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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!

2013 River Styx International Poetry Contest

The 2013 River Styx International Poetry Contest winners, judged by Terrance Hayes, are featured in River Styx‘s latest issue:

First Place
Molly Bashaw: “A Talk With Chagall”

Second Place
Lois Marie Harrod: “Woman Finds Her Face”

 Third Place
Robert Campbell: “Arrhythmia’

 Honorable Mentions
Jennifer Perrine: “Confidence Game”
Robert Heald: “Twelve Dreams About You”

Hayes wrote that the winning poem “stood out because of its scale and range of tone. It is propelled by wonderful imagination, tone and imagery. Lines like this one stayed with me: ‘You would think someone watched over these scenes with a whip made of wheat.'”

Baltimore Review Winter Contest Winners

The editors of The Baltimore Review are pleased to announce the winners of their winter contest:

Brett Foster, 1st place, for “On the Numbness That Will Be Our Future”
Clay Matthews 2nd place, for “An Angel Gets Her Wings”
Roy Bentley, 3rd place, for “O, Kindergarten”

The final judge for the contest was Reginald Harris.

The poems are included in the online issue launched January 31. The issue also features poems, short stories, creative nonfiction, and a video by Kilby Allen, Janette Ayachi, Gaylord Brewer, Daniel Butterworth, Michael Capel, Valerie Cumming, Anne Goodwin, Peter Goodwin, John Goulet, Piotr Gwiazda, Matt Hobson, Michael Derrick Hudson, Amorak Huey, Brian Maxwell, Sheila O’Connor, Rebecca Orchard, and Margaret Stout.

The next submission period for The Baltimore Review is February 1 – May 31.

Poem :: Jonathan Greene

American Life in Poetry: Column 464
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

We human beings think we’re pretty special when compared to the “lower” forms of life, but now and then nature puts us in our place. Here’s an untitled short poem by Jonathan Greene, who lives in the outer Bluegrass region of Kentucky.

Untitled

Honored when
the butterfly lights
on my shoulder.

Next stop:
a rotting log.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2001 by Jonathan Greene, whose most recent book of poems is Distillations and Siphonings, Broadstone Books, 2010. Poem reprinted from blink, September-October 2001, vol. 1, no. 2, by permission of Jonathan Greene 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 Citizenship

At Ball State University, Cathy Day is teaching a special class in creative writing called Literary Citizenship. The advice she teaches is something all writers can listen to. Engage in the community, and see what you can do for the literary world, not what it can do for you. “I’ve started thinking that maybe the reason I teach creative writing isn’t just to create writers,” Day writes, “but also to create a populace that cares about reading. There are many ways to lead a literary life, and I try to show my students simple ways that they can practice what I call “literary citizenship.” I wish more aspiring writers would contribute to, not just expect things from, that world they want so much to be a part of.”

Here’s some excerpts from the main blog post on her page:

1.) Write “charming notes” to writers. (I got this phrase from Carolyn See.) Anytime you read something you like, tell the author.

2.) Interview writers. Take charming notes a step farther and ask the writer if you can do an interview.

3.) Talk up (informally) or review (formally) books you like. Start with your personal network. Then say something on Goodreads. Then Amazon.com or B&N. Then try starting a book review blog.

4.) If you want to be published in journals, you must read and support them. Period.

5.) If you want to publish books, buy books

6.) Be passionate about books and writing, because passion is infectious.

She then goes into more detail about these challenges. Follow what the class is doing on the site, literarycitizenship.com, and join in on their challenges.

2013 Editors’ Prize Contest Winners

The Winter 2013 issue of SRPR (Spoon River Poetry Review) features the winners of the 2013 Editors’ Prize Contest:

First Place ($1000): Jesse Nissim, “Fire”

First Runner Up ($100): Dante Di Stefano, “Praying to Ares After Listening to My Father’s Voice Message”

Second Runner Up ($100): Carol Matos, “Goodbye Charlie”

Honorable Mentions:
Leland James, “A Brief History of the Electric Chair”
Susan Charkes, “Conveyance”
Michael Sukach, “Poetry Critic: a Found Pastoral”‘
Arne Weingart, “Parenthetical”

Advice by Dan Gerber

American Life in Poetry: Column 463
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

This touching poem by Dan Gerber, who lives in California, captures the memory of a father’s advice, but beneath the practical surface of that advice we can sense a great deal of emotion, which shows through a little crack at the moment the father clears his voice before continuing.

Advice

You know how, after it rains,
my father told me one August afternoon
when I struggled with something
hurtful my best friend had said,
how worms come out and
crawl all over the sidewalk
and it stays a big mess
a long time after it’s over
if you step on them?

Leave them alone,
he went on to say,
after clearing his throat,
and when the rain stops,
they crawl back into the ground.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2012 by Dan Gerber, from his most recent book of poems, Sailing through Cassiopeia, Copper Canyon Press, 2012. Poem reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press. 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.

Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week

So it’s been a while since I posted about magazine covers, but don’t worry–I’m not stopping now! The holidays and AWP have put me a little behind with these posts, but there are plenty in store. If only you could see the boxes and boxes of litmags I have to go through! And one of the delights is discovering some amazing artwork and photography and design on the covers:

Room‘s cover features a house with one side removed so that you can see the, what do you know, rooms. The Dollhouse: Blue Night #2 was constructed in 2007 by Heather Benning with wood, plaster, paint, mixed media, and an existing abandoned house.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Salmagundi Magazine‘s cover just looks like fun. It features Untitled (Hunterdon County, NJ) by Meredith Moody from about 1984.

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 This cover of The Fiddlehead features the work of Deanna Musgrave’s acrylic on canvas, Crown.

Screen Reading is FRESH Online Review!

This month, Editor Kirsten McIlvenna brings a fresh round of online literary magazine reviews to Screen Reading. This unique monthly review column explores great reading online, this month featuring a critical look at Brevity, East Coast Ink, Ghost House Review, Jersey Devil Press, and Really System. Engaged Readers. Creative Writers. Start Here.

Museum of Haiku Literature Award

The Museum of Haiku Literature Award is given to the author of the best previously unpublished work in the latest Frogpond issue, voted on by the Haiku Society of America Executive Committee. The winner featured in the Autumn 2013 issue is John Parsons from Norfolk, England for:

silence of snow
we listen to the house
grow smaller

Constance Rooke Creative Nonfiction Prize

Liz Windhorst Harmer was awarded with the Constance Rooke Creative Nonfiction Prize for her piece “Blip” which is featured in the latest issue of The Malahat Review. It was chosen by the final judge John Vaillant from among 160 entries. Valliant writes, ” The author’s confidence in her story and her craft was evident throughout, revealing itself in the clarity and cadence of the sentences and by a notable (and refreshing) absence of simile and metaphor. The words and what they conveyed were strong enough on their own that there was no need for amping them up with adjectives or outside associations. There is also a lyrical quality in this piece that made me want to hear it read aloud, in other words ‘told’ to me, as opposed to written.”

Finalists:
Robert Colman, “The Word Is Man”
Abigail Gascho Landis, “Inside a River”
Madeline Sonik, “Dead Ewes”
Dale Scott Waters, “The Light, The Light, The Horror, The Horror”
Terence Young, “Almost Home Again”

Kugelmass :: In Transition

In issue number 4 of Kugelmass, Editor David Holub writes that this is the last edition in association with Firewheel Editions and Kugelmass co-founder Brian Clements. “The support and guidance Brian and Firewheel have provided Kugelmass from its inception has been beyond invaluable and Kugelmass wouldn’t exist without it,” he writes.

On the website itself, it announces that Kugelmass is on hold and is not currently publishing issues. The blog post reads, “there’s a bit of a transition ahead and an uncertain future for Kugelmass.” Let’s hope it’s not done for good.

Here’s some highlights from the current issue, still available through the website as either print or digital copies: essays by Charlie Geer, Tracy Golden, and Daniel Asa Rose; stories by Jenny Allen, Daniel Brauer, John Henry Fleming, Josh Logue, Andrew Nicholls, Joe Plicka, Ryan Shoemaker, George Singleton, and Lisa Wilde; poetry by Laura Ramos and David Galef; comics by Pat McKay; and photos by Pete Duval.

Help Denise @ NewPages

As a reader, writer, teacher, student, publisher, editor, etc. – How do you use NewPages?

I am in the process of having my work with NewPages recognized by my college, and any notes of support from people using NewPages would help!

Teachers/Students – If NewPages is included on your class website or in the class syllabus, please send me a link or a copy.

Send comments and relevant materials to [email protected]

Thank you!

december Revived!

december magazine, around since 1958 who published Raymond Carver’s very first published story along with writing from future U.S. Poets Laureate, state Poets Laureate, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award writers, and more, is making its comeback. And while it lay dormant for a little bit, Gianna Jacobson has purchased the magazine and has big plans for its return.

The revival issue has been published with a variety of work from past contributors as well as new writers. Jacobson writes, “As I sifted through boxes and books and journals, taking stock of all that december had been and meant to the literary world, I felt a circus-performer-like surge of adrenaline and committed myself to upholding december‘s legacy . . . As I settle into my role as ringmaster, I invite you to experience and enjoy a rich array of literary and artistic performances.”

This issue features the work of Jack Anderson, Annette Basalyga, Amy Beeder, Marvin Bell, Stephen Berg, Douglas Blazek, Grace Cavalieri, Kelly Cherry, Jaydn Dewald, Albert Goldbarth, H. L. Hix, Karen Holman, Lawson Fusao Inada, Jesse Lee Kercheval, Michael Lally, Michael Fedo, Gary Gildner, Marge Piercy, Faye Reddecliff, Jay Duret, Gary Fincke, Sherri Hoffman, and more.

American Amnesiac

How would it feel to suddenly find huge distortions in your memories of your own life, and then sense ripples of distortion when looking at the story of the world all around? The narrator of Diane Raptosh’s American Amnesiac speaks from within the swirl of such an ongoing confusion: “I’m a man without a past, like so many folks who’ve been expelled / from their own but dare not detect it. Shake your head no; nod your head yes. // There’s enough amnesia out there to kill a horse. . . .” Continue reading “American Amnesiac”

Short Leash

In this memoir covering more than thirty years, teacher and award-winning writer Janice Gary expertly braids together her life’s themes and experiences, focusing on her fifteen-year relationship with Barney, a stray Lab-Rottweiler that she finds in a supermarket parking lot. Barney fulfills the prediction made during his first visit to the veterinarian: he grows into a very big dog. This presents a complex problem for Gary after Barney becomes dog-aggressive as a puppy when he’s attacked by a larger dog and subsequently attacks and injures several neighborhood dogs. Gary, a trauma survivor who at fifteen years old found her father’s body after his suicide and then four years later was raped at gunpoint in a dark alley, explains how Barney’s size and power initially provide her with a sense of safety and security, although, since he outweighs and overpowers her, she’s challenged to control him when other dogs are present. The writer wins the reader’s sympathy for this life-loving dog, whose emotional wounds mirror the wounds of his owner: “We were twins, the two faces of fear walking side by side.” Continue reading “Short Leash”

Liliane’s Balcony

“Each material has its own message and, to the creative artist, its own song. Listening, [s]he may learn to make the two sing together.” Frank Lloyd Wright knew the art of crafting a structure that complements the space it inhabits. And as he suggests, artists must make music from the intersection of materials and messages. Like Frank Lloyd Wright’s infamous Fallingwater (the setting for this book), Liliane’s Balcony is an architectural treat.  Form and content are married perfectly in Kelcey Parker’s novella. Even the font and structure of the book were intentionally engineered. The font is influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright and the time period in which he created Fallingwater, and each symbol beneath the chapter’s heading is taken from Wright’s own Prairie-style geometric patterns. The various narratives speaking throughout the novella operate like the various cantilevers and balconies of Fallingwater, allowing the reader to step out into a new narrative, but always ducking back inside to the narrative of Liliane. Continue reading “Liliane’s Balcony”

Conquistador of the Useless

Even if you were only half-awake in the late ’80s and early ’90s and only occasionally watched prime-time shows on ABC, you may remember the nostalgic narrator of The Wonder Years and the young urban professionals in thirtysomething, which sparked the now-commonplace term and later earned a place in the Oxford English Dictionary. Both shows were framed in the imagination of baby boomers, the Clinton-Gore age group back in 1992 whose childhood memories of Sixties counterculture now feels muted, ironed out into designer suits and body language that secure career paths and retirement plans. You might get a whiff of those two shows in Joshua Isard’s Conquistador of the Useless, through the tone of nostalgia for one’s teenage years that, to some extent, acts as an element of restraint and caution about being pulled too fast into an upwardly mobile career in information technology. The narratives of urban alienation in Pearl Jam, Kurt Cobain, MTV’s Daria, and Kurt Vonnegut are not mere artifacts in Nathan Wavelsky’s suburban world, but serve as imaginary sticky notes for a life filled with statistical reports, deadlines, and board meetings. Thus, Nathan accepts a big job promotion with trepidation and, knowing the ball is in his court, requests a few months off for something unrelated to his career: his condition for accepting the offer is that he starts working in his new job after climbing Mt. Everest. Continue reading “Conquistador of the Useless”

Malignant

It’s impossible to do justice to the breadth of literature that surrounds cancer. We can view cancer in a historical context through works like Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Emperor of All Maladies. We can read reflections from the medical community in Atul Gawande’s Complications. We can see literature through the decades—like Death Be Not Proud—take on the question of how to balance art and science in practicing medicine and what might determine what we would call “good medicine.” Countless examples shape how we, as a culture, think about and make sense of cancer. And at the forefront of all cancer genres is the personal anecdote: the story of experiencing cancer either firsthand or through a family member or friend. Malignant: How Cancer Becomes Us, by S. Lochlann Jain, takes the jumbled milieu of medicine, anthropology, culture, and history and tells us how we (broadly defined) think about cancer through the lens of her experience with it. Continue reading “Malignant”

There. Here.

The beautiful cover image for this book of poetry—a painting by an artist named Linda Okazaki—features an animal, probably a fox, alone on a bridge over a vast expanse of water, with trees and mountains in the distance under an orange-red sky. There is a mythical quality to this painting that matches the energy of the best poems in Stan Sanvel Rubin’s There. Here. In this fourth full-length book by Rubin, I find an author who sometimes muses about life in direct, observant narratives and, at other times, offers images with the compression of Zen koans. Continue reading “There. Here.”

Scratching the Ghost

Scratching the Ghost is Dexter L. Booth’s first full-length book, though he has been published in a variety of literary magazines; this manuscript was the winner of the 2012 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. From the first stanza to the very last, I found myself reading like I had an addiction to his prose, and I just couldn’t put the book down. The beginning to one of his Abstracts:

Mouths foaming
like a scar after
the sweet kiss
of peroxide.

Continue reading “Scratching the Ghost”

Folsom’s 93

The backstory of Folsom’s 93: The Lives and Crimes of Folsom Prison’s Executed Men would make a pretty good book of its own. Author April Moore’s great-great-aunt Betty, a “fiery redhead” who worked in Los Angles nightclubs, was married to Tom, a professional gambler and bookie with ties to LA and Las Vegas crime syndicates. If that wasn’t enough to keep family phone lines and dinner conversations buzzing, Tom had photos and dossiers of all 93 men executed at Folsom Prison between 1895 to 1937. Why he had them is a mystery; they came into his possession following a visit to the prison to collect a debt from a prisoner. After Betty’s death, the author acquired, as her grandfather labeled them, “the ugly mugs.” Moore follows this irresistible film noir of an introduction with straightforward accounts of how the condemned went to the gallows. Continue reading “Folsom’s 93”

Fannie + Freddie

Poetry is often viewed as a respite from the noise and violence of the “real world.” A podcast that paused to lament the anti-intellectual culture of American politics talked of a book of poetry at a president’s bedside in the same breath as vacation and exercise. These things are necessary, or productive even, but not of the same world. Continue reading “Fannie + Freddie”

Glimmer Train November Short Story Award for New Writers Winners

Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their November Short Story Award for New Writers. This competition is held quarterly and is open to all writers whose fiction has not appeared in a print publication with a circulation greater than 5000. The next Short Story Award competition will take place in February. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.

1st place goes to Natasha Tamate Weiss [Pictured. No photo credit.] of San Francisco, CA. She wins $1500 for “What It Means to Rush” and her story will be published in Issue 93 of Glimmer Train Stories. This is Natasha’s first published fiction.

2nd place goes to Amy Evans Brown of Kalamazoo, MI. She wins $500 for “The Hudson.”

3rd place goes to Gabe Herron of Scappoose, OR. He wins $300 for “Uriah.”

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

Symposium on Poetic “Risk”

The latest issue of Pleiades puts forth a special Symposium on Poetic “Risk” in which poets and critics have been invited to select a recent poem that is “risky” and write a short essay about why. In the introduction to the section, the editors say that 10 or 15 years ago, risk in poetry was a big topic, but now there has been less discussion of it. “We found ourselves wondering: Has the idea of ‘risk’ in poetry been somehow rendered obsolete? Is it now considered a less important poetic value than it once was? Are there new and exciting ways that poets are currently taking risks in their works? Are the risks of poetry actually quite constant and old?”

Contributors to this section include Robert Archambeau, Rae Armantrout, Jaswinder Bolina, Victoria Chang, Heather Christle, martha Collins, Carl Dennis, John Gallaher, Tony Hoagland, Cathy Park Hong, Joan Houlihan, Joy Katz, John Koethe, Randall Mann, Adrian Matejka, and Rusty Morrison.

Sharon Drummond Chapbook Prize

FreeFall‘s latest issue features the poetry of Angela Simmons, winner of the Sharon Drummond Chapbook Prize. This prize was established in 2013 in memory of the Calgary poet Sharon Drummond and honors Alberta-based writers who have never before published a collection of poetry. Angela Simmons received a contract with Rubicon Press to publish her work in an edited chapbook. The issue includes several selections from this chapbook.

2013 Write Prize for Poetry

Able Muse‘s Winter 2013 issue announces and includes the winners of the 2013 Write Prize for Poetry:

Winner
D.R. Goodman: “The Face of Things”

Second Place
Jeanne Wagner: “The Unfaithful Shepherd”

Third Place
Richard Wakefield: “Keepaway”

Finalists
D.R. Goodman: “Our Late in Summer”
Tara Tatum: “The Nut House”
D.R. Goodman: “A Red-Tailed Hawk Patrols”
Anna M. Evans: “Prague Spring”
Melissa Balmain: “Two Julys”

Fractured West’s Final Issue

Fractured West, which announced some time ago that it would be ceasing publication, has come out with their fifth and final issue. Here’s all about it:

“Issue 5 is about endings and beginnings, the world after the world is over. In futuristic stories debris cascades back to earth from outer space while humans and animals run wild together; in personal stories relationships self-destruct and are reborn. Whatever else happens, people slip from life to death with freedom and hope for something more.

A theme of ending and renewal is appropriate for what will be our final issue. It has been a wonderful five years, full of unexpected stories and characters that will stay with us for years to come. As we both move on to new stages in our lives we hope the writing that we’ve published in Fractured West will stay with you too, reminding you to catch those glimpses of magic whenever and however they flash by.”

SRPR Contest Winners

SRPR (Spoon River Poetry Review)‘s Editors’ Prize 2013 Contest winners are announced and published in the latest issue:

 First Place ($1000)
Jesse Nissim, “Fire”

First Runner Up ($100)
Dante Di Stefano, “Praying to Ares After Listening to My Father’s Voice Message”

Second Runner Up ($100)
Carol Matos, “Goodbye Charlie”

Honorable Mentions
Leland James, “A Brief History of the Electric Chair”
Susan Charkes, “Conveyance”
Michael Sukach, “Poetry Critic: a Found Pastoral”
Arne Weingart, “Parenthetical”

2013 Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction

The Colorado Review‘s latest issue features the winner of the 2013 Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction, the prize’s 10th anniversary. Judge Jim Shepard selected Edward Hamlin’s “Night in Erg Chebbi” as the winning piece. Editor Stephanie G’Schwind writes that it is a “hauntingly beautiful story.” And Shepard writes that it “deftly deploys the kind of flyblow and faintly absurd exoticism shot through with menace that was Paul Bowles’s specialty, but the observational intelligence of its portrait of a loving but exhausted couple at the end of their tether is all its own, and both its sense of place and its pained compassion are arresting.” To read more about the prize, click here.

Also featured in this issue are Miki Arndt, Corey Campbell, Molly Patterson, Jen Hirt, Keane Shum, Sarah K. Lenz, Karen Leona Anderson, Mario Chard, Mark Conway, Robert Dannenberg, K.A. Hays, Michael Heller, Nabil Kashyap, and more.

Melville Fans :: Remaking Moby-Dick

“The Re-Making Moby-Dick project is an international multimodal storytelling performance instigated and enacted during 2013 to 2018. Poets, writers, artists, schoolchildren, scholars, dancers, curators, and sailors are invited to engage the project and participate via the means most natural to their expressive practice. The 135 chapters, along with the extracts, inscription, epigraph, and epilogue, of Herman Melville’s 1851 novel serve as prompts for responsive work created in multiple forms, recorded in digital video and exhibited online.”

Curator Trish Harris and Project Director Lissa Holloway-Attaway have completed the compilation and a participatory video screening that took place at the the Blekinge Museum in Karlskrona, Sweden during the Mixing Realities Digital Performance Festival in May 2013: “The festival foregrounded mixed reality works presented by scholars, curators, and International artists working across media (in sound, video, augmented reality, digital and live performance, dance).”  The YouTube channel for the videos is still available, as well as this compilation of the 24 hour MobyReading Marathon.

Trish and Lissa have also repurposed and re-contextualized the project artifacts, offering yet another “text” published online and in print form that can be shared with a wider audience, along with the original work from the festival, as a further extension of the project. The online version includes QR codes for audio/video content.

It doesn’t stop there – Trish and Lissa are collecting and curating new video so to screen a more-complete Remaking Moby in both Europe and the U.S. in 2014.

Although submissions are now closed, you can still participate by responding to “specific to separate chapters or passages in Moby-Dick or critically interpret some aspect of the novel, extending the meaning and significance of Moby-Dick and reflecting on its continued relevance. The full text of Moby-Dick is available at Project Gutenberg. Chapter synopses are available at Novel Guide.”

For more information, visit Re-Making Moby-Dick.

Readers’ Favorites from New Letters

In the latest issue of New Letters, they announce the readers favorites for Volume 19 Issues 1-4, 2012-2013:

Readers Award for Fiction
Douglas Trevor: “Slugger and the Fat Man”

Readers Award for Poetry
Claudia Serea: “My Father’s Quiet Friends in Prison, 1958-1962”

Readers Award for the Essay
Walter Cummins: “Roth’s Complaint”

First Annual Federico Garcia Lorca Poetry Prize Winners

Green Briar Review held its first annual Federico Garcia Lorca Poetry Prize judged by Sean Thomas Dougherty, who notes, “In judging the poems submitted for this contest, I looked foremost at language on the level of the line. This was the difference in deciding which poems were most successful. Then at meaning, then at guts. It was this last one that showed some poems were just braver emotionally than others.”

Dougherty selected the top three poems and then ten Honorable Mentions. Each of the three Green Briar Review editors then selected one poem from those ten for publication.

First Prize
What the Other Eye Sees
Christina Clark

Second Prize
Whiteness
Cary Waterman

Third Prize
Tattoos and Birthmarks
Patrice Melnick

Honorable Mention Editors’ Pick

Spiders and Big Gear Talk
Harlow Crandall

Tearing Down the Horseshoe & Star
Gentris L. Jointe

O Dochartaig, Ar nDutcas
Kevin Dougherty

Honorable Mentions

April Aubade
Richard Foerster

Soledad
Monica Teresa Ortiz

Cake
Trish Harris

Tarke al Yayeb Mohamed Bouazizi
Josh Gage

Lilacs
Mary Golias

Break On Through
Jeanne Sirotkin Haynes

State Park
Abigail Chiaramonte

Ninth Letter in 3D

The only thing not surprising about Ninth Letter is that it is always surprising. The latest issue comes with a pair of disposable 3D glasses. But careful where you put them, you’ll want them to view the cover, design, and artwork throughout (though I’d recommend taking them off for reading purposes). The issue also holds large, foldout portfolios of artwork.

Included is the winners of the 2013 Literary Awards:

Poetry winner
R. A. Villanueva, for his poems “Aftermaths” and “Sacrum”

Fiction winner
Caitlin O’Neill, for her story “The Change Over Day”

Creative Nonfiction winner
Jessica Wilbanks, for her essay “On the Far Side of the Fire”

Literature in Translation
Eleanor Goodman, for her translation of excerpts from Shen Wei’s A Dictionary of Xinjiang

Other honors accorded by the judges include:
G. C. Waldrep selected “Three Expressions of El Tio” and “Five Characteristics of the Genus Tragelaphus” by Zoey Farber as the Runner Up entry in poetry

Alexis Levitin selected Olga Nikolova’s translations of “A Birthday Between Two Seas,” “A Formula for Infinity,” and “Toast” by Krasimira Zafirova’s as the Runner Up entry up in translation

Margot Livesey named “Pinprick” by Christie Heinrichs, “Charcoal” by Rachel Unkefer, and “Here Where the World Is Greening” by Rachel May as Honorable Mentions in fiction.

Screen Reading :: Online Lit Mag Reviews!

Exclusive to NewPages, Screen Reading is a regular column of reviews of current online literary magazines. This month, Reviewer Kirstin McIlvenna takes a look at Agave Magazine, Alimentum, Apogee, FictionNow, and The Monogahela Review. Brief but critical, these reviews shine the light on great online reading. NewPages: Good Reading Starts Here!

2013 Kalos Foundation Visual Art Prize

Ruminate‘s 30th issue features the winner of the 2013 Kalos Foundation Visual Art Prize, which was judged by Joel Sheesley and sponsored by the Kalos Foundation. Sheesley writes about the winning piece by Alla Bartoshchuk, “The human body is the empirical core in these paintings. By fixing states of being in deft representation of the body, Alla Bartoshchuk translates ethereal states into physical encounters. Thus psychological and emotional conditions are given an undeniable veracity, we feel them and know them as our own.” Here are the winners:

First Place
Alla Bartoshchuk

Second Place
Steve A. Prince

Honorable Mention
Ashley Norwood Cooper

Finalists
Robyn San Anderson
Jonathan Aumen
Rebecca Calhoun
John Chang
Jenne Giles
Susan Hart
Zacheriah Kramer
Janet McKenzie
Barry Motes
Sydney Sparrow
Krista Steinke
Melissa Weinman
Rachel Yurkovich

The artwork of the top three winners are featured on the cover and throughout the magazine.

Original Artwork on Every Cover

The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review‘s Winter 2013 issue is exciting, right from glancing at the cover. When I received the NewPages copy, I had to look closely. Is that Sharpie on the cover? I flipped right to the editor’s note, and saw this:

“And isn’t this, we could say, ‘uncontrollable’ element of art one of the things that makes it so indispensable? I think so. When we publish the magazine each year, it is no longer, literally, in our hands, but in the hands (and eyes and ears) of our subscribers and readers. To that end, this year’s cover is something rather unusual. Each copy of this issue has an individually illustrated cover. Some may be signed, others may be anonymous. The artists range from professional illustrators and visual artists to college students, to academics, to elementary art school teachers to elementary school students themselves. They’ve all been done in a the simple medium of a permanent marker or two . . .”

Nathaniel Perry goes on to say that just like you can’t control what will be on the cover of your copy, you can’t control how you will read or react to any of the poetry. But here are the writers you can expect to find in this issue: Claudia Emerson, Maria Hummel, Christopher Howell, Robert Wrigley, and more.

The Greensboro Review – Fall 2013

The Greensboro Review has been around now for almost 50 years. Since the journal started up in 1965, it has developed an international reputation, meaning each issue plays host to the best work from both emerging and established writers. This issue is packed with work that seems to gravitate around feelings of longing and desire and the various ways these two emotions shape and impact our life. Every piece reaches out to touch the readers on a different level and engage them. Continue reading “The Greensboro Review – Fall 2013”

Lumina – 2013

You will need a pen and paper for this one. Two columns. Two Nobel laureates. Two radically different approaches to prose. In the first column, we have Faulkner and the Gospel of John. In the second column, we have Hemingway and the architectural concept that form follows function. Many journals published today feature prose that ascribes to one camp more than the other. But Lumina seems to capture the two styles precisely down the middle. The balance is perfect: in the fiction column, we have three of each and two that cross camps. In the nonfiction column, we have twenty-five percent Faulkner, seventy-five percent Hemingway (which makes sense considering he was a journalist with a night job), one excellent satire, and one chiseled memoir of sex and acid in the 1980s. Continue reading “Lumina – 2013”

Alimentum – December 2013

Alimentum, a food journal, transitioned a little more than a year ago from a print biannual publication to an online monthly. Because it is now more frequent, it is unfortunately a bit smaller. There is one piece for each of the sections each month: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, featurettes, book reviews, recipe poems, eat and greet, art gallery, jukebox, food blog favs, and news. Continue reading “Alimentum – December 2013”

Arcadia Literary Journal – Fall 2013

The Vietnam War, love affairs, a few ERs, a catastrophic case of acne and its scars: trauma and its aftermath are the subject of this issue of Arcadia, guest-edited by Benjamin Reed. Perhaps because of the nature of trauma, the dramatic and the weird take up a greater-than-usual proportion of the issue, but quieter and more quotidian disruptions are given their places, too. Despite the fragmenting and wounding effects of trauma, the work in this issue is accessible and gripping, at times sad but never depressing. Continue reading “Arcadia Literary Journal – Fall 2013”

Glimmer Train Stories – Winter 2014

One of Glimmer Train’s many claims to fame is its signature black-bordered cover, its distinctive logo title, and the always interesting art—this time, a drawing of curly-tailed pigs making their way home through winter-deadened wheat, erupting in curls from the snow like the animals’ tails. Perhaps the most significant claim to fame, however, is the magazine’s reputation for excellence. Selections from GT have appeared in nearly every annual anthology of “the best.” Its smart look, its dedication to literary fiction, and its consistent attention to the needs of writers reaching for their best, make this always a magazine to watch. This issue is no exception. Continue reading “Glimmer Train Stories – Winter 2014”