NewPages Blog

In honor of the 75 years The Kenyon Review has publishing, they are putting out credos from writers who have been previously been published within their pages. In the current issue, they invite George Saunders to contribute his credo, to which he starts, “I don’t know that I really have a credo, unless it’s ‘Trust the process.'”

“For me, the process is to take some tiny scrap of text,” he writes, “as unladen with ‘meaning’ or ‘theme’ or ‘intention’ as possible, and see what it wants me to do. The way I prompt it to tell me what to do is to revise it, and the means by which I revise it is, more or less, ‘to ear.’ I look at it, read it internally—and see how I feel about it. Often a slight rearrangement (a cut, a reordering, the insertion of a new phrase) will suggest itself instantaneously. Other times, a next sentence or small narrative beat will appear (‘Oh, she should follow him into the store.’) And I do mean ‘appear’—ideally this next bit of text alteration or froward movement does not come willed, exactly00it arrives on its own, instantaneously, unstoppable. This is where the mystery comes in—from where do those strong impulses-to-improve come? … This is also where a terrifying idea presents itself: the difference between a good writer and a so-so writer is the quality of these unwilled intuitions.”

Read the rest in the Summer 2014 issue.

Janice N. Harrington’s The Hands of Strangers: Poems from the Nursing Home come from her experience working as a nurse’s aide: “It was work; it was a way of life, and I wanted people to understand who the people are who are helping the elderly . . . Even when I read some of the poems in public, people will assume they’re nurses, but these are the nurses’ aides. These are the people who do the grunt work, the underpaid work. I wanted to tell those stories.”

The latest issue of New Letters features an interview with this author, where the quoted text above comes from. And as Editor Robert Stewart asks how she kept the details from so long ago in her mind, she responds, “I never forget the people I worked with. Even now I know what their conditions were . . . I still remember their names . . . I think we were in that intense, compressed situation, and their stories somehow became a part of my memory.”

The interview deals with the inspiration behind the book, her background in writing, and her writing process. “If I’m writing a poem,” she says, “I’m writing it for a reader; I’m writing it for another human being. I want the reader to understand me. I want there to be some communication. I know that there’s argument about being too simplistic. It’s not that I think poems are just about communication. Sometimes when I’m writing something, because I appreciate the sound of it, that’s what I want you to pay attention to.”

High Desert Journal was founded ten years ago by Elizabeth Quinn whose vision was “to create a platform for the artists and writers of the interior West, a place to showcase their talents, and by doing so bring to a wider audience the art and stories that come from the place they call home.” And the first eighteen issues (the journal is now on issue 19) were all designed by Thomas Osborne. Editor Charles Finn writes, “There is not a better looking, classier, more visually engaging literary magazine on the stands today. Period. Thomas put a look to Elizabeth’s vision, and between the two they created one of the most respected journals in the country.” And due to the many thanks that Finn has to these to for making the journal what it is, it is with a heavy heart that he announces that both of them will no longer be working with the journal on the day-to-day. They will remain, however, as advisors.

And the torch of a vision will be carried on: “High Desert journal can’t help but change, evolve as all endeavors such as this do, but I’d like to take this opportunity to say what it will not do is cease to be the visual and artistic voice Elizabeth and Thomas foresaw, a journal built to be a witness to the West,” Finn writes.

To carry on this vision, Sheryl Noethe, previous poet laureate of Montana, and Joe Wilkins, award-winning author of The Mountains and the Fathers, will join the team along with new Art Editor Kerrie Rosenstein and new Fiction Editor Jane Carpenter. The new design team will consist of Benjamin Kinzer and Chloe Frommer.

Previously founded in Farmington Hills, Michigan, Absinthe has announced that they will be moving to Ann Arbor, Michigan where The Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan will assume editorial leadership. Here’s more information from the announcement:

“The relocation of Absinthe to the Department of Comparative Literature will allow the journal to benefit from the expertise of one of the strongest comparative programs in the nation, and provide a sustainable publishing model to continue Absinthe’s commitment to promoting foreign literature in the United States. At the University of Michigan, Absinthe will provide a space of encounter between new voices in foreign literature, experienced translators, as well as translators in training.

Starting in summer 2014, Absinthe will serve as a platform from which to expand the Department of Comparative Literature’s ongoing engagement with translation activities across the Michigan campus and beyond. The magazine will offer graduate students the opportunity to gain professional experience in editing literary translations and identifying important new trends in contemporary world literature. It will also provide opportunities for collaboration with colleagues across departments, both within and beyond the University of Michigan, on topics for special issues.

In the fall of 2014, The Department of Comparative Literature will resume Absinthe’s biannual print publication as well as create an entire new online presence for the magazine. Two doctoral students in Comparative Literature will serve as co-editors for the first two transitional issues. Their task will consist of maintaining the legacy of Absinthe as established by Hayes, while broadening the magazine’s current focus on European literature to include texts that reflect the very wide range of geographical interests, talents and affinities present in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan. “

As a special feature in the latest issue from Green Mountains Review, Vermont Double Laureate Team-Up” is an illustrated collaboration between Poet Laureate of Vermont Sydney Lea and Cartoonist Laureate of Vermont James Kochalka. It’s a “strip” they title “Laureate Power.” Here’s a sampling from the first included page:

Under the Gum Tree has been making some changes to their staff. Six months ago, assistant editors Kathryn DeJarnette and Becca Litman joined the team. Robin Martin became senior editor. Now, Aimee Steffen Taber is taking Natana Prudhomme’s place as designer. Prudhomme helped launch the magazine in 2011 and designed the logo and page layout. “I can’t tell you how lucky I was to find Natana (and would you believe it was all thanks to a Craigslist ad?),” Editor Janna Marlies Maron writes, “seriously, Under the Gum Tree would not be the gorgeous magazine that it is without Natana. When we started working together, all I had was the title and an idea and Natana executed that idea more beautifully than I could have imagined. As sad as I was to see Natana go, I was so honored to have worked with her for two years and am excited to see her pursuing her goals as an artist.”

There has also been a transition in the editorial interns. Janna thanks Elizabeth Kroll for her contributions with the newsletter and social media and welcomes aboard the new intern, Katie Walker. You can read more here.

NANO Fiction has just announced that they are now able to pay their contributors: “Starting with issue 8.1, all writers who have work published in NANO Fiction (including reviewers and contributors to our State of Flash series) will not only receive two copies of the issue in which they are published, but they will now also be paid $20 per published piece!” Submissions will remain free, but there is now an optional tip jar to help support the magazine.

The Summer 2014 issue of Rattle has some great poems. I only skimmed through a few of them, but each one I read made me happy I did. Here’s a snippet of Nic Alea’s “River,” which opens up the issue:

I think I am in the back of
the car slamming my head against
the seat, I think I am screaming, no,
careless, maybe, I think I am too fast
over this canyon, I think my tape player
is stuck singing about the rain or
a field or no, this is a canyon and canyons have the once upon a river stuck to
the bottom, I’m going to hit the bottom
and it’s going to burn like the summer
and we feel good peeling the dead skin
off our shoulders and I press my thumb
into your chest to watch my imprint glow
against you, I think you forgot about me,
maybe we kissed goodbye on your bed with
the windows open and the orange house across
the street steamed like a fat sun and I feel all over
the wood floor…

Frank X Walker, the first African-American Kentucky poet laureate (2013-2014), is featured within the current issue of The Louisville Review. The magazine hails from Spalding University, and so the editors are especially pleased to welcome him to the issue as he is a graduate of the Spalding University low-residency MFA in Writing. “In this issue,” writes Sena Jeter Naslund, “we are proud to include the work of three of Frank’s teachers while at Spalding: Molly Peacock…Greg Pape…and Jeanie Thompson…” Here is a sample of his first included poem, “Thanks,” after Yusef Komunyakaa:

thanks for the tug at my heart string
and each beat that skipped
every time you were close enough
to be touched or touch but didn’t.
thanks for the light that came on
and the sirens and storm warnings
after the tequila flavored kiss
and the inhibitions that took flight
joining the flock of sky gods
just outside our windows.

The issue also features poetry from Michael Fulop, Robert Fernandez, Joel W. Nelson, Okla Elliott, Jesse DeLong, John Blair, Roy Bentley, Natalie Price, Aaron Crippen, Andrew Payton, Drew Pomeroy, Brandon Rushton, Jessica Pace, Helen Tzagoloff, and Simon Perchik; fiction by Cailin Barrett-Bressack, Megan E. Calhoun, Ed Taylor, Margaret Hayertz, Kirby Gann, Gayle Hanratty, and Chervis Isom; and more.

In a second post in her series “My First Book of Poetry: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Independent Presses,” one of Gulf Coast‘s poetry editors, Frances Justine Post writes advice on submitting your manuscript to small presses on the magazine’s blog. “Independent poetry presses are publishing the most daring, mind-blowing work,” she writes. “As a whole, they are not concerned with making money like the publishing behemoths of yore. They are interested in finding voices that speak to them. One of those voices may be yours”

She also suggests submitting during an open call instead of for a book contest. The publishers will select their favorites, but when it comes down to it, the final judge makes the decision. It may not be the publisher’s top choice, but they support it. However, if you submit during an open submission, you’ll know that they are backing your book one hundred percent. “They have chosen you because they believe in you,” she writes. “In my experience, this makes all the difference. They want your voice in the world, so they will work really hard to make that happen.”

In the rest of the blog post, she offers more advice. And in the post before that, she discusses putting your poetry manuscript together. There is also promise of part III. Read Gulf Coast’s blog here.

Ascent, an online magazine publishing fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, has just finished a website redesign. “Founded by Dan Curley at the University of Illinois, Ascent … provokes and entertains the head as well as the heart,” they write. “Now housed at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, and edited by W. Scott Olsen, each issue features dramatic poetry, thoughtful essays, and fiction with a solid narrative. We publish as many first-time authors as well-known names. We promise good company to our authors, and work that matters to our readers.” The screenshot on your left is their old design and the one to the right their new design. Check out the magazine and the redesign at readthebestwriting.com.

Last year, World Literature Today posed a question on their blog, “Now we must write as if the planet were dying. What would you say to a planet in a spasm of extinction?” In a special section of the latest issue (May-August 2014), eleven writers share their responses from essays to poetry to booklists. Writers include Kris Saknussemm, Maya Khosla, Niyi Osundare, Wu Ming-yi, Michael Cope, Liu Ka-shiang, Ava Chin, Tom Zoellner, Eduardo Mitre, Pedro Shimose, and Amarsana Ulzytuev. Here is a sample from Cope’s “The Stream”:

How quickly the rain will cease

and the stream go back to sand,

the blooms wither to dust

in the wind, the diligent ants

bringing in their stores curl up

to be blown away, the shades

on the other shore dissolve into light;

and how lightly we will cross over,

with a single pace, our children

beside us or on our backs.

And here’s the opening of Zoellner’s “The Mountain That Eats Men”: “Come see the mountain. It dominates the Bolivian city of Potos

The cover of the current issue of Dogwood is a still frame from a work-in-progress short, animated film by Nina Frenkel and Lyn Elliot: I Was a Teenage Girl, Apparently, the story of a woman who goes back in time to visit her teenage-self. In the back of the issue of Dogwood is a small interview with each of these featured artists:

Elliot, the writer, said that the collaboration is really helpful for her because she can still direct an animated film despite her “complete lack of drawing ability.” She writes, “I like making very short films; many of my films are five minutes or shorter. SO it seemed to me that my writing and directing impulses could be well0suited to short animation, where virtually anything you can imagine can be made to happen onscreen.”

Frenkel, the animator, says that they are using the “tradigital” style of animation; “it’s a combination of traditional frame-by-frame animation drawing using a digital tool.” This allows it to have “the looseness of the drawn style with the efficiency of the computer.”

The project was funded by Kickstarter and should be completed by late summer. For more information about the project, visit their Kickstarter page.

WATERisLIFE has created the first-ever manual that teaches safe water tips and serves as a tool to kill deadly waterborne diseases, The Drinkable Book. Created by Chemist Dr. Thersea Dankovich, the text of the book is been printed with food-grade inks that teach safe water habits and are printed on technologically advance filter paper capable of killing water-born diseases. Each page can provide someone with up to 30 days of clean water, and each book with up to 4 years of clean water.