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!
Part wunderkammer, part grimoire, Maggie Queeney’s In Kind is focused on survival. A chorus of personae, speaking into and through a variety of poetic forms, guide the reader through the aftermath of generations of domestic, gendered, and sexual violence, before designing a transformation and rebirth. These are poems of witness, self-creation, and reclamation.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
Gabriel Ebensperger’s debut graphic novel, Gay Giant, is a coming-of-age and coming-to-terms-with-oneself story, showing readers what it feels like to grow up queer in a heteronormative society in the 1990s. Filled with pop-cultural touchstones from Cher to Laurie Anderson, Jurassic Park to My Little Pony, Ebensperger navigates both the joy and pain of puberty surrounded by ignorance and homophobia, the anxiety of casual hookups, and pressure to be more macho. How do you love yourself if you’ve learned so well to hate yourself? For all who’ve ever felt bizarre, damaged, or strange, Ebensperger asserts that all is full of love, and that true acceptance must come from within. Ebensperger lives by the sea in Chile and works as an illustrator, a graphic designer, and an art director. His work has been featured in several Chilean and international publications.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
Theodore Enslin’s book-length poem Ranger is the inspiration behind #Ranger, an online quarterly of text, audio/visual, and video founded by David A. Bishop whose goal with this new venture is to provide a home for works that may not fit in elsewhere. “I felt there was a real need for experimental poetry and art,” he explains. “I mean, REAL experimentation. Everyone seems to play it safe nowadays, and that’s pretty boring, in my opinion. How will art evolve if we don’t experiment?”
Bishop’s background (or lack thereof), he says, is helpful for this ability to allow for more variations, “I don’t have an MFA, so there’s no dogma to follow.” But this doesn’t me he lacks experience for this start-up. “I’m mostly an editor,” he says, “but I also dabble in poetry (both visual and textual) on occasion. I’ve been published in Word/For Word, Otoliths, and other magazines. Under the pseudonym Drew B. David, I edited the now-defunct Angry Old Man Magazine.”
“I love publishing work that no one else will handle,” Bishop shares. “It gives me a lot of satisfaction to see it out there, however small my audience may be, and it’s small, I won’t lie. The challenge, of course, is finding the time to put out a good product. That’s always been the challenge. But someone has to do it. There aren’t many people out there who are willing to push the envelope. We live in a very, very conformist, commercial culture in America – at least, where art is concerned. Money dictates everything, and that’s sad. Art is for the ages! Art is for life!”
For writers looking to push that envelope with Bishop, submissions are open with no fees for “Stuff you think no one else will publish,” the submission page encourages. “So-called ‘market forces’ do not matter here.” #Ranger is currently a one-person endeavor, “I read everything that comes in, so expect response time to be 1-2 months. I wish it were shorter,” adds Bishop, “but I have a full-time job, which also means I can seldom give feedback.”
For readers, Bishop says to expect to be surprised by the content. “It certainly isn’t vanilla, so, be prepared for a wild ride. Art should be controversial if it’s good art.”
Contributors to the first issue include Luc Fierens, Daniele Virgilio, Daniel Y. Harris, Mark Young, Howie Good, Tommy Gunn, PokaPoka!, Anthony Janas, Irene Koronas, Sheila Murphy, Joshua Martin, Alexander Limarev, Richard Baldasty, Nico Vassilakis, Daniel de Culla, Robert Jacka, The Page Collective, Cecelia Chapman and Jeff Crouch, Gerard Sarnat, Grant Guy, Jim Leftwich, Harrison Fisher, Robert Beveridge, Paul Smith, Jason Ryberg, Erkin Gören, Bill Wolak, John Bennett, Michael Prihoda, Colin James, Texas Fontanella, Noisebuam, Casey Synesael, Doren Robbins, Nathan Anderson, Dale Jensen, Daniel F. Bradley, John Grey, Dan Sicoli, Les Bernstein, Gerry Fabian, Sanjeev Sethi, Shannon King, Michael Basinski, and Joel Chace,
Looking ahead, Bishop says, “I am trying to lure musicians into the fold. Experimental music, yes! I want #Ranger to explore all different art forms. It’s not just a lit/poetry mag. It’s a place where artists with a capital A are welcome.” He adds, “Make your work as weird and eccentric as possible. Don’t worry about the corporate gatekeepers harshing on your mellow. This project is definitely anti-commercial.”
The Malahat Review, established in 1967, is among Canada’s leading literary journals. Published quarterly, it features contemporary Canadian and international works of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction as well as reviews of recently published Canadian poetry, fiction, and literary nonfiction. The latest issue, Spring 2023 #222, features Open Season Awards winners Gloria Blizzard (cnf), Caroline Harper New (poetry), and Deepa Rajagopalan (fiction); cover art by SGidGang.xaal / Shoshannah Greene; poetry by Jenna Lyn Albert, Kayla Czaga, Sue Goyette, Maggie Helwig, Kate Kennedy, D. A. Lockhart, Pauline Peters, Cale Plett, C. Rafuse, and Shane Rhodes; fiction by Katherine Abbass, Mehr-Afarin Kohan, Rebecca Mangra, and Paul Ruban (translated by Neil Smith); creative nonfiction by Paul Dhillon and S. I. Hassan; and reviews of new books by Margaret Atwood, Manahil Bandukwala, Dionne Brand, Kevin Marc Fournier, Susan Glickman, Tomson Highway, Rhona McAdam, Paul Sunga, Délani Valin, and Joshua Whitehead.
In the poem-essays that comprise A Duration, writing is a physical act where writing and lived experience support one another in bodies—animal, plant, mineral, and word bodies—that are injured and heal, that die and continue in new forms, playing new roles. Here, in his fifth book, Richard Meier transmutes years of daily practices of attention—be it to a line spoken by Lear’s Fool, a train to Kingston, or “red inside green stem below eight white petals in a spiral with space between them attached to the yellow center”—into mesmerizing trajectories through an always unfolding present. In the collapse of the border between writing and the body, A Duration, “play[s] both hearts with a heartbeat and kinship of place, time, mundanity in the continuous onrushing imagined joy.”
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
There have been a number of recent books about being a female runner, including Lauren Fleshman’s Good for a Girl; Kara Goucher’s The Longest Race; Alison Mariella Désir’s Running While Black; and Des Linden’s Choosing to Run. Similarly, there have been several relatively recent books about the benefits of exercise (running, in particular) to help slow down the aging process, including Daniel Levitin’s Successful Aging and Daniel Lieberman’s Exercised. In her Older, Faster, Stronger: What Women Runners Can Teach Us All About Living Younger, Longer, Margaret Webb was on track to explore both areas almost a decade ago. Webb blends research and memoir in this work to delve into the ways running can keep people younger and healthier, especially how it benefits women.
Inspired by her mother and sister, Webb decides to become more serious about running, spending a year training for a World Masters half-marathon. Drawing on her background in journalism, she interviews experts on exercise science and some of the world record holders who are in the sixties, seventies, and beyond. She uses that information to shape her own training, certainly, but, more importantly, she wants readers to see how important it is to stay active as we age. She consistently references the growing body of research that shows how one can remain active well past the traditional retirement age and the multitude of benefits that activity can have, as she focuses on the quality of one’s life as much as the quality of that life.
Webb draws inspiration from the runners she interviews (often, fittingly, while running), but she also serves as an inspiration herself. She, like most of the runners she talks to, doesn’t feel they are extraordinary, though the one question she is unable to answer is what motivates some people to remain active, while others become more and more sedentary. Reading this book certainly serves to motivate, as Webb’s enthusiasm is infectious.
Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite or kevinbrownwrites.weebly.com/.
The MacGuffin Winter 2023 (38.3) issue features Lynne Thompson’s Poet Hunt 27 commentary and selections: Grand Prize Winner Judy Brackett Crowe and Honorable Mentions Abby Caplin and Sam Ferrante. Leaving Poet Hunt 27 behind, The MacGuffin gives readers a look ahead to 2023’s Poet Hunt 28, guest judged by Barbara Crooker, with a five-poem spread from the judge-to-be. The issue is rounded out with an eclectic collection of prose: from Carolyn Watson’s Hitchcockian “Hag,” to Scott Ragland’s postmodern World War II short “Wings,” to Carolyn Highland’s “Echoes,” and Gigi Cheng’s masterful essay “The difference between Chinese and English.”
NewPages receives many wonderful literary magazine and alternative magazine titles each month to share with our readers. You can read more about some of these titles by clicking on the “New Mag Issues” under NewPages Blog or Mags. Find out more about many of these titles with our Guide to Literary Magazines and our Big List of Literary Magazines and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed here or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay the most up-to-date on all things literary!
AGNI, 97 The American Poetry Review, May/June 2023 ARC Poetry, 100 Brilliant Flash Fiction, March 2023 Camas, Summer 2023 Chestnut Review, Spring 2023 The Cincinnati Review, Spring 2023 Colorado Review, Spring 2023 The Common, 25 Communities, Summer 2023 Concho River Review, Spring/Summer 2023 Conjunctions, 80 CutBank, 98 Cutleaf, 3.8, 3.9
Elegiaca Americana: Poems by Claire Millikin Littoral Books, October 2022
Elegiaca Americana by Claire Millikin is a collection of deeply personal poetry that contains poems of childhood, youth, and adulthood, set mostly in the southern United States. It is a book about reckoning with grief, about the beauty and brutality of life in America, about living in exile in one’s own land. Millikin is the author of eleven collections of poetry. She is the co-editor of Enough! Poems of Resistance and Protest, winner of the 2021 Maine Literary Award. A feminist scholar and art historian, she teaches art history at the University of Maine and for the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
The Spring 2023 issue of The Missouri Review (46.1) is introduced by Speer Morgan’s Foreward, “Seize the Day,” and features winners of the 2022 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize: Ann-Marie Blanchard for fiction, Robin Reif for essay, and Heidi Seaborn for poetry. Also included in this issue is new fiction from Rita Ayoshi, Jennafer D’Alvia, Threse Eiben, and Abby Geni; new poetry from Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer and Benjamin Grossberg; and new nonfiction from Anu Kumar and Joe Walpole. There is an arts feature by Kristine Somerville, “Man Ray: Reluctant Celebrity Photographer,” and the Curio Cabinet section houses “Gerda Wegener and the Pleasures of Art Deco.” Rounding out the issue is a review column by Sam Pickering, “Deep Listening and Time Passing: Five Recent Nonfiction Books of Note.” Cover art: Skater by Alex Colville (1964).
In Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau, Ben Shattuck begins the first of his six walks on a whim, or, more accurately, as a coping mechanism to deal with nightmares stemming from the end of a relationship. It is unplanned, and it doesn’t go particularly well. By the end of the book, when he retraces a few stops from that walk, his life has changed quite dramatically. The book is both a meditation on Thoreau’s influence on Shattuck’s life and thought and a memoir detailing Shattuck’s development from that particularly difficult time in his life to a much brighter ending. As he writes near the end of the work, “…walking through the dark forest, you might eventually look up through the trees, see that the sky above is the same as the sky over the sunny pasture, that it is one canopy of light spread over your whole life’s landscape. Grief and joy are in the same life, but it’s only in the forest where you notice the shafts of sunlight spilling through.” Shattuck explores both grief and joy in his life and in Thoreau’s life, helping readers understand both emotions and both people more clearly.
Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite or kevinbrownwrites.weebly.com/.
In Leda, his thirty-first poetry collection, J.R. Solonche once again proves that he has not lost his wit, insight, playfulness, honesty, and empathy. William Carlos Williams once said that “if it ain’t a pleasure, it ain’t a poem.” So once again, pleasure after pleasure in the form of poem after poem in page after page here await the reader. An excerpt from “TREE WORK”:
The tree crew is trimming a large oak. Take off that one, the boss on the ground says. What for? It looks all right, says the trimmer in the cherry picker. I don’t like the looks of it. Take it off, says the boss on the ground. But the one above it on this side is really bad, says the trimmer in the cherry picker. No, no, that’s not a problem. Do what I said, says the boss on the ground. You’re wrong, boss. You’re making a mistake, says the trimmer in the cherry picker. Okay, okay, take ‘em both off, says the boss on the ground. You got it, boss, says the trimmer in the cherry picker. Jesus, why can’t all the world’s problems be solved so easily?
Congratulations to Arc Poetry on their 100th issue of publishing emerging and established poets from across Canada and beyond! Editor Emily Stewart says, “I hope you consider the unrecorded, unquantifiable creative efforts that have gone into this issue and the ninety-nine before it. I hope you recognize the talent and labour that make this magazine happen. And I hope you realize, without any uncertainty, that one hundred issues of Arc Poetry would not have been possible without you, without the literary community that has grown alongside Arc.”
This issue features the 2022 Diana Brebner Prize winner and honorable mention; new work from Arc’s 2021-22 Poet in Residence Annick MacAskill, and a selection of work by her mentees; new poems from Billy-Ray Belcourt, Lorna Crozier, Selina Boan, and more; work from Parliamentary Poet Laureate Louise Bernice Halfe; a translation feature curated by Katia Grubisic, including new translations of Nicole Brossard by Erin Moure; new essays, including by Lakshmi Gill, one of the first women members of the League of Canadian Poets; feature reviews that bring books previously reviewed in Arc into new conversations; and two “How Poems Work” columns by Bardia Sinaee on Sarah Venart and Eric Folsom on John Barton.
Timothy Donnelly’s fourth collection of poems, Chariot, ferries the reader toward an endless horizon of questioning that is both philosophical and deeply embodied. “How did we get here?” he asks in his title poem—one of several in conversation with French symbolist Odilon Redon—to which he responds, “Unclear, if it matters; what matters // is we stay—aloft in possible color.” With a similar sensibility to previous collections The Problem of the Many and The Cloud Corporation (winner of the Kingsley Tufts Award), Chariot deepens Donnelly’s inquiry into artistic histories, from Jean Cocteau to The Cocteau Twins, while celebrating the power of poetic imagination to transport us to new zones of meaning and textual bliss. The collection also marks an exciting shift in form for Donnelly, who confines these new poems to twenty lines each, so that to read Chariot is to look through a many-paned, future-facing window, refracting and reflecting, letting all the light in.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
Chestnut Review 4.4 (Spring 2023) rounds out the publication’s fourth year as a literary journal and is the final installment of Volume 4. This issue features poetry, prose, and art that reckon with desire, time, and illness, amongst other themes. The cover art, which aligns with parts of the publication’s ethos and aesthetic, is a digital piece titled “Inhibition” by Grace Zhou. The issue opens with a celebration of the release of Dacia Price’s This is for the Naming with an excerpt from the 2022 Prose Chapbook Contest winner and an interview with the author. The poetry portion of the issue opens with a piece by Noor Hindi, titled “I’m Bored I’m Lonely I’m Throwing a Party,” which contends with beauty, mortality, and divinity. A graphic comic is featured, called “tanggal,” inspired by the penanggalan folklore of Malaysia, which explores the nature of change through its hybrid-format. Chestnut Review welcomes readers to enjoy the experience of their newest issue online.
In Disorientation, Elaine Hsieh Chou’s first novel, Ingrid Wang is in the eighth year of her doctoral work, and she is largely ignoring her dissertation on Xiao-Wen Chou, a canonical Chinese American poet. She is almost thirty, engaged to be married, and her department chair has hinted that she could take over his position if she can simply finish her degree. Her life appears to be going well, but Chou makes it clear in her novel that appearances are never what they seem. Ingrid makes a discovery that leads her into an existential crisis where she has to face her identity as a Taiwanese American in the very white Northeast, her engagement to Stephen—who translated a Japanese author’s autofiction, even though he doesn’t speak Japanese—and who she hopes to become. Chou satirizes a variety of topics in her novel—academia, identity politics, the far right, the debate over free speech and what some call cancel culture—and, at times, that satire can simultaneously feel too broad and too spot on; however, her notes at the end of the novel remind readers that everything in her work has too much basis in the world for us to ignore her critiques and questions.
Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou. Penguin, March 2022.
Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite or kevinbrownwrites.weebly.com/.
54 Submission Opportunities including calls for submissions, writing contests, and book prizes.
While you may be taking a break from writing and submitting due to the long holiday weekend in the U.S., NewPages is still here with our weekly roundup of submissions opportunities for when you are ready to start afresh. There are plenty of end of May beginning of June deadlines you don’t want to miss out on.
Have a happy, safe, and relaxing Memorial Day weekend. Don’t forget that our weekly newsletter will be delayed until Tuesday due to the holiday. Speaking of the newsletter, NewPages Newsletter subscribers with a paid subscription get early and first access to our submission opportunities and events, the majority before they go live on our site. Consider subscribing today.
Jason Tandon’s This Far North practices a poetics of breathtaking quietude. These meditative, imagistic poems evoke a Zen-like “suchness” as Tandon writes about the natural world and the daily tasks with which we busy our lives. Readers looking to slow down, looking for a poetry that is seasonal and sapre, present and attentive, will find much to savor in this collection that makes ordinary moments numinous.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
Impossible People: A Completely Average Recovery Story by Julia Wertz rings it at just over 300 pages and hardcover, so there is no mistaking that this graphic memoir is going to be as weighty as it feels. Wertz has earned her publishing chops with five other collections and as a contributor to the The New York Times and The New Yorker, but both seasoned and entry-level readers of her work will feel welcomed here.
The Spring 2023 issue of The Baltimore Review features poems, short stories, and creative nonfiction by Jared Beloff, Allisa Cherry, Sarah Elkins, Adam Forrester, Kimberly Glanzman, Pete Mackey, Meg Robson Mahoney, Michael Minassian, Donna Obeid, Abigail Oswald, Emmy Ritchey, Cressida Blake Roe, Adrie Rose, Huina Zheng, and Jane Zwart. Many contributors also provide notes about their work, as well as audio recordings. All issues of The Baltimore Review back to Winter 2012 can be read online at no cost, and content from the online issues is also published in annual print compilations. Founded in 1996, The Baltimore Review showcases writers from Baltimore, across the U.S., and beyond.
In this debut graphic memoir, What is Home, Mum?, Sabba Khan explores race, gender, and class in a compelling personal narrative creating a strong feminist message of self-reflection and empowerment. As a second-generation Pakistani immigrant living in East London, Khan paints a vivid snapshot of contemporary British Asian life and investigates the complex shifts experienced by different generations within immigrant communities. Khan is a visual artist, graphic novelist, and architectural designer. She is an advocate for increasing working-class black and brown representation in the arts and publishing as well as in architecture and construction. Her work is included in the Eisner award-winning graphic anthology Drawing Power.
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Between Paradise & Earth: Eve Poems edited by Nomi Stone & Luke Hankins Orison Books, April 2023
The recent and contemporary poems about the biblical figure Eve gathered in this anthology refuse given narratives. Here, poets of diverse backgrounds and traditions conjure a heterogeneous concert of Eves to reckon with desire, blame, power, gender, the body, race, politics, religion, knowledge, violence, and time. She becomes a door for dreaming of origins, for considering naming and language, for challenging assumptions and structures of power, and for examining the human condition. In these poems, Eve loves, grieves, rages, and proves a perennially relevant figure in our contemporary mythos.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought is published quarterly in print by Pittsburg State University and accepts submissions of poetry and essays on contemporary subjects “interesting and readable by a non-specialist reader.” The objective of the publication is “to discover and publish scholarly articles dealing with a broad range of subjects of current interest.” A sampling of articles in the newest issue includes: “Human Cargo: The Zombie as Metaphor for Aboriginal Restoration” by Liza Harville; “Understanding Individual Differences in the Dimensions of ‘Vestedness’ within Midwestern Populations toward the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) during Early-Stage Pandemic Onset” by A. M. Mason, Josh Compton, and Elizabeth Spencer; “The BaFa’ BaFa’ Cultural Simulation: A High-Leverage Teaching Practice to Increase Cultural Awareness” by Grant Moss and Harriet Bachner; and “Sustaining our Academic Careers amidst COVID-19: A Collaborative Autoethnography of Women Academicians” by Judy Smetana, Krissy Lewis, and Tatiana Goris. And for poetry, an interview with and a substantial portfolio of poems by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg.
Deep Are These Distances Between Us: Poems by Susan Atefat-Peckham Edited with a Foreward by Darius Atefat-Peckham CavanKerry Press, May 2023
In Deep Are These Distances Between Us, Susan Atefat-Peckham troubles preconceptions of nationhood and fixed systems of power by bringing her reader into the home and offering twilit glimpses of boundless familial love and intimacy. Atefat-Peckham reaches for a network of care, the foundations of which are laid in these poems’ ability to imagine and access the multiplicities of the human experience. Evoking a rich Iranian-American landscape, these poems ultimately articulate a spirituality that has no spatial or temporal boundaries, one that travels effortlessly between life and death to arrive at a timeless poetics, a treatise on empathy we need now more than ever.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
The newest issue of the print quarterly The Main Street Rag (Spring 2023) features Patti Frye Meredith author of the novel South of Heaven in conversation with MSR Editor M. Scott Douglass; fiction by Tony Hozeny, Roger Hart, Ann Levin, Scott Pedersen, and Steve Putnam; poetry by Rachel Barton, Joyce Compton Brown, Frank X. Christmas, Gayle Compton, Lana Hechtman Ayers, Ginny Lowe Connors, Brenda Edgar, Alissa Sammarco, Alfred Fournier, Monique Gagnon German, Mark Grinyer, Bill Griffin, Jana Harris, Randall Martoccia, Lloyd Jacobs, Hank Kalet, Gary Lechliter, D.C. Leonhardt, George Longenecker, Robert Lunday, Michelle Matz, Randy Minnich, Karen Whittington Nelson, David E. Poston, Philip Raisor, Diane Pohl, James W. Reynolds, Livingston Rossmoor, Mark Rubin, David Sapp, Karen Elizabeth Sharpe, Richard Allen Taylor, Judith Terzi, Mitchell Untch, Mid Walsh, Cynthia Ventresca, Randy Lee White, Richard Widerkehr, Christy Wise, and Samantha Woodruff; and several reviews of new publications.
The Stirling Review is a new online quarterly of poetry, creative nonfiction, short fiction, opinion pieces, artwork, and photography. It was founded by a group of participants from the 2022 Sewanee Young Writers’ Workshop at the University of the South who started hanging out together, sharing their writing at a local breakfast hub called Stirling’s Coffee House. They enjoyed their time together so much, they “wanted to create a space like Stirling’s, where young writers and artists could exchange their ideas, and thus this magazine along with its name was born.”
The Stirling Review showcases creative work from writers aged 14-22. The editors’ mission is “to spread creativity that we believe shines effortlessly, and writing in which marginalized groups, or just everyday people, can find some sort of solace.” Together, the editorial team says, “we believe in the unique power of young writers to speak words that spark change and to craft pieces that shine like stars. We aim to amplify their light.”
The editorial team is solidly built with writers and artists whose experience and publication credits have both breadth and depth. Currently on staff are Michael Liu and Tane Kim – Co-founders; Ellie Tiwari, Adelia Crawford, Hayden Oh, Max Boyang, Ethan Park, Evy Muller, Mia Grace Davis, Haley Timmermann, and Holland Tait. “Every issue is a collective effort of our editorial team and the creative young minds across the world that make such wonderful writing possible.”
For writers seeking a home for their work, the editors say, “Our preferences are shorter pieces with resonating language” that highlight the publication’s mission. Once contributions have been received, “all the editors read a set of pieces and rank them on a rubric similar to Scholastic Art and Writing Awards’ rubric. Every piece is ranked on a scale of 1-10 on skill, theme, and originality and moves on to our second round of submissions if they average a number greater than or equal to 7 (our co-founders also read every piece in round 1 to make sure rankings are consistent). After round 2, our entire team votes on every piece to decide if we publish it or not.”
For readers stopping by The Stirling Review, the editors say, “expect to find the poetry, prose, and art written by young people with powerful voices.” Contributors to the first issue include Sam Luo, Blanka Pillár, Naomi Ling, Amber Zou, Willow Kang, Margaret Donovan, Winston Verdult, Michelle Zhou, and Luke Tan.
The editors also offer some insight on starting a new publication: “Some challenges have been working around each member’s schedule because we are all busy high schoolers, but positives include being able to read amazing work from young writers like us. Seeing our first issue completed was definitely a huge accomplishment every member of our team feels incredibly proud of.”
For those considering starting a publication, the editors encourage, “Just do it. Just start it. Even if you don’t know the exact specifics of what you are going to do or how it is going to get done, take that first step and figure things out along the way. That way, you don’t put it off forever.”
Moving forward, The Stirling Review hopes to host contests (“with sweet rewards”) later this year as well as publish an anthology by year’s end. Writers and readers alike are encouraged to visit The Stirling Review and see for themselves what this great new addition has to offer!
Murmurations by Andrea Rinard EastOver Press, June 2023
In Murmurations, Andrea Rinard’s debut collection of twenty-six flash and micro fiction, readers are introduced to an eclectic array of women attempting to claim their own space and to find meaning in the extraordinary mundanity of moments large and small. Stark, spare, sometimes surreal but always illuminated with honesty, these stories are at once amusing and infuriating, comforting and heartbreaking, and always familiar. Rinard explores the art of literary distillation, packing whole worlds into few words. Sometimes ordinary, other times other-worldly, the myriad topics addressed by these small stories leave a big impression.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
Iggy Horse by Michael Earl Craig Wave Books, April 2023
The poems in Michael Earl Craig’s sixth book, Iggy Horse, resonate with an inscrutable logic that feels excitedly otherworldly and unsettlingly familiar, whether he be writing about the cadaver that Hans Holbein the Younger used as a model, Montana as the “Italy of God,” or the milking rituals in Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow. Not merely absurdist, Iggy Horse is a book that articulates the sadness and strangeness of American life with the poetic observations of true satire.
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The Spoon River Poetry Review (SRPR) Winter 2022 has much to offer readers to see them through the spring, starting with the brightly colored cover art by Desire for / desire (oil on gesso-bard) by Madelyn Turner. The SRPR Illinois Poet Feature in this issue is Rebecca Morgan Frank, with an interview of the poet by Jenna Goldsmith, and the Editors’ Prize winning poem “We Moved Out of the Projects and Into a Home” by Meghan Malachi, selected by Ashley M. Jones, is included as well as runners-up poems by Judith Mary Gee and Scudder H. Parker, honorable mention poems by Caroline Parkman Barr, Phillip West, Brittany Mishra, and Ana Lucila Cagnoni. There is new poetry by Jenna Le, Carrie Shipers, Clayton Adam Clark, Beth Weinstock, J. R. Forman, Rodrigo Toscano, Elizabeth Sylvia, and more, and the SRPR Review Essay “Dreams of Growing to Rock a Rhyme”: Tradition and Experiment in Recent American Sonnets” by Brian Brodeur, who reviews books by Caki Wilkinson (The Survival Expo: Poems), Rowan Ricardo Phillips (Living Weapon: Poems), Matthew Buckley Smith (Midlife: Poems), Alexis Sears (Out of Order: Poems), and John Murillo (Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry: Poems).
Jim Finley—a recently retired English teacher living alone on the shifting edge of San Francisco—has been set, unwittingly, on the back porch of life. Trying to harmonize the voices in his head, he sits most days by his stack of “to-do” books until, one day, his daughter comes home with the worst news of her life. Everything changes. As his broken heart reengages, he steps back into a new world. He sees his ex-wife has launched into a larger life than the one they’d shared. He is surprised to find it easier to talk to his son’s immigrant girlfriend, or even the remains of a Russian saint, than to the young man he’s raised. He misconnects with Carol—his first date in decades—a woman he enjoys talking with but doesn’t quite hear. Set in the pre-tech calm before the turn of this century, Outer Sunset is a deeply felt story about the intimate place where long-lasting growth occurs in our lives; how we revise, or live without, our dreams; how to love the flaws of those closest to you and watch a child grow away into someone better than you’d imagined; and how to be shaken by beauty amidst unimaginable loss and remain standing.
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The tone for AGNI97 is set by the opulent colors and imperiled undertones of cover (detail from Cemetary with Dog) and portfolio artist Salman Toor. Stories by Garielle Lutz, Via Bleidner, and Anna Badkhen put the seismograph to relationships and track the needle as it jumps. Essayist Kai Maristed assesses the loss and legacy of her enigmatic father, while Ishion Hutchinson shows how the close reading of a poem can open into a close reading of the complexities of history. Poems by Kwame Dawes, Nicole W. Lee, Danez Smith, and Tyler Mills construct tales, mythographies, and fabulisms that gesture toward another world: one that can and must be made from ours. All this and much more in the print edition, available for purchase by single copy or subscription. Readers can also find unique content at AGNI online as well as featured content from past issues.
While The Optimist Shelters in Place by Kimberly Ann Priest isn’t so brand new, we continue to help spotlight titles that may have been overlooked during the pandemic years, which is no irony intended on this particular title. Priest is the author of several other collections: Slaughter the One Bird (Sundress 2021), finalist for the American Best Book Award, as well as the chapbooks Parrot Flower (Glass 2021), Still Life (PANK 2020), and White Goat Black Sheep (Finishing Line Press 2018). Each poem in this newest book plays on the title, starting with “The Optimist,” which adds a weighted perspective as they reflect on the poet’s time during the shutdown. There are some humorous titles that I’m sure many readers will relate to, such as “The Optimist Takes a Personality Test,” “…Spends a Lot of Time on Pinterest,” “…Tries a New Recipe for BBQ Chicken,” “…Doesn’t Wash Her Hair,” but also some that will draw the reader in with their more allusive considerations, “…Imagines What It Would be Like if Her Daughter Were Actually Dead,” “…Remembers What is Needed to Feel Essential,” and the great closing poem, “…Sleeps Through the Night.” Priest is an associate poetry editor for the Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry and Assistant Professor at Michigan State University. Find her work at kimberlyannpriest.com.
In Wanting: Women Writing About Desire, Margot Kahn and Kelly McMasters have collected a wide range of essays from a diverse group of writers, reflecting the various ways women think and write about desire. Some are related to sexual desire, the most obvious interpretation of the subtitle, including Dr. Keyanah B. Nurse’s essay on polyamory and Amy Gall’s experiences with dildoes. However, the collection has a wider range than that narrow reading of the word. Larissa Pham begins the book by discussing her desire for more time, while Michelle Wildgen follows that essay with one on appetite, not just wanting to discover new foods, but wishing she could rediscover the desire she had when so many foods were new to her. Jennifer De Leon uses an SUV to explore her feelings of alienation as the child of immigrants, while Aracelis Girmay delves into racism and language, hoping to help her children find the gaps in the latter to fight against the former. As Lisa Taddeo writes in her essay, “Splitting the World Open”: “Finally, as a gender we are speaking about what we don’t want. But, perhaps more than ever, we are not speaking of what we do want. Because when and if we do, we’re abused for it.” Kahn and McMasters have given these thirty-three women a space for talking about what they want, providing readers with voices that demand to be heard.
Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite or kevinbrownwrites.weebly.com/.
Windows That Open Inward: Images of Chile White Pine Press, April 2023
With poems by Pablo Neruda and photographs by Milton Rogovin, Windows That Open Inward is a mosaic of visual images fused with words that create a compelling image of Chile. Rogovin, a well-known photographer, journeyed to Chile in 1967. At Neruda’s suggestion, he went to the island of Chiloe, in the south. Rogovin’s visit was most fruitful. He came away with some extraordinary photographs, capturing the stark beauty of Chiloe and the unromantic life of its people. His portraits depict individuals and families and the tools and elements of their existence. There is a symbiotic relationship between Rogovin and Neruda, a common interest in and respect for the ordinary. Editor Dennis Maloney has selected a diverse cross-section of Neruda’s poems to complement the photographs. White Pine Press is reissuing this classic to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the press.
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The theme of the 2023 spring issue of Valley Voices is “Goodbye,” which may mean departure, detachment, death, divorce, breakup, change for a new life, promising career, or bright future. There are different ways to say goodbye, such as farewell, adieu, bon voyage, or zaijian. Sometimes the word carries nuances of meaning. Pretty much the opposite of the word is badbye or sadbye, so bye can be awful, beautiful, fearful, joyful, mournful, mirthful, painful, peaceful, sorrowful, tearful, or wistful. Goodbye has been a charming theme that attracts writers to explore from different viewpoints. This special issue includes 7 fiction/nonfiction, a photo essay about the South, poetry by 24 poets, 10 book reviews, and a featured interview with DC Berry.
The Wilson College MFA program is designed for working professionals with a low-residency schedule tailored to meet the needs of artists allowing them to reach the next level in their field. Visit website and view flyer to learn more.
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Deadline: May 31, 2023 Apple in the Dark is taking submissions for its inaugural flash fiction contest, judged by Chelsea T. Hicks. Fee: $6. Prize: $150. Deadline: May 31, 2023. Submit here.
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Find community and grow your craft in our online summer workshops taught by leaders in the lit community. Join us for one-day Sunday masterclasses with topics like “Delusions of Grammar” and “Building Your Writing Brand” and multi-week workshops in all genres. Whether you’re a new writer or a well-published pro, you’ll find motivation, structure, constructive criticism, and a dedicated cohort. See our flyer and visit our website for more information.
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Are your characters compelling enough? Welcome to “Write the Next Famous Novel Character,” a comprehensive online workshop that will help you turn your readers into die-hard fans. We believe every writer has a legion of memorable characters inside of them, waiting to be unleashed. Let’s unleash yours. View flyer and visit website to learn more.
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Deadline: Rolling Chatham’s low-residency MFA in Creative Writing enables students to improve their writing through one-on-one interaction with mentors and other students at the Summer Community of Writers residency. Complete your MFA at your own pace. Join our vibrant creative writing community today! For more information, view our flyer and visit our website.
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The 10th Annual Chesapeake Writers’ Conference takes place June 18-24, 2023, and our excellent faculty will help you tell your story as only you can. Join us to see what happens when you immerse yourself in the words, water, and woods at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Mention this ad by May 24 for a 10% tuition discount!View flyer.
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Exile Editions is seeking the best short stories by Canadian writers for the inaugural Nona Macdonald Heaslip $15,000 Prize. All genres and styles considered. Stories cannot exceed 6,000 words. Deadline to enter is Friday, June 30. $35 fee. View website and see flyer to learn more.
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From March 1 to May 31 Flying South 2023 will be accepting entries for this year’s contest. There will be three categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry. In each of the three categories, the awards will be $400 for First Place, $200 for Second Place, and $100 for Third Place. Finalists will be awarded publication in Flying South. Visit website and view flyer for more information.
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Winning Writers will award a grand prize of $10,000 in its ninth annual North Street competition, and $20,400 in all. The top nine winners will enjoy additional benefits from co-sponsors BookBaby, Carolyn Howard-Johnson, and Book Award Pro. Gifts for everyone who enters. Submit books published in any year and on any self-publishing or hybrid-publishing platform. $75 entry fee. Enter online or by mail by June 30. Learn more at our website and share our flyer.
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Our Lady of the Lake University’s 100% online Master of Arts-Master of Fine Arts (MA-MFA) and Master of Arts (MA) in Literature, Creative Writing, and Social Justice prepare critically engaged and socially aware scholars, writers, educators, and professionals. This nationally unique, virtual program combines creativity with practical skills and critical knowledge, while keeping in mind the pursuit of social justice. View flier or visit website to learn more.
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54 Submission Opportunities including calls for submissions, writing contests, and book prizes.
Mid-month deadlines have passed, and end-of-month deadlines are looming. Plus, don’t forget the beginning of June deadlines coming up! NewPages is here with your weekly reminders in our Where to Submit Roundup series for the third week of May 2023.
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In her latest book, New Life, Lambda Award–winning poet Ana Božičević writes, “For my birthday I want a cake / revealing the color of my soul.” Never saccharine, these poems are by turns cheeky and heartfelt, grounded and wistful, and above all—surprising. New Life is a book that is Dantesque in its ability to commune with the dead without becoming fixed in the past. Instead, the poems here have a distinct sense of nonlinear time, where each line feels like an ancient bone discovered, only to be reassembled into a chimera of another self. In this way, Božičević continually greets herself as a stranger, reminding us that in some respects every poem is a love poem.
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The May 2023 issue of The Lake online poetry magazine is now live and features work by Kevin Carey, Mike Dillon, Ted Jean, James King, Norman Minnick, A. N. Other, Jane Pearn, Fiona Sinclair, J. R. Solonche as well as reviews of Jo Clement’s Outlandish and Claudia Serea’s In Those Years. “One Poem Reviews,” in which one poem is featured from a poet’s newly published collection, this month spotlights Catherine Esposito Prescott, Etheridge Knight, and Caridad Moro-Gronlier.
Editor-in-Chief Daniel Lawless writes, “Perhaps it’s best, as Plume nears its 12th year, to describe the current issue (#141) with reference to our initial mission statement: [We hope to present] a magazine dedicated to publishing the very best of contemporary poetry. To that end, we will be highly selective, offering twelve poems per monthly issue. A provisional indication of our tastes might include a sense of the uncanny, and of the fineness of language, the huge absences to which it points and partakes of, and the urgency and permanence of its state of departure — the coattails forever –just now—disappearing around the corner. But also a certain reserve, or humility, even when addressing the most humorous or trying circumstances.”
Only, now, those twelve poems are accompanied by essays, reviews, and longer featured selections. In the May issue, Plume includes, for example, a portfolio of poems from Mariella Nigro’s Memory Rewritten and an interview by Mihaela Moscaliuc with translators Jesse Lee Kercheval and Jeannine Marie Pitas; and Chard DeNiord’s essay “The Poetic “Engine” in Flannery O’Connor’s Fiction.” These, together with new work by Julie Bruck, Nicole Cooley, Volodymyr Tymchuk Denise Duhamel, Angela Ball, and Amit Majmudar, among others, make for a typical issue. Plume‘s cover art this month is Jacob Lawrence’s “The Photographer.” Readers are invited to enjoy the full content open-access online.
In a Friday Night Comics session for Sequential Artists Workshop, Will Betke-Brunswick explains that using birds as characters allows an “access point into emotional-heavy material,” and even though advised by a mentor “not to do birds,” Will says, “I feel connected to birds.” There is no doubt readers will also develop a connection, if not immediately, then over the course of topics covered in the graphic memoir A Pros and Cons List For Strong Feelings. These topics include Will’s mother being diagnosed with terminal cancer during Will’s sophomore year of college and going through treatments as well as Will’s coming out as genderqueer. There are flashbacks to Will’s youth, sharing thoughtfully tender and supportive moments, like when Will’s mother creates math problems for them to solve on the school bus to alleviate anxiety and when she writes a note for Will’s school when picture day rolls around to say it’s okay for them to wear a hat. It’s easy to sort Will’s family of characters, all represented as penguins, from other characters: buzzards, quails, parrots, toucans, and more. Betke-Brunswick uses line drawings with some fill, minimalist backgrounds, just two colors throughout, and varying framed and frameless compositions to express events, which include observational humor and situational poignancy. This is the kind of memoir that offers brief but deeply intimate and sometimes discomfortingly honest glimpses into someone’s life. In the same way Betke-Brunswick expresses feeling connected to birds, readers will develop their own connection to humanity through these feathered depictions.
