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!
With a selection of two poets and two pieces of fiction, this issue of The Bacon Review offers a spotlight on four writers, giving all of the writers the focus they deserve. Continue reading “The Bacon Review – September 2012”
Amsterdam’s Versal is a thoughtful collection of sophisticated, inventive writing and art. For the celebration of their first ten years, the editors included a mixed media art piece titled “750 Circles” that is a blank page with a balloon taped to it. Each of these pages is signed by the editors. The piece, they say, is to honor the many people who have made the last ten years possible. Small flourishes of creativity like this appear throughout the journal, making it not only a collection of great writing, but a united reading experience. Continue reading “Versal – 2012”
In the July 2012 issue of Verse Wisconsin, co-editors Sarah Busse and Wendy Vardaman stress the importance of community, and everything about the print and online issues of the journal point to the wisdom of their claim. Before moving to Madison, Wisconsin in 2009, Verse Wisconsin was published by Linda Aschbrenner for 11 years as Free Verse. Aschbrenner continues to serve on Verse Wisconsin’s advisory board, along with B. J. Best, Cathryn Cofell, Ron Czerwien, Tom Erickson, Fabu, David Graham, Angela Rydell, and Marilyn L. Taylor. In other words, Verse Wisconsin is a celebration of community and poetry. Continue reading “Verse Wisconsin – July 2012”
Assaracus, a journal dedicated to providing a stage for gay poets and poetry, is a part of Sibling Rivalry Press, which also prints Lady Business: A Celebration of Lesbian Poetry. Rather than including a slew of writers in each issue, Assaracus introduces about a dozen writers, each with a short biography, and then dives into a several page spread of their work. This really allows the reader to get to know each individual writer in depth, rather than just giving us a quick taste. Continue reading “Assaracus – 2012”
Whitefish Review takes their readers away from the comforts of civilization and into the wilderness with this issue. Editors Cristina Eisenberg and Brian Schott made a call for submissions that “explore the untamable and wild in astonishing ways.” Over 40 writers, artists, and photographers answered this call, offering literature and art that “explores wildness in all its incarnations and paradoxes.” Continue reading “Whitefish Review – Summer 2012”
You will love the most recent Bellingham Review on a microscopic level; you will love it on a macroscopic level. You will find considerable literary achievement down to the expert punctuation. The writers in this journal have a mastery of plot and a quiet rebellion of framing stories in segments. When reading this journal—as long as you aren’t in a subway—you will discern almost aurally a powerful philosophical clarity. Continue reading “The Bellingham Review – Spring 2012”
Attempting to chronicle a war is a massive literary undertaking, but trying to piece together a cohesive narrative about a half dozen or so combat zones from the poems and short stories of 17 different authors sounds like, well, hell. I’m a Vietnam-Era veteran, and even though I was never in combat, I was close enough to it to know that literature rarely captures the truths of war and the combat zone. Continue reading “Workers Write! – June 2012”
The editor’s note of this issue of Blue Collar Review reads, “We must not allow ourselves to become demoralized or cynical because to do so would be suicide. As poets, we must reclaim our culture and its narrative of community, solidarity and social conscience, recognizing the power of culture in defining our identity and vision.” Continue reading “Blue Collar Review – Spring 2012”
In response to the results of the VIDA Count (which counts the male to female ratio in publishing—I’ll let you guess which gender got the shorter stick), Brevity decided to put out a special issue called “Ceiling or Sky? Female Nonfictions After the VIDA Count,” which focuses on “the important contribution of female writers to the creative nonfiction movement.” Continue reading “Brevity – Fall 2012”
Published twice a year, Cave Wall is dedicated to publishing the best contemporary poetry it can get its hands on. This family-run magazine is based out of Greensboro, North Carolina. I was fortunate enough to attend a reading where Editor Rhett Iseman Trull read her own poetry and participated in a Q & A. She was down to earth and intriguing, just like this edition of Cave Wall. The issue includes black and white art by Dan Rhett that compliments the poetry very well. Continue reading “Cave Wall – Spring 2012”
The editors of Sweet say, “We want you to find something here that you need, something perhaps not as practical as a potato, but just as vital.” In this issue, I found something I “need,” and I found it in Anne Haines’s poetry. Contributing three poems, she was able to reach out of her poetry and capture my attention, stirring up feelings that I didn’t know I had. In “Night Language,” the middle stanza stands out: Continue reading “Sweet – Fall 2012”
This issue of the internationally-renown literary journal is dedicated in memory to Virginia Spencer Carr who had passed in April of this year. Dr. Carr left a brimming trove of literary scholarship in her decades as a writer, researcher and professor, including what is considered her masterpiece biography: “The Lonely Hunter,” about Carson McCullers who was often critically classified as a Southern Realist. McCullers, Carr, and this journal share an affiliation—formal or otherwise—with the American South, including but not limited to Georgia State University, which sponsors Five Points, and where Dr. Carr taught for over two decades. Continue reading “Five Points – 2012”
Reading StepAway Magazine is taking a stroll down the streets of a city, though you’ll never know which city is next—it is all determined by the writers. StepAway Magazine is “hungry for literature that evokes the sensory experience of walking in specific neighborhoods, districts or zones of a city.” Each writer must do this in 1000 words or less. Continue reading “StepAway Magazine – Autumn 2012”
This magazine’s name was recently changed from The Flagler Review (which is now its subtitle) to FLARE, and the content of this issue sparkles in ways that justify the title. In addition to poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and visual art, FLARE includes screenplays/plays as a regular feature. Continue reading “FLARE – Spring 2012”
I have never lived in the South (aside from the first two years of my life in Texas, which doesn’t count), and I certainly don’t know anything about Alabama, but this Birmingham-based magazine that strives to “provide a vehicle through which Alabama artists and artists from elsewhere can connect and find common ground” doesn’t seem foreign. In fact, it accomplishes its goal of uniting writers to a common ground. Continue reading “Steel Toe Review – Summer 2012”
Susan McCarty’s short fiction “Another Zombie Story,” in this issue of Indiana Review provides a flash of imagination that affirms hope in the midst of disaster. In ten linked thematic sections that are at times funny or ominous (but always insightful and compelling), the narrative warbles on a mysterious landscape, plays upon a portfolio of expectations and emerges resilient as the main character discovers love (and garden vegetables) against a backdrop of loss and instability. It is tightly drawn, lovely against an imagined—but all too real—wasteland. And isn’t darkly dramatic like other literary depictions of a wasteland: it rejects the nihilism that would characterize a wasteland; it teases along those shorelines and splashes right out of the water with a musical laughter you can hear through the pages. Continue reading “Indiana Review – Summer 2012”
I read this issue throughout the week entirely from my phone, in bed, before I fell asleep and started dreaming. It felt appropriate as all of these long stories contain an element of dreaming; some of the stories incorporate it more while others just mention a dream that the character had. Yet as much as these stories contain surreal and dream-like elements, the stories are about much more than fantasy. Continue reading “Swamp Biscuits and Tea – August 2012”
This issue of The Kenyon Review sustains the journal’s well-deserved reputation as an elite, erudite vehicle for criticism, fiction, and poetry. It opens with a long essay by distinguished philosopher and essayist George Steiner. “Fragments (Somewhat Charred)” consists of philosophical observations on, or circling about, aphoristic phrases allegedly appearing on a charred scroll found in Herculaneum. Steiner deconstructs, linguistically and semantically, eight of these—phrases like “When lightning speaks it says darkness,” and “Evil is.” Of “When Arion sings why do I weep?” Steiner says “[it] encapsulates a perennial fascination by the powers and effects of music in Greek sensibility. An uneasy inquiry into the penetration of sung and instrumental music into the human psyche.” Later in the essay, he continues, “We know of no human community that lacks music. . . . Could a musical experience be the only human encounter with time made free of temporality as we know it in biological and psychological processes?” Such questions intrigue us; the effort to explore them deeply constitutes a rare offering. Continue reading “The Kenyon Review – Summer 2012”
For an online publication, Penduline offers a massive amount to read in flash fiction, sudden fiction, prose poetry, and short fiction. This issue, themed “WTF?,” contains strange, but entertaining stories, no doubt aimed to make you say, “WTF?” Continue reading “Penduline – 2012”
September 29, 2012 marks the second annual global event of 100 Thousand Poets for Change, a grassroots organization that brings poets, artists and musicians (new this year) together to call for environmental, social, and political change, within the framework of peace and sustainability. The local focus is key to this global event as communities around the world raise their voices through concerts, readings, workshops, flash mobs and demonstrations that speak to the heart of their specific area of concerns, such as homelessness, ecocide, racism and censorship.
“Peace and sustainability is a major concern worldwide, and the guiding principle for this global event,” said Michael Rothenberg, Co-Founder of 100 Thousand Poets for Change. “We are in a world where it isn’t just one issue that needs to be addressed. A common ground is built through this global compilation of local stories, which is how we create a true narrative for discourse to inform the future.”
Organizers and participants are hoping through their actions and events to seize and redirect the political and social dialogue of the day and turn the narrative of civilization towards peace and sustainability. Those that want to get involved can visit www.100tpc.org to find an event near them or sign up to organize one in their area.
There are nearly 700 events planned worldwide, including:
• 25 different events in the San Francisco Bay Area, the birthplace of 100 Thousand Poets for Change, with live poetry readings by Beat Legend Michael McClure, former US Poet Laureate Robert Hass and other major poets
• The Occupy Wall Street Poetry group kicks off a weekend of events in New York City with a poetry reading at the famous St. Mark’s Poetry Project
• Peace On Streets, R.O.A.D., Tasker Elite and SHARP will host performance artists, poets, musicians, hip hop artists and various youth and parent groups who will perform and lead workshops throughout Philadelphia to bring awareness to the ongoing problem of street violence in their city
• Wordstock, a 3 day festival at the Bamboo Arts and Celebration Center in De Leon Springs, FL, will include poetry slams, concerts, and an art exhibition focusing on images of war and peace
• In New Orleans, a blues festival featuring ten bands will help raise funds for medical care for aging musicians
• In Jamaica a week long Street Dub Vibe series called “Tell the Children the Truth” will include concerts, spoken word performances, art exhibits, lectures, and workshops to bring attention to the damaging culture of secrecy and denial surrounding the abuse, poverty and illiteracy impacting the nation’s children and destroying their future.
• Poetry and peace gatherings are planned in the strife-torn cities of Kabul and Jalalabad, Afghanistan
• In Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt, poets, musicians and mime artists, in response to the revolution in Egypt and the major changes taking place in the Arab World, will perform in public spaces and theaters and explore new ways to communicate their concerns, and their roles as artists, in influencing the future of their country
• In Volos, Greece, there will be 5 days of poetry and music events, including an exhibition of photography looking at the new phenomenon of homelessness in Greece
• An event in Blackpool, England will celebrate activist poets and writers of past generations through a special performance of Bullets and Daffodils, a play about the life of peace poet Wilfred Owen
100 Thousand Poets for Change began in Sonoma County, Calif. The official Headquarters’ Event will take place at the Arlene Francis Center in downtown Santa Rosa and will feature poetry readings, group meditations, workshops, and music and dance of various styles including hip hop, flamenco, African drums, reggae, salsa, folk and more. The HQ event will also live-stream other 100 Thousand Poets for Change events worldwide. This 3-day event is sponsored by the Peace & Justice Center of Sonoma County and the Sonoma County Arts Council.
Immediately following September 29th, all documentation on the 100TPC.org website, which will include specific event pages with photos, video and other documentation compiled by each city coordinator, will be preserved by Stanford University in California. Stanford recognized 100 Thousand Poets for Change in 2011 as an historical event, the largest poetry reading in history. They will continue to archive the complete contents of 100TPC.org, as part of their digital archiving program LOCKSS.
About 100 Thousand Poets for Change
Co-Founder Michael Rothenberg is a widely known poet, editor of the online literary magazine Bigbridge.org and an environmental activist based in Northern California. Terri Carrion is a poet, translator, photographer, and editor and visual designer for BigBridge.org.
In addition to their quarterly publication of stories, Glimmer Train also publishes two writers newsletters: Writers Ask, a print quarterly of “useful techniques, informed perspectives, and inspired nudges” on select topics. For example, Writers Ask Issue 57 includes comments by writers and writing teachers on: Forms, How Reading Shapes Writing, Place and Setting, Publishers and Agents, as well as the Focus piece: “Reverse Storyboarding” by Cathy Day.
The second quarterly newsletter is a monthly e-bulletin which regularly features essays on writing. Anyone can sign up for the bulletin here and have it delivered to an e-mail address. The September 2012 Bulletin #68 includes:
Karen Brown: The Story That Will Not Write Itself
Joe Bunting: Eight Writing Techniques to Win You a Pulitzer
Stefani Nellen: Things to Do in German When You’re Bored
Sybil Baker: Writing the Unfamiliar: Incorporating Different Cultures and Lands in Your Fiction
ZZYZZYVA, a magazine that has “defined its regional character with a longstanding dedication to publishing writers, artists, poets, and translators who live on the West Coast.” In the editor’s note of the most recent issue, Laura Cogan writes, “As many of us have sensed at one time or another, the West Coast is more than a region. It is a state of mind, an experience you carry with you, wherever else life leads.”
“In this wider context, we’re compelled to note the continuing contributions to this literary conversation by those who’ve passed through the region and left their mark. With this issue we launch the debut of a new special section titled ‘Expats.” Here you’ll find poetry and literature by West Coast writers whose work or lives have now drawn them, for the time being, eastward.”
Writers featured in this new “Expats” section are John Freeman, Dagoberto Gilb, Edie Meidav, and Luis Alberto Urrea. Other writers in the issue include Brian Boies, Gilad Elbom, Jane Gilliette, Tom
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, published in 1962, is considered by many to be an essential book that helped to spark the modern environmental movement. This year marks the 50th anniversary of Silent Spring‘s publication, and programs celebrating this anniversary have been happening in the U.S. and around the world.
The Borderbend Arts Collective is working with other partnering organizations to present “Celebrating Silent Spring at 50.” This program includes creative responses to Silent Spring and celebrations of Rachel Carson’s life and legacy – with events, artistic contributions (writings, music, visual art, multidisciplinary works), and more. One of this program’s goals is for people and organizations from each of the U.S.’s 50 states to contribute to “Celebrating Silent Spring at 50,” and the organization welcomes contributions from around the world.
[Text from the Silent Spring at 50 website.]
NewPages now has classified listings for calls for submissions, contests, conferences, and services, as well as our popular LitPak of PDF fliers.
Our new format allows for more text and the inclusion of a PDF – unique to The NewPages Classifieds! Print out the PDFs to post or photocopy to share with others (great for classroom use!).
Editors: All basic calls for submissions which fit our guidelines and which have no fee for writers are free ads. For contact information, click here.
Edited by Elizabeth Bradfield, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Sean Hill, Alexandra Teague, and Mark Temelko, Broadsided has been putting literature in the streets since 2005. Each month, a new broadside is posted both on the website and around the nation.
Writing is chosen through submissions sent to Broadsided. Artists allied with Broadsided are emailed the selected writing. They then “dibs” on what resonates for them and respond visually – sometimes more than one artist will respond offering a selection of broadsides.
The resulting letter-sized pdf is designed to be downloaded and printed by anyone with a computer and printer. The goal is to create something both gorgeous and cheap, to put words and art on the streets.
The site contains a gallery of past broadsides, a map of cities/state/countries that have been broadsided (and where you can add yours), and links to other broadside sites.
Staple guns and duct tape to the ready – time to get your city on the map!
[Pictured: September 2012 Broadside: “Dhanaivi at 16 in the South Bronx,” writing by Dolan Morgan, art by Sarah Van Sanden]
Swamp Biscuits and Tea, a new quarterly online magazine, publishes magic realism, literary fiction, slipstream, noir, surrealist, bizarre, weird tale, experimental, science fiction, absurdist, mystery, hard-boiled, quirky, fantasy, and cross-genre. Editor Henry Sane says, “there’s no deep or exciting story behind the name.” He and Co-Editor Joseph German tried to come up with something that “would capture a certain style—a certain mental image, something that would get people interested and get their imaginations flowing while at the same time exuding our aesthetic of strangeness and wonder.”
Sane says that readers can expect to find “good, imaginative fiction.” He says, “Nearly every story we publish will offer some speculative element, whether subtle or outlandish. So if you like weird—whether it’s hidden comfortably in the shadows of a familiar environment, or springing at you like a tentacle-haired wildebeest robot—we think we’ll have something to satisfy your cravings. One of our goals is also to offer readers a series of unforgettable tales, which may be because they are either strange, beautiful, or just too damn engrossing to put down.”
“Joseph and I have always liked the same kind of stuff,” says Sane, “whether it be in art, music, film or literature. Naturally, after many years of profoundly weird conversations, we decided it was time to collaborate on some kind of creative project. As to the nature of the project, that was still uncertain. That is, until one day when inspiration struck me, telling me to create a fiction magazine. ‘We’ll get to name it, design it, and read stories to create our own style,’ I said. ‘Brilliant,’ said Joseph. Since that fateful day, the idea hasn’t lost even an ounce of momentum.”
And if that momentum continues, Sane says that they will consider an annual print issue, cataloguing the best stories of the past year’s worth of issues. “One hope is that we’ll eventually be able to move into full print publication, with eBook, Kindle, etc. as additional options for readers,” he says. “If things go swimmingly, we hope we can one day pay our contributors, and (fingers crossed) make this our livelihood.”
The first issue of Swamp Biscuits and Tea features Alex Aro, C. E. Hyun, Beth Spencer, Marc Lowe, and Adam C. Richardson. Submissions are accepted year-round through email.
There are many names out there to describe very short fiction—sudden, flash, nano, short-short, micro, minificción—but how is it classified? Are these very short stories still considered stories? Is this genre a “renaissance or a reinvention?” In “The Remarkable Reinvention of Very Short Fiction,” in World Literature Today‘s most recent issue, Robert Shapard takes a look at these questions.
“Very short fiction has many names,” he writes, “which vary by length of story and by country. In the United States, the most popular name, perhaps, is flash; in Latin America, the micro. On average, a very short fiction is ten times shorter than a traditional story, but numbers don’t tell us everything.” Later in the essay, Shapard says, “As Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Olen Butler (a novelist who also writes flash fiction) has said, ‘Fiction is the art form of human yearning, no matter how long or short that work of fiction is.’ I agree with Butler. It’s a matter of focus.”
This essay introduces a special feature in WLT of “very short fiction.” “These works, by eleven authors from ten countries, take many forms and range in length from sudden (about two pages) to flash (about a page) to micro (less than half a page).”
This special section includes stories from Carmen Boullosa, Hisham Bustani, Alex Epstein, Vanessa Gebbie, Josefine Klougart, Sylvia Petter, Nora Nadjarian, Andrés Neuman, Lili Potpara, and Clemens Setz.
NewPages New & Noteworthy Books is a regularly updated page where we list books received for listing and review consideration. If you want to browse a variety of independent, university and small press titles as well as literary imprints, then bookmark this page and make it a regular visit to keep up with what’s new and noteworthy. Good reading starts here!
Beard of Bees has just published ]] and other 9/11 works, a “human/machine poetic collaboration” which is “also a rigorously humane meidtation on events of 11 September 2001.” It’s available full-text as a pdf.
Human co-author Eric Goddard-Scovel writes in the introduction: “The three texts which make up this collection were all completed around the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, roughly between August and October of 2011, using a variety of digital methods and procedures. I think that it is important that readers are aware of the processes behind these compositions, as this information is integral to fully understanding them.”
Scovel then goes on to provide commentary for each of the three works included, explaining the digital process used in creating each one.
Beard of Bees is an independent, free press based in Oak Park, Illinois and Paris, France “committed to publishing quality chapbooks by liberated poets from Anywhere.”
A special THANKS to Brendan McBreen with the Striped Water Poets for organizing this year’s August Poetry Postcard Festival! According to his post, 160 people signed up to participate this year, with 16 from outside the US (Canada, UK, India, Singapore, South Korea, Ireland, Germany, and Tasmania Australia).
I was eager to get the mail each day and pleased to have received some really beautiful poems as well as postcards from all over the US and two from Germany. In all, I received 23 postcards and a few more may still find their way here.
I honestly enjoyed every poem I read. We are asked to dash these off and not revise or rewrite them, and that has some wary about participating. Linda H. from Germany noted on her card, “I hate sending rough drafts, but I just have enough time to write one each day and not revise. Still, it gets me writing again and this postcard project is fun.” And the poem she sent me, “Words,” complete with a scribble or two, was brilliant. She’s right: it can be unnerving. At the same time, taking the risk gets us writing, not worrying about a poem being “good,” and sharing our writing with others with no fear of negative feedback.
I’d love to mention all the poems I received, but here are just a few:
Nonie Sharpe of Port Angeles, seeing where I lived, wrote a poem about Michigan, noting “Memories of our Ann Arbor days.”
From Phillip Brown: “Colors and verbs were selected from a list and paired at random to serve as a starting point (inspiration) for the poems in this project.” Great idea! The poem he wrote for me was inspired by “lavender” and “flinch.”
Catherine Giodano created a found poetry piece from newsprint and regularly blogs such work here.
Emma Bolden created her own intricately detailed pen/ink drawings for the postcards. Beautiful.
All of the cards were uplifting to receive and fun to read, re-read, share out loud with others, and use to inspire my own writing.
This is the fifth year I’ve participated to the end: I did complete all 32 poems (we were asked to take an extra participant). This August Poetry Postcard Festival really fires me up each year. It gets me actively engaged in thinking “poetry” throughout my day as I look for what I might pen to a card when I have a moment, or forces me to just sit and write to get it done and in the mail.
When the month is over, that last card sent, I feel a bit sad. I try to carry on the motivation to keep writing and reading poetry regularly, but as the year wears on, I find other activities taking precedence. I use this postcard festival as a way to ‘re-center’ the importance of poetry in my life and look forward to August each year to help me do this.
I hope Brendan (or someone) will generously take the time to organize this next year. And I hope at least 30 others feel the same way and sign on to participate. I certainly do appreciate it.
Paul Dry Books is having a moving sale with a selection of backlisted titles available at $5 each when you order two or more titles. Some books are a few bucks more, but there’s a pretty good selection at this rock bottom pricing. The sale is good through September 26. What a great way to help someone move without hurting your back!
For Banned Books Month September 2012, PEN American’s The Daily Pen American Blog features daily posts by writers, editors, literary illuminati, and PEN staff about the banned books that matter to them most. Contributors thus far: Amy King on Alice Walker’s The Color Purple; Melissa Broder on Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal; and Matthew Zapruder on Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago.
PEN American Center is the U.S. branch of the world’s oldest international literary and human rights organization. International PEN was founded in 1921 in direct response to the ethnic and national divisions that contributed to the First World War. PEN’s programs reach out to the world and into diverse communities within this country. They promote writing and literature at every level and are founded on the belief that free expression is an essential component of every healthy society.
American Life in Poetry: Column 389
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
Perhaps by the time this column appears, our economy will have improved and people who want to work can find good work. Minnie Bruce Pratt, who lives in Syracuse, N.Y., has a new book, mentioned below, in which there are a number of poems about the difficulties of finding work and holding on to it. Here’s an example:
Temporary Job
Leaving again. If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t be
grieving. The particulars of place lodged in me,
like this room I lived in for eleven days,
how I learned the way the sun laid its palm
over the side window in the morning, heavy
light, how I’ll never be held in that hand again.
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 ©2011 by Minnie Bruce Pratt from her most recent book of poems, Inside the Money Machine, Carolina Wren Press, 2011. Reprinted by permission of Minnie Bruce Pratt and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2012 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.
A new publication of Beowulf translated by the poet Thomas Meyer has been recently released by Punctum Books. It is edited with a preface by David Hadbawnik, and includes an introduction by Daniel C. Remein, and an interview with Thomas Meyer.
Hadbawnik writes: “This is an open access publication, which means it’s available for free download; however, there is also an option to purchase a physical copy of the book, and I would urge anyone who’s interested in Tom’s work, Old English poetry, or supporting independent publishers to buy a copy. Tom’s translation was done 40 years ago during his studies at Bard, and it’s pretty groundbreaking, especially compared to what poets have usually done with this poem.”
“When a small group of women published the first edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves in the early seventies, it was one of those books young women hid the book from their parents and husbands. Jerry Farwell called it ‘obscene trash.’ Recently, Time Magazine named it one of the best non-fictions books of the 20th century. No matter how you reacted, there’s no mistaking it was a ground breaking book, one that’s now considered iconic.”
Bob Barrett interviews Judy Norsigian, Executive Director of Our Bodies, Ourselves, on WAMC Northeast Public Radio’s The Health Show (#1274). You can listen online or go to their podcast page to subscribe on iTunes.
For those of us who remember hiding the book and sneaking reads of it, and for those of you who could never imagine such a time, this is an interview well worth a listen as Norsigian talks of the importance of women’s health issues forty years ago when the book was first published and what has and hasn’t changed in our society today.
The American Short Fiction 2012 Short Story Contest winners have been announced. First place winner James DeWille’s story “Last Days on Rossmore” is featured in the most recent issue of American Short Fiction. The contest judge, Justin Cronin, says, “This story grabbed me right away with its off-kilter scenario, compact characterization, and downright zingy dialogue. Everything here felt completely original, nothing that had ever been written or imagined before, which is the hallmark of a first-rate short story.”
Second place (not printed in the issue) goes to Suzanne Barnecut for “On Great Mountain.” The announcement on the website says that “Cronin admired its deft use of second person and said the story is ‘full of wise observations.'”
Other writers in the issue include Max Ross (“Exorcising”), Elizabeth Ellen (“Teen Culture”), Alyssa Knickerbocker (“The Daughter of a Squaw Man Smuggles Wool and Other Goods”), and Roxane Gay (“We Are the Sacrifice of Darkness”).
In what can best be categorized as a major communication snafu, Gabe Durham, Editor of Dark Sky Magazine writes that after accepting submissions and, along several other editors, putting together issue #17 of DSM, he sent it off to the founder/publisher. The reply: Dark Sky was closing shop – both the magazine and the press. That’s when “the editors of Barrelhouse stepped in and generously offered to host the issue on their site. The editors and contributors [of DSM] were unanimously in favor of this idea.” Wow.
Issue #17 of Dark Sky Matter can be found here on the Barrelhouse website (though the cover image may make you sorry you looked – and yet, I’ll bet you’ll look at it twice!).
What a great show of support from Barrelhouse to all associated with DSM. I’m pretty sure it’s what Swayze would have done.
Got a bookstore or library near you with dozens of new lit and alt mags on the racks? Yeah, me neither, which is why we created the NewPages Magazine Stand for information about some of the newest issues of literary and alternative magazines. The Magazine Stand entries are not reviews, but are descriptions provided by the sponsor magazine. Sometimes, we’ll have the newest issue and content on our site before the magazine even has it on theirs. Good reading starts here!
Glimmer Train announced the winning stories for their June Fiction Open competition. This Fiction Open 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 September. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.
First place: Stefani Nellen (pictured), of Groningen, The Netherlands, wins $2500 for “Men in Pink Tutus.” Her story will be published in the Fall 2013 issue of Glimmer Train Stories. [Photo credit: Niels Taatgen]
Second place: Tom Kealey, of Greensboro, NC, wins $1000 for “The Lost Brother.” His story will also appear in an upcoming issue of Glimmer Train Stories.
Third place: Ben Fowlkes, of Missoula, MT, wins $600 for “Something Something Land Down Under.” His story will also be published in Glimmer Train Stories, increasing his prize to $700.
A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found here.
Upcoming Deadline for the next Fiction Open competition: September 30, 2012
Based out of Seattle, the Pongo Teen Writing Project offers a wealth of resources for those working with young writers, especially in similar populations as Pongo’s focus – teens who are in jail, on the streets, or in other ways leading difficult lives.Pongo provides writing activities and other resources for teachers, counselors, and advocates working with teens.
The Pongo Project Journal is a regularly updated blog of youth writing and advocate experiences. The most recent post is “The Color of Their Lives” by Pongo mentor Vanessa Hooper. Vanessa writes about her experience working in juvenile detention. In addition to the dark internal storms of the teens’ childhood trauma, and the greyness of the institutional settings where the youth find themselves, the Pongo authors also have vital lights, as expressed in the hopeful process of poetry.
This Pongo story is part of the following KING5 TV special, by John Sharify and Doug Burgess, about the role of the arts for people who are struggling: It’s Just So Powerful. (Note: I started watching this, and couldn’t stop! It’s extremely well done, and Pongo is the first story in the show, so you can catch it right away.)
Pongo collects surveys from their authors when there’s time at the end of a session and learned that one-third of their writers had previously written only a little or not at all. Pongo has collected over 700 surveys from their young writers with the following STUNNING results:
100% enjoyed the Pongo experience
98% were proud of their writing
73% wrote about things they don’t normally talk about
86% learned about writing
75% learned about themselves
83% felt better after writing
94% expect to write more in the future
92% expect to write when life is difficult
To learn more, visit Pongo Teen Writing Project and tell others about the writing activities and other free resources on the Pongo web site!
A post on Canadian Magazines blog let us know that Other Voices magazine of Edmonton has ceased publication. Started in mid 1988s, the magazine had a long history of publishing outside of the mainstream. Managing Editor Bobbi Beatty cited changes in the publishing industry and economy as two contributing factors to the decision to cease publication. The magazine website is no longer functioning.
In the most recent issue of Iron Horse Literary Review, Editor Leslie Jill Patterson announces that Managing Editor Brent Newsom, who also writes the Horselaugh column at the back of every issue, will be leaving for a tenure-track job in Oklahoma. “Brent has been a God-send to us this year,” she writes, “a young man quick to laugh and also real sly about calming tempters and quashing trouble in the office. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard as he and I did one day when proofing one of our issues. People passing by in the hallway must have thought we were drunk, howling as we were. I’ll miss him tremendously but am so happy for he and his wife, Amanda, as they start their lives as ‘real’ people, not poor, struggling students any more. Of course, it was only appropriate that Brent, with his sense of humor, created and wrote the Horse Laugh column at the back of every issue.”
She announces that there will be one more column from him in an upcoming issue, but then Iron Horse will start up a new column featuring the new managing editor, Landon Houle.
The actual issue includes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction from Harryette Mullen, John Hart, Mike Alexander, Alison Stine, Jennifer Bullis, Josh Booton, Ashley Seitz Kramer, Sean Bernard, Karen Regen-Tuero, and Amy Monticello.
Chilean writer Alejandro Zambra’s first novel, Bonsai, for all its short length (83 pages), is easy to read, dense with events if not with explanations, and intriguing. The chapters are short, the prose clear but remote from the “characters,” who the author claims are not characters but only given names for convenience’s sake. He also tells us which characters are not important even though he gives information about them. Of necessity, the reader slides over these bewildering directives to get two main themes—lying and love. Overriding all is a love story between Emilia and Julio, who meet at age fifteen in a Spanish class. Continue reading “Bonsai”
A Map of the Lost World is literary blending of history and poetry through lyricism, realism, and, it would seem, an almost empathetic touch of irony that leaves the reader caught between literary landscape planes. The book is comprised of five parts (each of the parts and each of the poems, by the way, with utterly fantastic titles) that do not necessarily work to frame a specific narrative whole, yet they nevertheless contribute to A Map of the Lost World in specific ways. What author Rick Hilles does, then, is weave together the particular commonalities between these parts: unexpected geographies, small moments, specific people, connected anecdotes, stories, transliterated language. The real literary strength of Hilles’s writing comes from his broad familiarity with historical themes and his ability to connect individuals—and his readers—to those themes. Continue reading “A Map of the Lost World”
With increasing frequency, well-meaning friends have been sending me articles that encourage me to stop worrying about the next generation and just have fun. It’s not that they think everything will turn out OK, but rather, that we’re so far gone, there’s nothing to be done. It seems that groups of climate scientists are predicting our demise with a specificity and immediacy that would make an old-timey cult leader blush. The Water Wars are coming: look busy. Continue reading “The Time of Quarantine”
Paisley Rekdal’s artistic book Intimate may be, at first glance, part of an indefinable genre. Flipping through its pages, one finds snippets of poetry, family stories, photos, and biographies. As the subtitle indicates, this is a textual and visual photo album of American family history. In her book, Rekdal challenges the definition of “American” family by examining race, lineage, and gender through the fictional biographies of Edward Curtis (a photographer of American Indians) and his translator, Alexander Upshaw, as well as scenes from Rekdal’s own life and the lives of her white father and Chinese mother. These biographies are interspersed with Curtis’s photographs and Rekdal’s poetry. She urges us to take accountability—not only for our dysfunctional family histories, but for the bloodied and prejudiced histories that belong to the American identity. Rekdal’s language is both delicate, and sharp—like a thin slice of glass cutting through our histories, our masquerades, our deceits. Continue reading “Intimate”
Jack Driscoll’s short story collection The World of a Few Minutes Ago reflects Michigan’s weather, concentrates on mostly blue-collar workers and trailer inhabitants, and offers a mostly masculine voice but also a beautiful lyrical style, describing the beauty of stars as well as perfectly capturing the lives of his characters and their personality clashes. His story structure is meticulous and convoluted as we twist from the characters’ sad hard lives toward a resolution of acceptance and sometimes release. Continue reading “The World of a Few Minutes Ago”
This book is ostensibly an essay collection, but poet and creative writing teacher John Morgan has also filled the pages with poems, biographical information, journal entries, book reviews, interviews, and reading and writing instruction. These various elements within the same volume combine to create an intimate portrait of the poet and his spirituality, teaching methods, family life, writing practice, and interactions with nature and place. Continue reading “Forms of Feeling”
In the morning as I walk to work down the streets of San Francisco and the endless movement of fog and wind brings the crisp salt air in from off the bay water, setting it to swirling about the buildings and sidewalk, I’m oftentimes reminded of how much this really is a beach town. Etel Adnan’s Sea and Fog is an extended series of lyric meditations contemplating human desire, loss, war, art, and much more through the lens of writing towards this landscape, though Adnan’s own daily observations take place from her home in Sausalito across the bay. In these definitely ordered, yet infinitely variable, short prose-blocks, consciousness is fully immersed in the act of writing as motifs and concerns overlap and reoccur. There’s guiding awareness that “here,” wherever we may find ourselves, remains a definitive spot in observable time: “There’s a moment to the moment. We’re in the world.” Continue reading “Sea and Fog”
Egyptian prize-winning novelist Ibrahim Abdel Meguid’s The House of Jasmine, though set in the ‘70s during Anwar Sadat’s presidency, has a lot of resonance for Egypt’s current Arab Spring. Shagara, a low level employee of Alexandria’s shipyard, reflects in his own petty thievery the corruption not only of his shipyard administration, but that of the Sadat regime. As the translator Noha Radwan explains, this novella is “a story of deception and fraudulence, planned by a scheming administration and carried out by a disenchanted and dejected population.” Shagara redeems himself in the reader’s eye because of his love of beauty, his simple desires, and his own self-criticism. Continue reading “The House of Jasmine”
