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!
In his “36 Assumptions About Playwriting,” José Rivera instructs, “In all your plays be sure to write at least one impossible thing. And don't let your director talk you out of it.” Jonathan Ball takes this idea to a new level in his collection, Clockfire. Billed as poetry on its press release, this genre-defying collection consists of “blueprints for imaginary plays that would be impossible to produce.” Continue reading “Clockfire”
In this, her third book of poems, Jen Currin is at her most elliptical. Yes, it’s a somewhat useless term, one replaced by something even more vague by the critic who coined it, but it is a term which has come to indicate a certain sort of poem to me, which Jen Currin’s poems are: not really fairy or folk-tale-like, but having commonalities with fantastic narratives with an object lesson; not really domestic surrealism, but certainly in love with the idea of slippage, the morphology of phrases when juxtaposed, etc.; not really symbolism in a heavy handed way, but light, contemporaneous, elliptical indications of meanings just beyond the text. Continue reading “The Inquisition Yours”
My grandfather used to tell me and my siblings stories about World War II all the time. But he never talked about Alsace-Lorraine. He never talked about whether he heard the potato masher that filled him with shrapnel. He never talked about if he saw from where the bullet came that shredded the nerves in his right arm. He never talked about how he was presumed dead, like everyone else in his unit by the German army that day. He never talked about crawling through the woods while trying to keep his consciousness. He never talked about the year in a British hospital. He never talked about why he hated fireworks, or backfiring cars or popping birthday balloons. He never talked about why he woke up every night of his life in a sweat until he was 75. He never talked about the small pieces of metal that would work their way out of his skin and end up next to him in bed some mornings. He never talked about a lot, but he wrote a lot of it down, in the margins of his bankbook, in a photo album, scratched onto the back of his Purple Heart. Continue reading “Phantom Noise”
For those readers drawn to history and psychology, Solares’s Yankee Invasion is a novel certain to intrigue. Set in the aftermath of the Mexican-American war of 1846-48, the novel is narrated by Abelardo, who struggles to write an account of the recent war even while he is still dominated by the mental trauma of the conflict. Continue reading “Yankee Invasion”
The Digital Comic Museum is “the #1 site for downloading FREE public domain Golden Age Comics. All files here have been researched by our staff and users to make sure they are copyright free and in the public domain. To start downloading just register an account and enjoy these great comic books. We do not charge per download and the goal of project is to archive these comic books online and make them widely available.” [via Gerry Canavan]
The Millay Colony for the Arts offers one-month residencies to six visual artists, writers and composers each month between April and November. Nurturing the work of artists of all ages, from a range of cultures and communities, and in all stages of their artistic career, the Colony offers comfortable private rooms, private studio spaces, and ample time to work in a quiet, pastoral atmosphere.
To Apply:
NEW: Online application submission for 2011 Residency Program.
Application submissions via mail also available for 2011 season.
Applicants must submit a Millay Colony for the Arts application in addition to an artistic statement and work samples.
Details and form are available on our website. Applications must be postmarked or posted by October 1, 2010 for a month-long residency in 2011. Acceptance letters go out in February.
For more information, please call Residency Director Calliope Nicholas at 518-392-3103 or email at residency[at]millaycolony[dot]org.
So it goes, and a mollusk can not draw
the machine as we can not draw the heart Continue reading “To Light Out”
Robert Coover is one of my favorite writers. With quirky, mythical tales of magic realism, it’s no wonder he endorsed The Mothering Coven, the fabulist debut novel by Joanna Ruocco. Throughout this slight, but fertile novel, Ruocco plays with language and creates an inventive world filled with richly crafted characters. Continue reading “The Mothering Coven”
“My argument is abandon and tells me to abandon every argument.” Continue reading “The Art of Recklessness”
Margarita and Alex Haralson are just average Jewish parents. Sixty-somethings, recently retired, they want nothing more than to get some grandchildren, and quick. But their two grown children refuse to cooperate (marijuana usage, potential lesbianism, and other obstacles get in the way of progeny production). So, Margarita and Alex do what, perhaps, any folks would do: they turn to robots. Or, to be more precise, the robots turn to them. Hey, whatever it takes to get some grandchildren! Continue reading “Our Jewish Robot Future”
Here is a collection of poems for hard times. The first section, “There Goes the Neighborhood,” re-examines life’s past warts and pimples. Weil’s poem, “In My Neighborhood, Everyone Almost Wins the Lottery” looks at where he grew up and says, Continue reading “The Plumbers Apprentice”
The Hotel Under the Sand is a sweet, touching and funny story aimed at children from about 8-12 years old. Fans of Eva Ibbotson will love the friendly ghosts, gentle tone and quirky characters. It has a charming old-fashioned feel. Children books nowadays tend to be hectically paced adventures defeating terrifying villains. This quieter, sweeter yet witty book makes a nice change. Continue reading “The Hotel Under the Sand”
Lee Rossi interview with Maxine Kumin on The Pedestal.
John Siddique: “You know you’ve made it when one of your poems is immortalised in wool.”
List Magazine does just what it says – publishes lists. Twice a month, nonfiction lists submitted by “guest experts in science, art, and public spectacle, and other serious persons will be posted.” Currently, the first list, from the editor’s desk, is “How to Say a Few Words in 10 Languages That Will Soon Be Extinct.” A footnote reference states: “The Unesco Interactive Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger maps 232 extinct and 2,465 endangered languages. Half of the world’s 6500 to 7000 languages are expected to disappear this century.”
This is not silly or superflorus listmaking, but thoughtful and thought provoking, such as the one word entry that will be going up on my office door, “taturaaiiwaatista: ‘I am going to tell a story.’ Pawnee, a Caddoan language spoken by fewer than ten people in Pawnee County, Oklahoma.” And another, “nee’ééstoonéhk bíi3néhk noh héétniini núhu’ hee3éihi’ ee3eihi’: ‘If you do that, if you eat it, then you will be the way we are.’ Arapaho, a Plains Algonquian language spoken by 200 fluent elders on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, and by students of the language immersion school they founded in 2008,” which incites the reader to suddenly make connections with much deeper roots and greater meaning to the contemporary saying – ‘You are what you eat.’
List Magazine is edited by Josh Wallaert, poet, fiction writer, and documentary filmmaker, who invites submissions with this limitation: “If you are a non-serious person who trades in fictional lists, such as Rap Lyrics of the 17(90)’s or Heavy Metal Board Games, you may want to send your wares to Mr. Timothy McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Timothy keeps a fine collection of that sort.”
Otherwise, List Magazine invites submissions of “lists, queries, and other species of correspondence. Lists can be funny, sad, curious, personal historical, whatever you like, but they must be true, and they must be your original work. List Magazine particularly enjoys lists that demonstrate significant research. (Footnotes and links are appropriate.)”
Additionally, contributors agree to publish their lists under the magazine’s creative commons license. Nice to see that in use – thanks Josh!
Roadside Haiku: Using the brief format of traditional haiku—three lines of five/seven/five syllables—John Morse transforms the familiar bandit sign into a delivery device for poetic snapshots of the urban condition presented and consumed within the brief seconds of stop and go traffic.
Long-time editor, Judith Axel Turner, is retiring from The Journal of Electronic Publishing (JEP), and Aaron McCollough has been asked to curate one of several issues to be published in the interim before a new editor-in-chief is appointed.
McCollough has chosen to put together an issue broadly dedicated to digital poetry publishing and is seeking articles. He hopes this issue will “bring together many distinct but related conversations concerning relationships between poetry and the wide array of digital prostheses that are shaping and have shaped 21st Century poetics,” as well as “bring the pertinent conversations to the attention of new audiences.” Submission deadline is April 15, 2011.
The Journal of Electronic Publishing (JEP) is a forum for research and discussion about contemporary publishing practices, and the impact of those practices upon users. Contributors and readers are publishers, scholars, librarians, journalists, students, technologists, attorneys, retailers, and others with an interest in the methods and means of contemporary publishing. At its inception in January 1995, JEP carved out an important niche by recognizing that print communication was in the throes of significant change, and that digital communication would become an important – and in some cases predominant – means for transmitting published information.
JEP is published by the Scholarly Publishing Office (SPO), a unit of the University of Michigan Library, which is committed to designing affordable and sustainable publishing solutions in the network era (with a serious commitment to open-access publishing).
Published by the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre (*nzepc*), the ninth issue of Ka Mate Ka Ora: A New Zealand Journal of Poetry and Poetics offers a special focus on North American legacies in the southern hemisphere:
Murray Edmond, Trade and True: Anthologies Fifty Years After Donald Allen’s The New American Poetry
Virginia Gow, The Activity of Evidence: Robert Creeley’s New Zealand
Jeffrey Paparoa Holman, Hello, America: Christchurch’s 1970s Pacific Moment
Scott Hamilton, Before Erebus: Five Footnotes to Kendrick Smithyman’s ‘Aircrash in Antarctica’
Ian Wedde, Does Poetry Matter?
Roger Horrocks, Leigh Davis (1955-2009)
Paul Millar, Jacquie Baxter / JC Sturm (1927-2009)
Murray Edmond, ‘Landed Poem Upwards’: Martyn Sanderson (1938-2009)
Robert Sullivan, Cape Return: for Alistair Te Ariki Campbell (1925-2009)
* *
*kmko* is edited by Murray Edmond with assistance from Hilary Chung, Michele Leggott, and Lisa Samuels at the University of Auckland, and with the support of a team of consulting and contributing editors. It publishes research essays and readings of New Zealand-related material and welcomes contributions from poets, academics, essayists, teachers and students from within New Zealand and overseas. Submission guidelines and further information at www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/kmko/about.asp
Emerson College’s Redivider Magazine welcomes Amber Lee as Editor-in-Chief for 2010-2011. Amber will be joined by Managing Editor Nick Sansone, Production Editor Rebecca Demarest, Fiction Editor Brooks Sterritt, Poetry Editor Emily Thomas, Nonfiction Editor Lindsay Milgroom, Web Editor Anna Pollock-Nelson and Art Editor Merry Stuber.
Also new at Redivider is their Fiction Contest with cash prizes and publication – open for submissions until March 1, 2011.
The Ralph Waldo Emerson Society announces three awards for projects that foster appreciation for Emerson.
Research Grant
Provides up to $500 to support scholarly work on Emerson. Preference given to junior scholars and graduate students. Submit a 1-2-page project proposal, including a description of expenses, by March 1, 2011.
Pedagogy or Community Project Award
Provides up to $500 to support projects designed to bring Emerson to a non-academic audience. Submit a 1-2-page project proposal, including a description of expenses, by March 1, 2011.
Subvention Award
Provides up to $500 to support costs attending the publication of a scholarly book or article on Emerson and his circle. Submit a 1-2-page proposal, including an abstract of the forthcoming work and a description of publication expenses, by March 1, 2011.
Send Research, Pedagogy/Community, and Subvention proposals to:
Jessie Bray
brayjn[at]etsu[dot]edu
and
Daniel Malachuk
ds-malachuk[at]wiu[dot]edu
Award recipients must become members of the Society
Editor Jennifer Acker and Poetry Editor John Hennessy head The Common, a biannual print publication from Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Inspired by this mission and the role of the town common, a public gathering place for the display and exchange of ideas, The Common seeks to recapture an old idea. The Common publishes “fiction, essays, poetry, documentary vignettes, and images that embody particular times and places both real and imagined.”
The first issue (00), much of which is available online via PDF, features works by Ted Conover, Yehudit Ben-Zvi Heller, Michael Kelly, Honor Moore, Sabina Murray, Mary Jo Salter, Don Share, Jim Shepard, and Marina Tsvetaeva.
The Common is currently accepting submissions for Issue 01. The submission period is September 15-December 1.
Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their July Very Short Fiction competition. This competition is held twice a year and is open to all writers for stories with a word count not exceeding 3000. No theme restrictions. The next Very Short Fiction competition will take place in January. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.
First place: J. K
evin Shushtari, of Farmington, CT, wins $1200 for “The Vast Garden of Strangers.” His story will be published in the Winter 2012 issue of Glimmer Train Stories, published in November 2011.
Second place: Graham Arnold, of Downers Grove, IL, wins $500 for “The Story Is in the Reflection.”
Third place: Nahal Suzanne Jamir, of Tallahassee, FL, wins $300 for “In Perfect English.”
A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found here.
Deadline soon approaching for the September Fiction Open: September 30
This competition is held quarterly and is open to all writers. Word count range: 2000-20,000. No theme restrictions. Click here for complete guidelines.
Monday, September 27, Coldfront Magazine debuts a new feature: TOURIST TRAP, NYC – a video web series that follows touring poets to some of New York’s top tourist destinations, as well as lesser known bars, reading venues and unheralded back streets. Each episode will feature one or two poets as they explore the city, discuss their work, how urban landscapes influence their writing, the history or importance of landmark they’ve chosen to visit, as well as any art/literature related conversations they might deem relevant along the way. Each episode will culminate with a short, 1-2 poem reading at their destination of choice. Episode 1 features the poet Julie Doxsee.
Visit Banned Books Week online for information about book challenges, events, and a Google map marking locations where books were challenged 2007-2009 – see how your state ranks.
The 10 most challenged titles for 2009:
ttyl; ttfn; l8r, g8r (series), by Lauren Myracle
Reasons: nudity, sexually explicit, offensive language, drugs, and unsuited to age group
And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson
Reasons: homosexuality
The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
Reasons: drugs, homosexuality, nudity, offensive language, sexually explicit, suicide, and unsuited to age group
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
Reasons: racism, offensive language, unsuited to age group
Twilight (series), by Stephanie Meyer
Reasons: sexually explicit, religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group
Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
Reasons: sexually explicit, religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group
My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Picoult
Reasons: sexism, homosexuality, sexually explicit, offensive language, unsuited to age group, drugs, suicide, violence
The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things, by Carolyn Mackler
Reasons: sexually explicit, offensive language, unsuited to age group
The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
Reasons: sexually explicit, offensive language, unsuited to age group
The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier
Reasons: nudity, sexually explicit, offensive language, unsuited to age group
From Stephen Knezovich, Associate Editor / Mentoring Director, Creative Nonfiction:
Creative Nonfiction is seeking narrative blog posts to reprint in an upcoming issue. We’re looking to get input from folks, like yourself, who are plugged into the online literary community, and we hope you’ll send us your suggestions (or, you know, if you wanted to post this call on your Twitter/Blog/Facebook pages, we’d like that a whole lot, too).
We’re looking for: Vibrant new voices with interesting, true stories to tell. Narrative, narrative, narrative. Posts that can stand alone, 2000 words max, from 2010. Something from your own blog, from a friend’s blog, from a stranger’s blog.
Deadline for nominations: Monday, September 27, 11:59 PM EST.
For more details and to nominate a blog post go here.
Applications are open for the 2011 Baltic Writers Residency, a funded month-long annual summer residency in Riga, Latvia for poets, playwrights, and writers of fiction working in English. December 15 deadline.
Free Spirit Publishing, the leading publisher of books that support young people’s social and emotional health, seeks young people, grades 6 and up, to join its teen advisory council. In order to keep the publisher’s books and other products current and relevant, the advisory council provides valuable feedback on things like design, art, and content. More information and applications are available on this flyer: Free Spirit Publishing. Application review is ongoing.
Guernica Magazine of Arts and Politics has begun a new membership program – Guernica Commons for readers who want to support the online publication.
In addition to its regular offering of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, photo essays, and readings, Drunken Boat #12 online has new and unpublished poems, prose, and 14 images of hand-written drafts by Pulitzer Prize winning poet Franz Wright as well as a tribute to 20th century dramatist Eugene O’Neill entitled Celtic Twilight, with essays by over two dozen Irish-American authors and artists.
Check out these craft essays in the September issue of Brevity – online:
Exploring Intersections: An Exercise in Dismembering and Remembering Selves by Lockie Hunter
A writing exercise that has generated a great deal of excitement in my nonfiction classes is one I call the “self-adjectives” exercise. Its intent – to locate your interests and passions by listing self-descriptors – is similar to Sherry Simpson’s “tiny masters” exercise (Brevity craft essay, Issue 28) and rarely failed to spawn enthusiastic responses…until I began teaching at Warren Wilson College.
The Wonder of Geese by Bryan Furuness
One of the worst teachers I ever had was a man named Sam, who led my first writing workshop in graduate school. He used to stop class whenever geese flew past the window. “Geese!” he’d say, interrupting whoever was speaking, even if it was himself. The class would look dutifully at the geese, and some ass-kisser would say, “Wow,” or, “That’s really something, how they V up.” By the time we’d get back to the discussion, Sam would have forgotten what we’d been talking about, and everyone else would pretend to have forgotten, too. But not me.
Q&A: Using Tension and the Narrative Arc by Brendan O’Meara
An interview with Thomas French, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and author of the New York Times bestseller Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives, on the challenges of long-form journalism and how the writer uses tension in the story to create a dramatic narrative.
Winners of the 2010 Narrative Magazine Poetry Contest have been announced:
First Prize
Kate Waldman
Second Prize
Lillian-Yvonne Bertram
Third Prize
Ezra Dan Feldman
Finalists
Mermer Blakeslee
Laton Carter
Katharine Coles
Maria Hummel
Gray Jacobik
Jenifer Browne Lawrence
Lynn Melnick
Steve Price
Marsha Rabe
Christie Towers
Upcoming Narrative Magazine contest deadlines:
The Fall 2010 Story Contest, with $6,500 in prizes. Open to fiction and nonfiction. All entries will be considered for publication. Deadline: November 30, 2010.
The 30 Below Story Contest 2010, with $3,550 in prizes. All entries will be considered for publication. Open to all submissions from writers and artists age thirty and below. Deadline: October 29, 2010.
Women of Note Quarterly is coming back from hiatus (website working but under construction) as Women Arts Journal, a peer-reviewed online journal now at the University of Missouri-Saint Louis, Women of Note Quarterly is accepting submissions of scholarly essays, fiction, poetry, visual art, and interviews by women or about women in the fields of music, fiction writing, poetry, and visual art. Please send submissions of up to 8,000 words in Microsoft Word format or TIF files of original artwork to wia[at]umsl.edu for consideration in the fall 2010 issue.
Spurred by a reader’s letter, Senior Fiction Editor Ronna Wineberg takes on this question in her forward to the Fall 2010 issue of Bellevue Literary Review:
Recently, a reader wrote us a letter and objected to a story we had published. She felt on of the characters in the story was unfairly dismissive of nurses. Her letter caused us to think about the BLR‘s goals. What can a reader expect from creative work about health, healing, and illness published in a literary journal?
Literary work about these themes differs from scholarly work, of course. Articles in medical journals must be fair, based on fact or rigorous research. A personal essay that appears in the BLR is grounded in fact as well, although the writer often expresses an opinion. But a short story and sometimes a poem create a fictional world. What does fiction promise us? How does the world of a story differ from a creative essay or scholarly article?
All readers bring their own experience to a work of literature. The reader who wrote to us understood the objective reality of the medical world and the importance of a strong partnership between doctors and nurses. But fiction does not always reflect reality. A character can think what he or she wants. A short story allows a reader to enter another person’s mind, to be privy to thoughts that might not otherwise be expressed.
Fiction doesn’t promise us a measured view of life or even a fair view, and it doesn’t always present a flattering portrait of people or a profession. A short story provides the reader with the vision of one author and the perceptions of the characters in that story. Readers, like our letter writer, may be offended by a story or feel that a character is insensitive. However, this is the beauty of fiction: it allows the reader to live another life, experience a new perspective, journey into unfamiliar worlds.
New Directions Publishing has released a new edition of Henry Miller’s The Colossus of Maroussi available from Amazon as their first official e-book title. It features everything that can be found in the paper edition: an introduction by Will Self, the new cover by Rodrigo Corral Design, and an Afterword by James Laughlin biographer Ian S. MacNiven (also the editor of the Lawrence Durrell/Henry Miller correspondence published by ND, as well as Lawrence Durrell’s authorized biographer).
Upcoming e-book editions will include: Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust, Nathaniel Mackey’s Bass Cathedral, and Muriel Spark’s Memento Mori.
From Poet Educator Activist Cara Benson:
Looking for creative works/projects in community. Creating a line of study, here. Please send all suggestions my way (cbenson67[at]yahoo[dot]com). Examples include: Kaia Sand’s Portland poetry walks, Claudia Rankine’s Provenance of Beauty, Tree Museum in the Bronx. Also, artmaking/writing with community.
Interventions.
Re-inventions.
Decorations.
Instigations.
And just plain old creation, in situ. Of situ.
Thinking social justice and sustainability. Yes, art and politics. Praxis, please.
I’m very much interested in theory and essays. Even numbers (statistics) on things like poetry reducing recidivism. Creative projects fostering neighborhood ties. Fostering concern for care of community, ecology. Cultural influence on politics. Oh, the Humanities…
[Stay tuned for results – to be shared with NewPages.]
Hardly recognizable by the cover, Boston Review has gone smaller and glossy, adding the new subtitle: Ideas Matter – guaranteeing that while the outside may change, the same quality content will remain flowing through its pages. Read more about the format change here.
An Apology for Women’s Literature: “Yes, some of us write books. Well, a lot of us have done so, and for that we’re sorry. We’re sorry for all that time we spent writing our books (which aren’t any good, we admit), when we could have been beautifying gardens, cooking exquisite dinners, and raising our offspring.”
The school-based Promising Young Writers Program was established in 1985 to stimulate and recognize student’s writing talents and to emphasize the importance of writing skills among eighth-grade students. Students who are eighth graders in the present academic school year are eligible to be nominated for the Promising Young Writers program. Students must be nominated by their teachers. Home-schooled students may submit through a cooperating school. 2011 Promising Young Writers Brochure will be available in October. Send request for brochures to pyw[at]ncte.org. (Note: only mailed to school addresses.) Entry Deadline is February 1, 2011.
Mason’s Road is an online literary magazine sponsored by Fairfield University’s MFA in Creative Writing and run by the graduate students of the program. Mason’s Road publishes fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, drama, visual art, craft essays, writing exercises, and audio works, and will focus each issue on an aspect of the writing craft. Issues are published twice a year, in July and December, during residencies at Enders Island.
Each genre section opens with a letter from the editors of that genre, each addressing some aspect of their work in the selection process – for fiction, a discussion of voice; for creative nonfiction, touching on elusive qualities; for poetry, a litany of poetic voices – raw, fresh, metaphysical, familiar; and for drama, an interest in screenplay writing with an exclusive interview with Pulitzer-Prize-winning novelist and screenwriter William Kennedy exploring “the hybrid and challenging form of the screenplay.”
Mason’s Road also includes a Radio Drama Cliff Hanger challenge in their drama section: “Your challenge – to pick up the story from this opening episode of our radio drama, or write the opening of a new radio drama. Whether the continuation of this script or a new one, it must be of true literary quality, entertaining, and provide another cliff-hanger ending…The Mason’s Road Players will produce the winning submission.”
This inaugural issue features fiction by Sandra Derrick, Laura Maylene Walter, Emily Davis Watson, Monet Moutrie, Mark Powell, Joel Kopplin; creative nonfiction by Brianna L. McPherson, Lia Purpura, Mary-Kathryn Bywaters, Michael Kortlander, Brandi Dawn Henderson; poetry by Lucas A. Gerber, Jeremy Francis Morris, Gladys L. Henderson, Jonathan Austin Peacock, Meredith Noseworthy, George Wallace, Robert Atwan, Julie E. Bloemeke, Shawnte Orion, Jason Michael MacLeod, Rhina P. Espaillat, J. Angelique LePetit, Paul Freidinger, Charlene Langfur, and Tim Hunt; artwork by Tinnetta Bell; and a conversation with Michael White on Voice/Persona.
Mason’s Road is accepting fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, drama (stage or screen), art, craft essays, and audio drama from both emerging and established writers and artists for Issue #2 until Nov. 1, 2010. The issue will focus on strong settings – pieces that evoke a particular place or time.
Mason’s Road will award a $500 prize to the best piece of creative writing published in the first two issues of the journal.
A Child’s Garden: A Story of Hope by Michael Foreman (Candlewick Press, 2009) is a beautifully written and illustrated children’s book about a young boy who nurtures a new green shoot he finds amid a garbage heap in a war-ravaged land. The vine grows to cover a fence that separates two communities – how they became that way is never told, nor is exactly where the story takes place. From the images – the landscape, the building structures (whole and crumbled), and military uniforms of the guards – it looks to be desert area – and the children are all portrayed as light-skinned.
The vine grows to cover the fence, inviting birds and butterflies and children all to play together on either side of the fence, but the military guards from the “other side” of the fence come and tear it down. It regrows from seeds spread and shoots in the ground – first on the militarized side, where a young girl nurtures it, and the guards allow her to do so. Soon, new sprouts come up on the young boy’s side of the fence, and the vines from both sides intertwine. “Let the soldiers return,” thought the boy. “Roots are deep, and seeds spread… One day the fence will disappear forever, and we will be able to walk again into the hills.”
The illustrations begin with stark grey-brown “colorless” images and progress with the growth of the vine to vividly rendered watercolor scenes. The color is not overbearing – but as the story starts from bleak, peaks, then returns to bleak – the introduction of color is a stunning in appearance, and equally stunning in its loss as the vine is ripped from the ground. Of course, just as the vine shoots reappear through the earth’s surface, so too does the color seep back onto the page, ending in a joyful burst of color: the boy’s hopeful challenge of unification.
A Child’s Garden is a poignant story for both children and adults in a world where we are inundated with messages of cultural division and derision. This book provides a central concept – a simple vine – as a way to explore this very difficult topic with young adults.
“Blinded by the Light” is a portfolio of photographs by Carlo Van de Roer and featured in Issue 25 of Salt Hill Journal. Each image is a photograph of a museum display and captures the reflection of the camera flash on the glass barrier. The image creates the illusion that the beings within the display are aware of the light as a result of its placement: wolves running through the snow-coveredforest appear to be chasing the light, a pair of bongos cautiously entering a thicket seem to be stopped, inspecting the light before progressing. A brilliant (no pun intended) concept deftly executed and worth picking up a copy of Salt Hill Journal to have your own well-produced copies of these photographs.
The Spring 2010 issue of Cream City Review features their annual literary prize winners, Haines Eason for the Beau Boudreaux Poetry Prize, Eson Kim for the David B. Saunders Prize for Creative Nonfiction, and Roger Sheffer for the A. David Schwartz Fiction Prize.
The call was issued for Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art, and Thought – “The Ancestors We Were Looking for We Have Become: International Queer Indigenous Voices” – to be edited by Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhr
The September 2010 issue of World Literature Today includes a first-ever marquee section devoted to International Short Fiction, introduced by guest editor Alan Cheuse, who is best known for his frequent book reviews on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. Authors contributing short stories include Ana Menéndez (Cuba/US), Raija Siekkinen (Finland), Nicole Lee (Malaysia), Andrei Cornea (Romania), Fatou Diome (Senegal/France), Cyrille Fleischman (France), Simon Fruelund (Denmark), Benjamin Percy (US), Amanda Michalopoulou (Greece), Alix Ohlin (Canada), and Ru Freeman (Sri Lanka), with original artwork by Edel Rodriguez on the cover and Danica Novgorodoff inside.
The Minnetonka Review Editor’s Prize generally recognizes writers who’ve not published a major book by awarding $150 to one prose and one poetry author from each issue. The awards for the Fall 2010 issue were given to Gary L. McDowell for poetry and Liz Prato for prose.
The fall 2010 issue of Prarie Schooner features a A Celebration of Hilda Raz, who has retired from UNL and from the editorship of Prairie Schooner as of August.
Raz was editor of Prairie Schooner since 1987 and the founding director of the Prairie Schooner Book Prizes in poetry and short fiction published by the University of Nebraska Press. In 1993 she was named the first Luschei Professor and Editor in the Department of English at the University of Nebraska where she has worked intensively with graduate students in the Ph.D. program. Raz, also received the 2010 Stanley W. Lindberg Award for Literary Editing. This award is presented to someone who has labored to uphold the highest literary standards in a magazine or small press.
Honoring her work and contributions to the literary community are submissions from James Engelhardt, Carole Simmons Oles, Ladette Randolph, Janet Burroway, Glenna Luschei, Mari L’Esperance, Sarah Kennedy, Biljana D. Obradovic, Kelly Grey Carlisle, Erin Flanagan, Pam Weiner, Tim Skeen, Lee Martin, Karma Larsen, Robert Pack, Nancy Welch, Floyd Skloot, R.T. Smith, Kara Candito, Kate Flaherty, Alicia Ostriker, Aaron Raz Link, Peggy Shumaker, and Maxine Kumin.
River Styx 83 features winners of the 2010 Schlafly Microfiction Contest: Christopher Maggio (“Exclamatory Statements”), Katey Schultz (“Grimshaw on the Ice”), and Jessica McCann (“Night Window”).
