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

When in Drought Zine

A new zine called When in Drought is hitting the streets in a small print run from Los Angeles. With a tongue-in-cheek and often political attitude, it has no problem standing out from a crowd of other literary magazines. Each issue is themed and contains writing, art, and translation “with neglected literature from around the world.” To get a feel for them, here’s some excerpts from their submission guidelines: “Whatever it is, we’re against it. Just kidding. We love you.” And at the bottom of each page on their site, they declare, “Stay horny for art.” And on their contest page, they have some sample titles of books that if written, they would pay good money for: Nude on a Chair; Look Mom, the Children Don’t Have Any Pants Today; Mein Kampf, Your Kampf, Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off; Tits Laid Heavy on My Thoughts: A Memoir; and other humorous suggestions.

The latest issue is themed Prague: “never in recorded history has the municipality of Prague experience drought. On the contrary, it has withstood floods, torrential downpours, &, quite often, thunderstorms . . . It is no wonder then that the editors of this journal should be fascinated with such a place . . . We hope you will soon find your thirst slaked—& please, when in Prague, do not forget your umbrella.” The issue itself contains 100 pages of original work combined with passages from Franz Kafka.

William Matthews Poetry Prize Recipients

The editors at The Asheville Poetry Review to announced the William Matthews Poetry Prize Recipients for 2014, judged by Billy Collins.

Bruce Sager, from Westminster, MD was awarded first prize for his poem, “The Lot of Stars,” and will receive $1000, plus publication in the 20th Anniversary issue of The Asheville Poetry Review (Vol. 21, Issue 24, 2014), which will be released in November, 2014

Second prize is awarded to T. J. Sandella, from Cleveland, OH, for his poem, “Flight.” He will receive $250, as well as publication.

Dave Seter, from Petaluma, CA, was the third prize recipient for his poem “What My Uncle Is Trying To Say,” and he will also be published in the next issue. All three authors will be featured at a reading in Malaprop’s Bookstore in Asheville, NC this summer.

Lungs Full of Noise

Tessa Mellas’s debut collection is full of noise—and absurdity, charm, otherworldliness, and beauty. The twelve stories in Lungs Full of Noise brandish the bizarre and stroke the pages with strange and unsettling stories that hover on the border of reality. Mellas ushers us into the uniqueness of her world, reminding me of the inventive and alluring worlds created by such writers as Kevin Brockmeier and Joyelle McSweeney. It is no wonder that she was the deserving winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award. Continue reading “Lungs Full of Noise”

Vow

Kristina Marie Darling’s Vow is simultaneously familiar and strange. The title itself evokes Anne Waldman’s Vow to Poetry, but one look at the small, spare book tells you that this is a different thing. It is, like Waldman’s book, a text about text, but not just in content: Continue reading “Vow”

Kayfabe

Saul Lemerond writes in a bizarre universe, fraught with psychosexual dysfunction and filled with strange and desperate characters. The worlds of Kayfabe, whether rainbow cities littered with drunk children or WWE-style wrestling rings, are surreal, disturbing, and often hilarious. He goes to places where few writers have dared, or thought to dare, and finds something universal out there on the same edge that Vonnegut likes to view us from. Continue reading “Kayfabe”

Skull in the Ashes

A fire sparked Peter Kaufman’s Skull in the Ashes: Murder, a Gold Rush Manhunt, and the Birth of Circumstantial Evidence in America. On the evening of February 3, 1897, the Walford, Iowa General Store burned to the ground. Among the few recognizable items found in the rubble was a skull detached from a partial male skeleton. The assumption was that it was storeowner Frank Novak, who had been guarding his property following a rash of neighborhood burglaries. Continue reading “Skull in the Ashes”

Karate Chop

If the fifteen stories in Karate Chop, by Danish writer Dorthe Nors, were drawings, the spare lines would be punctuated by dark space filled with implication. Each tale is a visit to a foreign place from the viewpoint of an other, someone you might pass without noticing—a walker in the park, a woman getting a haircut, a teenage girl with her father in a car. Continue reading “Karate Chop”

Poems (1962-1997)

Poems (1962-1997), a new collection from Wave Books, presents 35 years’ worth of work from avant-garde poet Robert Lax. An enigma even in the weird world of poetry, Lax (1915-2000) was educated at Columbia University, where he met lifelong friend Thomas Merton and studied with poet Mark Van Doren. He served over the years as a critic, editor, and writer for TIME, Parade, and The New Yorker, among other publications, although he identified himself as a poet first and foremost. As a young man, he spent a season traveling through Canada with the Cristiani family circus, which eventually led to his first book of poetry, The Circus of the Sun. Continue reading “Poems (1962-1997)”

Detroit as Barn

William Carlos Williams famously wrote, “It is difficult to get the news from poems.” However, Crystal Williams’s third book of poetry, Detroit as Barn, is lacking neither in news nor in difficult truths between the lines (between the minds) of those she writes about. Her poetry engages with the question of how to live with what changes and also with what stays uncomfortably the same, stuck in a rut. The collection is centered on real moments where history seems to sit on a struggling city and its people, yet there is also a central wonder throughout the book about the “life beneath this life,” a reminder that history is shimmering, that it is not one thing.

Continue reading “Detroit as Barn”

Becoming Judas

Becoming Judas, Nicelle Davis’s second full-length poetry collection, is a strange, beautiful, complicated book which includes equally strange and beautiful illustrations by artist Cheryl Gross. The book is comprised of a vast cast of voices and stories, with the speaker weaving religious history, popular culture, and personal experience into a complex personal mythology. Judas and Jesus may be expected characters, based on the title, but the book also includes Joseph Smith, John Lennon, and Charles Manson, as well as the speaker’s mother, grandmother, son, and many others. Continue reading “Becoming Judas”

Diddy Wah Diddy

On the copyright page of Diddy Wah Diddy, Corey Mesler writes: “Everything in this book, including its truths, is a falsehood,” establishing a humorous tone that continues throughout the book. The disclaimer is also a reminder that this is a work of fiction, even though historical characters—one-time Memphis mayor “Boss” Crump, W. C. Handy, Robert Johnson, Arty Shaw, Elvis, John Dee, Butterfly McQueen, Bessie Smith—appear in the scenes. While most of the chapters or vignettes could stand alone, together they present a complex, multi-layered imaginative account of post-World War II Beale Street, gateway to the Delta and birthplace of the blues. Continue reading “Diddy Wah Diddy”

A Polish Doctor in the Nazi Camps

Every so often one comes across a book so engrossing that, as the truism goes, one can’t put it down. Typically, such books tend to be works of fiction—popular crime thrillers, espionage novels, or summertime beach reads. It’s nice, then, to find a work of nonfiction that takes on a subject matter as grim as the Nazi concentration camps and turns it into an utterly relatable story—like that of a Catholic Polish woman who survived World War II and lived to 100 years of age. A Polish Doctor in the Nazi Camps: My Mother’s Memories of Imprisonment, Immigration, and a Life Remade is anthropologist Barbara Rylko-Bauer’s rendering of Jadwiga Lenartowicz Rylko’s memories of life, both before and after World War II. Continue reading “A Polish Doctor in the Nazi Camps”

The Boss

Any time I pick up a book from McSweeney’s Poetry Series, I have high expectations—and Victoria Chang’s The Boss does not disappoint. This collection of poetry is full of clever, cheeky language that propels you through to the last page. The author presents us with a diverse collection written on the same core topic, yet contemplates it from so many points of view that although she considers it fully, I still wanted more. A particularly good example from “The Boss Has Grey Hair”: Continue reading “The Boss”

BBC Season of Classic Literature

This season on the BBC, writers and directors have taken on four big classic works: Jed Mercurio’s adaptation of DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Ben Vanstone’s adaptation of Laurie Lee’s novel Cider With Rosie, Adrian Hodges’ adaptation of LP Hartley’s The Go-Between and J B Priestley’s classic play An Inspector Calls. Each have been made into 90-minute adaptations. Read more on the BBC website and from John Plunkett on The Guardian. Though not everyone is pleased with this; check out Mof Gimmers’s article on Anorak.

New Lit on the Block :: Isthmus

Isthmus, edited by Ann Przyzycki, Randy DeVita, and Taira Anderson, is a new biannual print magazine that publishes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Hailing from Seattle, Washington, Isthmus offers “good writing that will make you want to pass the issue to a friend.” Przyzycki says, “We value the traditional as well as those pieces that organically can only be told through experimentation with form.”

Przyzycki recalls a time when all three editors were stuck together in traffic on the interstate highway running north to south through Seattle. One editor remarks that the reason for the bottleneck traffic in Seattle is that the city is built on an isthmus. Later, when coming up with a name for the journal, Przyzycki says they looked back on this moment and chose Isthmus to refer not only to the city it was based out of but also to the geographical term and the accompanying metaphor: “a narrow connection between two larger objects, as the printed journal is a connection between the writer and the reader,” she says.

But as with all new journals, we ask why? Why start a literary magazine? And in Przyzycki’s research, she found that most start because the editors don’t feel like there is “a venue for a certain kind of story, that there is some hole to fill”—and she would be right. She is fully aware of the vast amount of venues already out there but says “I don’t think that there can be too many opportunities for good writing to be shared.” Inspired by the independent presses and magazines at AWP this year, she believes that many writers are looking to independent lit mags for “new voices.” She loves the honor of allowing someone else to trust her with their work; “I love working on books and so perhaps naively I feel that my passion for publishing and connecting writers to readers is reason enough.”

As the journal grows, Przyzycki hopes to include translations on a regular basis, increase the online presence, and include more book recommendations and author interviews on the website.

The first issue features fiction by Jennifer Bryan, Michal Davis, and Leslie Parry; nonfiction by Kelly Chastain, Elizabeth Mack, and Mark Rozema; poetry by Louis Armand, Cody Deitz, Suanne Fetherolf, Natalie Giarratano, Matt Hemmerich, Gabe Herron, Patrick Kindig, Jed Myers, Jason Olsen, Natania Rosenfeld, Mike Smith, Haley Van Heukelom, Laurelyn Whitt, and Theodore Worozbyt.

Isthmus editors read year round for poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. You can submit through Submittable only; please find complete guidelines on their website. They also note that you should check in regularly with their blog and Facebook page for announcements of any upcoming special issues or future contests.

A Paper Cut I Think You’ll Like

Awkward Paper Cut is a literary site devoted to supporting and inspiring innovative artistic creations incorporating words, images, and sound in a new kind of storytelling that mixes different formats and media with original and inventive ideas and approaches. Featured pages include Writers on Writing, Swoon’s View (picks from “video addict” Marc Neys), and Podcasts of multiple authors/works under a connecting theme. The most recent podcast, Episode 14-8, is titled D

Seneca Review Challenges Genre in New Issue

In the latest issue, Seneca Review is challenging genre. “In 1977, Seneca Review made room for a cross-fertilization of poetry and nonfiction it called ‘the lyric essay,'” the editor note states. “With this special issue of SR (Fall 2013/Spring 2014), we are making room for a different chimera we’re calling Beyond Category—work that crosses bigger lines of genre and form. Not just between poetry and essays but between writing and visual art, between analog and digital. These hybrids and outliers will be a regular part of future issues”

And it is, indeed, beyond categorization. In addition to the bound print copy, which includes a wide variety of art and photographs of projects, Seneca Review‘s new issue comes with a poster filled with thought bubbles, two witty tattoos, a newspaperesque handout combining drawings and sketches with tiny type that must be read with magnifying glass (also included), and more beyond category pieces rolled into tubes. It’s certainly exciting!

This is also the start of the Beyond Category Online feature that includes digital work. Currently, you can find pieces by Susan Howe & David Grubbs, Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, Derek Gromadzki, Sarah Minor, Noah Saterstrom, and more. I didn’t play around there too long, but you should definitely do so. As a sample, the piece “Memory Collective” explores the nature of memory as six essayists share a fleeting or fragmented memory. Then, another essayist takes that memory and remembers it, in whatever format they choose. “This process may involve speculating, soldering, or drawing on one’s own reservoir of memories to complete or cohere another’s memory.” It may sound a little confusing at first, but I urge you to take a look.

Grant :: Documentary Photography Project

The Open Society Documentary Photography Project is soliciting calls for the 2014 Audience Engagement Grant Program. Since the program’s inception in 2004, they have funded 54 photographers who have gone beyond documenting a human rights or social justice issue to enacting change. Beginning this year, they will offer two tracks of support for individuals at different phases of their Audience Engagement projects.

Track One: Project Development
Grantees will receive funding to attend an Open Society–organized retreat in December of 2014. This event will be designed in collaboration with Creative Capital’s Professional Development Program, whose nationally recognized workshops provide participants with essential practical tools and strategies to help them move their project and career goals forward. Attendees will become part of a larger Audience Engagement Grant cohort, with opportunities to connect both during the conference and after.

Track Two: Project Implementation
Grantees will receive funding to execute (or continue executing) their projects as well as attend December’s retreat.

Eligibility Criteria
•Documentary photographers, photo-based artists, and socially engaged practitioners who use their work to move target audiences beyond the act of looking, to directly participate in activities or processes that lead to change around an issue.
•Individuals who establish meaningful partnerships with others committed to realizing change and who bring a complementary set of skills and expertise.
•Projects that use photography or photo-based art creatively and innovatively to reach a project’s unique audience.
•Projects with goals that are ambitious, yet realistic and achievable.

Deadline
The application deadline for BOTH tracks is: Tuesday, July 8, 2014 at 5:00 p.m. EST.

Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week

As you’ll quickly be able to tell, this week it’s all about color. It’s been a dull and dreary winter, and I loved having a collection of colors filling my bins this week:

I saw this staring up at me from the top of my magazine pile, and I gravitated to it. Teen in Body Paint, Key West, Florida is a picture by Roger Sacha of a young man painted by Tony Gregory with body paint in 2005. You’ll have to pick up an actual copy of Subtropics to get the full effect.

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The color on the cover of The London Magazine‘s new issue is fascinating as though it’s a rainy day, there’s still a rainbow of color. It’s detail from Leonid Afremov’s Rain of Fire, oil on canvas, 2007.

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This cover of Boulevard completes the list of colorful action as the lights dance of the bridge in the photograph. It’s by Charles Gross and titled Crossing the Tuo River at Night.

2013 Consequence Prize in Poetry

The 2013 Consequence Prize in Poetry was selected by Brian Turner and awarded to William Snyder. Snyder’s winning piece “They Give Me Money Near Karbala”is published in the current issue of Consequence (Spring 2014). Also included are the pieces by the finalists.

First Prize
William Snyder: “They Give Me Money Near Karbala”

Finalists
Heather Bell: “Decoding The Poem”
Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach: “To the Women of Trabzon”
Aubrey Ryan: “Song”

American Life in Poetry :: Amy Fleury (Again!)

American Life in Poetry: Column 474
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Let’s celebrate the first warm days of spring with a poem for mushroom hunters, this one by Amy Fleury, who lives in Louisiana.

First Morel

Up from wood rot,
wrinkling up from duff
and homely damps,
spore-born and cauled
like a meager seer,
it pushes aside earth
to make a small place
from decay. Bashful,
it brings honeycombed
news from below
of the coming plenty
and everything rising.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Copyright © 2013 by Amy Fleury from her most recent book of poems, Sympathetic Magic, Southern Illinois University Press, 2013. Poem reprinted by permission of Amy Fleury and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2014 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Literary Couples and their Writing

Iron Horse Literary Review‘s latest issue is the “Duet Issue,” featuring writing from some writers who are in relationships with other writers. “Every writer, at some time or another, imagines finding a mate who understands the ups and downs of creativity, the victories and failures of publishing,the obsessive love/hate relationships we have with our manuscripts,” writes Editor Leslie Jill Patterson in the foreword. “Who else could this soulmate be but another writer, whom we might collide with at a reading, or while traveling, or during a workshop? …. Writer couples, we believe, encourage each other to write, and support one another steadfastly when readers turn critical…”

This issue features work from these couples: Kim Barnes & Robert Wrigley, Landon Houle & Adam Houle, Jessica Jacobs & Nickole Brown, and Eula Biss & John Bresland. The magazine’s regular features also revolve around this “duet” theme.

ZYZZYVA Hits 100th Issue

The Spring & Summer 2014 of ZYZZYVA marks 100 issues. “So now, 100 issues in, having persevered through many a difficult time and may a close call, our hope is to keep this journal thriving and vibrant for as long as we can,” write Editors Laura Cogan and Oscar Villalon. “In an environment crowded with dazzling and questionable new technologies, ZYZZYVA asserts the cerebral and tactile pleasures of reading, of holding a well-bound book in your hands, of losing—and finding—yourself in the pages of a story. . . . We hope you will join us in celebrating 100 issues of preeminent and daring literary publishing, of Pulitzer winners and poet laureates, of the finest contemporary minds and astonishing raw talent, and twenty-nine years of cultivating a cultural community around the arts and letters.”

The issue features fiction by Ron Carlson, Daniel Handler, Michelle Latiolais, Paul Madonna, Scott O’Connor, Erika Recordon; nonfiction by Katie Crouch, Jim Gavin, Glen David Gold, Jonathon Keats; poetry by Dan Alter, Valerie Bandura, Noah Blaustein, Christopher Buckley, and more.

Hello Modernists! Today is Your Lucky Day!

The Modernist Journals Project, a joint project of Brown University and The University of Tulsa, focuses on the years 1890 to 1922 and features:

  • journals that have been digitized by the JP
  • a searchable databse, teaching and research guides to using the MJP
  • the “MJP Lab” – a site for experimenting with MJP data
  • biographies of authors and artists whose work appears in the MJP journals
  • books and essays about MJP journals and topics
  • a directory of periodicals published within the years 1890-1922
  • the “Cover-to-Cover Initiative” for locating full runs of magazines with their advertising intact

The year ends at 1922 “for both intellectual and practical reasons. The practical reason is that copyright becomes an issue with publications from 1923 onward. The intellectual reason is that most scholars consider modernism to be fully fledged in 1922, a date marked by the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses, Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room, and T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.”

The materials on the MJP website, its curators note, “will show how essential magazines were to modernism’s rise.”

Kore Press 2014 First Book Award Winner

Silent Anatomies by Monica Ong has been selected winner of the 2014 Kore Press First Book Award as selected by Joy Harjo. Fnalists were Sass Brown (Alexandria, Virginia) for USA-1000, and Jennifer Franklin (New York, New York) for Daughter.

Joy Harjo (2014 Gugenheim Fellow) said of the winning work, Silent Anatomies: “This is one of the most unique poetry collections. It’s a kind of graphic poetry book, but that’s not exactly it either. Poetry unfurls within, outside and through images. The images are stark representations that include bottles that have been excavated from a disappeared age, contemporary ultrasound images of a fetus, family photographs and charts. They establish stark bridges between ancestor and descendant time and presence.This collection is highly experimental and exciting.”

Monica Ong is a poet and artist dwelling in experimental spaces. She completed her MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design in Digital Media, and is also a Kundiman poetry fellow. Her work has been published in Seneca Review, Drunken Boat, Glassworks Magazine, Tidal Basin Review, and others. An exhibiting artist for over a decade, she draws from her professional design practice to innovate on the alchemy of text and image.

You Can Now Enroll in Hogwarts Online

Hogwarts Is Here: free, online classes in the same subjects studied by Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Not only that, but you can also become a Hogwarts Professor. Slate‘s Alex Heimbach writes: “The website works as a sort of cross between a MOOC (massive open online course) and an RPG (a role-playing game, like Dungeons & Dragons). You start by creating an account and choosing a house. (No sorting hat here, unfortunately.) I went with Ravenclaw, which seemed fitting for an optional intellectual endeavor. I wasn’t alone in that decision: Ravenclaw is the second most popular house (after Gryffindor, of course) and has the most house points (which you gain by completing assignments).” Read his full review here.

River Teeth Reveals Acceptance Process

The editors note of the second issue of volume 15 of River Teeth reveals a very important process for the editors: how they accept work and find work that will uphold their standards. The editors and readers “peruse every one of the more than a thousand unsolicited manuscripts that come [their] way each year—even though [they] know [they] can accept only about ten or twelve of them,” writes Dan Lehman. “We root for each and every submission, hoping to find not only the perfect piece by a great writer whom we already love, but, as has happened, the fledgling writer whose first published piece will appear in River Teeth and will snare a Pushcart for the writer and for us.”

So where do the rest of the pieces that make up the issues come from? The editors travel to conferences and workshops and search websites for pieces they know they just have to have. “If we hear something that is great, we go for it. Right then. We don’t suffer a turn-down easily. Something about our enthusiasm for a piece, and about our vision for the journal and what we do, has convinced writers who otherwise don’t owe us the time of day to take a shot with River Teeth,” Lehman writes. Here’s what he has to say about selecting pieces:

“At heart we always ask two questions: Is this the sort of piece I would want to call the other editor in the middle of the night to say we have to have? And would we die if we saw this piece in someone else’s journal and knew we could have had it for ourselves? Those are the criteria, nothing else really. As we wrote a few issues ago, we will publish the work of friends and acquaintances (even ourselves) if it meets those standards. Only then. That’s all. That our two Best American essays come from writers with close ties makes our case. Both were among the best dozen or so essays in this or any other year; it would have killed us to see them win those prizes for someone else. And we confessed that fact in writing before the prizes were won.

“We know all this sounds more than a little intuitive, even presumptuous, and quite a bit less than arm’s length. That’s the nature of love, we guess.”

Check out more from the editors note and see what’s in stock of this issue here.

I AM: TWENTY-SEVEN

Here’s an interesting call for submissions: I AM: TWENTY-SEVEN is a yearlong curated art project consisting of twenty-seven pieces about the age of twenty-seven. All pieces will be posted and archived on the project’s site. This project is curated by Rachel Ann Brickner, writer and Managing Editor of Weave Magazine. Deadline: JUNE 1, 2014.

Summer Teaching Fellow in Fiction

Summer Teaching Fellow in Fiction Antioch College, an independent, selective liberal arts college located in Yellow Springs, Ohio, invites applications for a three-month teaching fellowship in fiction for Summer 2014. The Summer Teaching Fellow will teach two courses in his/her area of expertise, including one workshop-style creative writing seminar (LIT 250) and one course intended to offer undergraduate students an introduction to the genre (LIT 242).

Responsibilities

  • Teach one creative writing workshop-style seminar and one introductory-level literature course to undergraduate students focusing on fiction during Antioch College’s Summer session (July 8-September 19)
  • Give one public reading of current work
  • Assist students in the coordination of a student-led fiction reading in September 2014

Qualifications

  • MFA or comparable degree in creative writing
  • Record of publication in fiction
  • Enthusiasm for and experience teaching fiction

Application Process
To apply, submit a cover letter, curriculum vita, brief writing sample, and three letters of recommendation, to: nwilburnATantiochcollegeDOTorg

Electronic submission of all materials is strongly preferred. If necessary, hard copies may be mailed to Literature Faculty Search, c/o Nancy Wilburn, Antioch College, One Morgan Place, Yellow Springs, Ohio, 45387. Applications will be reviewed as received. Deadline for submission of materials is May 15, 2014.

Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week

Michigan Quarterly Review‘s Winter 2014 issue features quilt art by Rachel May. The issue contains a story from her along with more of her pieces. Although I don’t see a link for it on their site yet, you will be able to see her story and art pieces in full color.

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Workers Write!‘s 2014 issue, “More Tales from the Cubicle,” features the side of, well, a cubicle. It’s not fancy or flash, but it’s perfect for this issue.

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The Laurel Review‘s latest issue is very simple, but oh-so-juicy. I selected for a cover of the week purely because seeing it instantly made my lips purse.

2014 Bellevue Literary Review Prize Winners

Bellevue Literary Review‘s latest issue (Spring 2014) features the winners of the 2014 BLR Prizes:

 Goldenberg Prize for Fiction, selected by Nathan Englander
Winner: “Pediatricology” by Abby Horowitz
Honorable Mention: “Death Defiant Bomba or What to Wear When Your Boo Gets Cancer” by Lilliam Rivera

Felice Buckvar Prize for Nonfiction, selected by Helen Benedict
Winner: “Forty-One Months” by William McGrath
Honorable Mention: “Double Exposure” by Elisha Waldman

Marica and Jan Vilcek Prize for Poetry, selected by Tina Chang
Winner: “Chronic Care: ‘Broken Leg’ by Keith Carter, Photograph” by Laurie Clements Lambeth
Honorable Mention: “The Rules of Surgery” by Kristin Robertson

The issue also features fiction by Susan Bartlett, Sean Kevin Campbell, Lillian Huang Cummins, Soniya Greenfield, Abby Horowitz, D. Quentin Miller, Billy O’Callaghan, Lilliam Riverea, Pamela Ryder Jean-Marie Saporito, Sheena Suals, and Jessica Stults; nonfiction by Mary Arguelles, Will McGrath, Leslie Van Gelder, and Elisha Waldman; and poetry by Alison Bradford, Steven Cramer, Catherine Freeling, Rachel Hadas, Kip Irwin, Will Johnston, Laurie Clements Lambeth, Laura Lauth, Michal Lemberger, Kaitlin LaMoine Martin, Marty McConnell, Thomas R. Moore, Jennifer Perrine, Kristin Robertson, Avery Leigh Thomas, Amy Tudor, Kathryn Weld, and Stacia Gyrene Yearwood. See more information about the issue and contest winners here.

Ecology and Science Fiction

I am happy to shamelessly assist Gerry Canavan* with his shameless self-promotion of  Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction, a collection of essays he has put together with Kim Stanley Robinson. The book is due out next month from Wesleyan University Press in paperback, hardback, and on Kindle.

Here’s a table of contents borrowed from Gerry’s blog:

Preface by Gerry Canavan
Introduction: “If This Goes On” also by Gerry Canavan

Part 1 Arcadias and New Jerusalems
1 ► “Extinction, Extermination, and the Ecological Optimism
of H. G. Wells” by Christina Alt
2 ► “Evolution and Apocalypse in the Golden Age” by Michael Page
3 ► “Daoism, Ecology, and World Reduction in Le Guin’s Utopian Fictions” by Gib Prettyman
4 ► “Biotic Invasions: Ecological Imperialism in New Wave Science Fiction” by Rob Latham

Part 2 Brave New Worlds and Lands of the Flies
5 ► “‘The Real Problem of a Spaceship Is Its People’: Spaceship Earth as Ecological Science Fiction” by Sabine Höhler
6 ► “The Sea and Eternal Summer: An Australian Apocalypse” by Andrew Milner
7 ► “Care, Gender, and the Climate-Changed Future: Maggie Gee’s The Ice People“ by Adeline Johns-Putra
8 ► “Future Ecologies, Current Crisis: Ecological Concern in South African Speculative Fiction” by Elzette Steenkamp
9 ► “Ordinary Catastrophes: Paradoxes and Problems in Some Recent Post-Apocalypse Fictions” by Christopher Palmer

Part 3 Quiet Earths, Junk Cities, and the Cultures of the Afternoon
10 ► “‘The Rain Feels New’: Ecotopian Strategies in the Short Fiction of Paolo Bacigalupi” by Eric C. Oto
11 ► “Life after People: Science Faction and Ecological Futures” by Brent Bellamy and Imre Szeman
12 ► “Pandora’s Box: Avatar, Ecology, Thought” by Timothy Morton
13 ► “Churning Up the Depths: Nonhuman Ecologies of Metaphor in Solaris and ‘Oceanic’” by Melody Jue

Afterword: “Still, I’m Reluctant to Call This Pessimism” by Gerry Canavan and Kim Stanley Robinson

There’s also a lengthy “Of Further Interest” appendix that’s an annotated list of some key texts in the subgenre of ecological science fiction.

*In case you’re wondering why I would do this for Gerry, check out his blog. I have followed it for YEARS and it’s like having an aggregate of all things I am interested in. Well, except Star Trek, but then, I have lots of people I share that stuff with and they love it. Not to mention, this collection of essays just sounds amazing.

Terrain.org’s New Face

Exciting new things are happening over at Terrain.org, a literary magazine that “publishes editorials, poetry, essays, fiction, hybrid forms, articles, videos, reviews, an interview, the ARTerrain gallery, and the UnSprawl case study.” Now, Terrain.org has a newly designed website that makes it easier to move through genres while “continuing with [their] image-rich and multimedia focus.” And indeed, the new website is much more image heavy, with rolling landscape pictures that help emphasize the theme of the journal. There’s also a cleaner font and easier-to-read layout. I’d say it’s a nice move forward for the magazine.

In other news, they’ve also switched from putting out issues to publishing on more of a rolling basis, currently with three or four contributions per week. Another minor change is that the blog is now part of the site, instead of hosted at a separate URL.

The latest contributions include three poems by Beth McDermott, a video essay about glaciers by Nancy Lord and Irene Owsley, an interview with Derrick Jensen, and some reviews and recommended reads. Check it out here.

David James Poissant on Rejection

In this month’s Glimmer Train Bulletin, David James Poissant, author of The Heaven of Animals (Simon & Shuster March 2014) writes “On Relentlessness, Or, How to Make Submitting Your Superpower.” In this featured essay, he advises writers, “don’t let the first dozen rejections stop you” when it comes to submitting works. A story oft told, and yet, relentlessly needing to be oft told. Poissant’s more humorous than stern approach may help some new writers better understand, three or four rejections is no big deal: “Invariably, my response is, ‘Three or four?’ Then, I lead said student or writer to my office where a corkboard hangs prominently above my computer. To the face of the corkboard, I have thumbtacked about fifty rejection slips.” But it’s not just about rejection, but about the sensibility of revision and in some cases, knowing when a work is “probably a dud” and may just need to rest a while.

MQR 2013 Literary Award Winners

Michigan Quarterly Review has announced this year’s three annual literary prize winners whose works are selected from those published in MQR throughout the year.

Laurence Goldstein Poetry Prize 2013 ($500): Benjamin Busch for his poem “Girls” which appeard in the Winter 2013 issue of MQR. [Photo credit: Richard Mallory Allnut]

Lawrence Foundation Prize 2013 ($1000): Cody Peace Adamns for his story “Victory Chimes” which appeared in the Winter 2013 issue of MQR.

Page Davidson Clayton Prize for Emerging Poets ($500): Anne Barngrover for her poem “Memory, 1999” which appeared in the Fall 2013 issue of MQR.

Read more about the winners and the selection process here.

Brick – Winter 2014

Have financial constraints or a lack of vacation days turned you into a regionalist against your will? Don’t fret, the new issue of Brick is here to take you on a whirlwind tour, sans pat downs, turbulence, and the high cost of airfare. Aptly labeled “an anthology of enthusiasms” by former editor Michael Ondaatje, Brick is filled with the work of writers and thinkers whose preoccupations are as categorically eclectic as they are geographically diverse. From the ice fields of the North Pole to a paradise in the mind, from Tokyo to Arizona’s San Rafael Valley, the latest issue of Brick gathers the essays, interviews, letters, travelogues, poetry, fiction, reviews and musings of writers eager to give you a guided tour of their personal enthusiasms. And while the magazine’s content is eclectic and truly international in scope, it’s never willfully obscure. Rather, Brick’s eclecticism feels like an extension of its editors’ trust in the ability of good writers to determine what is substantial for themselves and make that substance meaningful and entertaining to others. Continue reading “Brick – Winter 2014”

Apple Valley Review – Spring 2014

Apple Valley Review is definitely a journal to watch, with excellently crafted prose and engaging verse. This particular issue boasts three fictions, one nonfiction, and thirteen poems. Dave Patterson “A Return to Rothko” is enchanting with the innocence of a child’s (and then man’s) reaction to death, along with his mother’s idea that there is something wrong with him because of it. The brilliance is in the small details, the illustrations that further the characters. When he is a child, the narrator plays with his dead dog; at only eight years old, he’s fascinated with the idea of death and is still learning what it really means… Continue reading “Apple Valley Review – Spring 2014”

Chtenia – Winter 2014

“No one can embrace the unembraceable,” the editors of Chtenia commented on the task of reading for this issue, “Storied Moscow.” Indeed, Moscow evokes a rush of impressions like no other city: six-month winters, intrigue, people from Tashkent and Minsk rubbing elbows and trading blows, the center of violence, dreams, disappointments, and majesty for so many. I’m willing to bet that the Stolichnaya (“of the capital”) brand of vodka wouldn’t ring with the same aplomb if it were associated with, say, Washington, D.C. or Ottawa. The editors have done an admirable job of going beyond the familiar, however; the pieces in the issue range from historical records to writers who are hardly known outside Russia, to the lesser-known works of famous writers as well as snippets of Pushkin and Okudzhava in a new spotlight. The quirky volume makes me feel as if I’d just stumbled into a dusty section of the library, opened a worn hardcover that hadn’t been checked out since 1957, and discovered a treasure trove. Continue reading “Chtenia – Winter 2014”

Hamilton Stone Review – Winter/Spring 2014

Hamilton Stone Review, like most online literary magazines (and literary magazines in general), is compiled by a small staff, but that isn’t to say that it’s a small publication, by any definition. It’s not small in size (five fiction, five nonfiction, and more than 20 poems), and it’s not small in quality. This issue of Hamilton Stone Review is bursting with crisp language, powerful tones, and lustrous imagery. Continue reading “Hamilton Stone Review – Winter/Spring 2014”

Fence – Winter 2013-2014

As an introduction to this issue of Fence, Rebecca Wolff covers all the bases in her editor’s note: poetry, nonfiction, and, yes, fiction (because confessions and revelations often feel like fiction). Wolff’s tone is unapologetic, proud of her position, her power as editor: “It is in my power to bestow power, to share it.” One can argue that she’s flaunting this power, waving it in your face in a mixed mode of fuck-you and endearment, which is not unusual, since we live in the age of Facebook and Twitter where being in and over each other’s face has become common ritual, where our perceptions of privacy are constantly challenged by this urge to be social. Thus, the tone of this issue loudly and approximately adheres to the tenor of Wolff’s piece: forceful, hammered, on steroids, bitchy, suspicious of melancholia, and persistently fresh. Continue reading “Fence – Winter 2013-2014”

Flyway – March 2014

Home to Iowa State University, Flyway aims to publish work that “that explores the many complicated facets of the word environment—at once rural, urban, and suburban—and its social and political implications.” While environment may be a theme of the journal in general, I think it’s a pretty loose interpretation, meaning that almost any type of story could fit. But that isn’t to say that any piece of work could be accepted; the work presented here is polished, and is worth reading. Continue reading “Flyway – March 2014”

Graze – Fall 2013

Graze, a perfectly delicious foodie literary magazine, is printed in two color: black and green. The design works throughout and pulls the pieces together. This issue features a fantastic cover with various life-like foods in the library: an ice-cream sandwich lies on his back, a piece of pizza sits on the floor, a burrito browses the stacks, and plenty more characters populate the page. Inside, you’ll find plenty more fun. Continue reading “Graze – Fall 2013”

Sixth Finch – Winter 2014

This issue of Sixth Finch begins with the line “You wish for a moon,” from Elizabeth Barnett’s “Between Two Houses,” which ends, “if sometimes / a house hurts you, // you still walk toward it / in the dark.” So tread forward into this issue; you may be wishing for a moon—beautiful turns of lines—and you’re most certainly walking in the dark, not sure what you’ll find, but I promise it won’t hurt you. Continue reading “Sixth Finch – Winter 2014”

The Hudson Review – Winter 2014

“As Han-shan observed, / sometimes there is no Zen, / only hermits plodding up and down Cold Mountain.” These opening lines from Dick Allen’s brief poem “As Han-shan observed” nicely paraphrase a key question at the heart of several essays and reviews in The Hudson Review’s latest issue. Allen’s memorable poem from the current issue not only describes the human tendency to find dogma where none exists, it also calls into question the degree to which an accurate portrait of a person’s interior life can ever be drawn from the exterior evidence available to others. Continue reading “The Hudson Review – Winter 2014”

Origami Journal – Spring 2014

In “Chasing Butterflies,” Cassie Hooker gives us a beautiful though gruesome idea of what one might imagine in those moments between when a person’s heart gives out and when she is revived. “She found herself standing on the edge of the sprawling void, utterly alone,” it begins. And as it continues, we discover this woman has scrapes all over her face, from which a delicate butterfly emerges and then returns. Its tone is very dreamlike, with a slow beat, gently carrying the reader through the piece. Continue reading “Origami Journal – Spring 2014”

The Missouri Review – Winter 2013

In his lucid, wise introduction to this issue of the highly-reputed Missouri Review, Editor Speer Morgan invokes paradox and opposition, those twin universals of human existence, as the theme of the day. “Falling man” is the image on the cover and the title of his survey of the issue’s contents, and in referring to “the potential uncertainty of the given” as the driving principle of its stories, essays, and poems, he’s utterly correct. But I’d also argue that another theme, present in equal abundance, is beauty of language, deep respect for the right words in the right order, every bit as much in the prose as in the poetry. This—as always—is a magazine for the connoisseur. There is nothing amateur about it. Continue reading “The Missouri Review – Winter 2013”

The Nassau Review – 2013

The 2013 issue of The Nassau Review revolves around the theme of “Ekphrasis” or descriptions of other works of art. Each piece in this issue stays true to the theme and gives the reader things to think about on multiple levels. The work in the journal will make the reader not only contemplate what the piece of art they are reading is doing, but it will force the reader to meditate on the implications the work has on another body of work, be it a painting, an instructional manual, a pornographic magazine, or a sculpture. In many instances, the reader will be asked to consider the act of creating in and of itself. Continue reading “The Nassau Review – 2013”

Notre Dame Review – Winter/Spring 2014

“What’s Up?” is the title of this issue; on Robert Kareka’s cover, “Muddy Feet” are up, waving around in beachy air. But a lot more is up, too. Most of the time, the appeal of literature is its pointing beyond itself, like a Zen finger, to the “world under the world.” Language’s gaps and leaps, the cumulative sound and meaning of particular arrangements of words, lead us past mere materiality into the reality behind it, so that we close the pages transported and enlarged, though we couldn’t put our finger on the exact paragraph that did the trick. Continue reading “Notre Dame Review – Winter/Spring 2014”

Raleigh Review – 2014

The mission statement of Raleigh Review reads, “We believe fine art should challenge as well as entertain.” While many of the pieces in this issue fit the description of traditional poetry and prose, there are significant pieces of work that do indeed “challenge as well as entertain.” Throughout the journal, again and again we are presented with imagery in a modern style that drives the pace in bursts of short statements and thoughtful comments that ask to be revisited. Continue reading “Raleigh Review – 2014”