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!
Slice highlights lies and make-believe in its newest issue and overflows with engaging poetry, spectacular fiction, smart nonfiction, and insightful interviews with Ray Bradbury and Isabel Allende among others. Where to begin? What to highlight? Continue reading “Slice – Spring/Summer 2011”
Admittedly, I was a bit tentative when I began reading the latest issue of The Southern Review. When I hear the word “Americana,” its self-proclaimed theme, certain images are conjured—flat beers, hunters waiting in the pre-dawn darkness, the barefoot and pregnant teenage fatherless-yet-sweethearted girl working in a diner on the side of a barren highway—of which I have become a bit tired. Let us call those images shortcomings of my imagination; I had no idea of the depth and variance to the works waiting inside this publication’s pages. Produced by Louisiana State University, it is an engrossing and well-balanced mix of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and photography. Continue reading “The Southern Review – Spring 2011”
This issue of Adbusters, subtitled POST—with an Arabic word insertion—WEST, is at first glance an irreverent avant-garde (the publishers probably think using avant-garde is passé) mish-mash of advertisements, graphics, photographs, art, essays, book excerpts, observations, and poetry about economics, capitalism, politics, jihad, revolution, militarism, overpopulation, aquaculture, genetic modification, anarchy, and you name it.
Published by C.A.L. Press, Berkeley, CA, Anarchy purports to “Disarm authority! Arm your Desires! with provocative, creative, and critical anti-authoritarian discourse and art.”
Right off the bat (no pun intended), Jenny Shank’s novel, The Ringer, appealed to me. The story takes place in the Mile High City, Denver, Colorado—a location I still consider to be home even though I haven’t lived there in eight years—and I was looking forward to being transported back to the wide-open skies, to the dry, thin air of the Rockies, and to the familiar sights and streets of my youth. And I wasn’t disappointed. Shank’s sense of place is strong, and throughout the novel I experienced many wonderful moments of nostalgia and recognition—Hey! I’ve eaten at that restaurant! I know that newscaster! I remember the daily, summer thundershowers! Continue reading “The Ringer: A Novel”
Timothy O’Keefe’s The Goodbye Town is brimming with small, intricate images, stacked piecemeal upon one another to create the brilliant and sensuous world of each individual poem. Space is not only put to remarkable use by the poet in a structural sense, but is a complex recurrent theme as well. The occupation of space and—conversely—absence, are ever-present throughout O’Keefe’s work. The poems’ people are shadows and outlines or fleeting memories captivated only by the noises they produce. Continue reading “The Goodbye Town”
Arpine Konyalian Grenier’s fourth full-length book, The Concession Stand: Exaptation at the Margins, is a genre-bending collection of what can best be described as lyric essays. In essence, the pieces in this book are enacting the exaptation that they advocate: the exaptation of language to connect with a collective identity, one that allows for new ways of communication that are not hindered by culture/hierarchy/power/history but are inclusive to all. Continue reading “The Concession Stand”
Part mystery, biography, memoir, history, narrative nonfiction escapade, Deborah Baker’s The Convert doesn’t fit in any one category. Like its subject, Margaret Marcus/Maryam Jameelah, the book is a misfit. And like creative nonfiction should, it poses questions, and in wrestling with those questions, it jigs loose more questions, bigger questions, questions that tie you in knots, give you an unscratchable itch, or maybe incite you to hurl something not unlike a hardback volume across the room. In any case, it is a book you want to discuss. Continue reading “The Convert”
Titling a collection of short stories In Which Brief Stories Are Told may seem rather obvious, but Phillip Sterling’s tales of loss, detachment, and mystery reveal the complications inherent in narrative and character, and call into question the relationship between narrator and audience. Throughout, he brings to life characters we ordinarily might not give a second glance: bystanders and passers-by who, like the reader, catch only glimpses of the greater plot in which they play a role. Continue reading “In Which Brief Stories Are Told”
Curses and Wishes, Carl Adamshick’s award-winning debut collection, is driven by brief retrospective and introspective poems, compacting an overwhelming sense of loss in America. Adamshick at once laments and celebrates different ways of American life, ranging from small-town farms of the Midwest to the international scale of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Following in the tradition of American poetry that engages with the American spirit, Adamshick transfers the fervor of Whitman’s long, sprawling lines into short-lined, energetic poems that make for a fast and invigorating read. Curses and Wishes will entrance any reader with concerns for the fate of the American landscape and its people. Continue reading “Curses and Wishes”
Helsinki, as a collection, almost reads as one long poem. The poems are nearly uniform in length and line-length, all one-stanza, lacking punctuation, title-less. The poems are characterized by their drive, their unceasing motion that sweeps the reader along with it. It is the work of an author with focus; the collection’s themes are primarily on love and war. The love object, a reoccurring character, is Julia. The book first begins with discussing war and death: Continue reading “Helsinki”
Fallout from a real revolution can be worse than its cause. Mass murder, reckless replacement of proven agrarian practices, and imprisoning the educated are just a few documented aftershocks. Fictional revolutions and their resulting chaos can be equally atrocious, as it is in Bogdan Suceav?‘s Coming from an Off-Key Time. Continue reading “Coming from an Off-Key Time”
Fanny Howe’s latest work, Come and See, explores themes of spirituality and war with a concern for children growing up in the midst of war-torn countries. Spirituality, a theme that can be seen in Howe’s work as a whole, rises more in the form of a seeker, one questioning religion, rather than an adherent. Continue reading “Come and See”
With Privado Daniel Tiffany offers up a pop-cultural remix of sorts on, as he tells it, “cadences used by the armed services in marching drills,” so every “poem” or “section” here is titled “Cadence.” However, the nearest he allows for hitting a rhythmic stride is the oft repeated: Continue reading “Privado”
In Greek mythology, there is perhaps no myth so painfully evocative and morally instructive as that of Daedalus and Icarus. Daedalus, the brilliant architect of the Minotaur’s labyrinth, constructs wings of feather and wax so that he and his son can escape their imprisonment. They are almost successful, until Icarus, forgetting his father’s warnings, flies too close to the sun and his wings melt, plunging him to his death. Rachel Eliza Griffiths’s The Requited Distance mines this myth, as well as the other stories related to Daedalus, for their rich and mournful underpinnings. Griffiths presents the conception and birth of the Minotaur, the construction of the labyrinth, Daedalus’s attempted murder of his nephew Perdix, and Icarus’s fatal flight through many different eyes (including that of a watching fig tree), capturing profound emotions with her lush descriptions. Throughout, we witness the cost of unwieldy desire and ambition. Continue reading “The Requited Distance”
Atlanta in the late seventies and early eighties, two women, two daughters, one man: such are the major players in Tayari Jones’s Silver Sparrow. Delicate and tender without being cloying, this novel explores not only the strangeness of bigamy but also what it means to be a wife, to be a sister, to be a family. The premise of Jones’s plot is straightforward: James Witherspoon, a black man who runs his own limousine company, has married two women and fathered a daughter with each. Only one wife, Gwen, and her daughter, Dana, know of the existence James’s other family (Laverne, the wife, and Chaurisse, the daughter). Continue reading “Silver Sparrow”
Oh, the teenage years. Insecurities, fights between friends, disagreements with parents, first loves, and broken hearts. Leap by Jodi Lundgren has it all and more. Natalie Ferguson is a fifteen-year-old who finds herself battling drugs and drinking, body issues, insecurities about dating, the struggle to hold onto childhood friends all while coping with divorced parents who are ready to move on with their lives. The amount of things on her plate would be overwhelming for anyone and through diary entries the reader goes through it all with her. Natalie’s one savior is her love of dance though she finds herself at odds with her strict dance teacher. While she explores a newfound love of modern dance, Natalie comes into her own and finds confidence in her ability to handle all of the crazy things life has thrown her way. Continue reading “Leap”
In the past decade, death penalty defense lawyers have taken to the practice of outlining the life history of their clients to juries, including the circumstances that led to the murder for which they face death. The goal is the jury’s sympathy, the hope that they might spare them from death. I always wondered about whether these same juries end up with sympathy for the lawyers themselves. A life of death penalty defense, with so many sleepless nights and last-minute scares, often seems like a sadomasochistic, or at the very least, all-consuming career choice. Continue reading “The Autobiography of an Execution”
Cribbing from Leo Tolstoy, poets of place are all alike in how that particular locale obsesses them, whereas poets from Detroit are uniquely autochthonous. Jim Daniels, Toi Derricotte, Robert Hayden, and Philip Levine are four writers who come to mind, and each wears their (sometimes bittersweet) affection for Detroit like a permanent tattoo. Michael Heffernan, along with the above poets, has spent more time away from his native city than within it, yet no matter where he goes—Kansas, Washington, Ireland, Arkansas—he totes Detroit’s DNA along with him, whether he chooses to or not. Continue reading “At the Bureau of Divine Music”
If there’s one thing the Internet is good for, it’s publishing visual art. And if there’s one magazine that has shown just how great this can be, it’s The 22, a new online magazine based out of Brooklyn, NY.
Simply titled to reflect its content, The 22 features 22 contributors each issue. The magazine’s mission is to “publish art, music and writing as integrated structures that play off each other and enhance the whole.” Editor and publisher, Cat Gilbert says they’re looking for “intriguing art,” poetry, fiction, non-fiction, video, music, animation and more. “The restrictions are few and the work is chosen by the creators or a visiting guest editor.” Some issues will revolve around themes which will be posted in advance. The inaugural issue editors include Gilbert, Contributing Editors Ansel Elkins and Dolores Alfien, with Guest Editor Laura Grandmaison.
The first issue features works by Adriean Auguste Koleric, Alan Bigelow, Andrew Topel, Ansel Elkins, April Gertler, Brian Dettmer, Dolores Alfieri, Douglas Pierre Baulos, Edgar Oliver, Eric Zboya, Erin Snyder, Jeff Burns, John Jennison, Joseba Eskubi, Kate Javens, Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann, Louise Robinson, Max Evry, Michael Babin, Samantha Kostmayer Sulaiman, Threefifty Duo, and Tobias Stretch.
The 22 is currently accepting submissions for their next volume (no theme or restrictions); deadline July 1st.
The 22 is also holding their first annual Bloomsday Contest. Deadline June 14.
[Artwork by Joseba Eskubi.]
David Perry is an inspirational photographer, a willing teacher, and a captivating storyteller who brings the unique insights and skills garnered in his 30 years of professional photography to each new project he encounters. View 12 photographs (with narratives) of entropy in the garden and beyond on Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built and Natural Environment.
In the editor’s note to the Spring 2011 issue of Sinister Wisdom, Julie R. Enszer comments on attending the October 2010 conference sponsored by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) titled In Amerika They Call Us Dykes: Lesbians in the 70s. This issue is compiled of works from this conference by Agatha Beins, Evelyn Torton Beck, Cheryl Clarke, Madeline Davis, Tucker Pamella Farley, Myriam Fougere, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Patricia A. Gozemba, Jeri Hilderley, Bonnie J. Morris, Amanda Ream, Mimi Iimuro Van Ausdall, Fran Winant, Renee DeLong, Lisa C. Moore and Tiona McClodden.
Enszer writes: “Attending the conference and compiling this issue of Sinister Wisdom, I’ve been thinking about these questions: How do we narrate and share history between generations? How can we pass on traditions, ideas, and values to new generations while still giving younger women the space to experiment and formulate their own traditions, ideas, and values? How do we honor the past and think critically about it as a way to refine our strategies for change? How do we honor the past while still celebrating the current achievements and future dreams of women who have already made extraordinary contributions? Contributors to this issue of Sinister Wisdom grapple with these questions and more.
Jessica Powers interviews James Engelhardt, [former] editor of Prarie Schooner, in which reveals his enthusiasm for the literary life: “We keep going over the same ground as humans, as writers, the same emotional or intellectual ground — we keep exploring what it means to be human, finding new ways to explore the human condition. You’d think we’d have done that already, that we would know everything there is to know about love, or loss, but we don’t. The world seems to excite the imagination endlessly.”
James also shares the news that he will be leaving Prairie Schooner to take a new position as acquisitions editor with the University of Alaska Press. Kwame Dawes will be the new editor-in-chief with Prairie Schooner beginning this fall.
We wish both the best in their new roles!
From Tricia Currans-Sheehan’s Editor’s Note to the 2011 issue of The Briar Cliff Review:
In November I went to Beijing to visit my daughter who was teaching English there. What struck me was the silence about Liu Xiaobo, who had just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. There was a disconnect. Here I was in this city of 18 million, near a shopping mall, which was putting up Christmas decorations, selling KFC, Big Macs, and Gucci bags and yet the people didn’t know what was happening in their own country or if they knew they couldn’t talk about it. I wondered how long those Gucci bags would keep them satisfied.
While in Beijing my daughter couldn’t blog, connect to Facebook, YouTube or Twitter and only had access to a censored Google. In The New York Times on January 23, 2011, Nicholas Kristof wrote, “…the Chinese cyberspace remains a proletarian dictatorship. In November the government sent a young woman, Cheng Jianping to labor camp for a year for posting a single mocking sentence.”
The connection between freedom of speech and the press and my job as editor of The Briar Cliff Review was so clear. As editor I read hundreds of manuscripts that cover all topics and issues. If I lived in China, there wouldn’t be a magazine like this.
Formerly the assistant editor of High Desert Journal, issue #13 of the publication brings Charles Finn on as editor, with Elizabeth Quinn moving into the newly developed role of managing editor. Finn writes that Elizabeth is “still very much a part of the High Desert Journal. High Desert Journal is her creation, her ‘baby’ as she sometimes calls it and will continue to be so.” The change in roles will allow Elizabeth to “tackle the difficult and necessary job of keeping the magazine financially afloat, arriving on newsstands and in your mailbox twice a year.” With readership and subscriptions on the rise as well as an increase in submissions, the change is a necessary business decision.
From The Huffington Post – Poetry Book Contests Should be Abolished: Why Contests Are the Stupidest Way to Publish First Books, in which Anis Shivani argues (with selected examples from recent contest-winning poetry books) that “the contest system is at least partially responsible for: 1. A halt to aesthetic progression; 2. An encouragement of mediocrity and ambition; and 3. A corruption of the poetic process itself.”
Volume 76, Numbers 1 & 2 of North Dakota Quarterly is devoted to “Hemingway in His and Our Time” and features the following authors and their works:
H. R. Stoneback
For Whom the Flood Rolls: Ernest Hemingway and Robert Penn Warren—Connections and Echoes, Allusion, and Intertextuality
Ben Stoltzfus
Hemingway’s Iceberg: Camus’ L’Etranger and The Sun Also Rises
Jeffrey Herlihy
The Complications of Exile in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises
Joseph Holt
The Textual Condition of Hemingway’s African Book
Walter Houk
Hemingway’s Cuban Son Looks Back on Life with Papa
Allen Josephs
Confessions of an Animal Lover: Clearing Up a Few Things about Hemingway, Spain, and the Bulls
Allen Josephs
Picasso, Hemingway, and Lorca: or Toreo As a Modernist Principle
Melanie Conroy-Goldman
10,000 Words (story)
Matthew Nickel
Lighthearted Sinners and Pious Puritans, Followers, and Believers: Hemingway’s “Holy War Meat Eaters and Beer Drinkers Happy Hunting Ground and Mountain Religion” in Under Kilimanjaro
Brad McDuffie
Teaching In Our Time to Freshmen (poem)
Donald Junkins
Martha Gellhorn’s Letters
David Raabe
Dempsey over Hemingway in Three Rounds
Robert E. Fleming
The Deaths of the Children in Islands in the Stream
Robert E. Gajdusek
Bimini
Ron McFarland
Three Novels on Hemingway in Cuba
Zak Haselmo
Hemingway: Eight Decades of Criticism
Donald A. Daiker
“Don’t Get Drunk, Jake”: Drinking, Drunkenness, and Sobriety in The Sun Also Rises
Marina Gradoli
Hemingway’s Criteria in Ordering the Sequence of the Vignettes of in our time (1924) and In Our Time (1925)
The newest issue of George Mason University’s Phoebe: A Journal of Literature and Art (Fall 2011 Issue 40.2) features works by the winners of the magazine’s annual contest:
Winter Fiction Contest
Judged by Caitlin Horrocks
Winner: Aja Gabel, “Little Fish”
Honorable Mention: Dwight Holing, “Spines”
Greg Grummer Poetry Award
Judged by Dan Beachy-Quick
Winner: Mark Wagenaar, “Moth Hour Reliquaries”
Honorable Mention: Grace Curtis, “Wordsplay”
Inaugural Nonfiction Contest
Judged by Shauna Cross
Winner: R.B. Moreno, “I’d Like to Talk About the Bigger Stuff”
Honorable Mention: Jessica McCaughey, “On the Music of Distraction”
Along with a full section of poetry and essays, notes, and reviews, French poetry and poetics in translation (English only) are featured in Aufgabe #10, guest edited by Cole Swensen and introduced with her essay “Dossier: Contemporary Poetry in France.”
Authors whose works are translated include Oscarine Bosquet, St
The June 2011 issue of Poetry is “The Translation Issue” and includes works in translation by Amrita Pritam, Juhan Liiv, Angelos Sikeliano, Lucie Th
The Quotable is a quarterly online and print magazine “showcasing tomorrow’s quote-worthy authors.” Each issue will feature short stories, essays, poetry and artwork based on a specific theme and quote. The first issue is available online at no cost, and in print, epub, mobi both for single issue purchase and subscription.
The inaugural issue features works by A.J. Kandathil, Eddie Jones, Brooke Bailey, Jasmon Drain, Chris Wiewiora, Joseph Pravda, Rob McClure Smith, Bruce Bischoff, Alicia Dekker, William Zebulon Peacock, and Don Campbell.
Behind the scenes of The Quotable are Editors Eimile Denizer, Lisa Heins, and Leslye PJ Reaves, Poetry Editor Deborah Preg, Art Editor Michael Reid, Associate Editor Mary Wilt, and Copy Editor Cassie Pinner.
The Quotable accepts submissions during the following reading periods:
December 1 – February 1 : Spring Issue
March 1 – May 1 : Summer Issue
June 1 – August 1 : Fall Issue
September 1 – November 1 : Winter Issue
Unless otherwise noted, each issue will be centered around a theme. The next theme for Issue III is Transformation: “The universe is transformation; our life is what our thoughts make it.” ~Marcus Aurelius
The Quatable accepts flash fiction (under 1,000 words), short fiction (under 3,000 words), creative nonfiction (under 3,000 words), poetry (up to three submissions of one poem per submission), art and photography.
The Oxford American is pleased to announce the launch of Southword, a multimedia partnership with NPR designed to present thoughtful and textured reporting about the people, places, and trends that are shaping the modern American South. The OA’s award-winning filmmaker, Dave Anderson, teams up with NPR’s celebrated journalists to go wherever an important or interesting story is unfolding. Together they produce video and radio pieces that provide timely and artful perspectives on a region that continues to evolve in unexpected ways.
In Southword’s first episode, NPR’s Debbie Elliott and The OA’s Dave Anderson explore issues of appetite and health in Holmes County, the most obese county in Mississippi.
Visit NPR’s website to see the program with additional information and related links.
Unbridled Books is partnering with the American Booksellers Association for a promotion that highlights 25 Unbridled eBooks for 25 cents. The titles, all Google eBooks™, will be available for 25 cents via IndieCommerce websites for three days, June 9 – 11.
The 25 Unbridled eBooks for 25 Cents
Conscience Point by Erica Abeel
The Islands of Divine Music by John Addiego
Panopticon by David Bajo
Shimmer by Eric Barnes
The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish by Elise Blackwell
Green Age of Asher Witherow by M. Allen Cunningham
Breath and Bones by Susann Cokal
The Journal of Antonio Montoya by Rick Collignon
The Good Doctor Guillotine by Marc Estrin
Wolf Point by Edward Falco
Small Acts of Sex and Electricity by Lise Haines
The Distance between Us by Masha Hamilton
Stranger Here Below by Joyce Hinnefeld
Vanishing by Candida Lawrence
Song of the Crow Layne Maheu
The Evolution of Shadows by Jason Quinn Malott
The Singer’s Gun by Emily St. John Mandel
The Pirate’s Daughter by Margaret Cezair-Thompson
Captivity by Deborah Noyes
Hick by Andrea Portes
The Wonder Singer by George Rabasa
Taroko Gorge by Jacob Ritari
Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters by Timothy Schaffert
Rain Village by Carolyn Turgeon
Sometimes We’re Always Real Same-Same by Mattox Roesch
The folks at Chamber Four (C4), in addition to their book review and book news website, and on the heels of their fiction anthology of the web’s best stories, have launched their own literary magazine. C4 Magazine features fiction, nonfiction, poetry and artwork and is available in print ($12) and online and in various ebook formats for free: PDF, ePub, and Mobi. You can also get Issue 1 at Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, Diesel eBooks, on Stanza apps on iPhone and iPad, and on the Nook app on Android and other devices (in apps, search for “C4 issue 1”). Coming soon to the Kobo and Sony Reader ebookstores.
Issue 1 includes fiction by Gregory Blake Smith, Bilal Ibne Rasheed, Margaret Finnegan, Kim Henderson, Michael Henson, Anne Leigh Parrish, Ron Koppelberger; nonfiction by Marc Levy, Terra Brigando, M.J. Fievre; poetry by D.H. Sutherland, Gale Acuff, William Doreski, Yaul Perez-Stable Husni, Shannon C. Walsh, Luca Penne, Julian Smith-Newman, Katelyn Kiley, Daniel Lawless, Jenn Monroe, Greg Hewett; artwork by Ganesha Balunsat, Eleanor-Leonne Bennett, Guillermo Esteves, Dennis van Dijk, Christoph Zurbuchen, Sandro Garcia, Christopher Woods, Paivi Salonen, Ivo Berg.
C4 Magazine is open for submissions for its second issue: fiction (short stories, flash fiction); nonfiction (personal essays, memoir excerpts, travel writing); poetry (traditional, experimental); digital visual art (anything 2D and static, i.e. pictures, drawings, etc.). Deadline: July 1, 2011
Cover to Cover on WKPFA (Berkeley, CA) hosted by Jack Foley features weekly interviews and readings with Jesse Glass and authors from Ahadada Books from June 1 – July 8, 2011. Available online (mp3).
June 1
This is the first of three shows featuring Jesse Glass, American expatriate poet, publisher, artist and folklorist. In 1992, Glass moved to Japan, where he currently lives and teaches. In this show, Jack and Jesse particularly discuss The Passion of Phineas Gage and Selected Poems and Lost Poet: Four Plays by Jesse Glass.
June 8
Jesse Glass interviewed, Part Two.
June 15
Jesse Glass reading from his work.
June 22
A celebration of Ahadada Reader 3, published by Jesse Glass and Ahadada Press. Four chapbooks by four poets are featured in the Reader: Mary-Marcia Casoly, Katherine Hastings, Melanie Moro-Huber and Jack Foley. This show features Mary-Marcia Casoly reading from Australia Dreaming.
June 29
Ahadada Reader 3, Part Two. Katherine Hastings reads from Fog and Light.
July 1
Ahadada Reader 3, Part Three, selections from Melanie Moro-Huber’s The Memory of Paper read by Jack Foley.
July 8
Ahadada Reader 3, Part Four. Jack Foley reads from Disordered City.
Being an editor is an act of service, an act of generosity. There are many of us who can be curmudgeonly and grumpy sometimes, but we wouldn’t be doing this particular part of the business if we didn’t believe in the capacity of others to amaze us. The short way to fail as an editor is to just lose that capacity for surprise and delight.
Village Books in Pacific Palisades, CA
“It was with great regret and sadness that Katie O’Laughlin announced on Thursday, June 2 that Village Books would be closing on June 30, after fourteen years in business. ‘Village Books has struggled financially for the past 10 years,’ says O’Laughlin, ‘but I was able to somehow make it work. Unfortunately, recent changes in the book business have made it impossible to continue operating the store in its present form.’ To read the full story, click here.
The Bookstore in Radcliff, KY
“There are plenty of books on the shelves at The Bookstore in Radcliff. But there are not enough customers. So after 37 years in business, owner Jerry Brown is closing his bookstore. Blame the electronic revolution. ‘With the e-readers, the Nooks, and the Kindles, all of my best customers instead of coming in here and buying books, I think now they are downloading books,’ says Brown.” To read the full story, click here.
Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their March Fiction Open competition. This competition is held quarterly and is open to all writers for stories with a word count range between 2000 – 20,000. The next Fiction Open will take place in June. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.
First place: Melissa Yancy, of Los Angeles, CA, wins $2000 for “Teeth Apart.” Her story will be published in the Summer 2012 issue of Glimmer Train Stories. [Photo credit: Stacy Clinton.]
Second place: Susan Messer, of Oak Park, IL, wins $1000 for “Angstschweiss.” Her story will also be published in an upcoming issue of Glimmer Train Stories.
Third place: Nellie Hermann, of Brooklyn, NY, wins $600 for “Meanness.” Her story will also be published in an upcoming issue of Glimmer Train Stories, increasing her prize to $700.
A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found here.
Deadline soon approaching: Short Story Award for New Writers May 31
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 1500-6000 words, but up to 12,000 is fine. Click here for complete guidelines.
The first issue of Crashtest, a literary magazine run, edited and published in by high school age writers, is up and running. In addition to featuring work from students across the country, each issue will also showcase a piece by an established adult author looking back in some form or fashion on their teenage years. For their inaugural issue, Crashtest includes a piece of short prose by Michael Martone.
Student writers in Volume 1 Issue 1 are Mollie Cueva-Dabkoski, Jules Cunningham, Meredith Evett, Bobby Gaines, Emily Gaudet, Sophie Gibson, Chloe Gordon, Shady Kievannia, Peter LaBerge, Michael Martone, Julia McCrimlisk, Kathleen Radigan, Abigail Schott-Rosenfield, and Stephen Urchick.
Crashtest publishes poetry, stories and creative non-fiction in the form of personal essays, imaginative investigation, and experimental interviews from students in grades nine through twelve.
Entasis is a new, online literary quarterly based out of Irvine, California. Editors Robert Anasi and Greg McClure accept poetry, with fiction, literary non-fiction, and art at their discretion.
“Badlands” is the theme of the current issue. Anasi writes, “We weren’t thinking about the Civil War when we picked ‘Badlands’ as the theme for this issue but division and darkness were on our minds. In America today, we see a country that seems increasingly at odds with itself and a media that resounds with rage, mendacity and shrill desperation. The artists and writers for this issue all explore these growing divisions, separations, cruelties.”
Entasis contributors include: Michael Barach, Nicelle Davis, Susan Davis, Brandi George, Evan Peterson, Justin Rigamonti, Elizabeth Wyatt, Cynthia Mitchell, Steve Geng, Sara Jimenez, Daniel Kukla, Joe Heaps Nelson, Andrew Lichtenstein, Angela Koh, Beth Raymer, Leah Kaminski, Lena Firestone, Mike Dubisch, Nathan Bishop, Rachel Hinton, Rosemary McGuire, and Travis Lindquist.
Entasis is open for submissions, accepts simultaneous submissions with an approximate one-month response time. The deadline for Fall 2011 is August 10.
Seven short stories, linked by the event and resonance of September 11th, constitute Jess Row’s Nobody Ever Gets Lost. Modern, pertinent, worldly, these stories speak directly to the reader, drawing one in, compelling one to keep reading, to engage. Row’s prose is self-conscious but never awkward, rich and rewarding. Continue reading “Nobody Ever Gets Lost”
The idea of the suburbs as a “Utopia minus” comes to the fore in a collection that laments the rise of the suburbs as a “rise into ruin.” Susan Briante has written a bold second collection that tackles issues plaguing the American landscape and, even more urgently, the American people. Utopia Minus challenges notions of industrial and social progress in emboldened poems, fearlessly examining the plight of current American culture and even addressing the wars in the Middle East. These poems seethe with a silent anger and worry for the future. Continue reading “Utopia Minus”
If you’re like me, the title Destroyer and Preserver will make you expect a speaker who finds himself filling both roles at once, somehow. You’ll long to embrace the conflict of some tragic irony. You’ll look forward to witnessing small, tender moments nestling together in the shadow of something supremely horrible. Continue reading “Destroyer and Preserver”
Matthew Henriksen’s poems are fun to read. They aren’t elaborate constructions, even when concerned with painful circumstances or disturbing displays of psychological torment, neither are they simple in statement or form. Tony Tost’s blurb mentions T.S. Eliot and Gram Parsons. This works as Henriksen is of a generation for whom turning from reading Eliot to listening to Parsons without missing a beat comes easily. (Parsons, after all is very much in Eliot’s lineage—wealthy white and southern, Parsons was a musical star who readily mixed country with rock, his personal setbacks and limitations reflected by his art and life.) Henriksen, however, is not merely deploying a grab bag of insights he picked up from the college dormitory. So, while there’s a bit of looseness deployed under cover of freehanded collage in these poems, Henriksen surprises as being far subtler a poet than to boringly lay everything straight out. Continue reading “Ordinary Sun”
If you’re the sort of reader who likes a nice, linear plot and a trustworthy narrator, then Chelsea Martin’s charming collection of stories, The Really Funny Thing about Apathy, is probably not for you. If, on the other hand, you delight in the odd, the cerebral, the uncanny, and you love the possibility of language and the unexpectedness of the human brain, then by all means, go get your hands on a copy. Continue reading “The Really Funny Thing about Apathy”
Lizzy Acker’s book Monster Party is hard to categorize. Is it a fiction chapbook? A novella? A story cycle? Maybe a fictive autobiography? Maybe a collage of short-shorts? Or should we call it a badass bildungsromanesque manifesto with a poetic ode to the 90s computer game Oregon Trail thrown in? Whatever it is, it’s a must-read. Especially for all you 20 and 30-somethings who grew up on He-Man and Nick at Nite. And you literary types who have always wanted to do something gnarly and totally against-the-rules with metaphor. And especially all you who may be considering boob tubing it tonight—Acker’s protagonist would—but are thinking it’ll be loads more fun hanging out for eighty pages with a slacker tomboy named Lizzy who drools sarcasm, shoots Fourth-of-July bottle rockets out of her mouth, and accidentally participates in the murder of a possum because she thinks it’s mortally wounded when the poor critter is just playing dead. Trust me, friends. This hipster hip, tough girl, love-rock, indie narrative word-thing is for you. Continue reading “Monster Party”
Perhaps the highest praise I can offer Moore’s instructional book on writing the personal essay is this: when I started reading it, I had no intention or desire to write an essay, and now, having finished it, I already have a list of potential projects I’m ready to begin. His easygoing, conversational style and encouraging tone (“Everyone has bad days. So don’t beat yourself up about it”) make the book an easy read, and most of his advice is concrete and specific. Continue reading “Crafting the Personal Essay”
Craig Nova’s quirky memoir mixes his life as writer, father, and husband in a series of short essays that all revolve around his life as a fly fisher searching for the native brook trout. This reprint and expansion of the original 1999 publication incorporates simple prose with wit and humor. Although predominantly known as a fiction writer, Nova, in a series of twelve non-chronological essays, informs the reader about how he developed his obsession with fly-fishing alongside other stories about his shared passion with friends and family. These essays, with a charming voice, invite the reader to share with Nova in his memories and pieces of advice that enrich the memoir. Continue reading “Brook Trout and the Writing Life”
Zone is a contemporary Homeric epic, 500 pages of one sentence–and it works. Enard’s message is that no matter where the conflict takes place and what the issues are, the human atrocities are the same. Therefore, the style allows for the account of one savage leader and his victims to bump up against others with not even a comma in between: Continue reading “Zone”
Reading the first, very short chapter of Michael Kimball’s Us, I knew the book was going to make me cry repeatedly. A husband wakes to his wife having a seizure in their bed, and from that point we experience the complete change to their lives as he cares for her until her death. Their story is told from the point of view of the old man and there is no dialogue in the book. We are completely immersed in his experience as he tries to keep his wife alive and then helps her prepare for her death. I say “experience” because he is so unsure, scared, and sad that his descriptions are very physical because he doesn’t quite know how to process them: “I couldn’t feel any breath coming out of her anymore. I held onto her nose and tried to breathe some of my breath into her mouth. There didn’t seem to be enough air inside of me anymore to get her to breathe.” There are dozens of moments like this through the book, ones that start with a play-by-play description of what is happening and end in heart-wrenching realizations. Continue reading “Us”
