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NewPages Blog

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

The McGinnis Ritchie Award

Southwest Review announces the winners of The McGinnis Ritchie Award for 2012. Robert F. Ritchie was a huge supporter of the magazine. After he died in 1997, the magazine was able to give an award each year to the best works of fiction and nonfiction published in that year. Each award is worth $500.

J. F. Glubka
2012 McGinnis-Ritchie Award for Fiction
“Heat Lightning”
(Volume 97, number 4)

Jacob Newberry
2012 McGinnis-Ritchie Award for Fiction
“The Long Bright World”
(Volume 97, number 4)

Gorman Beauchamp
2012 McGinnis-Ritchie Award for Nonfiction, Essay
“‘But Tiepolo is My Painter’: Twain on Art in A Tramp Abroad”
(Volume 97, number 4)

Ann Peters
2012 McGinnis-Ritchie Award for Nonfiction, Essay
“The House on the Ledge”
(Volume 97, number 1)

AWP Tips on Visiting Boston

A friend and colleague who is familiar with the Boston area shared the following with me when I asked her: “What should I do/see while I’m in Boston? If you could tell me one really great/cool/fantastic/don’t-miss-this ‘thing’ about Boston what would it be? And then, add all the runner-ups to that one best thing.” She couldn’t contain herself – obviously, she’s a fan of the area – so here’s what she sent me and agreed to allow me to share. So, thank you Lauren!

Sights/things to do very near the conference

1. The Prudential (the Pru) Building and Top of the Hub: Wonderful view of the city from the top of a landmark building. The food and drinks are way overpriced, but you could splurge on maybe one drink.

2. The Hancock Tower: Another cool building. It’s not as tourist-friendly as the Pru, but people enjoy the view.

3. Trinity Church: Beautiful old church and set for many movies.

4. The Trident Booksellers and Cafe: A MARVELOUS independent bookstore on Newbury Street (one street over from Boylston). A staple of progressivism, too.

5. If the weather is bearable, and you like looking at old architecture, you could spend a few hours walking around the Back Bay neighborhood. Boylston, Newbury, Commonwealth, Marlborough, and Beacon Streets are the major thoroughfares. Boylston is probably the least interesting, but it’s home to lots of lunch and coffee places (mostly chains from what I remember). Newbury Street is for art and fashion – this is where the rich and au courant live. You might find more adventurous lunch places along Newbury. Commonwealth, Marlborough, and Beacon are residential and lined with beautiful brownstones. Commonwealth is a wide street with little spots of green in it.

6. The Public Garden: You get to this historic, European-style garden from the end of Boylston or Newbury Street. Serene and dignified.

7. Across from the Garden is the Boston Common, a larger and less refined park. It is the oldest public park in America, though, and it offers the starting point for the Freedom Trail. If you like colonial history, it’s cool to walk the Freedom Trail. Sometimes, you end up on it accidentally – it’s marked with a big red line. I recommend a stroll through the Common if you want to see normal Bostonians in action.

8. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: A quirky, gorgeous museum with a great restaurant. You can take a cab or the T (Get on at the Pru station and take an E train to the “Museum of Fine Arts” stop).

Food and drink near the conference

1. The Cactus Club: Decent Mexican food and margaritas.

2. Bukowski Tavern: One of my favorite bars of all time!!! Large selection of beers in a cozy environment. I suggest bringing a book, a tablet, your lovely spouse, etc., and settling in for a few hours. It will likely be packed the whole time we’re there – it’s a hipster mecca already, and with this hipster conference in town…still, worth it!

3. Legal Seafoods: A favorite with seafood fans. Very corporate but also very good. Inside the Pru.

Food and drink somewhat near the conference

1. Beer Works: For your microbrew needs! It might be easier to take the T there (Green Line to Kenmore or Yawkey), but it really wouldn’t be that far of a walk. It’s nothing special in terms of food and decor, but the beers are tasty. It’s next to the famous Fenway Park.

2. Addis Red Sea: Amazing Ethiopian food. Likely to be crowded, and worth the small cab fare it will take to get there.

3. The Green Dragon Tavern: Charming, friendly old bar dating back to the Revolutionary War. Take the Green Line to Government Center.

4. The Union Oyster House: I’ve never eaten there, but it’s a Boston institution. For chowder and lobster. Take the Green Line to Government Center.

5. Brown Sugar Café: Excellent Thai food! Somewhat T –accessible, but it’s probably easier to take a cab.

CAMBRIDGE INFO

If you have the time, I definitely suggest a side trip to Cambridge, an intensified, bigger version of Ann Arbor [a Michigander reference]. Harvard Square is easy to get to by T (the Red Line to “Harvard Square”), and it’ll offer you no shortage of cool places to visit.

You can get great, great beer at John Harvard’s. It’s a little stuffy for a brewery, but I like it better than Beer Works. I’m also fond of Shay’s – although their website makes it look more upscale than I remember.

For a more working-class, grubbier part of Cambridge, go to Central Square (Red Line to “Central Square”). You can get a feel for it walking up and down Massachusetts Avenue (the main street in Cambridge). Western Avenue and Prospect Street are also fun to explore. The best Indian and Middle Eastern food and markets are found here.

Go to either location of the 1369 Coffee House if you want to hear people planning the revolution.

My favorite Central Square Irish pubs:
The Field
The People’s Republik

The Cantab Lounge hosts a fantastic poetry slam on Wednesday nights. Lots of slam greats got their start there. And only in Cambridge does a poetry slam occasionally get SOLD OUT.

While I don’t especially love the MIT bar The Miracle of Science, it’s unique and extraordinarily popular.

The Glimmering Room

Have you listened to those early songs by Cat Power where the speaker lists the names of friends from her youth who grew up abused, turning to sex and drugs way too early in life? These poems by Cynthia Cruz are just like those songs. I’ve discovered that Chan Marshall (aka Cat Power) never quite had friends with those exact experiences or went through all that miserable hell herself. It doesn’t bother me too much either. The songs are still damn good. Powerful, moving, and quite evocative, the poems of Cynthia Cruz equally match all the grime and dark foreboding of Cat Power’s best licks. The Glimmering Room hits the same raw nerve, again and again: Continue reading “The Glimmering Room”

The Moon & Other Inventions

American artist Joseph Cornell (1903-1972) has long been a favorite among poets and writers. His work first appeared in art shows and galleries advertised as surrealist, frequently accompanied by and/or incorporating text. In his own lifetime, he directly courted the friendship and patronage of poets such as Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop. In addition, poets ranging in diversity from John Ashbery to Charles Simic have also written about the attraction his work holds for them and/or composed poems in his honor. Cornell also completed a number of various homages to poet Emily Dickinson. In short, there’s poems-a-plenty in existence that interact one way or another with Cornell and his work. By joining in such company, Kristina Marie Darling is taking the risk that her work be held to a similarly high standard. Or rather, in composing a book so directly addressing Cornell’s work, the assumption is that Darling herself is aware she’s aiming high and must be willing to hold her own work to these standards. Continue reading “The Moon & Other Inventions”

Bibliodeath

If you are reading this review, chances are good that books, those things with lots of words crammed between two covers, are probably an integral part of your life. You live with them, thumb through their pages, pass them on to friends, and—if you have enough—make furniture with them (as do I). If this describes you in any way, you will doubtless do yourself a favor by reading Andrei Codrescu’s take on the printed word both past and present, how it lives, where it goes, and the very nature of archives. Bibliodeath is also a portrait of a life lived with books and words. At the end of his tome, Codrescu states: “It is still possible, for as long it took you to read this book, to distinguish the quickly vanishing border between the real and the virtual. This essay is a history of how I got to that border, and how I moved to one or another side of it.” Indeed, Codrescu surveys with depth and humor this very transition we are living through, the digitization of our words. Continue reading “Bibliodeath”

Y

I’ve been thinking a lot about masculinity lately, more specifically the particularly violent attitudes that have been swirled into recent discussions about mental illness, gun laws, sexual violence, and football. In this miasma, masculinity is presented as problem, as a relation of actions based on constructed ideals. But of course, a person is not a problem, or not only a problem, and especially not to his mother. Continue reading “Y”

The Lighthouse Road

With its depiction of wintry weather along the shores of Lake Superior and even a view of Isle Royale, Michiganders (and Wisconsinites) will relate to Peter Geye’s novel The Lighthouse Road even though its setting is Northern Minnesota. Geye is a native of Duluth, and some of the novel’s action takes place there, but mostly it alternates between 1895-96 and 1910-37 in the lakeside town of Gunflint, near a logging camp called Burnt Wood Camp. Continue reading “The Lighthouse Road”

The Memoirs of JonBenet by Kathy Acker

This book of thirteen short essay-stories, The Memoirs of JonBenet by Kathy Acker by Michael du Plessis, is dense with conflated cultural images that construct an alternate unreal-real reality of consumer America. The story’s location is Boulder, Colorado, in a a snowglobe, the kind bought at a “cheap airport gift store and stuck at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.” Boulder is also the place where JonBenet, a six-year-old beauty pageant queen and possibly one of the narrators, was murdered on Christmas Eve in 1996. The other possible narrator of this “fiction inside a fiction” is the dead writer Kathy Acker. Then, there is another narrator, as JonBenet and Kathy Acker discuss: “Somewhere a narrator still worries, almost like a grown-up.” These narrators “out” each other and often call attention to the narrative as a narrative. Continue reading “The Memoirs of JonBenet by Kathy Acker”

Purple Daze

Hey Mr. Tambourine Man, pick up a copy of Sherry Shahan’s book Purple Daze and smell the incense and peppermints. Equally appealing to readers who lived through the 1960s and to those who didn’t but want to know what it was really like, Shahan has created a compelling chronicle of a single tumultuous year: 1965. This particular window to the past is unusual for a couple of reasons. First, Purple Daze features not one main character, but six. Ziggy, Mickey, Cheryl, Nancy, Don and Phil are a group of friends growing up in Los Angeles. The second thing that sets this book apart is the fact that Shahan has chosen to write much of the novel in verse. Our protagonists share their stories through poems, notes, letters, journal entries, and song lyrics. While this format might seem an odd choice from the outside, Shahan’s skill and range engenders a level of intimacy with each character that is surprising given the brief snatches of information shared in a given moment. The reader feels the drama as the paths of these six friends diverge and darken with the weight of the year’s events. Ziggy writes: Continue reading “Purple Daze”

Ten Little Suffergets

Published c. 1910-1915: “As in Ten Little Indians, the group loses a member in each sequence, here for typical transgressions of little girls: gobbling cakes, crying over a dead doll, kissing a boy, – the usual sins of the contemporary sub-Sweet Sixteen set, suffragettes as self-destructive children…” Read the rest of Stephen J. Gertz’s commentary considering possible authorship of the booklet in the context of opposition to the woman’s vote and see all ten images (plus cover) on Booktryst. The booklet is actually for sale via The Literary Lion.

Get Your Ad Seen

Advertising calls for submissions and writing contests on NewPages.com has proven to be very successful for many magazines and presses:

“. . . the traffic generated to our site due to this ad was tremendous. Both the volume and the quality of work that we received in such a short time was nearly overwhelming. . . . and we still can clearly credit 3/4 of our traffic from NewPages.com. The service that you provide to writers and literary magazines is just wonderful,” says Lisa Andrews from The Apeiron Review, a relatively new literary magazine.

You can learn more about running ads with NewPages here. And if you’re at AWP, feel free to stop by the tables J1 & J2 so we can answer any of your questions!

Pongo Writing Resources for Teachers & Teens

The Pongo Teen Writing Project mentors personal poetry by teens who’ve suffered childhood traumas, such as abuse and neglect. The writers work with youth inside jails, shelters, psychiatric hospitals, and other sites. They help youth worldwide through the interactive writing activities on our web site. Their primary purpose is to help our authors understand their feelings, build self-esteem, and take better control of their lives.

Pongo’s latest blog, “Being Pretty on the Inside,” shares some great teen poems – the latest winners of the Pongo Poetry Prize – on themes of struggling to be ourselves and also please others as well as the vulnerability we feel in doing so.

In “If My Fist Could Speak” (January 2013) a young woman, age 13, speaks intensely and courageously to a bully. She writes: “You should eat diamonds so you can be pretty on the inside.”

In “If God Were Looking at My Life” (October 2012), a young woman, age 14, writes: “If God opened a new door for me…I’d change who I was, and I would try to find the real me. The me who isn’t afraid.

Pongo has expanded its effort to help distressed youth through poetry, not only with their ongoing projects inside juvenile detention and the state psychiatric hospital, but by mentoring “duckling” projects on the Pongo model. Pongo is currently consulting with five start-ups, including projects in Seattle, Sacramento, and Ann Arbor. These programs are helping homeless youth, youth in psychiatric care, youth in detention, and youth in foster care.

The New Classics: Emoji Dick

Funded through Kickstarter in 2009, Fred Beneson’s Emoji Dick is now available for purchase. It is copyrighted through Creative Commons with some permissions built in and was recently accepted into the Library of Congress. The Kickstarter video explains the project – taking sentences from Moby Dick and translating them into Emoji – Japanese comic icons. [Sample shown.] Each of the 10,000 sentences in the book was translated three times, then the three versions were voted on for inclusion. “In total, over eight hundred people spent approximately 3,795,980 seconds working to create this book.” Print copies of Emoji Dick are available for purchase $40 for B&W softcover and $200 for full color hardcover.

Chapbooks Issue

The New Orleans Review‘s Fall 2012 issue is actually a set of five chapbooks. All under a similar design, the chapbooks include Juan Rengifo-Borrero’s “To Create a World,” Patricia Colleen Murphy’s “Beloved Father Person,” Max Ross’s “Harold’s Problem,” Lynda Sexson’s “A Nickel Novel,” and Cody Peace Adams’s “Polish Movers.”

2012 Non-Fiction Contest

Event‘s Winter 2013 issue features the two winners of the magazine’s 2012 Non-Fiction Contest. There were 101 entries, ten of which were selected by Event’s staff and sent (without the writer’s names attached) to Zsuzsi Gartner, the contest judge.

Winners:
Mary B. Valencia: “The Decision”
Libby Zeleke: “We Were Punk Rockers”

Gartner writes that she wasn’t surprised that all ten pieces she read were memoirs: “Although it was disappointing not to discover narrative non-fiction tha was more outward looking, it did make my job easier. Apples to apples it would be—and some crisp Ambrosias, tangy Empires, sweet Galas, and pie-worthy Granny Smiths were found in the mix. So I come not to bury the memoir, but to praise it!”

8 short-listed entries:
Paige Cooper: “The Dead in Georgetown”
Trisha Cull: “The Doctor Scott Journals
Chris Donahue: “Where Poison Gets Ya”
Katherine Fawcett: “Promo Girl”
Kirsten Madsen: “Kestrel”
Sigal Samuel: “Sadder Than You”
Emily Walker: “The Grey Goose and Wild Turkey Years”
Terence Young: “Liquor Run”

Ready for AWP?

Can you believe that in just one week, we’ll be packing or already en route for Boston? Although it certainly hasn’t crept up on me, I still can’t seem to believe that it’s happening so soon. At NewPages, we’ve been hard at work, preparing everything we need to take with us. And this year, we are bringing out LitPaks again; but this year, they are even better!

The bound LitPak includes a listing of all the tables and booths that will be at the bookfair as well as lots of information from presses, creative writing programs, and literary magazines. Make sure to stop by our table (J1 & J2) to get your copy (and of course say hello to us!).

But knowing that you can’t possibly wait until then, we are offering a free PDF that you can either view online or download to your desktop. This way, you can plan out your bookfair sleuthing before you’ve even packed your bags.

Here is a link to where you can get the PDF. Even if you aren’t attending AWP, there is a lot of good information in there for writers, so be sure to share the link with any friends, colleagues, and students!

Women Write Serious Nonfiction

The cover of the latest Creative Nonfiction issue reads, “Who says Women Don’t Write Serious Nonfiction?” And this issue proves that women do. Lee Gutkind writes in his editor’s note that they didn’t intend to publish and all-women essay section: “CNF consistently receives more submissions from women than from men. As we read for this issue, we were drawn to a number of essays about, in some way, ‘the senses’—hearing, sight. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say they’re about ‘perception.’ It just so happened that all of them were by women.” And in correspondence with the cover, Gutkind says, “I think there are a lot of women writing serious nonfiction; they’re just not getting the serious attention they deserve.”

The first feature of the issue is a conversation between Cheryl Strayed and Elissa Bassist, titled “How to Write Like a Mother#^@%*&.” Bassist is the young writer who requested advice from “Sugar” on The Rumpus’s popular column and who received the now-famous response, “Not like a girl. Not like a boy. Write like a motherfucker.” This feature is a conversation via email correspondence, two years later. It is both entertaining and insightful. At one point, Strayed addresses the gender bias in writing:

“I think gender bias exists in forms that are more discreet and ingrained. I’ve had an incredible experience with Wild. It’s been received warmly by critics and readers alike. But a running theme has been how many men have said something along the lines of, ‘Wow, I was so surprised I loved your book, because I’m a man.’ These men mean no harm—I don’t take those comments personally—and yet the fact that they were surprised that they loved a book by and about a woman is an indication of the sexism women writers are up against every time they write. It tells me that women writers are still perceived as less capable than men writers of telling the big universal human story.”

The all-women essay section is comprised of Sara Dailey’s “The Memory Train,” Marissa Landrigan’s “Elk Country,” Mary Quade’s “The Collection,” Danielle R. SPencer’s “Looking Back,” Elizabeth Mosier’s “The Pit and the Page,” Brenda Miller’s “Regeneration,” and Pria Anand’s “Far, Far Away.”

Audio Publishers Association Awards

The Audio Publishers Association has announced finalists for its 2013 Audie Awards competition, the only awards program in the United States devoted entirely to honoring spoken word entertainment. Winners will be announced at the Audies Gala on May 30, 2013, at the New-York Historical Society in New York. Writer Daniel Handler, longtime friend and supporter of the audiobook industry, will emcee the event. A list of finalists can be seen here.

Categories include: audio drama; biography/memoir; business/educational; childrens; classic; fantasy; fiction; history; humor; inspirational faith fiction; literary fiction; multi-voiced performance; mystery; narration by authors or authors; non-fiction; original work; package/design; paranormal; personal development; romance; science fiction; short stories; sole narration – female; sole narration – male; teens; thriller/suspense.

The Audio Publishers Association (APA) is a not-for-profit trade organization whose primary goals since 1986 have been to promote awareness of the audiobook industry, gather and disseminate industry statistics, encourage high production standards and represent the interests of audiobook publishers.

Southeast Review Contests

The Southeast Review‘s current issue (Volume 31, Number 1) features the winners of the 2012 contests:

World’s Best Short-Short Story Contest
judged by Robert Olen Butler

Winner:
Hal Ackerman, “Belle and Melinda”

Finalists:
Heidi Bell, “Haunted”
Stace Budzko, “Why We Will Always Love You, Vera Knightville”
Michelle Dove, “Intruders”
Sandra Jensen, “Fault Lines”
Kat Gonso, “Capture the Flag”
Rochelle Hurt, “Impossible Child”
Sam Paradise, “At The Liberty Motor Inn Motel”
Chris Tusa, “Mean Blood” and “Neighborhood Association”


SER Poetry Contest
judged by James Kimbrell

Winner:
Noel Crook, “Crows”

Finalists:
Johleen Adena, “I Will Stop Loving You When This War Ends”
Barrett Warner, “Ammo Domini”
John Lander, “A Place to Hide My Crumbs”
Emily Pulfer-Terino , “What Will Never Be” and “The Familiar”
Benjamin Goldberg, “Busted Mirror of Everything Under the Sun”
Les Gottesman, “My Twentieth Century” and “Tremble”
Mark Wagenaar, “A Gospel of Hands & Breath”


SER Narrative Nonfiction Contest
judged by Jennine Capó Crucet

Winner:
Ruth Moose, “A Key As Big As My Hand”

Finalists:
JLSchneider, “The Glass Wall”
Kelly Sundberg, “Snow. Angel. Ghost

Doppelganger Moment

`The Antioch Review’s most recent issue, “Our Doppelganger Moment,” starts what the editors have called their “doppelganger phase.” The magazine now has an electronic version available through JSTOR. Unlike some magazines that print two different versions, these will be the same, just available in two different formats. “We are now ‘double walkers,'” says Editor Robert S. Fogarty. “It will be the same magazine in both forms . . . The digital hadow version will not be a minor-league publication with also-ran authors appearing (those who could not make the cut for the hard-copy print edition). They will be separate and equal.”

This issue features Bruce Fleming, Jeffrey Meyers, Anis Shivani, Matthew Clark, Marcia Cavell, Thomas J. Cottle, Rick DeMarinis, Paul Christensen, Robert Ready, Alex M. Frankel, Sebastian Agudelo, Valerie Wohlfeld, Richie Hofmann, Richard Howard, and Alison Powell.

Teacher Resource: About Science Fiction

AboutSF, founded in 2005, is the educational outreach arm of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction and is a joint-project of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and the Science Fiction Research Association. Their mission is to encourage librarians, educators, and individuals to promote, teach, read and share Science Fiction, the literature of speculation and change.

The “For Teachers” content of the site includes: “Why teach SF?”; numerous full course outlines as well as shorter lesson plans; information on finding guest speakers; video of lectures and interviews; reading guides for a number of science fiction and fantasy novels; sample projects; “SF and _____” (current content includes -for the Science Classroom, -for the French Students, -for Math Students, -for Physics Students); and SF Poetry selected by author and poet Scott Green.

AboutSF welcomes correspondence from readers, teachers, and writers, including contributions to “Teaching the Future,” a column in which teachers share stories and advice about using SF in the classroom.

First Nation Films

Since 1998, First Nation Films has been creating and distributing award-winning television documentary films for, by and about Indigenous people. Their exclusive programs are distributed to broadcasters, schools, libraries, universities and other individuals and institutions throughout the world. First Nation Films is also considers films for distribution.

Currently in production:

SO FAR FROM HOME
Two First Nations homeless youth search for the meaning of their home.

THE CIRCLES OF LIFE – The Medicine Wheel 2
Personal insight into the ancient stone circles in Canada and beyond!

TOTEM POLES
A visually beautiful film on the depth and meaning of the totem poles of the west coast – then and now.

BOUNDARIES
Analyzing the Indian “business” in Canada

First Nations Programs Available:

Life on the Reserve (real life)
Deception of Freedom (law)
The Medicine Wheel (native spirituality)
Whose Land is This? (land settlement)
Making Treaties (land settlement)
Role Models (inspiration for our youth)
Beat of the Drum (native music)
Native Women: Politics (history)
Reclaiming Our Children (child wellness)
DANCE – In Search of Hamat’sa (dance)
The Residential Schools (the other side)
Living in Two Worlds (old and new)
Dancing on the Moon (discovery)
Sleep Dancer (a dramatic journey)
Vanishing Links (returning to her roots)
HIV – If There’s a Will … (native people)
Echoes of the Sisters (breast cancer)
The Storytellers (truth and honor)
The Pipe Makers (making the pipe)
Sacred Buffalo People (culture and tradition)
The Medicine People (ceremony)

Modern Haiku Awards

The favorite poems from the autumn 2012 issue are selected by an anonymous selector and donor, and the poets receive a $50 award.

Favorite haiku:: Jayne Miller

dead of winter
making stock
from the bones

Favorite senryu: Dorothy McLaughlin

my ex’s date
wearing the dress
I almost bought

Favorite haibun: Harriot West

“A Brief Analysis of Contemporary Society as Seen Through My Eyes”

Tiny Lights No Longer in Print

Tiny Lights announces with its latest issue (18.1) that it will be its last print issue.”The world has changed a lot since 1995, and while advances such as email and the Internet have made publishing easier, increased printing and mailing costs have taken this enterprise from impractical to impossible. What hasn’t changed is the loving support from our family of writers and readers, who continue to keep the power of story alive,” writes the editors. “The decision to end the hard copy version of Tiny Lights has not been smooth or easy . . . I hope you’ll stay tuned!” Current subscribers may choose to receive back issues or have their money refunded.

The final print issue features writing by Eleanor Stanford, Kathryn Wilder, Richard Jay Goldstein, Traci Moore, JLSchneider, Gillian P. Herbert, Margaret Rose, Barbara Shine, Marilyn Petty, Catherine Crawford, Jamie Moore, Laurel Aiona, Carol Hoorn, and Teresa Oefinger.

December Fiction Open Winners

Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their December Fiction Open competition. This competition is held quarterly. Stories generally range from 2000-6000 words, though up to 20,000 is fine. The next Fiction Open will take place in March. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.

First place: Vi Khi Nao [Pictured], Providence, RI, wins $2500 for “Herman and Margaret.” Her story will be published in the Spring/Summer 2014 issue of Glimmer Train Stories.

Second place: David H. Lynn, of Gambier, OH, wins $1000 for “Divergence.” His story will be published in an upcoming issue.

Third place: Madhuri Vijay, of Bangalore, India, wins $600 for “Hill Station.”

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

Deadline soon approaching! Short Story Award for New Writers: February 28. This competition is held quarterly and is open to all writers whose fiction has not appeared in a print publication with a circulation over 5000. No theme restrictions. Most submissions to this category run 1500-5000 words, but can go up to 12,000. First place prize is $1500. Second/third: $500/$300. Click here for complete guidelines.

Carve in Print

Carve has published their second print edition, this one themed about school. “It’s difficult to capture the range of joys and challenges one may experience in school in just one short story,” writes Editor-in-Chief Matthew Limpede. “We hadn’t planned to do a school-themed issue, but as we looked through the sotires that were drawing us in and receiving cheers from our reading committee, we realized we didn’t have just one story to give us insight into school, teenagers, and classrooms. We had four. Each of them present a different angle from which to view the prism.”

These stories that are included (along with interviews with the authors about writing style and processes) are “Lone Wolf” by Eric Freeze, “Literature Appreciation” by Man Martin, “Firebug” by Katie Cortese, and “Snow Day” by Gary V. Powell. Also in this issue is a Reject! section, which lists pieces rejected from Carve that have gone on to be published elsewhere; it also has a note both from Amber Krieger and the editor about the rejection of her piece “Among the Missing and the Dead” which went on to win the 2009 Fulton Prize and be published in the Adirondack Review.

Short Grain Contest

Grain hosted its 24th Annual Short Grain contest, judged by Lawrence Hill in fiction and rob mclennan in poetry. The Winter 2013 issue includes the winners along with comments from the judges. The winning fiction piece, Susan Mersereau’s “The Valley,” was selected because, according to Hill, it “leapt off the page from the first sentences, thanks to its strange, haunting, and unusual delivery.” And mclennan writes that in first place “something like being (five flights, for rafi),” speech is made out of single words, and less than. It can be that simple, that complicated.

Fiction: judged by Lawrence Hill
1st Prize, $1000 — Susan Mersereau of Vancouver, BC
2nd Prize, $750 — Madeline Sonik of Victoria, BC
3rd Prize, $500 — Alexandra Sadinoff of New York, NY

Poetry: judged by rob mclennan
1st Prize, $1000 — Sean Howard of Main-à-Dieu, NS
2nd Prize, $750 — Jordan Abel of Vancouver, BC
3rd Prize, $500 — Kate Flaherty of Toronto, ON

Poetry :: Portraits by Mark Irwin

American Life in Poetry: Column 413
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Every day, hundreds of thousands of us are preoccupied with keeping up a civil if not loving relationship with our parents. In this poem, Mark Irwin (who lives in Colorado) does a beautiful job in portraying, in a dreamlike manner, the complexities of just one of those relationships.

Portraits

Mother came to visit today. We
hadn’t seen each other in years. Why didn’t
you call? I asked. Your windows are filthy, she said. I know,
I know. It’s from the dust and rain. She stood outside.
I stood in, and we cleaned each one that way, staring into each other’s eyes,
rubbing the white towel over our faces, rubbing
away hours, years. This is what it was like
when you were inside me, she said. What? I asked,
though I understood. Afterwards, indoors, she smelled like snow
melting. Holding hands we stood by the picture window,
gazing into the December sun, watching the pines in flame.

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 ©2010 by Mark Irwin, whose most recent book of poems is Tall If, New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2008. Poem reprinted from The Sun, July, 2010, by permission of Mark Irwin and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2013 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.

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American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.

2012 Lush Triumphant Winners

subTerrain‘s newest issue features the winners of the 2012 Lush Triumphant Literary Award Winners, the 10th annual contest.

Winners
Fiction: Carleigh Baker’s “Last Call”
Poetry: Susan Musgrave’s “The Goodness of This World”

Runners-Up
Fiction: M.E. Powell’s “Grid Lines”
Poetry: Ashley-Elizabeth Best’s “Erratics”

Honorable Mention
Creative Nonfiction: Natalia Buchok’s “1948”

The rest of the issue features “Zombie Sluts, Purple Cows, and the Pornography of Death,” “We Are a Rupture That Cannot Be Contained,” “Canadian Nationalism: The Tip of the Colonial Iceberg,” and more.

Puppets, Poetry, Japan, and Jesse Glass

SPECS { } literary magazine from Rollins College features an interview with Jesse Glass as well as some of his work. Jesse Glass teaches literature and history at Meikai (Bright Sea) University in Japan, is author of The Passion of Phineas Gage and Slected Poems, publisher of Ahadada Press, and is a puppeteer and visual artist. His interview with SPECS covers his living abroad (“outsourcing” is SPECS theme), crossing boundaries of artistic expressions, and his work with the Meikai International Puppet Theater.

Unsanctioned Writing and Freedom of Speech

Check out Sampsonia Way: A Magazine on Literary Freedom of Expression. The publication offers full, online content, with the latest column by Vijay Nair “The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party” in which Nair parallels Indian government to “Alice in Wonderland” — the country is falling down the rabbit hole with its paradoxic interpretation of free speech. Also featured are interviews with Frank Dullaghan, Hind Shoufani, Zeina Hashem Beck, and Jehan Bseiso in columns “Unsanctioned Writing from the Middle East“; and an account of an attack against journalist Lars Hedegaard, the Mexican cartel’s intimidation tactics, and a Chinese blogger’s grassroots revolution are covered in Freedom of Speech Roundup.

Booth 2012 Poetry Prize

Booth 4 features the winners of the 2012 Poetry Prize, judged by Linda Gregg. Gregg’s awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Whiting Writer’s Award, an NEA grant, a Lannan Literary Foundation Fellowship, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and multiple Pushcart Prizes. The first place winner received $500 and publication, and the second place winner won $250 and publication.

Winners
1st Prize: “How to Make a Beginning” by Aubrey Ryan
2nd Prize: “Bearing October” by Sarah Marcus
Honorable Mention: “Travelogue” by Claire Kiefer

Finalists
“Country Road” by George Amabile
“Distance and Order” by Dylan Carpenter
“Lion in the Limo” by Doug Paul Case
“To Know a Door” by Kate Rutledge Jaffe
“Travelogue” by Claire Kiefer
“May Support Life” by Alyse Knorr
“Bearing October” by Sarah Marcus
“How to Make a Beginning” by Aubrey Ryan
“Trout” by Emily Viggiano
“Flemish Giants” by Susan Yount

Knock’s New Cycle

Knock magazine is switching from a biannual cycle to an annual cycle, while also publishing 3-4 pieces online each month. The print issue for this year will be released April 2013, after which the issues will be printed in December of each year.

So what happens if you already have a subscription? Instead of receiving two for a year, your subscription is automatically changed to be for two years (so you will still get two issues). “In the end, with this new hybrid of online/print distribution, we will have more consistent contact with our readers–as well as a more artful product,” writes Caitlin Coey, managing editor.

Liberal Arts in Business

“The value of a liberal arts education has long been a source of skepticism in the business community. However, in a recent interview for PandoMonthly, Chad Dickerson – the CEO of Etsy who has a BA in English literature from Duke University – talked about the importance of a liberal arts background. When asked to name one thing he believes in that almost no one else does, he responded: ‘I believe that liberal arts education is as important, maybe more important, than a math or science education.'” – “Is there a Place for Liberal Arts in Business?” Inc. Online.

Philip Roth Unmasked

American Masters explores the life and career of Pulitzer Prize-and National Book Award-winning novelist Philip Roth, often referred to as the greatest living American writer. Reclusive and diffident, Roth grants very few interviews, but for the first time, allowed a journalist to spend 10 days interviewing him on camera. The result is Philip Roth: Unmasked, a 90-minute documentary that features Roth freely discussing very intimate aspects of his life and art as he has never done before. The film has its world theatrical premiere March 13-19 for one week only at Film Forum in New York City and premieres nationally Friday, March 29 on PBS (check local listings) in honor of Roth’s 80th birthday. (Text from PBS AM.)

New Poetry Editor

Sou’wester‘s Fall 2012 issue has a new poetry editor: Stacey Lynn Brown. Editor Valerie Vogrin writes that as long as she has been with the journal, she has been learning new ways to think about poetry and how to assemble a publication. “The opportunity to collaborate with Stacey is no exception to this happy furthering of my literary education,” she says.

“The way we work things,” she continues, “I don’t generally see the poems until it’s time to lay out the entire issue. As that day approaches, I work with our talented roster of readers to select a complementary array of stories and essays, my anticipation rising. I am like the co-hostess of an elaborate gala who is forced to wait for months on end for the other half of the invitation list to be revealed. I have a sense of what kind of party it will be based on my accumulating choices, but until we’ve assembled all the guests and finalized the seating arrangement, so to speak, neither of us knows exactly what the season’s bash with bring.”

But now that it’s here, we know that the party guests include Alex Fabrizio, Angie Macri, Cynthia Manick, Nikki Zielinski,Jenna Bazzell, Elyse Fenton, James Ellenberger, Seth Abramson, Thomas Hawks, Scott Weaver, Lance Wilcox, Jon Pearson, Jeff Martin, Randall Brown, Jessica Afshar, Corey Ginsberg, and more. To see the whole guest list, you’ll have to invite yourself to the party, and go get an issue.

Mudfish – 2012

Mudfish, a journal founded by Jill Hoffman in 1984, marries poetry and art in a spellbinding series of verve and verse. For a quick and accessible view of the art in full color, the Mudfish website has an exquisite introduction to a moving collection of drawings, paintings, and photographs included in this volume. The poetry is likewise compelling and contains this year’s contest winners, as selected by Mark Doty. But for the poetry in its entirety, you may have to schlep it to a Barnes & Noble, where select stores feature the journal—see the website for participating locations. Continue reading “Mudfish – 2012”

River Styx – 2012

By the time you read this review, the so-called Mayan Apocalypse has passed, and the human race is still kicking (whether we like it or not). But just because we missed our extermination date doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the latest batch of poems, essays, and stories from River Styx. Editor Richard Newman has dedicated issue 88 to the End of the World: “Something in us, often a small, barely suppressed voice, roots for destruction. Evangelicals have their own reasons—eternal rewards in heaven—but most of us harbor an itch to see the demise of things.” The works presented in this issue deal with The End in different ways, from personal and absurd to global and horrific. Continue reading “River Styx – 2012”

Soundings Review – Spring/Summer 2012

The Northwest Institute for the Literary Arts (NILA) is a community of writers on Whidbey Island (Washington state) which supports, teaches, and guides upcoming writers by means of a freestanding low-residency MFA program, an annual conference, and this publication, Soundings Review. This was the last issue to be produced under the direction of founding editor Marian Blue. Subsequent issues will be produced by students and faculty in the Whidbey Writers Workshop, the Institute’s MFA program, where, according to the website, production of the Review is to become an aspect of the proposed MFA in Publishing and Editing. It’s apparent from the bionotes of the journal that much of the work published in Soundings comes from within the NILA community—but that doesn’t mean it’s local, or even regional. It especially doesn’t mean that it’s anything but “high quality poetry, fiction, and nonfiction” by writers whose deepest value is to create community and contribute to the field of writing. The institute’s website is emphatic about this; I find it very exciting. Continue reading “Soundings Review – Spring/Summer 2012”

Sterling – Fall 2012

Now this is fun! Published out of Canada, Sterling gives us a handy (128 pages), portable (of course, most literary art is portable), and extremely enjoyable collection of poetry, fiction, plays, manuscripts, and an “interview.” The cover of the issue evokes the idea of Boy Scout merit badges, but for writers. With badges such as “First Typewriter,” “Rejection Letter,” and “Rhymed with Orange,” the cover puts forth its main badge that says, “All Stories Matter.” I like variety, and the Sterling premise is “I want to hear everyone’s stories.” Me too. Continue reading “Sterling – Fall 2012”

Unstuck – 2012

Unstuck, a relatively new literary journal based in Austin, Texas promises “literary fiction with elements of the fantastic, the futuristic, or the surreal . . . everything from straight-up science fiction and fantasy to domestic realism with a twist of the improbable.” After reading this thick—well over 500 pages—issue, it is that last line, “domestic realism with a twist of the improbable,” that seems most applicable to the surprising pieces in Unstuck. While many of the selections could be called “weird” in one way or another, most of the pieces are grounded in a reality. Continue reading “Unstuck – 2012”

Yellow Medicine Review – Fall 2012

There is persistent music in this volume, and it is not limited to the poetry. From Denise Low’s “Gambling in the Heart of Winter” to Dawn Karima Pettigrew’s “An Indian Doctor,” the prose narratives invoke other echelons in a mesmerizing language. “Mesmerizing” is a very fat word for what I mean specifically—that is, the success of these writers in engaging tradition to create new meaning. The language is rich, the styles often magical, but even in a lush literary landscape the authors in this volume evade over-writing or purple prose. It’s a tough and beautiful presentation. Continue reading “Yellow Medicine Review – Fall 2012”