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The Spring 2012 issue of Knockout Literary Magazine includes the winners and runners-up of the 2009 The International Reginald Shepherd Memorial Poetry Prize as selected by Carl Phillips:
First place winner: “Occupation” by Kelly Madigan Erlandson
Second place winner: “Archaic Bronze” by Christian Gullette
Third place winner: “Wood” by Larry Bradley
First runner-up: “Modern Ripple” by Rickey Laurentiis
Second runner-up: “August, near Arles” by Richard Foerster
Third runner-up: “Faggot” by Rickey Laurentiis
Special thanks to Ilya Kaminsky for his reading at Saginaw Valley State University in Saginaw, Michigan last night. What a treat to see him and hear him read in our own back yard. For the time, we forgot about the cold dreary damp of winter, rapt in his lyrical recitations. Still not familiar with Kaminsky? Check out his book Dancing in Odessa from Tupelo Press, and hear him read “Author’s Prayer.” That’s how I got hooked. See you in Chicago, Ilya!
Harvard Review Editors Christina Thompson & Laura Healy take a playful but serious look at who gets published in HR in their editorial for issue 41 – beginning with how pieces find their way to the publication (via referrals, conferences, previous contributors, and slush). And, as the editors note, because they had so much fun looking at those numbers and creating a corresponding pie chart, they went on to review other data for which they also create pictorial representations: Contributors by Gender & Genre; geographic distribution of current contributors; and age & gender of contributors (topping 200 is Alfred de Vigny, French Romatic poet b. 1797). Take a look at the editorial here.
Tiny Lights: A Journal of Personal Narrative includes the winners of their annual essay contest, which includes a “standard” category (under 2000 words) and a “flashpoint” category (under 1000 words):
Standard Essay Winners
First Prize: “O, Engineer!” by Anna Belle Kaufman
Second Prize: “Floating” by Tim Bascom
Third Prize: “Nisqually Fish Fling” by Adrienne Ross Scanlan
Honorable Mentions: “Submarine Dreams” by Ed Miracle and “Lost. Found” by Christine Watson
Flashpoint Essay Winners
“Forgiveness” by Mary Zelinka
“I Tell You Something” by Jessica McCaughey
“Rock Bottom” by Marcelle Soviero
A full list of finalists in available on the Tiny Lights website.
Motionpoems broadens the audience for poetry by turning great contemporary poems into short films for big-screen and online distribution.
In 2008, animator/producer Angella Kassube animated one of Todd Boss’s poems. The results were so compelling that Boss and Kassube began introducing other poets to other video artists. A year later, a public screening at Open Book in Minneapolis drew a standing-room-only crowd of 150+ to see 12 pieces they dubbed Motionpoems… and a new hybrid form was born. Since then, motionpoems have appeared in mainstream media, blogs, YouTube, international film festivals, art galleries, and on Vimeo.
Past poetry contributions include the works of Thomas Lux, Deb Kirkeeide, David Mason, Robert Bly, Jane Hirshfield, Angella Kassube, K. A. Hays, and many more.
All motionpoems are available for online viewing with the option to subscribe for monthly update notice when new videos become available.
The Ocean State Review is a new annual print publication from the University of Rhode Island English Department.
Editors include Peter Covino (advisory), Mary Cappello (advisory), Ryan Trimm (advisory), Jay Peters (managing), Don Rodrigues (managing), Nicki Toler (senior), Max Winter (senior), Jacob Nelson (associate), and David O’Connell (associate).
Managing Editor Jay Peters writes that “by producing a high-quality publication of contemporary literature, The Ocean State Review provides an annual record of URI’s continued engagement with regional, national and international literary communities. Central to this engagement is the journal’s affiliation with URI’s annual Ocean State Summer Writing Conference.”
Readers of The Ocean State Review can expect to find “two hundred eclectic pages by well-established and newly emerging writers and artists.” OSR publishes poetry, fiction, nonfiction, interviews, and artwork.
The inaugural issue features works by Tomaz Salamun, Denise Duhamel, Richard Hoffman, Louise DeSalvo, Robin Hemley, Julia Glass, and many others. The second volume will be released in June with plans for the journal to develop the capacity to accept online submissions.
Submissions of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, our currently being accepted until February 15; submission by post only at this time.
Issue 6 of PANK Magazine includes the winners of the 1,001 Awesome Words Contest, 2011:
Tyler Gobble, “To Toss is to Life”
Erin Fitzgerald, “No One Cares About Your Problems”
Naomi Day, “A List of My Shortcomings”
Chris Hildebrand is the new Managing Editor for New Madrid, the national journal of the low-residency MFA program at Murray State University.
The First Line has gone “Lorax Friendly” and can now be read on Kindle.
Winter 2012 will be the final print issue of Alimentum Journal: The Literature of Food as they move to online only.
Above and Beyond:
PMS poemmemoirstory last year at their publication party held a collection drive of new children’s books to give to the Aid to Inmate Mothers Story Book Project at the Tutwiler Women’s Prison in Alabama. They collected over 30 books for moms and kids to read together and hope to continue supporting this program.
Thanks to their supporters, CALYX: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women donated 300 copies of their newest book Who in This Room: The Realities of Cancer, Fish, and Demolition by Katherine Malmo to oncology departments, hospitals, women’s centers, and support groups in Oregon, Washington, and nationwide.
The Golden Triangle is published three times per year and is available online, and via iPad and iPhone Apps. Readers can expect to find “fresh, risk-taking, original poetry, fiction, and non-fiction coupled with intelligent design.”
Editors Jessica Schulte and Sasha VanHoven tell me that “The Golden Triangle was created by struggling writers and literary nerds trying to make it in ‘the real world’ of writing. With the decrease in printed publications, competition to get in became harder, and yet while digital journals were taking off, they severely lacked legitimate design. We decided to become the solution ourselves, offering a digital space for the under-exposed voices of our peers that cared for aesthetics as well as the community behind it.”
Contributors in the first issue include Howie Good, Corinna Ricard-Farzan, Jon Gingerich, Brittany Shutts, Lauren Chimento, William VanDenBerg, Corina Bardoff, Justin Mantell, Joanna C. Valente, Devan Boyle, Ansley Moon, and Taylor Saldarriaga.
With ambitious plans for the future, Schulte and VanHoven are looking to become a fully functioning small press within the next five years, in both digital and print media.
The Golden Triangle is open to all genre forms within poetry, fiction, and non-fiction; work that “blurs genre lines and takes risks,” is welcome, but editors “warn against ‘post-post-post modernism’ type work.” Only previously unpublished works considered; simultaneous submissions are “a-okay,” as long as editors are notified immediately. The next deadline is March 3rd, 2012.
The poem of the 2011 Lois Cranston Memorial Prize Winner is featured in the newest issue of CALYX (27.1): “The Apple Orchard” by Bethany Reid. Honorable mentions by Beth Ford, J. Angelique Johnson, and Amy Schutzer (as well as the winning poem) are available on the CALYX website.
Beecher’s Magazine is the graduate student-run literary journal at the University of Kansas (KU) MFA program. The print annual has an editorial board, which for 2011-2012 includes Iris Moulton and Ben Pfeiffer (co-editors); Mark Petterson (fiction); Amy Ash (poetry); and Stefanie Torres (nonfiction).
The impetus for Beecher‘s served to expand the options and offerings in the KU MFA program. Pfeiffer writes, “Our program was geared almost exclusively to teaching, not to publishing or to editing; in order to give the students a chance to try out this vocation, we thought having some kind of graduate student-run literary journal was important. So a bunch of students rolled up their sleeves and set to work. The administration supported us with money, but all the heavy lifting was done by students. Beecher’s One is the result.”
The publication features stories, poems, essays, and interviews. The inaugural issue includes works by Alec Niedenthal, Rebecca Wadlinger, Joshua Cohen, Rhoads Stevens, John Dermot Woods, Phil Estes, Creed J. Shepard, Lincoln Michel, Adam Robinson, Stephen Elliott, Yelena Akhtiorskaya, John Coletti, Colin Winnette, Dana Ward & Stephanie Young, James Yeh, Alexis Orgera, Rozalia Jovanovic, Ricky Garni, and Justin Runge.
Beecher’s Magazine has just selected the winners of their first contest, and editors and staff are preparing for AWP 2012 in Chicago. Issue #1 of Beecher’s Magazine was a limited run and has sold out, but the second issue is underway.
Beecher‘s accepts poetry, fiction, and nonfiction via Submishmash for both print and online (forthcoming) consideration.
From LA Times Books Blog Jacket Copy, I saved this post by Carolyn Kellogg from last year, and it’s time to revisit it: 21 dos and don’ts for an AWP newbie. My favorite is lucky #13 “DO: Give yourself plenty of time to walk around the conference exhibit floor.” Of course, this is where you’ll find NewPages! At tables M8 & M9.
New additions to The NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines:
971 Menu [O] -fiction, nonfiction
and/or 
– poetry, fiction, comics, visual art
Under the Gum Tree [O]
Peripheral Surveys – poetry, fiction, nonfiction, photography
Mangrove [O/P] – undergraduate poetry, fiction, nonfiction, art
Peripheral Surveys [O] – poetry, fiction, nonfiction, photography
Thrice Fiction [O] – fiction
Valparaiso Fiction Review [O] – fiction
Ink Tank 
– poetry, prose, editorials, essays, multimedia
Carbon Copy Magazine – poetry, fiction, nonfiction, drama, visual art
Heavy Feather Review [O] – poetry, fiction, nonfiction
IthacaLit [O] – poetry, nonfiction, art
Penduline [O] – poetry, fiction, nonfiction, artwork
HOOT [O] – a postcard and online review of poetry and prose
[O] = mainly online = mainly print
New additions to Literary Links – hybrid and experimental online and print literary endeavors that do not adhere to traditional models (magazines, publishers, booksellers), but still meet criteria for recommendation.
The Danforth Review – fiction
Every Day Fiction – Short fiction in your inbox, Daily!
Every Day Poets – poetry
Kindling – poetry, prose, black & white art
mixer – literary genre
OccuPoetry – poets supporting economic justice
Pigeon Town – nonfiction, photography
Safety Pin Review – A weekly of short fiction
Third Space | Soapnotes – stories from the bedside
Truck – monthly blog of guest edited poetry
Newly added to the NewPages Guide to Alternative Magazines:
Multicultural Review – dedicated to reviews of a better understanding of diversity
Newly added to NewPages Guide to Independent Publishers & University Presses:
Trembling Pillow Press – poetry, translations, critical/historical essays, chapbooks
Parthian Books – (UK) poetry, fiction, nonfiction
Pond Road Press – poetry, chapbooks
In her editor’s note, Anna Schachner talks a lot about her vision for the re-visioning of The Chattahoochee Review and “the need for awe.” With this issue, Schachner has demonstrated the accomplishment of this vision. The Spring/Summer 2011 issue of The Chattahoochee Review is stuffed with work worthy of the word “awe.” Continue reading “The Chattahoochee Review – Spring/Summer 2011”
This issue of Fiction International welcomes “deformity in all of its guises,” a description pulled from James Carpenter’s story “Extravagant Meanings.” In this story, a writer looking for literary fodder starts a shelter for troubled souls. He describes his “house of freaks,” as I’d describe what you’ll find in this issue of FI: “The physically infirm, the congenitally twisted, the morbidly obese and the anorexic and the bulimic, the mentally ill and mentally handicapped, the morally confused, the addicted.” It’s intense reading, to say the least. The plots are fast-paced and adventurous, and many of the stories’ lasting impressions are, on a human level, unsettling. It is also one of the more formally challenging and innovative journals I’ve read in a long time. Continue reading “Fiction International – 2011”
The Fifth Wednesday journal explores “the idea that contemporary literary and photographic arts are essential components of a vibrant and enduring culture.” This commitment to a “vibrant, enduring culture” is, in other words, a contemporary milieu of writing that allows the reader to explore fiction, nonfiction, poetry, photography, interview, and book reviews bound together under the auspices of Fifth Wednesday’s commitment to contemporary writing. This issue is like an abstract tapestry collage of stories and poems that—at first glance—seem to have very little that weaves the pieces together. On second glance, you realize it comes together simply by being interesting and vibrant. Continue reading “Fifth Wednesday Journal – Fall 2011”
The poems in this issue of I-70 had a certain flow not always found in literary journals—or even single-author collections, for that matter. It is a feature made even more remarkable given that the work here is presented alphabetically by the author’s last name. Continue reading “I-70 Review – Summer 2011”
What are the connections linking these three stanzas? Continue reading “Journal of Renga & Renku – December 2010”
It’s difficult to pick just one short story as a “favorite” in The Louisville Review’s 70th issue. I’d much rather suggest that a disproportionate number of them are beyond good and deserve accolades. However, a few stood out especially. Continue reading “The Louisville Review – Fall 2011”
In “Mothman’s Guide to the Here & Hereafter” Mark Wagenaar says, “All language is survival.” “All language is the revelation of our essence.” This 33rd prize issue of Nimrod cries out yes! yes! look here! in affirmation of Wagenaar’s lines. Every year, Nimrod awards the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction and the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry; Amy Bloom and Linda Pastan were the 2011 judges for these respective prizes, and the results are breathtaking. Even the non-prizewinners are winners, offering evidence of our survival beyond time, in language that sings the essence of temporal humanness. A few examples: Continue reading “Nimrod International Journal – Fall/Winter 2011”
The wintry cover of the 2011 issue of Prism Review projects two RVs squatting on a frozen landscape under an ominous clouded sky. I liked it immediately, and it urged me to open and begin reading. The editors at the University of La Verne (California) dispensed with any editorial pleasantries and let their contributors’ work spill forth from the get-go. Continue reading “Prism Review – 2011”
Puerto Del Sol is always inviting. The volumes flex and relax into the hand. Art wraps around both front and back covers. Inside, readers will find prose, poetry, and reviews from familiar and new writers alike. This issue of Puerto Del Sol contains the winners and runners-up of the Puerto Del Sol Fiction and Poetry contests, judged by Dawn Raffel and Julie Carr, respectively. Let me tell you, these ladies know how to pick strong, well-crafted writing. Continue reading “Puerto del Sol – Summer 2011”
This stellar, solemn issue of Agni begins with Sven Birkerts’s “The Golden Book,” a lament about certain things that have been lost in time, and certain things that can be rediscovered through writing, photography, and books. At the forefront of what has been lost, he implies, is the bookstore—in this case, a Borders that provided him with his first post-college job in Michigan. What can be gained from reading and looking at books is a sense of immersion, that each time one returns to an image, line, or story, there is more to be sensed, more meaning to be wrung out of it. Continue reading “AGNI – Number 74”
Forgive me. For some reason, I was expecting delicate. Reserved. Stuffy. Polite. But my assumptions about a journal of “metrical works, including well-rendered blank verse, sonnets of every variety, villanelles and triolets” were way off. The Raintown Review is kind of a badass. Continue reading “The Raintown Review – September 2011”
The 70th anniversary issue of The Antioch Review is mammoth. This 385-page issue serves up the best of the past ten years of The Antioch Review. Some of the luminaries chosen for this issue are Stephen Jay Gould, Daniel Bell, Clifford Geertz, Aimee Bender, Gordon Lish, Benjamin Percy, Eavan Boland, and Federico García Lorca. This best-of celebration is a wonderful place to turn for any who are looking for interesting pieces by established writers.
Lyrical essays and poetry rely upon the power of metaphor and associative thinking to create a deeper, more personal interpretation for the reader. The writers in this issue of the Seneca Review walk a fine line, hoping to tickle the reader’s imagination while providing enough detail to ground the piece in something resembling the real world. Most of the time, the authors are quite successful, providing delicious food for thought. Continue reading “Seneca Review – Spring 2011”
Tomatoes, children, cats, drinks, and boats. Reading a poetry journal in one sitting can be problematic. You notice odd, inconsequential connections between poems, like those listed above. An excellent categorization of this issue of Bateau is that which the editors put forth: transformation and morphology. Themes aside, the charm of Bateau is in its understatement and uniqueness. Including the work of thirty well-accredited poets, this issue is a mish-mash of inventive, quirky poems that play with form and content, impressively pinpointing elusive emotions and giving artistic value to the most banal moments. Continue reading “Bateau – 2011”
Dubbed “The Transitional Issue,” this first issue of Toad Suck Review, based at the University of Central Arkansas (UCA), follows the demise of the Exquisite Corpse Annual, which ended when founder and editor Andrei Codrescu retired. The team at the helm aims to carry on the Corpse‘s “experimental sense of humor and international enquiries” while at the same time staying true to its central Arkansan roots. With gaping shoes to fill, the Toad Suck crew delivers an impressive first shot of literary whiskey. Continue reading “Toad Suck Review – 2011”
If I hear writers talking about literary magazines, I often hear them getting excited about some new magazine on the scene. They talk about the experimental aesthetic or the unique formatting or the promise of aggressive marketing. They talk about what they’ve submitted and what it might mean to get something accepted. They talk as though the magazine might just be the next Paris Review—or the next Beloit Fiction Journal, for that matter.
Continue reading “Beloit Fiction Journal – Spring 2011”It’s 424 pages long, weighing in at a chunky 1.75 pounds; Vlak cannot be called a little magazine. It is a literary magazine, though, launched from Prague and flashing through the reader’s consciousness like a bullet train. With works from eastern and western Europe, Australia, North Africa, and the United States (and a single nod to Brazil), the issue brings together ninety writers and visual artists. Continue reading “Vlak – May 2011”
Big Lucks, much like its name, has a quirky but earnest mission statement. “We at Big Lucks feel as if the most exciting and noteworthy writing lurks in the unlit depths of the ocean, amid the lifeforms and creatures humanity was never meant to see. It’s our goal to be the vessel—the nuclear submarine—that helps these new life forms breach the repetitive ebb-and-tide of this metaphorical ocean’s surface.” Continue reading “Big Lucks – 2011”
Published by Lake Superior State University, Border Crossing shows just how vibrant a small journal can be. Many of the poems stand out, but it’s the first two lines of George Bishop’s “Watching Dolphins In the Harbor With the Homeless” that really stand out in my mind: “I found myself / carving silence into a shelter.” Continue reading “Border Crossing – Spring 2011”
The worst part about The Briar Cliff Review is that it only comes out once a year. The journal, published by Briar Cliff University (Sioux City, IA), is packed with uniformly excellent work. Editor Tricia Currans-Sheehan managed to find poetry, prose, and artwork that are technically sound and satisfying to a wide range of readers. Continue reading “The Briar Cliff Review – 2011”
Executive Editor and Founder Sara R. Rajan and Assistant Editors Dinesh Rajan P and Andrea O’Connor are the force behind Literary Juice, an online bimonthly publication of works in a wide variety of genres, including comedy, romance, and fantasy. A unique feature in Literary Juice is “pulp fiction”: stories written in just 25 words – no more, no less – with one-word titles.
Rajan founded Literary Juice as “a creative outlet for both established and emerging poets and writers, as well as an avenue for readers looking to indulge their imaginations in a world of absolutely remarkable and unforgettable talent.” As such, audiences will read works by “authors who are bold and not afraid to cross into unconventional territory. Literary Juice showcases poetry and works of fiction that are dramatic, playful, and even outright weird!”
Contributors to the first issue include Craig M. Workman, Joel Bonner, Jennifer McIntosh, Amy Agrawal, Storm J. Shaw, Pamela Evitt-Hill, Jessie Duthrie, Angela Huston, Sarah Helen Bates, Amanda Little Rose, W. Walker Wood, E. Drape, Michelle L. Hill, Vita Duva, Matthew L. Wagner, Sydney Rayl, Jerry Judge, Helen Stamas, John Grey, George Freek, Liz Minette, Aur
The Malahat Review Winter 2011 includes the 2011 Constance Rooke Creative Nonfiction Prize winner “Hoarding” by Anne Marie Todkill. The Malahat Review website also includes a Web exclusive: Interview with Anne Marie Todkill and a link to another review with the author in The Martlet.
In this series, I Just Don’t Read Like I Used To, featured in Atticus Review, artist and writer Cheryl Hicks “cut strips of text from classic novels that have been made into film and used the pieces to create portraits of the characters. This project is a commentary on the way media has changed the experience of literature.”
Barge Journal is a biannual print publication with preview content available on the website and e-reader formats forthcoming.
Editors Shawn Maddey, Justin Maddey, Christine McInnes, and Hallie Romba say they started Barge Journal “when we realized that there was a particular aesthetic that we shared and found in many up-and-coming writers, but that seemed relegated to the internet. We really wanted to bring the fervor and style of innovative internet publications to the print world, where a lot of it is highly underrepresented and overwhelmed by more ‘literary’ styles. We also wanted to be able to raise awareness of indie publications to broader audiences of artists and readers.”
What can readers expect to find in Barge Journal? Maddey writes, “We like to say ‘stuff, not things.’ Expect lots of playfulness with language and form, expect risks, expect stuff that you’d be hard-pressed to find in print many other places. Few works we publish are easy reads, and you won’t find any traditionally structured stories or hard genre delineations – instead we strive to publish work that pushes its readers to think, to think differently about literature, and to enjoy the process of doing it. It doesn’t hurt to find comfort in a bit of ugliness, either.”
Contributors to the inaugural issue include Gregg Williard, Yarrow Paisley, M.J. Nicholls, R.L. Swihart, Joshua McKinney, Matthew Dexter, Kristine Ong Muslim, Art Zilleruelo, Colin Winnette, Thomas O’Connell, Nicolas Destino, Paul Kavanaugh, Jonathan Dubow, Margaret Bashaar, Zdravka Evtimova, Andrew Borgstrom, Parker Tettleton, Bob Shar, Travis Blankenship, William Akin, Janann Dawkins, and Neila Mezynski.
As Barge Journal moves forward putting together Issue #2, the editors’ goal is “to always be pushing the boundary a little bit further while having as much fun with it as possible. We would love to be able to include more visually-oriented work and comics/art as well. A lot of our current efforts are focusing on expanding our role as a press, beyond the journal. We will have a series of chapbooks forthcoming (currently by solicitation only, sorry), and are soon going to print with our first full-length book (a comix anthology) as well as a series of literary/arts greeting cards with some great artists and literary works paired up – so, a few great projects to get excited about.”
Barge Journal accepts submissions only online through Submishmash on a rolling basis. Genre identification is open, and the editors state a preference for work that is difficult to classify by genre.
Maddey adds, “We love to interact with our readers, submitters, and contributors, so we invite you to follow us @bargepress on twitter or /bargepress for facebook.”
MENLO PARK, CA – The Kepler’s Transition Team, a group of local business and community leaders, have announced the launch of “Kepler’s 2020,” an initiative that will transform Menlo Park’s historic independent bookstore into a next-generation community literary and cultural center. The project aims to create an innovative hybrid business model that includes a for-profit, community-owned-and-operated bookstore, and a nonprofit organization that will feature on-stage author interviews, lectures by leading intellectuals, educational workshops and other literary and cultural events.
Now in it’s 14th year, Writer Beware is an excellent professional/educational resource that every writer who submits work should read. Writer Beware is “a publishing industry watchdog group sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America with additional support from the Mystery Writers of America, shining a bright light into the dark corners of the shadow-world of literary scams, schemes, and pitfalls.”
Here’s a list of Writer Beware’s most notable posts and warnings from 2011:
First One Publishing’s Writing Contest
Karma’s a Bitch (For Scammers)
Why Your Self-Publishing Service Probably Didn’t Cheat You
The Interminable Agency Clause
Book Fair Bewares
Net Profit Royalty Clauses
Literary Agencies as Publishers: a Trend and a Problem
Getting Out of Your Book Contract–Maybe
Clark, Mendelson and Scott: New Name for a Fee-Charging Agency
The Cruelest Hoax
Farrah Gray Publishing
Taking Famous Names in Vain
The Agenda of The Write Agenda
A Small Press Implodes: The Inside Story of Aspen Mountain Press
The Brit Writers Awards: Questions and Threats
Introducing Writer Beware’s Small Presses Page
The Fine Print of Amazon’s New KDP Select Program
Publisher Alert: Arvo Basim Yayin
The Baltimore Review was founded by Barbara Westwood Diehl in 1996 as a literary journal publishing short stories and poems, with a mission to showcase the best writing from the Baltimore area and beyond. Their mission remains just that. “However,” Diehl writes, “in our new online format, we can now bring that fine writing to the world’s attention, more frequently, and at less cost. We can also explore new ways to bring the world of writers and writing to the reader’s attention. This doesn’t mean that we’ve fallen out of love with the printed book. Work accepted for online publication will also be collected for annual print issues.”
Readers of The Baltimore Review can expect to find fiction, flash fiction, creative nonfiction, and poems from established and emerging writers – “work we hope will take readers into unfamiliar worlds or deeper into familiar ones, work that knocks the walls down,” Diehl says.
The first online issue includes: Poems by Edgar Silex, Al Maginnes, Dorianne Laux, W. Todd Kaneko, Paul Hostovsky, Tim Kahl, John Walser, Angela Torres, Ned Balbo, and David Dodd Lee; Fiction by Devin Murphy, Christopher Lowe, Josh Green, Gregory Wolos, Catherine Thomas, Peter Kispert, Nathan Gower, Ryan Millberg, Ajay Vishwanathan, Catherine Parnell, Jen Murvin Edwards, and Emily Roller; Creative Nonfiction by Heather Martin, Stephen J. West, Colin Rafferty, Bram Takefman, Michelle Valois, Lockie Hunter, and Seth Sawyers.
The Baltimore Review hopes to continue forward with quarterly online and annual print issues, always seeking new ways to engage their readers.
Submissions are accepted through Submittable. Details available on BR website.
The Florida Review has announced the results for the 2011 Jeanne Leiby Chapbook Award. The winner is “Rubia” by Patricia King. She will receive $500, and the story will be published in a letterpress, hand-bound chapbook. Second place goes to “Foreign Service” by Julia Lichtblau, and third place to “The Geometry of Children” by Mary Sheffield. They will receive tuition at writers conferences and their work is under consideration for The Florida Review.
The Africana Research Center at The Pennsylvania State University has announced it will host the 2012 NEH Summer Institute for College Teachers: Contemporary African American Literature, on July 8-28, 2012. During the three-week program, teachers will engage in an intensive program of reading and discussion with leading scholars, reviewing new and recent scholarship and a variety of literary works.
Institute faculty will include Trudier Harris, Maryemma Graham, Dana Williams, Howard Rambsy, Eve Dunbar, L.H. Stallings, Evie Shockley, and Greg Carr. Participation is supported by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Participants receive a stipend to assist in defraying the cost of travel, food, lodging, books and supplies related to the institute. Transportation to off-site program activities related to the institute will be provided as part of the grant.
The deadline for applications is March 1, 2012.
Special thanks to Sally and Bryan for their donations to the blogger beer fund. You’ve put a happy end to my dry spell. Cheers!
Visit NewPages Book Reviews for February to read thoughtful commentary and analysis of the following titles:
Against the Workshop: Provocations, Polemics, Controversies
Nonfiction by Anis Shivani
Texas Review Press, October 2011
Review by Patrick James Dunagan
Half in Shade
Nonfiction by Judith Kitchen
Coffee House Press, April 2012
Review by Ann Beman
St. Agnes, Pink-Slipped
Poetry by Ann Cefola
Kattywompus Press, August 2011
Review by Alyse Bensel
The Tin Ticket: The Heroic Journey of Australia’s Convict Women
Nonfiction by Deborah J. Swiss
Berkley Trade, November 2011
Review by Lydia Pyne
In the Absence of Predators
Fiction by Vinnie Wilhelm
Rescue Press, October 2011
Review by Wendy Breuer
Starring Madame Modjeska: On Tour in Poland and America
Nonfiction by Beth Holmgren
Indiana University Press, November 2011
Review by Patricia Contino
Exhibit of Forking Paths
Poetry by James Grinwis
Coffee House Press, October 2011
Review by Gina Myers
Lucky Bruce: A Literary Memoir
Nonfiction by Bruce Jay Friedman
Biblioasis, October 2011
Review by David Breithaupt
The City, Our City
Poetry by Wayne Miller
Milkweed Editions, September 2011
Review by James Crews
Disclosure
Nonfiction by Dana Teen Lomax
Black Radish Books, December 2011
Review by Aimee Nicole
Drunken Angel
Nonfiction by Alan Kaufman
Viva Editions, November 2011
Review by Audrey Quinn
The Day Before Happiness
Fiction by Erri de Luca
Translated from the Italian by Michael F. Moore
Other Press, November 2011
Review by Olive Mullet
Already It Is Dusk
Poetry by Joe Fletcher
Brooklyn Arts Press, September 2011
Review by H. V. Cramond
Hypotheticals
Poetry by Leigh Kotsilidis
Coach House Books, October 2011
Review by Alyse Bensel
The Cisco Kid in the Bronx: Episodes in the Life of a Young Man
Fiction by Miguel Antonio Ortiz
Hamilton Stone Editions, January 2012
Review by Paul Pedroza
Lunch Bucket Paradise
Fiction by Fred Setterberg
Heydey Books, November 2011
Review by Audrey Quinn
selected unpublished blog posts of a mexican panda express employee
Poetry by Megan Boyle
Muumuu House, November 2011
Review by Aimee Nicole
Heavy Feather Review is a biannual ebook published by editors Nathan Floom and Jason Teal
HFR editors describe the content as “an eclectic mix of fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, or any hybrid thereof. Every issue of HFR is its own animal. Writers, and those concerns of writers, change with time, and so does HFR.”
Contributors to the inaugural issue include Alex Austin, Nick Barr, Anhvu Buchanan, Seth Berg, J. Bradley, Chloe Caldwell, Karen Craigo, Lori D’Angelo, Rick D’Elia, Larry O. Dean, Elizabeth Ellen, Nicolle Elizabeth, Ricky Garni, Roxane Gay, Amy Glasenapp, Howie Good, David Greenspan, Len Kuntz, Thomas Patrick Levy, D.W. Lichtenberg, Adam Moorad, Meg Pokrass, Molly Prentiss, Andrew Rihn, Paul Arrand Rodgers, Steve Roggenbuck, Matthew Savoca, Bradley Sands, Peter Schwartz, Gregory Sherl, Zulema Renee Summerfield, J.A. Tyler, James Valvis, Robert Vaughan, John Dermot Woods, Jake Wrenn, and Joshua Young.
Future plans for HFR include “print, press, music festival.” As Teal notes, “HFR is actively looking to exist in more real and real forms.”
HFR is taking submissions for both its homepage —thoughtful essays/posts concerning art, life, anything — reviews, interviews — and HFR 1.2, arriving in summer 2012. Deadline for 1.2 is August 15, 2012. Submission accepted via Submittable.
Northern Wanderer is a new online quarterly edited by Dr. Darren Richard Carlaw and Elena Kharlamova.
The inspiration for Nothern Wanderer, write the editors, was the poem “After Breakfast (With Peter) Costing 5/6d” which appeared in Newcastle upon Tyne poet Barry MacSweeney’s first collection, The Boy from the Green Cabaret Tells of his Mother (1968):
“After Breakfast…” is a pastiche of Frank O’Hara’s “A Step Away from Them,” the walking poem from which Northern Wanderer‘s sister publication, StepAway Magazine, takes its name. Mr. MacSweeney’s after breakfast wander, however, takes place in his hometown of Newcastle upon Tyne, England, beginning outside the Cloth Market Café and ending outside the Green Market
Northern Wanderer is a way of encouraging contemporary northern writers to follow in Barry MacSweeney’s footsteps, to explore and observe the North East of England on foot.
Which is precisely, then, what readers can expect to find in Northern Wanderer: A series of poetic walking narratives which celebrate street life in northern towns and cities.
Contributors to the first issue include Barry MacSweeney, Stevie Ronnie, Ira Lightman, Bob Beagrie, Ian Davidson, Lizzie Whyman, and Keith Parker.
In upcoming issues, editors expect that Northern Wanderer “will grow to become a repository of poetry and prose devoted to walking in the North East of England.”
Writers are encouraged to submit one story or poem at a time via e-mail (no attachments). Simultaneous submissions are accepted. Response time is within 14 days with acceptance/rejection on a rolling basis. For more information, visit Northern Wanderer.
Prior to audio and video, theatre history is a frustratingly silent one. Reviews, illustrations, journal entries, photographs, designs, and prompt books are helpful—and rare. Continue reading “Starring Madame Modjeska”
It is impossible to think of forking paths without recalling Borges’s garden of innumerable possibilities. And so in James Grinwis’s second book of poems, Exhibit of Forking Paths, selected by Eleni Sikelianos for the National Poetry Series, it makes sense that we find a poetry of possibilities and alternatives, a bit of play, an interest in “what the sounds mean before the definitions of sounds,” and a space where things can simultaneously be and not be. The title poem, which opens the book, presents different lives captured on numbered tablets, with the speaker coyly stating, “In the case of tablet 31, we will not speak.” Grinwis delivers a lot in this collection, but he reminds us we cannot have it all. Continue reading “Exhibit of Forking Paths”
The title of Bruce Jay Friedman’s new “literary” memoir, Lucky Bruce, is an understatement. All the old adages about luck come to mind, you make your own luck, some are luckier than others, etc., but when you read Friedman’s life story you can’t help but agree: Bruce is one lucky guy. Continue reading “Lucky Bruce”
