NY, “Pop”
and
Kenneth Ronkowitz, Cedar Grove, NJ, “That Summer Between”

A complete list with honorable mentions can be found here.

Writers Reread Childhood Favorites

brick-95Now this is cool: Brick 95 has a special feature “On Childhood Books” in which 17 writers reread and comment on books of their youth. Featured authors include Marina Endicott, Pico Iyer, Colum McCann, Kilby Smith-McGregor, Melora Wolff, Eugene McCabe, George Murray, William Kowalski, Frank Macdonald, Aga Maksimowska, Sarah Faber, John Goldbach, Eliza Robertson, Yasuko Thanh, Madeleine Thien, Lisa Moore, and Johanna Skibsrud. Some books you may recognize: Black Beauty, The Little Mermaid, Crime and Punishment, Stuart Little, The Hardy Boys, Peter Pan, and many more. Great concept. Great read. Brick includes some samples on their website here.

Books :: Iowa Short Fiction Award

night-in-erg-chebbi-and-other-stories-edward-hamlinThe 2015 Iowa Short Fiction Award from the University of Iowa Press has been awarded to Edward Hamlin for his debut collection Night in Erg Chebbi and Other Stories.

Judge Karen Russell says of her selection, “The stories in Night in Erg Chebbi are sweeping and intimate and awesomely confident of their own effects. They document staggering, cataclysmic changes—forest fire, flash flood, revolution, murder—as well as the slow violence of grief and degenerative disease. [ . . . ] This is a collection with both depth and breadth, a book dedicated to revealing ‘the universal concealed in the weft of the particular.’ Hamlin spins the globe, jumping nimbly from a treetop lodge on a Brazilian riverbank to the lawn of a governor’s mansion on the eve of an execution to Merzouga, Morocco, ‘gateway to the dune sea of Erg Chebbi.’ [ . . . ] Each story here is a world in miniature, illuminated by the flashbulb bursts of Hamlin’s luminous, controlled prose.”

Available in August, readers can preorder a copy of Night in Erg Chebbi and Other Stories on the University of Iowa Press website.

Glimmer Train Very Short Fiction Award Winners :: June 2015

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

SpencerHydeFirst place: Spencer Hyde [pictured], of Franktown, CO, wins $1500 for “Light as Wings.” His story will be published in Issue 97 of Glimmer Train Stories. This will be his first major fiction publication.

Second place: John Patrick Sheridan, of Schenectady, NY, wins $500 for “The Narrators.”

Third place: Steve Lambert, of St. Augustine, FL, wins $300 for “Fishing with Max Hardy.”

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

Deadline coming up for the Fiction Open: June 30
Glimmer Train hosts this competition quarterly, and first place is $2500 plus publication in the journal. This category has been won by both beginning and veteran writers – all are welcome! There are no theme restrictions. Word count generally ranges from 2000 – 6000, though up to 20,000 is fine. Click here for complete guidelines.

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

pilgrimage-sleepPilgrimage magazine (v38 n3) features black and white photography from the organization Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep (NILMDTS). From the organization’s website: “NILMDTS trains, educates, and mobilizes professional quality photographers to provide beautiful heirloom portraits to families facing the untimely death of an infant. We believe these images serve as an important step in the family’s healing process by honoring the child’s legacy.”

Pilgramage editors write, “The organization has a valuable mission and takes powerful photos that are haunting and tender. The photography intersects with the issue’s words by encouraging us to look closer and take no detail for granted. It risks sentimentality and makes us look closer at an intimate moment for families. At the core of it, NILMDTS offers a uniquely valuable service to parents in need and navigates the tough terrain of grieving and celebrating life simultaneously. We encourage you to learn more and support NILMDTS at https://www.nowilaymedowntosleep.org.”

Books :: Gival Press Poetry Award

we-deserve-the-gods-we-ask-for-seth-brady-tuckerThe Gival Press Poetry Award is held annually. Open to national and international poets, winners receive $1,000 and publication. The 2013 winner, We Deserve the Gods We Ask For by Seth Brady Tucker was published this past fall.

Judge Lisa Graley, winner of the previous year’s poetry award, says of her selection, “This is sinewy writing at its most sturdy and tenacious. His—tangle of silk and muscle—is sure to stagger and transfix.”

More information about the Gival Press Poetry Award and We Deserve the Gods We Ask For can be found at the Gival Press website.

Threatened Languages Dialogue

YMR Spring 2015Yellow Medicine Review Spring 2015 features “Entering Language from Two Directions” a roundtable conversation with poets who work directly with/in threatened languages. Participants include LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Jacqueline Osherow, James Thomas Stevens, and Karenne Wood. Megan Snyder-Camp moderates the conversation and begins: “This is a conversation between poets who enter language form two directions: in addition to engaging language on the page in a variety of innovative ways, these poets also work as linguists, translators, and/or language activists…Grounded in our craft, our conversation covered both what these poets bring to the page and also what happens on the page, while also exploring historical and contemporary context.”

IR Contest Winners & Graphic Memoirs

IR 37n1Indiana Review v37 n1 features 2014 Fiction Prize winner (“The Passeur” by E.E. Lyons) and finalist (“Come Go With Me” by Nora Bonner), 2014 1/2K Prize Winner (“The Girl Next Door to the Girl Next Door” by Amy Woolard), and, while not a contest winner, a cool “Special Folio: Graphic Memoir” featuring work by Bianca Stone, Douglas Karney, Diane Sorensen, Arewen Donahue, and Rowan Hisayo Buchanan.

MAR 2014-15 Poetry & Fiction Award Winners

The newest Mid-American Review (v35 n2) features winners and runners-up of the magazine’s 2014-2015 Poetry and Fiction Awards:

James Wright Poetry Award
Oliver de la Paz, Judge
Winner: “Mapping the Tongue” by Geetha Iyer
Runner-Up: “Iki Dugno,” by Keith Kopka

Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award
Alissa Nutting, Judge
Winner: “Postcard from a Funeral, Cumberland, Maryland, October 16, 1975” by Miles Harvey
Runner-Up: “The Turnip Girl,” by Laura I. Miller

See the full list of finalists as well as judges’ comments on the winning works here.

Essays on The Alchemy of Print

BirkertsThe Sewanee Review Spring 2015 issue takes a close look at the print world with its theme “The Alchemy of Print.” Essays include Sven Birkerts [pictured] on “The Little Magazine in the World of Big Data”; A. Banerjee on T. S. Eliot’s editing career, “T.S. Eliot and the Criterion“; Robert Buffington on Allen Tate’s time at the Sewanee Review; Stephen Miller on the life of the Partisan Review, “Memoirs of a New York Intellectual Manque”; David Heddendorf on “Reading that Isn’t Reading”; John Maxwell Hamilton’s “The Gospel on Book Theft”; “Price Control and the Publisher” by James L. W. West III; “Everything an Anchor” by Fred Chappell; “The Man Booker Prize for 2014” by Merritt Moseley; “Remembering Winston Churchill: The making of a Book” by Mel Livatino; and “The Cheever Misadventure Revisted” by Scott Donaldson.

Writing Maps

writing-mapFrom the mastermind of Shaun Levin come a couple of fantastic creations. The first is Writing Maps. Simply designed and beautifully executed, these illustrated maps are printed on sturdy 11×16 paper and folded into eight, making the closed map about postcard size. Each map contains writing prompts related to the subject of the map. For example: Write Around the House: Writing Prompts to Explore the Rooms We Inhabit; Writing Art: Writing in Galleries and Museums; The Café Writing Map: Writing Prompts for Cafes, Bars, Bistros, and Pubs; Writing Things: Writing About Objects and the Things We Carry; How to Write a Story Writing Map; Write Around the Bookshop.

Shaun explains: “Writing Maps are created to suit writers of all genres and levels. Writing Maps are devised to inspire stories, spice up your writing routine, expand your work, develop work-in progress, and make sure you have writerly fun in ways that’ll surprise you.” There are currently 16 maps available with more planned, such as Writing School Map and Write Around the Garden.

In addition to the Writing Maps, Shaun is editor of The A3 Review, a publication folded in the same style as the maps, featuring poetry and prose with a 150 word limit. With room for a cover and back cover, 14 writer’s works can be featured in each publication. The contributors come from a monthly writing contest in response to changing prompts. Current and upcoming prompts: Green Things; Journeys; Hands. Contest winners receive a cash prize, with two works selected each month for publication in The A3 Review.

Subprimal Poetry Art Announces Suggest a Theme Contest

subprimalOnline literary magazine Subprimal Poetry Art is having a contest to select the theme for their next issue. They are looking for submissions of a theme title and description of approximately 100 words. There is no entry fee to submit to this contest and you can enter up to three times. The winner will receive $50 USD.

The deadline to enter is July 28th. Subprimal Poetry Art suggests taking a look at past issues and themes before submitting. You can find full guidelines and details here: subprimal.com/contests.

Books :: Sanger-Stewart Chapbook Competition

owl-invites-your-silence-richard-parisioThe Slapering Hol Press Sanger-Stewart Chapbook Competition is open to writers who haven’t yet published a chapbook collection. Richard Parisio is the 2014 winner with his collection The Owl Invites Your Silence, released this year.

From the editors: “Parisio’s wise and moving words emerge from his training as a naturalist, teacher, journalist, and conservationist. This is a book of poems written by a poet who pays keen attention to the natural world that is quickly being destroyed. It is an important book for our time.”

Parisio has worked as an interpretive naturalist for 40 years and is a nature columnist for the local paper in New Paltz, NY. His work can be found in three regional anthologies, as well as The Kerf, Spillway, and Common Ground Review, among other journals.

Fig Tree Books Expands to YA

Fig Tree Books, “Publishing the Best Novels & Memoirs of the American Jewish Experience (AJE),” has announced that it is now accepting AJE memoirs and young-adult and graphic-novel manuscripts in addition to literary novels.

fig-tree-booksFredric Price, founder and publisher of Fig Tree said, “We typically describe ‘American’ as dealing with the people or institutions of the United States; this does not mean that the protagonist must be a citizen or that the action must take place exclusively within our country. But the book needs to be grounded in American values, culture or history and American readers need to be able to identify with the characters and the story. For us, the ‘Jewish experience’ means engaging with what it means to be a Jewish American, or how one goes about his or her life practicing (or denying) his/her Judaism, or how one copes with Jewish identity, or deals with social/political/cultural issues associated with being Jewish or interactions between/among Jews and other groups.”

Fig Tree accepts agented and unrepresented manuscripts and pay competitive advances and standard royalties. All of their books will be available in print and e-format, and promoted using a combination of traditional and social media approaches.

Poetry – May 2015

The May 2015 issue of Poetry prompts us to ask questions, and to observe without judgement the ways in which we act and operate as humans. In the opening poem, Frank Bidart’s “The Fourth Hour of the Night,” a young boy murders his half-brother for stealing a freshly-killed lark, and after, justifies his actions: “He looked / around him. Human beings // live by killing other living beings.” The poem positions us in a setting filled with slavery and brutality, a ruthless desire for power, and the search for immortality. Here, the boy acts based upon what he observes in a world that caters to those “stronger, taller, more / ruthless than you.” Continue reading “Poetry – May 2015”

Black Warrior Review – Spring/Summer 2015

Before I began reading this issue of Black Warrior Review I skimmed its pages to see what they had in store for me. As it turned out, the pages held more than I could have ever expected, such as a chapbook by Nicole Walker, the graphic prose of Jeffery Chapman, a small section of featured work which includes everything from fiction and nonfiction to a graphic short story and artwork by Melissa Zexler. Needless to say that before I even started this issue, my mind was buzzing with excitement to read every single page. Continue reading “Black Warrior Review – Spring/Summer 2015”

Caketrain – February 2015

When I first laid my eyes on the cover of the newest issue of Caketrain, I knew I would be in for a treat. The cover images titled “Kingdom of Heaven” by Yonca Karakas Demirel are both aesthetically pleasing and intriguing—they ask the reader to open the journal and explore what is within this issue’s pages. I expected fresh, new, and inspiring ideas that would make me want to write and that is exactly what I got; Issue 12 of Caketrain will not leave lovers of contemporary creative writing unsatisfied. Continue reading “Caketrain – February 2015”

The Caterpillar – Spring 2015

If you have young people in your life you want to inspire to read and write, The Caterpillar is your way to reach them. Published by the same folks who bring The Moth to young adult readers, The Caterpillar is geared toward an even younger crowd, the 7 – 11-ish range, which can be a tough group to target with the right amount of enjoyable silliness as well as seriousness for the more critical among them, but The Caterpillar gets the mix perfectly. Continue reading “The Caterpillar – Spring 2015”

Dogwood 2015 Prize Winners

Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose #14 features the winners of their 2015 contest. A prize of $1000 goes to one winning entry, with two additional entries receiving $250 each as well as publication.

dogwood-14First Prize Creative Nonfiction
Dogwood Grand Prize
“Los Ojos” by Daisy Hernández
Judge Jill Christman

First Prize Poetry
“Under The Tongue” by Ed Frankel
Judge Mark Neely

First Prize Fiction
“We’ll Understand It By and By” Rosie Forrest
Judge Rachel Basch

A full article with judges’ comments can be read here.

Also check out this interview with artist Shanna Melton, whose gorgeous painting of Espranza Spalding is featured on the cover.

Grist – 2015

Grist is an annual magazine published in paperback by the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Subtitled “the journal for writers,” the masthead says that Grist is “devoted to contemporary literary art and essays that present and represent the writer’s occupation.” The operation is run by students, so the accent is on “contemporary.” Continue reading “Grist – 2015”

South Dakota Review – Winter 2015

What stuck out to me the most in this issue of the South Dakota Review was the poetry section, not only because I am a poet by nature, but because of the depth and breadth of range from ghostly lines to historical narratives. The poetry section begins with “Black Tigers” by Angela Penaredondo. Borrowing its epigraph from Wole Soyinka’s “Civilian and Soldier,” “Black Tigers” follows the life of a young female civilian soldier and the everyday preparations of dying. In the poem, she “shall be severed. Spread with voracity, / then refined to seeds and meat. / This land. All hunger girls.” Continue reading “South Dakota Review – Winter 2015”

Jabberwock Review – Winter 2015

It may seem counterintuitive to begin with the end, but that is where I want to start with one of my favorite pieces. The last narrative in the Winter 2015 issue of Jabberwock Review follows a father, who, after the death of his wife (who appears to him post-mortem as a physical manifestation of his subconscious much like the ghost of Hamlet’s father), frames his drug-addicted son for grand larceny in hopes to save him from his addiction. In her prose, Sonia Scherr explores how our losses define us while remaining visible like stars in the night sky, where the stars are dead long before we gaze upon them, yet are “not a reflection or a picture, but the living star” that we see. The stars, like our losses, leave “A Hole in the Universe.” Continue reading “Jabberwock Review – Winter 2015”

Crazyhorse – Spring 2015

Perhaps my favorite poem in this issue of Crazyhorse is the “Poem for the Giraffe Marius,” written by Christopher Kempf. The poem details the death of Marius, a giraffe who was executed via a bolt gun at the Copenhagen Zoo, “Because they said genetics [ . . . ] inbreeding. Because when the steel bolt retracts, the giraffe’s / skull crumpling // on itself like a cup.” Kempf continues, “There is [ . . . ] an element / of cruelty rooted in every spectacle.” Continue reading “Crazyhorse – Spring 2015”

Books :: Tenth Gate Prize

impossible-object-lisa-sewellThe Word Works’s Tenth Gate Prize, “named in honor of Jane Hirshfield, recognizes the wisdom and dedication of mid- and late-career poets.”

Lisa Sewell was recognized in 2014 with her winning collection Impossible Object, selected by Series Editor Leslie McGrath for “its eloquence, originality, cohesion, and craft.”

Released in April, readers can pick up copies of Impossible Object from the publisher’s website or from SPD.

Litro : The Detroit Issue

litro-143While Litro Magazine Editor Eric Akoto claims he won’t attempt to give a full understanding of the history of Detroit that led it to becoming “the symbol of the American urban crisis,” his introduction to Litro #143: Detroit does a pretty darn good job. More importantly, this issue’s content focuses on the “hope for this once great city to rise again and rebuild itself.”

Content includes fiction by Dorene O’Brien, “Way Past Taggin’,” which takes readers inside the sub-culture of Detroit’s graffiti artists, and Patricia Abbott’s dark and gruesome story “On Belle Isle” about a photographer obsessed with photographing images of dead corpses. Amy Kaherl, one of the founding members of Detroit Soup, writes about her Detroit and its community in “A Community through Dialogue.” A Q&A with Detroit photographer Amy Sacka explores her project “Lost and Found in Detroit,” a photo series that began as a 365-day photo essay, where she literally took a photo a day, and has now extended to “The next 500 days.” The issues closes with Bram Stoker Award and Locus Award winner Kathe Koja, who considers Detroit’s new status in “The Limbo District.”

Litro is fully available online as well as on Issuu.

Rattle Tribute to New Yorkers

rattle-48The newest issue of Rattle: Poetry for the 21st Century (#48) features a Tribute to New Yorkers. In addition to a conversation with Jan Heller Levi, recorded live in her Manhattan apartment, the publication features works by “real New Yorkers”: Ryan Black, Susana H. Case, Bill Christophersen, Coco de Casscza, Kim Dower, Tony Gloeggler, Linda S. Gottlieb, Michele Lent Hirsch, Jan Heller Levi, Arden Levine, Martin H. Levinson, Peter Marcus, Joan Murray, Harry Newman, Myra Shapiro, Katherine Barrett Swett, and Marilynn Talal.

“Nearly 9 million people call the five boroughs home,” Rattle editors write, “squeezing into a land area of just 305 square miles. How does life in such a unique locale enter into the poetry, and what do New Yorker poets have in common? We explore, in the smallest regional theme we’ve ever done.”

Books :: First Book Competition

50-water-dreams-siwa-masannatWinner of the 2014 First Book Competition from the Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 50 Water Dreams by Siwar Masannat, selected by Ilya Kaminsky, is now available for purchase on the publisher’s website.

Of his selection, Kaminsky says, “How lucky we are to find a poetry debut that isn’t afraid of ideas, of mysteries, of politics, of passion. How brave she is to say ‘I saw nobody coming so I went instead.’ And to dare us: ‘I want to put you in my revolution.’ Like Zbigniew Herbert, this poet wants ‘to hide you in my eyelids & the nation,’ like Venus Khoury-Ghata, she makes a mythological pastoral, a book of voices that speak for more than one person.”

Masannat’s writing can also be found in New Orleans Review, Gargoyle, and Hayden’s Ferry Review, among other journals.

Hawthorne-Dzanc Merger

dzanc-booksHawthorne Books has announced a merger with Dzanc Books. As of June 1, 2015 Hawthorne is an imprint of Dzanc. The merger allows both houses to maintain their own individual editorial vision while working together on select projects. In addition to having offices in Ann Arbor and New York, a publicity center for both presses will be headquartered at Hawthorne’s Portland, Oregon office, and Rhonda Hughes will serve as Dzanc’s Director of Marketing and Publicity. Dzanc and Hawthorne are distributed by PGW.

Steven Gillis, publisher and co-founder of Dzanc says about the deal, “I could not be more pleased. Having worked with Rhonda and her staff prior for my own writing, I know what a level of excellence and professionalism she brings to the table. Providing Hawthorne with what Dzanc can offer, and in turn allowing Dzanc authors to avail themselves to Rhonda’s magic as a marketer and publisher, is a perfect partnership that enables both houses to expand and become a real force for our authors in the industry.”

Glass Kite Summer Writing Studio

glass-kite-2Glass Kite Anthology‘s Summer Writing Studio for Young Writers is accepting applications until June 27. According to Glass Kite Anthology Founders and Editors-in-Chief Margaret Zhang and Noel Peng, this is a free, online writing studio for high/middle schoolers, intended to guide, inspire, and mentor young writers of prose and poetry during the summer months.

The program mentors are experienced young writers who are Foyle Young Poets, Scholastic Art & Writing Award Recipients, California Arts Scholars, and more. Each will choose up to 3 mentees with whom they will work for at least four (cumulative) weeks; after that, other arrangements can be made between the pairs, if it is desired.

For more information and to fill out an application, click here. The application is a google.doc, so you can access it on the GKA site if you are using Google Chrome as your browser. Otherwise, you have to log in to Google to access the application.