Home » NewPages Blog » Page 134

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!

New Lit on the Block :: Bear Review

bear-reviewBased out of Kansas City and Seattle, Bear Review is a new independent online biannual of poetry and micro-prose (under 500 words) as well as visual art. Between issues, Editors Marcus Myers and Brian Clifton also post Bear Review authors reading their work on Soundcloud and Tumblr.

In starting a literary magazine, Myers and Clifton say they like the juxtaposition inherent in those publications. “When reading one, you never know what will be on the next page–your new favorite poem? your best friend from childhood? a plot that destroys everything you though about storytelling? The possibilities are endless. We wanted to create a space in which this excitement could live and grow. Part of the fun for us is putting each issue in order and seeing how the text and images converse with one another. In a phrase, our mission is to keep our readers guessing.”

And while the name Bear Review might seem to invite eco- or nature-themed writing, the inspiration expresses a more complex metaphor. When Myers was a teenager, he went hiking and came across a bear face-to-face. The experience was full of beauty that turned into danger and fear. Myers writes, “As readers, we crave that specific sort of encounter from each poem or flash piece we happen upon. Our favorite pieces, like literary bears, have a mix of beauty and danger that leaves us with a greater respect for what’s real. And we want to share this vital wonder with our readers. “

Reader of Bear Review can expect to find this mix of beauty and danger throughout, though since the editors are both poets, the publication is bias to that genre. (“But we do love micro-prose,” says Myers.) In both prose and poetry, Myers assure me that readers can expect to find a wide breadth of styles and contemporary modes as well as visual art from critically acclaimed photographers, illustrators, and painters.

Some recent contributors include Moikom Zeqo, Mathias Svalina, Jordan Stempleman, Lisa Russ Spaar, DA Powell, Rusty Morrison, Wayne Miller, Emily Koehn, Megan Kaminiski, Miriam Gamble, John Gallaher, Drew Cook, and Hadara Bar-Nadav.

Myers tells me that future plans for Bear Review are to continue making the journal “a beautiful place for the poems and prose we love; we want to continue to bring an audience there. We want to provide a place where established and soon-to-be established writers can share the same stage.” A chapbook contest, website expansion for close readings, and book reviews and interviews are all in the works.

Bear Review takes submissions year round via submittable, and Myers and Clifton say they read each submission out loud. All work done as a labor of love, Bear Review is a welcome addition to the literary arts community.

[Cover: “Victim of Explosion” by August Sander, 1930]

Room “In Translation” Issue

roomRachel Thompson’s Editor’s Note for the newest issue of Room Magazine (38.1) comments on the publication’s theme of In Translation: “In this issue of Room we explore literature from languages other than English, and the act of translation in all its senses. . . submerging ourselves into another language can give us a greater understanding of the world. When we try new tongues, our own becomes richer with infusions and transfusions of new elements, and foreign turns of phrase.

“But just reading a good translation in English—and we also have some of those in the issue—gives us a lens to look through and understand (if only briefly) how writers from other times and places may think and feel. Because we know the impact literature has on our humanity, we see the potential for reading to dissolve preconceptions or misconceptions we have about another culture. More than ever before, readers understand how crucial it is to expand our repertoires, to find stories and ideas outside of narratives that dominate prescribed reading lists and literary review pages.”

To read more from Thompson’s introduction and see a full list of contributors, visit Room‘s issue web page here.

2014 NANO Fiction Winner

NANO Fiction 8.2 features this year’s winner of the 2014 NANO Prize selected by Kim Chinquee.

jasmine-sawersJasmine Sawers piece “The Weight of the Moon” was chosen, as Chinquee notes, beecause “This piece represents, to me, what it means to be in love. So in love that one wants to capture the being one’s in love with and keep it to one’s self. Not realizing, at first, that this may produce harm. Ultimately this piece renders, to me, one’s growth, the grief in letting go, and what a love that is in itself.”

This is an annual contest which awards $1,000 for a previously unpublished work of fiction 300 words or fewer. This year’s contest will be judged by Amber Sparks. All entrants will receive a one-year subscription to NANO Fiction. Deadline: September 1, 2015. See full guidelines here.

Black Warrior Review 2014 Contest Winners

Black Warrior Review issue 40.2 featurs the winners and runners-up of their 10th Annual Contest in Prose, Poetry, and Nonfiction. Each winner received $1,000 and publication, and for the first time, each runner-up received $100.

black-warrior-reviewFiction Contest judged by Judge Lily Hoang
First Place: Michael Mau, “Little Bird”
Runner Up: Elise Winn, “Brother and Sister”

Poetry Contet judged by Richard Siken
First Place: Curtis Rogers, “Of Plenty”
Runner Up: Emily Skaja, “Self-Portrait with Hawk & Armada”

Nonfiction Contest judged by Kiese Laymon
First Place: Landon Houle, “Bigfoot, Bum Foot, Barbie: Strange But True at the Yahoo Freak Show”
Runner Up: Chelsey Clammer Kiese, “Mother Tongue”

Click here for judges’ comments and a full list of finalists.

Interview with Calogero’s Translator

calogeroThe Bitter Oleander journal of contemporary international poetry and short story regularly features poetry translated into English published alongside the originals. The newest issue (21.1) includes the works of 20th century Italian poet Lorenzo Calogero (1910-1961) and an interview with his translator, John Taylor. An excerpt from the interview and one of Calogero’s poems can be read on the publication’s website here.

River Styx 2014 International Poetry Contest Winners

Issue 93 of River Styx features the winners of their 2014 International Poetry Contest. Their editorial panel selected a number of poems to send to this year’s final judge, poet Joan Murray [pictured], who selected the winners:

joan-murray1st Place
Adam Scheffler, “Contemporaries”
Murray’s comment: “It’s a very accomplished accretive poem that pays off our anticipation with specifics and surprises, and lets us chuckle right through the inevitable.”

2nd Place
Brian Patrick Heston, “Overtime”
Murray’s commen: “It’s a jewel-like yet gritty poem that lifts a dark moment to the light and pulls us inside with curiosity, reluctance, and empathy.”

3rd Place
Suzanne Cleary, “Making Love While Watching a Documentary on Lewis and Clark”
Murray’s commen: “It’s an appealingly drowsy meditation on expectation, imagination, and disappointment—in history, on TV, and in bed.”

Honorable Mention
Myra Shapiro, “Put the Kettle On”

BreakBeat Poets in Poetry

Editor Don Share says of the April 2015 issue of Poetry Magazine:

breakbeat-poets. . . this issue of Poetry, timed for National Poetry Month, features a selection of BreakBeat poets: in the pages that follow, readers will experience a “new American poetry in the age of hip-hop,” a resounding allusion to the resonant and groundbreaking 1960 anthology edited by Donald M. Allen, The New American Poetry 1945–1960. In fact, our feature is an excerpt from the book The BreakBeat Poets, published this month by Haymarket Books, and edited by Coval with Quraysh Ali Lansana and Nate Marshall. . . the work of the BreakBeat poets is crucially alive to our present moment. As the anthology’s editors say, this is work “for people who love Hip-Hop, for fans of the culture, for people who’ve never read a poem, for people who thought poems were only something done by dead white dudes who got lost in a forest, and for poetry heads.” In other words, it is for everyone.

Poetry’s full contents can be read online and in celebration of National Poetry Month can be downloaded for free – including audio and video content – on any iOS device.

Southwest Review 100th Anniversary

southwest-reviewEstablished in 1915, frist as The Texas Review at the University ot Texas at Austin, Southwest Review, now of Southern Methodist University, celebrates 100 years of publishing. As critic Edmund Grosse said in the inagural issue of the publication, the magazine has proven his prediction that it would “uphold the banner of scholarly elegance” and “stoop to no word unworthy of the Muses.”

Under the editorial guidance of Willard Spiegelman since 1984 (when the editorial responsibility was returned to a faculty member for the first time in forty years), Southwest Review has emerged as “one of the best literary quarterlies in the United Sates,” according to PEN American Center. Having won the PEN Nora Magid Award for Literary Editing in 2005, Spiegelman and his editorial staff have shown a true lifetime commitment to publishing “luminous and unfamiliar names, so long as the writing is genuine.”

Also featured in this anniversary issue are the 2014 Morton Marr Poetry Prize Winners. This year’s judge was Elizabeth Spires.

First Place Kyle Norwood “Landscape with Fountain and Language”
Second Place Lisa Rosenberg “To the Makers”
Second Place David Landon “Ash Wednesday: Coffee At Starbucks”

State of Flash in the Classroom

nano-fictionNANO Fiction has put out the call to continue their State of Flash series with short essays about flash fiction in and out of the classroom. Do you have thoughts about flash fiction being published today? Which stories or authors have moved you or worked particularly well to generate classroom discussions? Which stories have inspired students? Which stories have inspired you? How has flash fiction changed the way you or your students view writing or the writing process? See full guidelines here.

Books :: Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize

neighbors-jay-nebelThe Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize is awarded to one poetry author a year, with a $2,000 prize and publication. 2014’s prize winner is Jay Nebel whose work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Narrative, Ploughshares, and Tin House, among other journals.

Neighbors, his winning collection, is a book of lyric narratives about the men and women who live and work next to us the people standing in line at the DMV or buying milk and bread at the grocery store. Jay Nebel gives voice to an America lost in the graffiti of park benches and 24-hour diner parking lots, where men attempt CPR on gorillas and beat each other in back alleys with baseball bats, as well as revere their mothers. These are poems that look through the windows at the secret lives of our neighbors, their affairs and addictions, their curses and loves.

Published by Saturnalia Books this month, Neighbors can be purchased through the University Press of New England website.

Structo: Faber New Poets

structoStructo Editor Euan Monaghan starts the newest issue commenting on the work of editing a literary magazine, “. . . not always fun and games. Sometimes, when I’ve had enough of chasing invoices or wrestling software, I pull up on screen something that we are about to publish: a piece of writing so new that it’s not yet been committed to paper. Something only a few people have seen. And the excitement returns. I remember why I’m doing this – it’s because I want to share this feeling of excitement with the whole world. The writing we publish is really good.”

In addition to their own “really good” selections, the UK-based Structo has been invited by Faber & Faber and Arts Council English to publish one poem from each of the 2013-2014 Faber New Poet Award Winners. The Faber Poets receive mentoring, financial support, and a debut pamphlet published by Faber & Faber. The poets are Declan Ryan, Zaffar Kunial, Rachael Allen, and Structo‘s own Will Burns. Burns also talks with Kunial and includes the interview in this issue.

Bellevue Literary Review 2015 Prize Winners

The spring issue of Bellevue Literary Review features the winners of the 2015 BLR prizes:

bellevue-literary-reviewThe winner of the Goldenberg Prize for Fiction, “Autobiography” by Carla Hartenberger—chosen by judge Chang-rae Lee—follows a set of Canadian conjoined twins who must wrestle with the physiology and psychology that both keep them together and wrench them apart.

The winner of the Felice Buckvar Prize for Nonfiction, “I Must Have Been That Man” by Adina Talve-Goodman, was selected by judge Anne Fadiman. In her winning essay, Talve-Goodman navigates college-age independence, her recent heart transplant, and the challenges of compassion when she comes upon a man lying on the side of the road on a rain-drenched night.

The winner of the Marica and Jan Vilcek Prize for Poetry—”Dysesthesia” by Hannah Baggott, selected by judge Major Jackson—is a vivid look at the sensory mayhem of dysesthesia: “I want to know why I am always wanting,” Baggott writes, “why my body is never quiet…”

The winner of the inaugural Daniel Liebowitz Prize for Student Writing is Philip Cawkwell’s haunting poem “The Dinosaur Exhibit.” This award recognizes one outstanding literary submission from the Medicine Clerkship at the NYU School of Medicine.

Honorable mentions (also published in the issue):
Fiction: “Bystander” by Jen Bergmark
Nonfiction: “Torso” by Leslie Absher
Poetry: “Damaged” by Colby Cedar Smith

New Lit on the Block :: The Birds We Pile Loosely

BPLThe Birds We Piled Loosely (or BPL for short) is an online quarterly interested in publishing “anything we can fit into our magazine,” according to Editors Johnathan McClintick and Nicole Letson. For that reason, readers coming to BPL can expect to find just about any kind of writing: from villanelles, to essays, etc. And art can range from photography, painting, illustrations, graphic design etc. BPL is published as a pdf (free to download) because the editors found using InDesign allows them to more easily format non-conventional pieces. Also, McClintick notes, “we can curate the magazine so that the pieces inside read together in a complementary order, and the magazine can readily be shared and circulated.”

McClintick says BPL “started on a whim, but as we’ve gotten more engaged with the work, we really see it as a chance to help writers and artists get more visibility online.” Like many start-up publications, there’s no paycheck for those involved, but nor does the publication ask for payment. “All our work is voluntary and we see it as community service,” comment McClintick, “We love having the chance to share the work of others and give readers the chance to find more work like it. This is why our contributor’s bios contain links to other work they’ve done or are doing. We want readers to read more and discover more; our magazine is just a starting point for them.”

Some featured contributors to the first two issues include Emma DeMilta, Glen Armstrong, Karen J. Weyant, Luke Thurogood, Rob Cook, Robin Wyatt Dunn, Patty Somlo, John Colasacco, who has a book coming out this May through CCM Press, and Howie Good, whose Fugitive Pieces proceeds will be donated to charity.

And the name – why The Birds We Piled Loosely? The answer reveals a whimsical side: “We liked birds! And besides, the great danes piled loosely would just sound silly,” McClintick jokes. “In reality,” he says, “we came up with a shortlist of several different names and passed them around to friends and settled on the name people liked the most.” The result is indeed intriguing and unique.

In the future for BPL, the editors want to look for ways to incorporate video and audio, consider print options and different website designs, and feature a sample of an author’s newly released book. Already, issue three will feature poems from Rob Cook’s new book Asking My Liver for Forgiveness.

For submissions, the editors tell writers to submit “text pieces” instead of any one genre because they don’t want to discourage people from submitting in any medium or style of writing. As for art, they’re really open to anything there as well. Letson’s background and career is in visual design, while McClintick’s is in writing and editing, so they complement each other in the type of work they’re looking for.

McClintick stresses to writers: “Understand that we won’t know your name or publication history when we review the piece. We’ve rejected writers claiming they had over a 100 publications and accepted writers who have never been published. We’ll take a look at any type of writing and judge it on its merit alone. Name dropping publications when you submit your piece doesn’t impress us.”

McClintick and Letson offer this final word: “We really believe in the work we’re doing and in our contributors! We want to thank them again. This magazine is really for our contributors and readers, and we can only hope that when someone opens the magazine that they can see all of this in our work.”

Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week

blue-route

The Blue Route is an online national literary journal for undergraduate writers, with each author’s school affiliation noted in the table of contents. I like the feel of this cover photo by Taylor Blume, with its intense colors and grainy texture.

tahoma-literary-review

This Spring 2015 cover of Tahoma Liteary Review is from a series by southern California artista Wendy Smith called “Inside the Brain.” Inspired by the the work of neuroscientist Camillo Golgi who dyed samples of brain tissue so the neurons could be observed, Smith’s images mimic the technique: color washes to illustrate brain cells.

arc-poetry-76

Arc Poetry Magazine #76 features acrylic on canvas artwork of Christi Belcourt both on the cover and inside the publication in full color. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous.

Michigan Quarterly Review Prize Winners Announced

courtney-sender2kwonmorgenstern-clarren

Courtney Sender has won the $1000 Lawrence Foundation Prize for 2014. The prize is awarded annually by the Editorial Board of MQR to the author of the best short story published that year in the journal. Sender’s story “We Can Practice Starts” appeared in the Spring 2014 issue.

Haesong Kwon has won the 2014 Laurence Goldstein Poetry Prize, which is awarded annually to the author of the best poem or group of poems appearing that year in the Michigan Quarterly Review. His poem “Epistle,” appeared in the Fall 2014 issue.

Rachel Morgenstern-Clarren has won the 2014 Page Davidson Clayton Prize for Emerging Poets, which is awarded annually to the best poet appearing in MQR who has not yet published a book. The award, which is determined by the MQR editors, is in the amount of $500.

For more information about the prizes and judges comments, click on the individual prize links above.

A Month of Visual Poetry

john-m-bennettAngelHousePress presents NationalPoetryMonth.ca 2015, 30 days of visual poetry, asemic writing, concrete poetry, collage, and hybrid visual pieces from Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Finland, India, Ireland, Japan, Portugal, Russia, Ukraine, USA. Visit the site each day in April to see work that blurs genres and transcends boundaries. Poets featured include John M. Bennett; Volodymyr Bilyk, writer, translator from Ukraine; Shloka Shankar, freelance writer residing in India; hiromi suzuki, illustrator, poet and collage artist living inTokyo, Japan; and S Cearley.

PoMoSco Project for NPM

PoMoScoPoMoSco — short for Poetry Month Scouts — is the Found Poetry Review‘s 2015 National Poetry Month project. This April, 213 poets representing 43 states and 12 countries are joining together as a troop to earn digital merit badges for completing experimental and found poetry prompts.

Poetry prompts are divided into five categories: remixing, erasure, out and about, conceptual and chance operation corresponding to their generation method. Each category offers six distinct badges that can be earned. Badges vary in level of difficulty — some may be completed in less than an hour and within one’s home, while others require additional time, interacting with the public and learning to use new software. Poets choose their own source texts from which to craft their poems.

Poets participating in PoMoSco demonstrate a willingness to experiment and write outside of their comfort zone. While not every poem they produced this month will be publication-worthy, the poets end the month with some strong starts and a new set of tools to which they can turn to as they continue their career as a writer.

The poems are available to read throughout the month and the site includes a Scout Roster and Scout Interviews.

[Main text from the About PoMoSco page.]

Buffalo Almanack Inkslinger Award

buffalo-almanackBuffalo Almanack online quarterly of fiction, visual arts, and literary criticism has established the Inkslinger Award for Creative Excellence. The award is made to the best short story and art piece in each issue as selected by the editors. There are no entry fees – all submissions to Buffalo Almanack are considered. Winners currently receive $50 and publication. With the most recent issue of Buffalo Almanack, the editors have added the feature of Woodshop Talk in which the Inkslinger winners are interviewed about their published artwork and stories.

The March 2015 Inkslinger Award winners are Michael Deagler for his story “Fishtown, Down,” and photography by Justin Hamm. Previous winners can be found here with links to their winning works.

Buffalo Almanack has announced they are open for submissions for their first themed issue: “Where Thou Art.” The editors are expanding submissions to include creative non-fiction in addition to short stories and visual art. “Everybody on the planet is eligible,” say the editors, “no entry cost is required, and you have plenty of time to prepare – subs will remain open from March to November of 2015.” Specific guidelines can be found on the Buffalo Almanack website as well as in the newest issue (pages 61-62).

Brevity Special Issue: Race, Racism, and Racialization

claudia-rankine-2ira-sukBrevity, the online journal of “concise literary nonfiction,” has announced an upcoming special issue on Race, Racism, and Racialization guest-edited by Ira Sukrungruang and featuring new work by Claudia Rankine. Using progressive fundrasing “stretch goals” on Kickstarter, Brevity has raised funding to publish a special issue on experiences of gender (with new work by Kate Bornstein), and having surpassed that goal, is now stretching the effort for this next special issue. Submissions will open in Fall 2015, depending on funding.

Books :: Holocaust Remembrance Series

choiceThe Holocaust Remembrance Series for Young Readers by Second Story Press is an award-winning series encouraging young people from all cultures and all walks of life to engage in serious global/cultural issues. The Choice by Kathy Clark is the newest in this series, and is the story of thirteen-year-old Hendrik and his family who have hidden their true identity as Jews and are living as Catholics in Budapest during WWII.

From the publisher: “One day, in a burst of loyalty, Hendrik reveals that his name is in fact Jakob and he is Jewish. It is a choice with drastic consequences. It not only puts his whole family in danger but it also severs his ties with his best friend Ivan, whose father is a high-ranking military official. Throughout the horrific months that follow in the Auschwitz concentration camp, it is Jakob’s passion for revenge against Ivan that fuels his will to survive. However, unknown to Jakob, Ivan had made a choice of his own on that fateful day – a choice that changes everything.”

The Choice is Kathy Clark’s second book in the Holocaust Remembrance Series for Young Readers, and is based on the experiences of her father, a Holocaust survivor.

[ISBN 9781927583654 / Ages: 9-13 / 200 pages / paperback / b&w photos]

Inheritances

William Black’s stunning and stirring debut collection consists of twelve short stories set in Appalachia’s Northeastern Pennsylvania, where rugged hills and peaceful valleys landscape both the terrain and the soul. The evocative language in which Inheritances is written mirrors the highs and lows of his characters’ emotions as Black leads us into and immerses us in their lives. Each story’s intriguing beginning and thought-provoking ending make this collection a keeper—one you’ll find yourself reaching for every time you need a dose of the valor and courage his characters demonstrate. Continue reading “Inheritances”

Starlight in Two Million

Starlight In Two Million bills itself as a neo-scientific novella. Amy Catanzano works in quantum poetics, a lofty goal. She states that she tries to amplify the hallucinatory experience of the novel by changing perspectives and seeks to find a fourth person perspective in the mode of time. Detached and somewhat nonlinear, the novel moves from an outré perspective and gives itself to the form much of the time, posing a challenge for the reader looking for one. The work attempts to produce a feeling, a controlled navigation through a hypercube. Continue reading “Starlight in Two Million”

Tax-Dollar Super Sonnet, Featuring Sarah Palin as Poet

This is a found poetry book . . . of sorts. William Shatner did Palin on the “Tonight Show.” He took Sarah Palin’s farewell speech and delivered verbatim in a beatnik style with an accompaniment of bongos and stand-up bass. Hart Seely, Syracuse Post-Standard columnist, seemed to hit gold with Pieces of Intelligence, his collections of poems that he ripped from Donald Rumsfeld. Nicole Mauro takes the idea to the next logical level in Tax-Dollar Super Sonnet, working with the fervor of a mash-up DJ. The borrowed speeches span the history of America and bristle with the newness of the modern age. These poems have a real political edge added back to them, the words reorganizing themselves to fortify new points. Continue reading “Tax-Dollar Super Sonnet, Featuring Sarah Palin as Poet”

Washing the Dead

Intimate family relationships can startle us when we recognize that, despite our familiarity, we’re actually strangers who keep many secrets from one another. Such is the case for Barbara Pupnick Blumfield, who discovers as a teenage girl her mother’s infidelity. Author Michelle Brafman explores three generations of mother-daughter relationships in Orthodox and Chasidic Jewish families through the eyes of Barbara, contrasting her life in the 1970s when she first discovered her mother’s unfaithfulness, with her life as a grown woman in 2009, where she has a teen daughter of her own. Continue reading “Washing the Dead”

My Body is a Book of Rules

I listed My Body is a Book of Rules by Elissa Washuta as one of the books that I was currently reading online and saw that a friend of mine listed it as one of her “to-read” books. That has happened a few times but I’ve never been as happy to see it as I was for this book. It’s very possible that I feel so attached to it because I’m a 20-something girl (who still finds it weird to call herself a “woman” since that seems to imply some level of adulthood) just out of a grad school trying to figure out what to do from here. The experiences that Washuta describes aren’t all ones that I can relate to. She discusses mental illness, being raped, and being a minority in such a way that, while a reader may not be able to relate, it’s easy to empathize with her. Continue reading “My Body is a Book of Rules”

The Descartes Highlands

If you are looking for a fast-paced, succinct, plot-driven book then The Descartes Highlands by Eric Gamalinda may not be for you. If, however, you are looking for a thoughtful, slow-burning character-driven story then settle right in. It is a story that follows two adopted brothers who grow up in different homes after being sold in the Philippines by their American father. Gamalinda’s novel delves into a world inhabited by an American draft-dodger living in the Philippines who ends up needing to sell his two sons to other foreigners, each burdened with their own grief and turmoil. We spend about a third of our time with the father in flashbacks and each of his sons in the present as they try to find out about their origins and deal with how their unique beginnings impact their lives. Continue reading “The Descartes Highlands”

Books :: April Book Reviews

Readers, April’s Book Reviews are now up. Our reviewers were busy this month, covering a lot of great titles: Change Machine by Bruce Covey, The Descartes Highlands by Eric Gamalinda, Happy Are the Happy by Yasmina Reza, Inheritances by William Black, The Islands by John Sakkis, The Last Two Seconds by Mary Jo Bang, My Body is a Book of Rules by Elissa Washuta, Southside Buddhist by Ira Sukrungraung, Starlight in Two Million: A Neo-Scientific Novella by Amy Catanzano, The Sun & The Moon by Kristina Marie Darling, Tax-Dollar Super Sonnet, Featuring Sarah Palin as Poet by Nicole Mauro, and Washing the Dead by Michelle Brafman. Go check them out and find your next favorite book.

Books :: BOA Short Fiction Prize Winner

reptile-house-robin-mcleanRobin McLean’s first short story collection, Reptile House, will be published May, 2015 by BOA Editions, Ltd. A finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Short Story Prize in 2011 and 2012, Reptile House is the winner of the BOA Short Fiction Prize.

The fascinating characters in these nine short stories abandon families, plot assassinations, nurse vendettas, tease, taunt, and terrorize. They retaliate for bad marriages, derail their lives with desires and delusions, and wait decades for lovers. How far will we go to escape to a better dream? What consequences must we face for hope and fantasy? Probing the dark underbelly of human nature and want, Robin McClean’s stories are strange, often disturbing and funny, and as full of foolishness and ugliness as they are of the wisdom and beauty around us.

Living in Alaskan woods for 15 years as a potter and lawyer, McLean, in an interview with BOA, reveals how Alaska has affected her writing, “Alaska is wild, dangerous, beauitiful, and makes you feel tiny. Living there made me want to write with wild dangerous beauty, to be small, and also big . . . . Alaska made me think about scale, grandeur, and audacity.”

More information on Reptile House can be found on the publisher’s website.

GreenPrints Celebrates 25 Years

greenprintsGreenPrints “The Weeder’s Digest” celebrates 25 continuous years of publishing with its 101 issue of spring 2015. GreenPrints was the alternative path Pat Stone, Garden Editor, and Susan Sides, Gardener, took when Mother Earth News came under new ownership and ended their positions with the publication. Over the next twenty years, GreenPrints became a “family run” publication, with Pat and his wife Becky and their four children all participating in the production.

Today, GreenPrints continues to fill a unique niche in both the literary and gardening worlds. Only GreenPrints magazine “shares the human side” of gardening through its content: “the joy, humor, frustrations, and heart in fine prose and fine art.” GreenPrints also publishes a poem per issue and contains some of the best illustrations throughout as I have ever viewed in a literary journal, in addition to seasonally gorgeous cover art on each issue. Continuing to cross the genres of gardening magazine with literary journal, GreenPrints also features ads for bulbs, seeds, natural pest repellants, herbs, and much more to support the gardening community.

To see some of the illustrations as well as sample a story from the most recent issue, visit GreenPrints here.

 

The Sun & The Moon

I just finished reading Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, a novel in which the narrator desires that she and her sister resist the socio-economic structure of 1950s New England and reside, instead, on the moon. They finally do achieve this goal by converting their large house into a smaller living space, boarded-up and isolated from the outside world. In novels like Castle, women often reinterpret the boundaries of living spaces in their writing partly because traditional domestic contracts and spaces constrain emotion, creativity, and grief. In her book of poems titled The Sun & the Moon, Kristina Marie Darling contributes to this collective literary voice that unfetters domestic space as her speaker grieves and examines a past marital relationship. The Sun and the Moon, representing respectively a husband and wife, are always at opposite poles in this space that reels with cinematic flashes of memory and the ghosts that inhabit memory over time. Continue reading “The Sun & The Moon”

The Islands

Throughout John Sakkis’s The Islands, a polyvocal weave of declarative refrains sound out in dizzying display. Across the book’s five sections appear poems, often in set series, presenting a hybrid mix of memoir, lyric, historical investigation, and daily documents full of dispatch concerning discursive news the poet’s ear has picked up on. We see in section three “Tangrams The New Collective,” the speaker’s concern throughout remains with “The salt of human projects,” in the face of which, Sakkis declares: “I go in. I am in bits.” What’s left for the poems are scattered fragments of events, both imagined and other, from out of which both structure and content prove to be derived. Continue reading “The Islands”

Change Machine

Bruce Covey’s Change Machine is a lively book that takes a humorous approach to formal experimentation. Among other ideas, Covey examines how the man-made world intersects with the natural one. Here, “man-made” includes human inventions both critical—mathematics, industry, philosophy—as well as trivial—puns, pop singers, imitations. The speaker’s voice is conversational but emotionally cool, and its consistency holds together a varied array of poetic forms including sonnets, near-sonnets, and imitations of iconic poems by Frank O’Hara, Alice Notley, and Ted Berrigan. Continue reading “Change Machine”

The Last Two Seconds

Mary Jo Bang is a slippery poet, with a mind that often seems a few seconds ahead of itself. A quick glance at the cover of her new book, The Last Two Seconds, perfectly encapsulates this kind of speed: the monorail that has just slipped from our frame of vision, the typography of the title trailing like a futurist contrail. It is this trailing, however, that is a crucial point—this collection is not about the next two seconds, but the last—as in the last two seconds you’ve just spent reading this sentence. Continue reading “The Last Two Seconds”

Happy Are the Happy

Theatergoers will be reminded of Yasmina Reza’s well-known plays Art and God of Carnage in this short story collection Happy Are the Happy. In spite of no paragraphing in each of the short stories, they flow with perfect dialogue, brief but definitive settings, and situations involving both humorous and sad bad behavior and embarrassment. Fiction allows Reza to exhibit her lovely style, vivid succinct descriptions, and ironic truisms and insights. Continue reading “Happy Are the Happy”

Zymbol Plans Clive Barker Issues

zymbol-kickstarterZymbol, an art and literature magazine, has teamed up with Los Angeles-based art gallery Century Guild for a Kickstarter straight out of the imagination of horror genius, Clive Barker. The magazine plans to use donated funds to build its 2015 issues around never-before-seen paintings and sketches from Barker’s “dream notebook.”

Clive Barker, a contemporary of author Neil Gaiman, first rose to fame in the eighties, with the Books of Blood. At the time, Stephen King called Barker “the future of horror”; a prophecy that proved true, as Barker’s talent easily translated across major films (Hellraiser, Candyman, Gods and Monsters) fine art and more fiction, with the bestselling Abarat series.

Now an elusive figure who makes few public appearances, Barker is baring his imagination for Zymbol readers, and offering some lucky Kickstarter patrons autographed prints, reproduced directly from the pages of his bedside notebook.

Other rewards on offer include rare autographed books and Zymbol Magazine subscriptions. The Kickstarter is underway now.

National Library Week April 12-18, 2015

national-library-weekFirst sponsored in 1958, National Library Week is a national observance sponsored by the American Library Association (ALA) and libraries across the country each April. This year’s event takes place April 12-18 with the theme “Unlimited possibilities @ your library.”

This event provides an opportunity to celebrate the contributions of our nation’s libraries and librarians and to promote use and support of all types of libraries: school, public, academic and special. All are encouraged to create ways to participate. The ALA website offers a number of free resources, ideas, downloads, posters, etc.

Specific celebration days include: National Library Workers Day – the Tuesday of the week (April 14, 2015); National Bookmobile Day – the Wednesday of the week (April 15, 2015); and Celebrate Teen Literature Day – the Thursday of the week (April 16, 2015).

Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week

rain-taxi

Well, it is Easter, after all. In addition to the cool cover art by Mary Schaubschlager, this spring 2015 issue of Rain Taxi: Review of Books includes AWP features: “Literary Twin Cities: An Incomplete Overview” by Andy Sturdevant; “Ten Things You’ll Need to Survive AWP” by William Stobb; and “[But Seriously Folks] Twelve Tips for Navigating AWP” by Kathryn Kysar.

saw-palm

“An Influence of Snow” by Linda Alexader-Rosas is featured on the cover of the spring 2015 issue of Saw Palm: Florida Litearature and Art, and carries over some of the colors from the cover above while transitioning in image to the cover below.

the-moth

“Camouflage” by artist Phillip Thomas is the cover art for the spring 2015 issue of The Moth, a print magazine of arts and literature from Co. Cavan, Ireland.

Glimmer Train Very Short Fiction Award Winners :: March 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.

Christa-RomanoskyFirst place: Christa Romanosky [pictured], of Pittsburgh, PA, wins $1500 for “Every Shape That the Moon Makes.” Her story will be published in Issue 96 of Glimmer Train Stories.

Second place: Adam Soto, native Chicagoan now living in Austin, TX, wins $500 for “The Box.” His story will also be published in an upcoming issue, increasing his prize to $700.

Third place: Katy E. Ellis, of Seattle, WA, wins $300 for “Night Watch.”

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

Deadline coming up! Family Matters: April 30. Glimmer Train hosts this competition twice a year, and first place receives $1500 plus publication in the journal. It’s open to all writers for stories about families of all configurations. Most submissions to this category run 1200-5000 words, but can go up to 12,000. Click here for complete guidelines.

What’s with All the Dogs?

big-muddy-dogsI’m not sure what it is, but in the most recent batch of lit mags coming through NewPages World Headquarters I’ve found a recurring subject: Dogs.

Grasslimb starts with the short story “To the Dogs” by Kurt Newton on its front page.

The Hollins Critic features “The Dogs of Literature – Seymour Krim: Bottom Dogs, Part II.”

The cover of Big Muddy: A Journal of the Missippii River Valley features a sweet pair of hounddoggies in a photo by Wes Anderson on its cover.

And finally, Barking Sycamores. Okay, it’s not about dogs at all, but I coudn’t help but make the connection. It’s a unique publication I covered in this blog post.

Blue Heron Speaks!

mj-iuppaBlue Heron Review, an online poetry magazine specializing in mystical and spiritual verse, publishes the monthly feature Blue Heron Speaks!, “a heart-centered, poetic offering ~ either from the editor, one of the contributors, or a guest author. . . messages of inspiration, support, and nourishment for the soul.”

March 2015 guest author is poet, M J Iuppa, whose work appears in the Winter 2015 issue. The editors write, “For the reader, the senses come alive in Iuppa’s poems. Her writing is atmospheric, with great attention to detail. Iuppa’s obvious love of words results in her beautiful use of language in every poem.”

New Lit on the Block :: Brain of Forgetting

brain-of-forgettingBrain of Forgetting is a new bi-annual (winter/summer) PDF and print (CreateSpace) publication of poetry, flash fiction, creative non-fiction, photography, artwork published by Brain of Forgetting Press with Editor-in-Chief Bernadette McCarthy and Associate Editor of Visual Art Tom Jordan.

The name Brain of Forgetting, McCarthy tells NewPages, “is drawn from the Irish legend of Cenn Fáelad, who lost his ‘brain of forgetting’ when his skull was split open by a sword-blow in battle. Cenn Fáelad developed a photographic memory for historical and legal information, which he wrote out in verse and prose on tablets. The journal honours his legacy by providing a forum for work that engages with archaeology, history, and memory, while recognising that pure, neutral historical fact does not exist in itself: the human (mis)understanding of history is not only susceptible to forgetting, but a natural tendency to impose a narrative structure on the past and invest it with meanings determined by the present.”

Based in Cork, Ireland, the journal brings together the intellects of archaeological researcher and poet Bernadette McCarthy and photographer and art historian Tom Jordan. Unable to discover a literary journal that bridged the gap between academic research and creative output, McCarthy set up the journal in September 2014, advertising a call for submissions on the theme of “Stones.” She attended an exhibition of her friend Tom Jordan’s photography, which focused in particular on recording built heritage, and asked him to come on board as editor of visual art. This issue is now available here to purchase as well as for free download from the site.

In starting a new publication, McCarthy tells NewPages, “We hope to raise more awareness of the importance of protecting our past heritage, and how the past is not dead, but can help us reach a deeper level in our own creative work, and understand our present reality in a more complex way. The past isn’t black-and-white, and there is no one narrative of what history entails; this is a central message of Brain of Forgetting. The process of ‘digging’ into the past and uncovering new meaning is vital to individual and collective social identity, and Brain of Forgetting hopes to address this need by negotiating the boundaries between past and present, creative imagination and historic record, and lyricism and bare-boned data.”

Readers of Brain of Forgetting will find creative work that relates to the past, but, as McCarthy says, “this work must have a contemporary edge.” A variety of writers and artists from all over the world were published in Issue One, many of whom had quite diverse backgrounds. Some were professional archaeologists, anthropologists, medievalists, and geologists; others were professional writers and artists who find the past to be a fruitful source of inspiration. “All work published was chosen not simply because it related to the past,” McCarthy stresses, “but on the basis of its quality and originality—subjective indeed, but we try our best!”

The editors are excited about the upcoming Issue Two, which will feature new poetry by Afric MacGlinchey, as well as new translations by Rosalin Blue of the poetry of August Stramm, who died in World War I.

Looking to the future, in an ideal issue of Brain of Forgetting, Bernadette McCarthy would love to include work from one of her favorite archaeologist-poets, Paddy Bushe, and perhaps creative non-fiction by the likes of Christine Finn, author of Past Poetic: Archaeology in the Poetry of W.B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney. In general, however, she is interested in original work from anyone that engages with the past, regardless of whether s/he is an established or emerging writer.

Tom Jordan would love to publish a previously undiscovered essay by Hubert Butler, author of Ten Thousand Saints, who bridged the gap between history and imagination in his writings. He is also a fan of Irish artist Robert Gibbings and cosmologist/author Carl Sagan, but in general he welcomes anything well-done that relates to the chosen theme of the journal.

For now, McCarthy says, “Surviving is our main goal at present, and perhaps gathering enough funding together to be able to pay a local company to do the printing for us – though we are grateful for the existence of online independent publishing platforms. We would also like to try and reach a wider readership, and publish an even more diverse range of writers. So far, most of the work submitted has emanated from Ireland, the UK, Canada and the US. It would be great to feature more work from the wider Anglophone world e.g. parts of Africa, Asia, and Australasia where English is spoken.”

Submissions for Issue Two, based around the theme of “Poppies,” are open until the end of March. Up to four poems or two pieces of flash fiction (900 words max.) can be submitted, while submissions of creative non-fiction (one piece, 1200 words max), as well as photography and other artwork are also welcome. While the journal is primarily English-language, work in other languages can be considered if accompanied by English translation suitable for publication, while translations of pre-1500 English-language work are gladly considered. Simultaneous submissions are accepted, as long as the contributor informs the journal if a piece is published elsewhere. All work submitted must be previously unpublished in print or online. See Brain of Forgetting‘s website for more information.

Cambodian Invisibility in Education

christina-nhekCambodian Invisibility in Education by Christina Nhek is the most recent in the What’s Your Normal series, a regular feature on the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association website. Nhek writes, “I came to understand that I fell into the stereotypes that are associated with mainstream Asian Americans. My family came to the U.S. to give their children better opportunities. I had an educational standard I adhered to because of the expectations of my parents. I needed to succeed. What I failed to recognize, however, is the fact that as Cambodian American, I am not part of mainstream Asian American communities.”

What’s Your Normal is a a series of personal essays, accompanied by resource lists, highlighting the different kinds and forms of identities within APA populations. Writers are encouraged to share stories that give insight into what is “normal” identy(ies). The APALA goal is to allow us to learn from each other and to showcase the diversity within the APA populations. The resource lists will be archived for use by librarians, information professionals, and the general public.

Birdfeast Opens to All Genres

birdfeastSince its inception in 2011, Birdfeast has been publishing poetry quarterly online. But, starting with issue eleven, Founding Editor Jessica Poli writes, “we’ve opened the journal to all genres in an effort to encourage and give a platform for cross-genre/hybrid work and, we hope, help bridge the space between genres. Birdfeast is interested in writing for the sake of writing, regardless of what box it belongs or doesn’t belong in.” Submissions are currently open and handled online.

Books :: A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize Winner

shame-shame-devin-beckerDevin Becker’s debut collection Shame | Shame investigates two types of shame: that which disgraces, and that which curbs and keeps. Set in the mundane everyday where lives maneuver around other lives, conversations are clumsy, and a co-worker is the only one without a party invite, these confessional narrative poems humorously dramatize the socially awkward moments of life.

Shame | Shame is the 2014 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize winner, selected by David St. John, who also provides a foreword for the collection, stating “We all want to know what happened to Huck after he decided to ‘light out for the Territory’—my own sense is that 150 years later, a little sadder and a whole lot wiser, he emerged as Devin Becker.”

Published by BOA Editions, Ltd., Shame | Shame will be released this April.

First Book Poets Talking

marc-di-saveriojulie-cameron-grayThe Boxcar Poetry Review Spring 2015 issue features “First Book Poets in Conversation: Marc Di Saverio & Julie Cameron Gray.” It’s an interesting concept, to see each poet discussing their own approaches to writing, then spinning that into a question to ask the other poet, back and forth.

At one point in the conversation, Di Saverio reveals how his manic-depression guides his writing, “You ask me to take you through a poem, start to finish. I find my manic-depression somewhat dictates how a poem will be written. Usually, in manic states, I am overcome with inner wilderness, and I essentially explode onto the page, often a filthy, incoherent mess. I leave this mess alone until I am calm enough to rationally formalize or structuralize my raw manic material.”

And later, Gray offers, “The themes of loneliness and isolation are all self-imposed, all the narrators are in situations of their own creation. It’s such a common moment in everyone’s life, at some point (or repetitively so), being lonely and liking it, reveling in it, keeping others at arm’s length because you just don’t want to deal with them right now; elements of self-sabotage.”

Real the full conversation here.

Young Adult Picks for Reluctant Readers

a-girl-in-piecesisabel-quinteroThe Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA) annually selects Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers, which this year identified 67 titles aimed at encouraging reading among teens who dislike to read for any reason. From that list, the committee also selects a Top Ten list. The lists include both fiction and nonfiction. [Pictured: Isabel Quintero, author of Gabi, A Girl in Pieces, one of the top ten Quick Picks, published by Cinco Puntos Press.]

Beltway Quarterly Sonnet Issue

gushueBeltway Poetry Quarterly is an online literary journal and resource bank that showcases the literary community in Washington, DC and the surrounding Mid-Atlantic region. The Winter 2015 issue is The Sonnet Issue, guest co-edited by Michael Gushue (pictured).

The issue features sonnets by 67 authors, contemporary and historic, from DC, VA, WV, MD, and DE. The editors have selected from traditional Shakespearean and Petrarchan sonnets, variations on those forms (including envelope sonnets, hybrid sonnets, and nonce sonnets), and 14-line free verse poems that borrow from sonnet tradition.

In his introduction, Gushue tells that he has arranged the issue “into eight sections along loosely thematic lines, all representing aspects of the sonnet’s reach”: The Beloved, The Body, The Heart, The Body Politic, Pop Culture, Conservations With Myself, À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu, Outdoors, Art And Its Boundaries.

Books :: Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction

father-brother-keeper-nathan-pooleIn case you missed it featured in the Editor’s Picks of the February NewPages Book Stand, Nathan Poole’s Father Brother Keeper was published last month by Sarabande Books.

Winner of the 2013 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction selected by Edith Pearlman, Father Brother Keeper’s stories are set in rural Georgia. They investigate small moments that illuminate life-altering struggles: A man slipping into dementia is abandoned at a diner with his granddaughters; a boy descendent of farmers discovers his love of carving wooden birds but buries his creations in shame; bait dogs are left to die, chained in the woods, when they grow too old to fight.

Poole has also received Narrative Magazine’s 2012 Narrative Prize and has served as the Milton Post Graduate Fellow in Writing at Image Journal. His work can be found in The Kenyon Review, Narrative Magazine, The Chattahoochie Review, Image, Nat.Brut. Quarterly, The Lumiere Reader, Strangers Magazine, Drum Literary Magazine, and the Saturday Evening Post among others.