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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!

New Book :: Lifeline to a Soul

Lifeline to a Soul by John K. McLaughlin book cover image

Lifeline to a Soul by John McLauglin
Lifeline Education Connection, April 2023

Lifeline to a Soul: The Life-Changing Perspective I Gained While Teaching Entrepreneurship to Prisoners by John McLaughlin was released this month in celebration of Second Chance Month: “On March 31, 2023, President Joseph R. Biden proclaimed April 2023 as Second Chance Month and called for observance of the month with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities.” For John McLaughlin, this was the perfect time to share his experiences with others. After devoting half of his lifetime transforming his start-up business into a multi-million dollar industry leader, McLaughlin set out in a new direction: to teach what he had learned to others. Due to a lack of teaching experience, his only job offer was to teach entrepreneurship to prisoners at a minimum-security camp in North Carolina. McLaughlin gradually built an effective program until a scandal involving prison officials blindsides his progress and threatens to bring his teaching career to an unceremonious end. Lifeline to a Soul takes readers inside the fence and chronicles the victories and challenges one man faced as a first-time teacher in the strange world of prison life. McLaughlin also works with Lifeline Education Connection, which offers low-cost classes to the public, allowing individuals “who have faced obstacles in their life achieve their aspirations in the areas of personal finance and entrepreneurship,” hosted by Founder Tavares James.

New Book :: Queering the Border

Queering the Border: Essays by Emma Pérez book cover image

Queering the Border: Essays by Emma Pérez
Arte Público Press, November 2022

The essays in Queering the Border by Emma Pérez reveal the influence of Gloria Anzaldúa’s scholarship; recount the controversy surrounding artist Alma López’s digital print, “Our Lady,” in which the Virgin of Guadalupe appears in a provocative bikini; and evaluate interviews with 25 LGBTQ people in the El Paso/Ciudad Juárez area to expose life on the border as a queer of color. This collection also includes short fiction and an epistolary love poem to the first feminist of the Americas, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, or in this case, Sor Juanx. Bringing together the work of a noted Chicanx writer and academic, this volume reinforces the body of work by LGBTQ people of color dealing with racism and sexism, conquest and colonization, power and privilege, all with a particular emphasis on the Southwest borderlands.

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!

New Book :: A Suit of Paper Feathers

A Suit of Paper Feathers by Nate Duke book cover image

A Suit of Paper Feathers by Nate Duke
Parlor Press, January 2023

In A Suit of Paper Feathers, Nate Duke writes about Americana singers like Lucinda Williams and Tom T. Hall. Several poems interrogate his experiences working on farms in rural Oregon with WWOOF. The ‘farm’ poems in the manuscript are complemented by some poems about working for his mother’s environmental mitigation company in Arkansas. Duke engages these experiences through an ecocritical lens, which he also turns to broader cultural referents such as installation artist Christo.

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!

Magazine Stand :: The Writing Disorder – Spring 2023

The Writing Disorder Spring 2023 cover image

Flowers are blooming and so is the Spring 2023 issue of The Writing Disorder, budding new fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and art for all to enjoy! This newest online issue includes FICTION: “A Letter from the Batcave” by Charles Joseph Albert, “The Best Detective There Was” by Leila Alliu, “A Cat in a Box for Mom” by Joe Cappello, “The Best We Can” by William Cass, “Selling Out the Nation” by Stephanie Daich, “The Sad Princess” by Cara Diaconoff, “Dream On” by CL Glanzing, and “The Scarecrow Cross” by Erik Priedkalns; POETRY by Lorelei Bacht, John Cullen, Shae Krispinsky, James McKee, Sloan Porter, and David Sapp; and NONFICTION: “Zone Valves” by Graeme Hunter, “Father’s Day” by Kate E. Lore, and “What the F*ck is Going on?” by Arlene Rosales; and the art of Courtney Parsons.

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

Where to Submit Roundup: April 7, 2023

55 Submission Opportunities including calls for submissions, writing contests, and book prizes.

Where to Submit Roundup 2023

The first week of April is officially behind us… and also the first quarter of 2023 is done. So hard to believe. Don’t let your submission goals pass you by this year. Take a look at our Where to Submit Roundup for the first week of April 2023 to help keep your goals going strong. And take note that several contests extended their March 31 and April 1 deadlines!

Don’t forget that 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.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: April 7, 2023”

Poem :: Rosa Parks by Nikki Giovanni

Rosa Parks
BY NIKKI GIOVANNI
Poetry Magazine

This is for the Pullman Porters who organized when people said
they couldn’t. And carried the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago
Defender to the Black Americans in the South so they would
know they were not alone. This is for the Pullman Porters who
helped Thurgood Marshall go south and come back north to fight
the fight that resulted in Brown v. Board of Education because
even though Kansas is west and even though Topeka is the birth-
place of Gwendolyn Brooks, who wrote the powerful “The
Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock,” it was the
Pullman Porters who whispered to the traveling men both
the Blues Men and the “Race” Men so that they both would
know what was going on. . . [Read the rest at Poetry Magazine.]

New Book :: Ephemera

Ephemera by Sierra DeMulder book cover image

Ephemera by Sierra DeMulder
Button Poetry, June 2023

In Sierra DeMulder’s melancholic yet beautifully hopeful poetry collection, Ephemera, she writes with the wisdom of someone who has learned to love and lose. Each poem reads delicately and elegantly, just fleeting memories on the page. Split into four sections detailing intimate experiences from the painful deaths of family members who clung to life, to passionate love she feels for her own mortal wife, DeMulder plays a sweet song by pulling on her own well-worn heartstrings. DeMulder ruminates on what will come and what will fade. Despite this impermanent nature, you can feel the tender warmth DeMulder holds for her family in every line, even the moments she wishes she could forget.

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!

New Book :: The Orchestra of Wind Chimes

The Orchestra of Wind Chimes by Geoffrey Jacques book cover image

The Orchestra of Wind Chimes by Geoffrey Jacques
Wayne State University Press, March 2023

This powerful collection of poems draws on American and African-American experimental lyric traditions, pushing language and form to their limits. Geoffrey Jacques’s poetry inspires deep thought, taking up themes of music, psychology, and literature. This work embodies the potential of poetry to forge new connections between aesthetic expression and the often onerous facts of human existence. Poems such as “Still Life” and “Detour Ahead” produce a juxtaposition of inspired poetic form and rich, complex realities of life, addressing topics of joy and love, race, class, politics, and the aesthetics of the everyday. With a contemporary and sophisticated tenor, Jacques lends his uniquely moving and provocative perspective to advancing discourse in these critical topics.

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!

Magazine Stand :: The Lake – April 2023

The Lake online magazine of poetry and reviews logo image

The April 2023 issue of The Lake online poetry magazine is now live and features work by Angela Arnold, John Bartlett, Clive Donovan, Tim Dwyer, Tom Kelly, Phil Kirby, Mercedes Lawry, Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco, Charles Rammelkamp, and Shane Schick. Charles Rammelkamp reviews Deborah Landau’s Skeletons, and Dorothy Wall reviews Stewart Florsheim’s Amusing the Angels. “One Poem Reviews,” in which one poem is featured from a poet’s newly published collection, this month spotlights Angela Arnold, John Bartlett, and Karen Poppy.

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: Her Scant State

Her Scant State by Barbara Tomash book cover image

Her Scant State by Barbara Tomash
Apogee Press, March 2023

In Her Scant State, Barbara Tomash’s brilliant reworking of Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady, the continuity and causality of the nineteenth-century novel are transformed into the isolate flecks of twenty-first-century poetry. Through excision and refashioning, Tomash has uncovered the troubling, luminous strands within the text, and provided a revelatory and radical new experience of her protagonist, Isabel. If the novelist built a world that is stable, the poet unveils a world that is fluid or broken or shifting and shimmering, in which the language has its own story to tell. When that language is set free in the poem, placed in dialogue with silence, what do we find in Her Scant State? America, men, marriage, money: the familiar detritus of our capitalism. And also a breathtaking lyricism, alive inside every word of this powerful poem.

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!

NewPages Guide to Indie Bookstores Updated

NewPages has been hard at work contacting bookstores and collecting updates last month. We have also been hard at work discovering new stores to recommend to you. So this is a great chance to check out our Guide to Indie Bookstores for your state to find an indie bookseller near you!

And if we’re missing your favorite store, do let us know!

We have also added a new search bar to help aid in your search of a bookstore to feed your reading addiction alongside our City filter.

If you are an author looking to promote your book, NewPages does offer mailing lists for indie bookstores (US & Canada), Barnes & Noble bookstores (a new edition!), and public and academic libraries. Learn more about our mailing lists here.

Book Review :: I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai

I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai book cover image

Guest Post by Kevin Brown

On the surface, I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai looks like another addition to the true crime genre, an appearance reinforced by the fact that Bodie Kane runs a podcast devoted to true crime. She returns to the boarding school she attended as a student to teach classes on podcasting and film studies, only for one of her students to work on a podcast investigating the death of one of Bodie’s classmates. However, Makkai goes well beyond this genre—subverting it at times, in fact—to explore the patriarchal structures women have to navigate on a daily basis and the real risks to their safety that come up again and again. Makkai has written a novel that raises questions about masculinity, internet culture, true crime, feminism, privilege, and justice, but she doesn’t provide any answers, as good novels are wont to do. The impressive part is that she has done all of that while telling a compelling story with characters readers care about. Readers will want to turn the page, not to find out about one more murder or microaggression, but to see what happens to Bodie and her classmates and students. Hopefully, they’ll see the world differently by the time they find out what has happened, as well.

I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai. Viking, February 2023.

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/.

Magazine Stand :: Jewish Fiction .net – Issue 33

Jewish Fiction .net issue 33 logo image

The newest issue of Jewish Fiction .net just came out – a brilliant, 7-language issue, where, for the first time, more than half the stories in it are translations. In Issue 33, you’ll find 12 terrific stories originally written in Danish, Polish, Russian, Yiddish, Hebrew, English, and – for the first time – Albanian! This brings to 20 the number of languages from which Jewish Fiction .net has published translations. The Albanian story, along with the Polish one in this issue, will appear in the anthology of stories from Jewish Fiction .net that is coming out this fall, entitled 18: Jewish Stories Translated from 18 Languages. This exciting book is only months away! Issue 33 also includes an Agnon story that has never before been published in English, and, in honor of the upcoming holiday, a Passover story. All this is available to read for free and online!

New Book :: A Short History of Anger

A Short History of Anger by Joy Manesiotis book cover image

A Short History of Anger by Joy Manesiotis
Parlor Press, February 2023

Both a book-length poetic hybrid and a live performance, A Short History of Anger takes as its source material the Destruction of Smyrna, the Turkish army’s genocide of Smyrna’s Greek citizens in 1922, and the resulting population exchange. Used as a blueprint for state-sponsored ethnic cleansing and forced migration, The Destruction of Smyrna is an event about which the world has remained strangely silent. Governed by its musical, ritualistic construction and lament structure, A Short History of Anger attempts to excavate the legacy of genocide and displacement that has resonated from The Destruction. It is meant to be deeply affective, rather than narrative, and move in the way historical occurrences pass into the present and live through subsequent generations. A Short History of Anger combines prose and poetry, essay and verse, persona and chorus; built with many voices, layers and fractures, it employs a modern-day Greek Chorus.

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!

New Lit on the Block :: Copihue Poetry

Copihue Poetry volume 1 cover image

Copihue Poetry is a new, open-access online journal of poetry and poetry in translation published twice each year in the winter and summer. “One of our main goals,” Poetry and Translation Editor David M. Brunson says, “is to be accessible to poets and translators at all stages of their careers. In our first issue, we published some very established names alongside those who had their first publication in our pages.”

This is in keeping with the publication’s mission statement, “We seek to publish exciting new work that moves beyond the imaginary borders of language, state, and culture. As a multilingual journal, we present poetry written in English, poetry written in Spanish, and poetry translated into English alongside the original language. It is our goal to highlight a mixture of poets and translators, both emerging and established. We are especially interested in writers who have been underrecognized or previously unrecognized in English translation, as well as writers of identities historically marginalized by the literary world.”

“While the poetry we publish doesn’t have to be explicitly international in its focus,” Brunson says, “we are interested in work that examines place, language, and culture, especially work that exists in between structures both real and imaginary.”

Continue reading “New Lit on the Block :: Copihue Poetry”

New Book :: Staying Right Here

Staying Right Here by Usman Hameedi book cover image

Staying Right Here by Usman Hameedi
Button Poetry, April 2023

Usman Hameedi’s debut collection, Staying Right Here, is a journey in finding home. Hameedi invites readers to bear witness to vignettes of joy and hardship as he navigates finding his place in America. From an ode to Bodegas, an autobiography of his eyebrows, and elegies for lost friends, Hameedi’s thematic metaphors for family, wellness, and American biases weave a literary tapestry. Reading Usman’s work is like drinking a warm chai while watching the sunset in Brooklyn, or coming home to an aromatic Biryani. Hameedi writes with an unmistakably unique voice that is not afraid of who he is.

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!

Magazine Stand :: Southern Humanities Review – 56.1

Southern Humanities Review 56.1 cover image

This bright, new Spring 2023 issue (56.1) of Southern Humanities Review features nonfiction by W.P. Osborn and Marian Ryan; fiction by Coda Canepa, Elizabeth Gonzalez James, Mehdi M. Kashani, and Helena Olufsen; poetry by Sharon Ackerman, Hussain Ahmed, Celia Bland, Tara Shea Burke, Brittany Cavallaro, Lawrence Di Stefano, Timothy Donnelly, Kristina Erny, Jade Hidle, Haesong Kwon, Alafia Nicole Sessions, and Maria Zoccola. Cover art is a video still from “Inorganic Plains,” 2021 by Auburn University professor Sara Gevurtz. Some content can be read online and individual copies, as well as subscriptions, are available on the Southern Humanities Review website.

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: The Pearl Diver of Irunmani

The Pearl Diver of Irunmani by Marc Vincenz book cover image

The Pearl Diver of Irunmani by Marc Vincenz
White Pine Press,

Marc Vincenz’s The Pearl Diver of Irunmani charts the paths of consciousness on an aquatic journey into the heart of mind and matter. What does it mean to be alive? What does it mean to be alive preparing for death? What animates the soul moments before death? In this collection, Marc Vincenz trans-navigates the oceans of consciousness that contain all the elements of life and death. . . and rebirth. In a language that is spare and ghostly, the narrator embarks upon finding that pearl of knowledge embedded in the heart of meaning.

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!

New Book :: Between Twilight

Between Twilight by Connie Post book cover image

Between Twilight by Connie Post
NYQ Books, February 2023

In Between Twilight, Post delves deep into the difficult journeys of everyday life and intersects those with the difficult maps of the past. There are “atrocities in the body” and many ways a person can falter, fall or rise from “the hue of an unseen self.” Post explores the necessary truths, the ones we can no longer hide, the ones we’ve held on to, for too long. In these poems, the reader will more fully understand Faulkner’s “the past is never the past in never past, it’s not even dead.” The poet infuses elements of evolution, illness, astronomy, humanity, internal travels inside our bodies, and travels back in time “before shadows understood their first for light.” Post’s poems will seep into our subconscious and help us see how a room can be “dark and iridescent all at once.”

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!

Book Review :: The Longest Race by Kara Goucher

The Longest Race by Kara Goucher book cover image

Guest Post by Kevin Brown

In this memoir, The Longest Race, Kara Goucher, with Mary Pilson, tells the story of how she became a world-class runner, focusing on her time at the Nike Oregon Project. Goucher talks about the mental abuse she endured as a woman, especially the intense scrutiny of her weight and appearance, but also her pregnancy. She was in the program during the doping scandals of the early part of the century, which later led her to testify against her former coach and teammates. She endured sexual harassment and assault on several occasions. Throughout all of this mental and sexual abuse, she was trying to be one of the best runners in America and the world. Goucher’s memoir reveals the realities of what has happened at the top of various sports throughout the past few decades, especially the ways people in power have abused and ignored women. As Pilson writes in the introduction, “If you’ve ever bought a shirt or pair of shoes with a swoosh, you need to know this story. If you’ve ever tuned in to watch an Olympic final, a World Series, a Super Bowl, or any other professional sporting event, you need to know this story.” Even non-runners need to know this story.

The Longest Race by Kara Goucher. Gallery Books, March 2023.

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/.

Magazine Stand :: New England Review – 44.1

New England Review 44.1 cover image

The newest print edition of New England Review (44.1) is on its way to subscribers with prose by Shaan Sachdev, Rebecca van Laer, Herb Harris, Gurmeet Singh, and Suzanne Jackson & Nathaniel Nesmith, and poetry by C. Dale Young, Megan J. Arlett, and El Williams III, translations from Italian, German, Spanish, and Hungarian, artwork by Suzanne Jackson, and much more. To get your own delivered to your door, visit the NER website for subscription information.

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: Before After

Before After by Owen McLeod book cover image

Before After by Owen McLeod
Saturnalia Books, March 2023

From action figures to alcoholism, mental illness to mortality, devotion to divorce, Before After interrogates yet celebrates the paradoxes of living in a world both beautiful and brutal—a world, according to these poems, in which Jesus texts random emojis from the cross, people suddenly sprout wings, human hearts are replaced by Platonic machines, and caskets are shrunk down to serve as symbolic trinkets. Along this journey through the real and surreal, the works of great poets—Hopkins, Plath, Lowell, and more—are lovingly subverted in the search for novel meanings that match this world. Written by a self-taught and award-winning poet, Before After challenges, with wit and compassion, our distinctions between thinking and feeling, sacred and profane, wellness and madness, before and after.

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!

Where to Submit Roundup: March 31, 2023

55+ Submission Opportunities including calls for submissions, writing contests, and book prizes.

Where to Submit Roundup 2023

It’s officially the last of March in 2023. With the end of a month and the start of a new one, that means old opportunities are gone and fresh ones have arrived. There are tons of March 31 deadlines below, so let’s dive into our weekly roundup of submission opportunities before it’s too late.

Oh, and don’t forget today is the last day to claim a 20% off discount on annual subscriptions to our weekly newsletter. This makes it just $40. Consider subscribing today to get first access to submission opportunities and upcoming events, the majority before they go live on our site.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: March 31, 2023”

Magazine Stand :: The First Line – Spring 2023

The First Line Spring 2023 cover image

With this Spring 2023 issue, The First Line begins its twenty-fifth year (!) with stories from Keith Casto, Dana Hufe, Philip Umbrino, Sayward MacInnis, Morag Allan Campbell, Heather McCoubrey, Ralph Hornbeck, and Christie Cochrell, all starting with the same first line: I am the second Mrs. Roberts. The spring issue also includes an essay from Sandy Kelman about the first line of Marc Hamer’s Seed to Dust: Life, Nature, and a Country Garden.

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: Far From New York State

Far From New York State by Matthew Johnson book cover image

Far From New York State by Matthew Johnson
NYQ Books, March 2023

Matthew Johnson’s second poetry volume constructs a space where the rural communities of Upstate, the suburban living of the Lower Hudson Valley, and the metropolitan landscapes of the City are woven together in a mosaic snapshot. A collection of poems where the historical and cultural traditions of New York State meet, the reader is acquainted not only with seminal figures across the cultural channels of literature, music, and sports, such as Washington Irving, Paul Robeson, and the ’86 Mets, but to the author himself. Tender, playful, and meditative, Johnson presents stories that he has lived, and shares others that have been passed down through familial storytelling around the kitchen table and cookout barbecue pit.

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!

New Publication Launch :: Short Reads

Short Reads is a brand-new publication that launches today! Four former Creation Nonfiction employees have banded together to create a free weekly publication delivered every Wednesday morning to subscriber mailboxes. The editors believe in “building a community of writers and readers who believe in the power of true stories to share ideas and experiences, foster empathy, and help make sense of what can happen in a life.” Short Reads will feature original and reprinted flash nonfiction, and while currently not open for submissions (stay tuned!), early contributors include Jaswinder Bolina, Brian Broome, Beth Ann Fennelly, Beth Kephart, Patrick Madden, Deesha Philyaw, and others. Visit their website to sign up today!

New Book :: Whatever’s Forbidden the Wise

Whatever's Forbidden the Wise by Anthony Madrid book cover image

Whatever’s Forbidden the Wise by Anthony Madrid
Canarium Books, April 2023

In Anthony Madrid’s fourth book, Whatever’s Forbidden the Wise, the poet appraises this world “full of ancient things whose shapes and colors have changed,” as his singular, unforgettable and voice resonates in ghazals, rubai, ditties, and “gnomic stanzas.” A polymath and iconoclast, Madrid knows the names of the stars and turns their light into astonishing music.

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!

Magazine Stand :: The Sunlight Press March 2023

The Sunlight Press logo

The Sunlight Press is a nonprofit, digital literary magazine that publishes new works on Mondays, Wednesdays, and the occasional Friday.

Work featured during the month of March 2023 includes essays by Caleb Coy and Brett Ann Stanciu; poetry by Denise Alden and Murray Silverstein; fiction by Emma Burnett and Rebecca Field; and photography by Wadzanai Nhongo.

The Sunlight Press will be accepting submissions to their 4th annual no-fee Flash Fiction Contest from April 3 through May 1.

Magazine Stand :: The Shore – Issue 17

The Shore Issue 17cover image

The Shore Issue 17 ushers in the spring with fresh poetry blooming into the world by Jennie E Owen, Pamilerin Jacob, Milica Mijatović, Nike Onwu, Frank Graziano, Samantha DeFlitch, Divyasri Krishnan, Michael Quattrone, Kelly R Samuels, Farai Chaka, Melissa Strilecki, KG Newman, Susannah Lawrence, Melanie McCabe, Ellen Zhang, Crystal Cox, Maggie L Wang, Ben Groner III, Ryleigh Wann, Savannah Cooper, Prosper C Ìféányí, Jill Khoury, Lily Greenberg, Luke Johnson, Jane Newkirk, Jessica Goodfellow, Nicholas Ritter, Jen Karetnick, Christopher Blackman, Laura Grace Weldon, Lindsay Clark, Alex Gurtis, Jill Kitchen, Taylor J Johnson, Letitia Jiju, Meg Kelleher, William G Gillespie, Kai Pretto, Karen Elizabeth Sharpe, John Barr, Arvinder Kaur Johri, Alston Tyer and Vincent Frontero. The issue is also awash with art by Ruby Miller & Kimberly Turner.

New Lit on the Block :: The Thalweg

The Thalweg issue 3 cover image

The Thalweg. The name comes from the geological term for “the deepest part of a canyon, the primary navigable channel of a waterway, a boundary between two formations where the current is the strongest.” The editors of this annual publication of prose, short essays, poetry, stories, and visual art felt that this term “was a beautiful metaphor for the work we hope to publish, hoping that The Thalweg can be a space to share strange and beautiful things, as a way of contemplating our normative ideas of nature.”

The Thalweg’s masthead speaks to experiences in both literature and nature. Founding Editor and Communications Director Seneca Kristjonsdottir works as a guide on the Salmon and Snake rivers in Idaho and in Arizona’s Grand Canyon. She has lived in a variety of landscapes including Colorado, Idaho, and California, and studied ecology and bee husbandry at Goddard College.

Continue reading “New Lit on the Block :: The Thalweg”

Book Review :: The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty

The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty book cover image

Guest Post by Kevin Brown

Tess Gunty’s debut novel, The Rabbit Hutch, is so weird and wild, with characters that can strike readers as so unlikable, I’m worried people won’t stick with it, which they definitely should, if for no other reason than her astonishing comparisons. Gunty’s title refers to a public housing unit where several of the main characters live, but it also refers to people whom society has put in a small cage, specifically people society has damaged in some way. For example, Blandine (originally Tiffany) has grown up in the foster care system and ends up living with three boys who have come up in similar circumstances, all of whom suffer from a lack of meaningful relationships. Moses and his mother—a woman who became famous as a child star on a TV sitcom—also have no real relationship, leaving Moses adrift as an adult, taking petty vengeance on those who hurt him. The novel sounds dark, and it is, overall, but not in a gratuitous manner. Instead, Gunty spends most of the book setting up the darkness—not just the characters’ immediate conditions, but also the realities of climate change and urban development—only to reveal a select few moments of light, just enough to remind readers of what is still good in the world and what can continue to be good, if only they work to make it so.

The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty. Knopf, August 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/.

New Book :: The Day Every Day Is

The Day Every Day Is by Lee Upton book cover image

The Day Every Day Is by Lee Upton
Saturnalia Books, March 2023

Whether crisp and understated or capacious and kinetic, the poems in Lee Upton’s seventh collection are lyrically dexterous and reverberant. Shrewd, formally ambitious, excavating cultural myths and contradictions, these poems allow the ordinary and the supernatural to inhabit one another. The poems are often attentive to suffering: torture as it persists through centuries, the extinction of species, and the agonies of illness, grief, and the blasting of innocence are meditated upon. At the same time, in this book of mysteries, the cultivation of the redemptive energy of wit, in favor of the sensual and tender, performs as a means to resist violence.

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!

New Book :: The Fight Journal by John Evans

The Fight Journal by John W. Evans book cover image

The Fight Journal by John W. Evans
Rattle Poetry, March 2023

Rattle Poetry Chapbook Prize Winner, The Fight Journal by John W. Evans is a heartsick elegy for a failed marriage. Written in couplets that mirror the back-and-forth of two parties alternately warring with each other and struggling to hold a family together, Evans explores the depths of longing, bitterness, resignation, and hope that humanize the struggle to live and parent during and after divorce. As much a story of resolve as it is vulnerability, The Fight Journal is a bittersweet account of the complexities of connection, the power of sympathy, and the many forms that love takes in lives that continue. This chapbook currently comes free with all spring-issue subscriptions to Rattle poetry magazine. Subscribers receive four issues of Rattle and four chapbooks for $25. See their website for more information.

New Book :: Gathering Sunlight

Gathering Sunlight by Silvia Scheibli & Patty Dickson Pieczka book cover image

Gathering Sunlight by Silvia Scheibli & Patty Dickson Pieczka
The Bitter Oleander Press, March 2023

Two extraordinary North American poets have come together in this shared book of poetry that exemplifies the depth to which the natural world and our place in it is perceived. Whether it’s Silvia Scheibli’s ability to connect with a Latin American culture that has been so influential on her own work, or Patty Dickson Pieczka’s wanderings through the dream-like reality of her ever-deepening world, these are all poems from poets who have not only earned their words but lived them as well.

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!

New Book :: pH of Au

pH of Au by Vanessa Couto Johnson book cover image

pH of Au by Vanessa Couto Johnson
Parlor Press, January 2023

Through chemistry, alchemy, citizenship, and social connections, the speaker of pH of Au navigates location and displacement, physical and otherwise. A Brazilian, a Texan, a granddaughter, a periodically long-distance partner—through her various identities, some properties of gold manifest.

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!

Book Review :: The Mare by Seth Christian Martel

The Mare by Seth Christian Martel book cover image

The Mare by Seth Christian Martel is a graphic novel that takes readers on a paranormal adventure with Indigo, a post-senior-year teen whose next steps are uncertain due to her rocky home life. As with any good YA story, Indigo has a best friend who is both a sidekick and a guide. Kasia is the steady rock with a summer internship and plans to go to medical school, a foil to Indigo’s widowed and now divorced alcoholic father whose need for caretaking causes Indigo to lose her job. All of these could be contributors to Indigo’s strange nightmares in which she is possessed by some ethereal being. Concern for Indigo’s health due to lack of sleep leads the two teens to explore remedies for her nightmares, or a “Mare” as they learn from a book – “the spirit of someone wronged that saps its victim’s energy at night.”

The images throughout are black and white with graywash and bold outlines that add a sense of 3-D. Blue enters as highlights in Indigo’s hair and as she transitions into her sleep-induced possessions. The full blue hue wash with white electric scribbles creates the eerie effect of paranormal embodiment. The pacing drives readers through several well-connected layers of development: teen summers, angst over outfits, indie band concerts, and crushes, but also the mystery of The Mare and Indigo’s finally coming to solve it.

My only criticism is that I wished the story was longer and more developed. There were details left unexplored that would have helped connect readers more to the main characters and repulsed us from others. The psychopathology related to The Mare is present but also underdeveloped, especially for as serious a topic as it is in our society.

This could also certainly leave room for a sequel or series. There were enough dropped clues and lesser-developed content to make The Mare a solid premier to connect with subsequent storylines, and Indigo is endearing enough to create a following.

The Mare by Seth Christian Martel. graphic mundi, March 2023.

Reviewer bio: Denise Hill is Editor of NewPages.com and reviews books she chooses based on her own personal interests.

New Books :: The Exhausted Dream

The Exhausted Dream by Joshua Edwards book cover image

The Exhausted Dream by Joshua Edwards
Marfa Books, March 2023

Also known as A Monthly Account of the Year Leading Up to the End of the World, by AGONISTES, Prophet and Fulfiller, this is Joshua Edwards’ longish poem in iambic pentameter about Love, Television, Philosophy, Prophecy, and the transience of Worlds. It’s also about the swiftness of iambic time, as the reader’s experience of the book’s nominal subjects is secondary to their experience of time as structured in this way. Sitcoms, French restaurants, favorite museums, incense, Atlas, and Caspar David Friedrich are all grains of sand in this small, though finely shaped hourglass.

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!

New Book :: Failures of the Poets

Failures of the Poet by Anthony Robinson book cover image

Failures of the Poets by Anthony Robinson
Canarium Books, April 2023

After more than 20 years of publishing poems in magazines and chapbook, Anthony Robinson has brought together an incredible collection for his long-awaited first full-length book, Failures of the Poets. Full of beauty, heartbreak, humor, pain, absurdity, sorrow, friendship, and love, as well as bridges, family, lakes, God, feathers, and food, this is a book brimming over with thinking and with things, as Robinson’s intense attention collides with the world. “All winter we waited / For the sun and now he’s here but will / He make it through another year?”

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!

Magazine Stand :: The Kenyon Review – Spring 2023

The Kenyon Review Spring 2023 cover image

The Spring 2023 issue of The Kenyon Review includes a folio of literature in translation guest edited by award-winning translators Jennifer Croft, Anton Hur, and Jeremy Tiang. The issue also includes poetry by Kwame Dawes, Timothy Donnelly, K. Iver, and Danusha Lameris; fiction by Sam J. Miller, Michael Tod Powers, J. T. Sutlive, and Lindsay Turner; nonfiction by A. J. Bermudez; and the winner of the 2022 Short Fiction Contest, judged by Karen Russell. The cover art is by Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum.

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: Exceeds Us

Exceeds Us by Leah Poole Osowski book cover image

Exceeds Us by Leah Poole Osowski
Satrunalia Books, March 2023

Taking its name from a line in Rilke’s second Duino Elegy, “For our own heart always exceeds us,” at its core, this is a book about new love and underlying illness. A lyric pursuit of our existence among the natural world, these poems keep in mind that existence is transient. They straddle reality lines, often stepping over into dream spaces or pushing against a linear world. But they are solidly of this world, its ground and various bodies of water, where a boy can become a field and a girl can drown in the rivers of her own body. At once intimate—“I would know you in someone else’s life, someone else’s storm cellar”—and expansive—“We rape the landscape / we can see, start with what covers the light”—Osowski is a poet of language, of notice, and of inquiry. Rilke writes, “Wasn’t love and departure placed so gently on shoulders that it seemed to be made of a different substance than in our world?” Exceeds Us is interested in that substance and the notion that our lives are not singular. These poems exceed the pair at their center, they exceed the one life we’re granted, and they are not bound to the laws of our earth. “Prove how weather is not a god and I’ll believe in you.”

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!

Where to Submit Roundup: March 24, 2023

Where to Submit Roundup 2023

Spring has officially sprung and while weather has been a little less winter-like in our neck of the woods, it’s still not the warmest. If you’re weather forecast is just as fickle as ours, here are some great submission opportunities to use as an excuse to stay put and indoors this weekend.

Next Friday is the deadline to enjoy a 20% off discount on annual subscriptions to our weekly newsletter. This makes it just $40. Consider subscribing today to get first access to submission opportunities and upcoming events, the majority before they go live on our site.

Let’s dive into our weekly roundup of submission opportunities without further ado.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: March 24, 2023”

New & Noted Lit & Alt Mags – March 2023

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!

American Poetry Review, March/April 2023
Arkansas Review, December 2022
The Baltimore Review, Winter 2023
Bennington Review, 11
Blink-Ink, 51
Bomb, Spring 2023
Booth, 18
Catamaran, Spring 2023
Chinese Literature and Thought Today, 53.3-4
Colorado Review, Spring 2023
Communities, Spring 2023
Copper Nickel, Spring 2023
Cutleaf, 3.4 & 3.5
ecotone, Fall/Winter 2022
EVENT, 51.3
Feminist Studies, 48.3
Gay & Lesbian Review, March/April 2023
Georgia Review, Spring 2023
The Gettysburg Review, 34.2

Continue reading “New & Noted Lit & Alt Mags – March 2023”

Book Review :: Saving Time by Jenny Odell

Saving Time by Jenny Odell book cover image

Guest Post by Kevin Brown

Fittingly, I read Saving Time by Jenny Odell during my Spring Break and during the shift to Daylight Savings Time. The latter exemplifies Odell’s critique of time as a construct, especially one that portrays time as a series of boxes to fill. She sees such approaches to time as problematic in two ways: 1) they help create the idea that there is an inexorable future coming; 2) they reinforce systems of control. Odell draws from a variety of subjects—apocalyptic language, incarceration, productivity, climate change, and geography, for example—to reveal how those in power use time to reinforce hierarchies, often based on race, ability, or gender, but especially socioeconomics. Odell questions the assumptions embedded in such systems, such as whether one person’s hour is actually equal to another person’s, an idea that seems to be logically true, but that Odell shows to be nothing but another construct. During my Spring Break, Odell might be pleased to see, I’m not using my time productively, at least not as typical Western societies see productivity. Instead, I’m engaging in creativity for its own sake, including writing this review. Her book isn’t self-help or time management, so readers shouldn’t expect tips for living, but they should expect Odell to help them see time—and, thus, the world—differently.

Saving Time by Jenny Odell. Random House, March 2023.

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/.

New Book :: The London Revolution 1640-1643

The London Revolution 1640-1643 by Michael Sturza book cover image

The London Revolution 1640-1643 by Michael Sturza
The Mad Duck Coalition, March 2022

The London Revolution 1640–1643: Class Struggles in 17th Century England chronicles England’s history through the revolution in 1641–1642, which toppled the feudal political system, and its aftermath. It explores how the growing capitalist economy fundamentally conflicted with decaying feudal society, causing tensions and dislocations that affected all social classes in the early modern period. In contrast with most other works, this book posits that the fundamental driving force of the revolution was the militant Puritan movement supported by the class of petty-bourgeois artisan craftworkers, instead of the moderate gentry in the House of Commons. This is a peer-reviewed publication.

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!

New Book :: General Release from the Beginning of the World

General Release from the Beginning of the World by Donna Spruijt-Metz book cover image

General Release from the Beginning of the World by Donna Spruijt-Metz
Parlor Press, January 2023

In General Release from the Beginning of the World, Donna Spruijt-Metz attempts to reconcile the death of the father, the lies of the mother, a hidden half-sister, and the love for a daughter – with the impossible desire to banish the past from the present. She examines shifting relationships with the holy, referred to in the book only as ‘YOU.’ She asks: “Do YOU hear / a whisper / in YOUR // constant night / -and then listen?” She breaks her own heart to touch yours.

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!

Magazine Stand :: Tint Journal – Spring 2023

Tint Journal Spring 2023 cover image

The online literary magazine Tint Journal Spring 2023 includes 25 new stories and poems by authors from 23 different countries who choose to write in English as their non-native, or second language. Tint Journal‘s issues are not themed, yet – reflecting the state of the current world – most texts in this particular issue deal with relationships, to place, history, teachers, students, relatives, neighbors and with the relationship to oneself. Tint also just relaunched their entire website. Now, visitors can find an interactive worldmap on the landing page, showing the geographical backgrounds of almost 200 authors that the magazine has assembled to date.

Authors in Tint Spring ’23: Eniola Abdulroqeeb Arówólò, Isabella Cruz Pantoja, Italo Ferrante, Jee Ann Marie E. Guibone, Douglas Jern, Yael Kastel, Caroline Kuba, Daniel Loebl, Gershom Gerneth Mabaquiao, Ethel Maqeda, Jael Montellano, George Nevgodovskyy, Adriana Oniță, Mandira Pattnaik, Karolina Pawlik, Ranjiet, Neha Rayamajhi, Philipp Scheiber, Oindri Sengupta, Leyla Shukurova, Bianca Skrinyar, Leah Soeiro Nentis, Wambui Waldhauser, J.M. Wong, Huina Zheng.

Each text contribution was published with a visual artwork by international artists (curated by Vanesa Erjavec) and a short interview with the author. Many of the texts can also be heard as audio clips, read by the writers themselves.

Artists in Tint Spring ’23: Angelica Atzin Garcia, Suresh Babu, Lena Baloch, Leslie Benigni, Jack Bordnick, Michaela Caskova, Nathan Cho, Kate Choi, Suzette Dushi, Vanesa Erjavec, Gianluca Fascetto, Karen Fitzgerald, Diamante Lavendar, Serge Lecomte, Anton Mandych, Adriano Marinazzo, Megan Markham, Alexiane Montpetit, Adriana Oniță, Linnea Ryshke, Virgil Suárez, Claire Townsend, Rebecca Unz.

Magazine Stand :: EVENT- 51.3

Event 51.3 cover image

EVENT’s latest Notes on Writing Issue, 51.3, features notes by Aimee Wall, Sydney Hegele, and Brandi Bird, along with nearly 70 pages of poetry by 23 poets, fiction by Ben Lof, and M.C. Schmidt, and reviews by Sadie Graham, gillian harding-russell, and Michael Lake. Cover art Hello Yellow! by Catherine Babault, 2022.

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: Joy Ride

Joy Ride by Kristen Jokinen book cover image

Joy Ride by Kristen Jokinen
Hawthorne Books, May 2023

Explorers Kristen and Ville Jokinen met and fell in love while scuba diving in Vietnam. Ville then left his native Finland to join Kristen in Oregon and together they embarked on a life-changing two-year cycling adventure covering 18,000 miles from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to Ushuaia, Argentina. Despite never having cycled further than around the block, they persevered unrelenting, punishing rain and wind, altitude sickness, dog attacks, bike accidents, and countless flat tires to cycle between the ends of the earth. Kristen and Ville believe that kindness connects us to our shared humanity. They held babies, attended quinceañeras, drank pulque, played soccer, and visited schools. People in Mexico, Central America, and South America invited them into their hearts and homes, allowed them to camp in their fields and farms, and acted as personal tour guides. Kristen and Ville are love on wheels, and who doesn’t need a little more love in their lives?

New Lit on the Block :: Arboreal Literary Magazine

Arboreal Literary Magazine No 01 cover image

Readers and writers will be delighted to discover Arboreal Literary Magazine, a quarterly of poetry, short fiction, creative nonfiction, and visual art available for purchase in print or free online. For the purchase of the print, or “Dead Tree” edition, the publication is donating a portion of the proceeds to One Tree Planted, a nonprofit that promises to plant one new tree for every dollar raised.

The name, from the Latin arboreus, the editors explain, “initially didn’t have any deeper meaning beyond the lyrical beauty of the word and its relevance to our names (Crabtree and Woods). Yet, after long discussion, we realized it is the perfect title for a publication committed to long-term artistic growth and a ‘big picture’ mission to help our readers, our contributors, and ourselves ‘see the forest for the trees.’”

Continue reading “New Lit on the Block :: Arboreal Literary Magazine”

Magazine Stand :: Room – 46.1

Room literary magazine issue 46.1 cover image

The newest issue of Room (46.1) is themed “Around the Table: Asian Voices.” Editor Michelle Ha introduces the volume, “When we first sent out the call for this issue, we invited Asians from all different backgrounds, ethnicities, and communities to come sit around the table with us and share their stories. The name ‘Around the Table’ came from the realisation that for a lot of Asian cultures many moments, activities, and memories are done and made around the table. In this sense, I wanted this issue to feel similar to that. The dream for 46.1 has always been about supporting and uplifting the voices of Asian writers and artists, as well as to curate this issue as a platform to showcase the vastness that is the Asian collective. As the issue progressed, it became more than that. ‘Around the Table’ became a home to these incredibly wonderful, joyful, and vulnerable pieces that share individual experiences for the collective.”

The cover art, Protect Asian Lives by Paige Jung, “was created in response to the eight lives – six of them belonging to Aisan women – that were unjustly taken on March 16, 2021, during the Atlanta spa shootings. Five portraits, of different ages and backgrounds, are depicted to put faces to the Asian diaspora and call attention to our safety that is being threatened due to racism, fetishization, and discrimination. The piece offer an ironic justaposition of joyful, bright colors with fierce and burdened expressions. It is a cry for justice and for solidarity.”