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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!

Morning in a Different Place

The year is 1963. Yolanda and Fiona have already been friends for two weeks, and Yolanda is in the hospital because some thugs came looking for Fiona’s brother’s stash of drugs. The two aren’t supposed to be friends. Yolanda is black, Fiona is white. But here they are, and Fiona is helping Yolanda escape from the hospital before they release her. Yolanda wants to run away before her mother arrives, her mother who is traveling up from South Carolina, where she lives now, and who is planning to take Yolanda back to South Carolina to live with her. So the two girls sneak out of the hospital, where a distressed woman asks them to watch her dog so she can take her son to see her dying mother. And this is how their adventure begins. Continue reading “Morning in a Different Place”

At or Near the Surface

Jenny Pritchett’s characters in At or Near the Surface live lives that, on the surface, would seem comfortable, secure, normal – lives that are generally good enough. But Pritchett opens the heads and hearts of these women to find that, in one way or another, they feel unfulfilled and dissatisfied with their lives. They long, they hurt, they are hungry. Whether they find themselves cycling through an unbreakable daily routine, at the crumbling edge of an unhappy marriage, unable to appease the stalking guilt from their past, or dealing with the surreal grief of a miscarriage, each of Pritchett’s characters must decide what they will or will not do with the rest of their lives. Continue reading “At or Near the Surface”

Comfort

In this sequel to Blue, Joyce Moyer Hostetter’s award-winning tale of a young white girl’s battle with polio and her friendship with a black girl in the hospital where she recuperates, we follow Ann Fay’s struggle to accept her polio-induced disability and the knowledge that she’s different from everybody else. At the same time, her father is suffering post-war psychological trauma. He’s not the same father or husband, and Ann Fay isn’t sure how to cope with his personality change, particularly the threat of violence. Continue reading “Comfort”

Shuck

Daniel Allen Cox is brilliant with a picaresque vignette. He bobs and weaves through Shuck, throwing glimpses at the porn industry, New York City, gay sex and literary magazine submissions with steady grace, floating through the voice of Jaeven Marshall, aka the new Boy New York: Continue reading “Shuck”

ViennaTriangle

Brenda Webster’s new novel, Vienna Triangle, employs the historical context of the early psychoanalysis movement to create a mystery that explores the dark side of intellectual enlightenment. Using Freud and his inner circle as case studies, she investigates the rise of egoism and the tension of professional ambition within the group. Like most historical fiction that focuses on intellectual movements and figures, Vienna Triangle plays largely on the relationship between ideology and character that exists whenever you have someone trying to change our cultural perspective. Continue reading “ViennaTriangle”

First Execution

On the surface, First Execution by Domenico Starnone is a novel about terrorism, filled with the requisite twists and turns that are the driving force of a crime thriller. Yet, it’s also a metafictional narrative reminiscent of Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, becoming a text on the act of writing and editing, switching from protagonist to author, and back again. Continue reading “First Execution”

The Bathroom

The nameless narrator of Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s debut novel, The Bathroom, takes up residence in his bathroom and refuses to leave, while others attend to him and try in vain to coax him from the bathtub, where he cultivates the “quietude of [his] abstract life.” The premise brings to mind Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov, the 19th-Century Russian nobleman who does not get out of bed for the first 150 pages of the novel. However, while The Bathroom is no satire, neither does Toussaint weigh it down with seriousness. Continue reading “The Bathroom”

Camera

In the geology of Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s career and development as a writer, his third novel, Camera, is easily placed in the same strata as his debut, The Bathroom. However, Camera is funnier and more romantic (in the nameless narrator’s weird way). The book opens: Continue reading “Camera”

Last Night in Montreal

This novel doesn’t cross lines. It blurs them. What first seems to be a flaw on the part of the author turns out to be the intention. Last Night in Montreal subtly breaks boundaries throughout, whether through aspects of the plot or the ways in which it was written. Because of this, the words get under our skin, making us feel as if something is off, but we are still urged, through Mandel’s words, to keep reading and to push past the discomfort that looms on every page. Continue reading “Last Night in Montreal”

New Lit on the Block :: ouroboros review

Jo Hemmant and Christine Swint have begun a poetry and art journal titled ouroboros review. The magazine is currently published online using a service called Issuu, and is also available in print through a print-on-demand service called Magcloud.

Issue 2 has just been released and includes the works of Jay Arr, John Borcherding, Tammy Brewer, Iain Britton, Dustin Brookshire, Julie Buffaloe-Yoder, Kelly Cockerham, Jill Crammond Wickham, Vanessa Daou, Jennifer Delaney, Nikki Devereux, Michael Doyle, Holly Dunlap, Marchell Dyon Jefferson, Andrew Erkkila, Hunter Ewen, Liz Flint-Somerville, Rebecca Gethin, Christopher Hileman, Dick Jones, Collin Kelley, Blake Leland, Chris Major, Rachel Mallino, Michelle McGrane, Joseph Milford, Steven Nash, January O’Neil, Scott Owens, Amy Pence, Allan Peterson, Robin Reagler, Deb Scott, Carolee Sherwood, Hannah Stephenson, Paul Christian Stevens, Amy Unsworth, J Michael Wahlgren, Christian Ward, Angie Werren, Ernest Williamson III, Robert E Wood

ouroboros is now reading for the third issue. The reading period ends Sunday, May 3.

On Newspapers and Journalism

There’s been much to read on this topic, but I found this article in The Nation especially informative for its historical perspective – all the way back to the founding fathers – and including the pre-internet decisions/legislation which actually began this downward spiral. Also included are suggestions for change, which is what I have found lacking in most other editorials and articles on the topic. Check it out:

The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers
By John Nichols & Robert W. McChesney
The Nation (April 6, 2009 ed.)
March 18, 2009

Awards :: Sami Rohr

Sana Krasikov, author of the short story collection One More Year, has won the $100,000 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature for emerging writers of Jewish literature. “The characters who populate Krasikov’s stories are mostly women–some are new to America; some still live in the former Soviet Union, in Georgia or Russia; and some have returned to Russia to find a country they barely recognize and people they no longer understand. Mothers leave children behind; children abandon their parents. Almost all of them look to love to repair their lives, and when love isn’t really there, they attempt to make do with relationships that substitute for love.”

Dalia Sofer, author of The Septembers of Shiraz, won the $25,000 Sami Rohr Prize Choice Award.

The Sami Rohr Prize is the largest monetary prize for Jewish literature, as well as one of the largest literary prizes globally, with fiction and nonfiction considered in alternating years.

Writer Beware Prevails

From the SFWA re: the work of Writer Beware (a site highly recommended by NewPages!):

Retaliatory lawsuit against Writer Beware staff dismissed
March 26, 2009

CHESTERTOWN, Md. — A Massachusetts Superior Court judge has dismissed a lawsuit against Ann Crispin and Victoria Strauss, the principal operators of the Writer Beware website, filed by a purported literary agent.

Writer Beware is a publishing industry watchdog group sponsored by Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) which “shines a light into the dark corners of the shadow-world of literary scams, schemes and pitfalls.”

The suit, initiated by Robert Fletcher and his company, the Literary Agency Group, alleged defamation, loss of business and emotional distress while making claims Fletcher had lost $25,000 per month due to warnings about his business practices posted by Crispin and Strauss.

The suit was dismissed with prejudice March 18 by the Massachusetts Superior Court due to Fletcher’s failure to respond to discovery or otherwise prosecute the lawsuit. Crispin and Strauss, through counsel, intend to file a motion against Fletcher and the Literary Agency Group, Inc., seeking recovery of their legal fees incurred in defending what they believe to be a frivolous lawsuit.

The case dates to February 2008, when Fletcher and his company filed for a temporary restraining order pending a preliminary injunction against Crispin and Strauss in Suffolk County Superior Court in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. During a subsequent hearing Feb. 19, the temporary restraining order was dismissed for improper service (Strauss wasn’t served until 42 minutes after the time of the hearing, and Crispin was not served at all), but the supporting complaint was allowed to proceed.

Currently, Fletcher and his companies remain the subjects of an active investigation by the Florida Attorney General’s Office.

“I’’m very pleased that the case was dismissed. Knowing how hard those involved with Writer Beware work – and how important the work they do is to writers, both within SFWA and outside of it – it’s very good news, indeed,” said SFWA President Russell Davis. “Writer Beware is one of the most important and valuable services SFWA provides, and knowing that this frivolous case was dismissed, and that Mr. Fletcher is now the subject of an investigation in Florida only validates the work done by Ann Crispin and Victoria Strauss.”

Crispin and Strauss have volunteered countless hours of their time to advising, educating and warning aspiring and established authors about dubious, questionable and outright criminal business practices on the fringes of the publishing industry. They maintain the Writer Beware website (writerbeware.com) and are major contributors to Writer Beware Blogs! (accrispin.blogspot.com).

Film :: Birmingham Shout Film Fest CFS

The 2009 Birmingham SHOUT Gay + Lesbian Film Festival has announced its Call For Entries for feature-length narratives, documentaries and short film entries. Now in its 4th year, the festival has expanded to include a juried competition! Narrative features, documentary features, and short films will compete in their respective categories for the coveted Best Film and Audience Choice awards.

REGULAR DEADLINE: March 30, 2009

LATE DEADLINE: April 7, 2009

Writer’s Travel Scholarship

From Jonathan Stray’s blog:

The Fifth Annual Equivocality Writer’s Travel Scholarship

This is is a short-form writing contest where the winner gets a round-trip ticket to anywhere in the world. Really.

Naturally, I do see a lot of travel writing submissions, but I’d like to reiterate that this is not about travel writing: it’s about writers traveling. Anything is fair game, as long as it’s prose under 10,000 words. Fiction, non-fiction, memoir, porn, whatever… just make it a good read.

“Why do you do this?” is a frequently-asked-question. So I will repeat (say it with me this time):

I think travel is good. I think writing is good. I think it is important that writers travel.

Applications are open from now until midnight April 30th, 2009. The winner will be announced May 15th.

Sentence Book Award Winner

Sentence has announced Catherine Sasanov the winner of the inaugural Sentence Book Award. Her winning poetry collection Had Slaves will be out in 2009.

The semi-finalists for the Sentence Book Awards are:

WoO, by Renee Angle
Let Me Open You a Swan, by Deborah Bogen
Backwards Rapture, by Cindy Carlson
They Say This is How Death Came Into the World, by Paul Dickey
I am going to clone myself then kill the clone and eat it, by Sam Pink
Post Moxie, by Julia Story
The finalists are:

Some Odd Afternoon, by Sally Ashton
All of Us, by Elisabeth Frost
The Clem System, by Andrew Neuendorf
Dear Editor, by Amy Newman
Aqueduct, by Leanne Tonkin
The Infinite War, by Tom Whalen

MM Images Sought

Daily Immediacy is an online exhibition of mobile media images: “A diary is a daily record of events and experiences. Because of the accessibility and instantaneous nature of camera phones, people are turning into spontaneous photojournalists. They are becoming more aware of their surroundings and more apt to capture aspects of everyday life. From the mundane to the spectacular, images are being inconspicuously captured and transmitted through the wireless infrastructure. These versatile images are an immediate document of daily life and have a unique aesthetic because of their lo-fi/low-resolution quality.”

You are invited to participate in this new online gallery. Please submit your daily mobile images to [email protected]. You can email them directly from your phone as a multimedia message (mms) or email them as jpegs. Selected images will be featured weekly on this site.

ALL image submissions can be viewed on Flickr.

Poetry Outloud

Check out the website for Poetry Out Loud: National Recitation Contest,an event created by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation. The site includes a daily poet feature with bio and poems, as well as a Best Performances video along with teacher’s guide for classroom use and score sheets for students to be the judge. This year, award-winning actress Tyne Daly, Prairie Home Companion‘s Garrison Keillor, and poet Luis Rodriguez, among others, will judge the fourth annual Poetry Out Loud National Finals on April 28, 2009, in Washington, DC.

PEN’s Online Translation Slam

Inspired by live translation slams that proved to be audience favorites at the Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival, and again at PEN World Voices, PEN’s online Translation Slam aims to showcase the art of translation by juxtaposing in a public forum two “competing” translations of a single work.

For the inaugural installment, they asked translators to test their linguistic mettle on 暮色, a poem by Chinese writer Xi Chuan.

At the live slams, audience members were invited to discuss the choices made by each of the translators and the resulting shifts of emphasis in the translated text. Readers of the online slam are encouraged to participate in the discussion by leaving comments on the site. PEN encourages you to cheer for your favorite translation, compare the two, talk about the poem.

MQR Names New Editor

Jonathan Freedman, University of Michigan Professor of English and American Culture, has been named editor of Michigan Quarterly Review, the University of Michigan’s flagship scholarly and literary journal. Professor Freedman holds a B.A. from Northwestern and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University, where he taught before coming to Michigan. He has also taught at Caltech, Oxford University, and the Bread Loaf School of English. He is the author of three books: Professions of Taste (1991), The Temple of Culture (2001), and Klezmer America (2007), and has edited numerous other volumes, including, with Sara Blair, Jewish in America, originally a special issue of MQR. In addition to his previous work with MQR, Freedman was a founding editor of the Yale Journal of Criticism and a member of its editorial collective.

MQR is a journal of the humanities, publishing essays, interviews, memoirs, fiction, poetry, and book reviews. Since 1977 MQR has been edited by University of Michigan Professor of English Laurence Goldstein, whose acute literary sensibilities and critical discernment have made the magazine an important venue for new creative work, and whose broad interests have encouraged its interdisciplinary scope.

He instituted the practice of devoting one issue a year to the exploration across disciplines of some topic of special interest, which has ranged from 1979’s “The Moon Landing and Its Aftermath” and 1980-81’s “The Automobile and American Culture” to the recent volumes on “Vietnam: Beyond the Frame,” The Documentary Imagination,” and “China.” In the last two decades MQR has published work by Margaret Atwood, Robert Coles, Carol Gilligan, Maxine Hong Kingston, Barry Lopez, Czeslaw Milosz, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Richard Rorty, Eric J. Sundquist, John Updike, William Julius Wilson, and other authorities in their fields, as well as some of the finest contemporary fiction and poetry. Work appearing in MQR is often selected for inclusion in anthologies such as the annual Pushcart Prize, Best American Essays, and Best American Poetry.

Professor Goldstein will complete his editorship with the Spring 2009 issue of MQR.

Dueling Austen Scholars

From The Observer, Sunday 15 March 2009, by Vanessa Thorpe, arts and media correspondent:

Oxford academic and Austen authority Professor Kathryn Sutherland is claiming that a new book by award-winning biographer Claire Harman has copied her own radical ideas about the novelist, pulled together over 10 years of research and published by her in 2005…According to Sutherland, the two former friends met in her home shortly after the publication of her own book, Jane Austen’s Textual Lives, from Aeschylus to Bollywood, in 2005. She says she let Harman read the book and was distressed to learn later that her friend was working on a popular version of its theories…Nick Davies, Harman’s editor at pub

New Lit on the Block :: Ozone Park

Ozone Park is a biannual online journal (also available PDF) of new writing publishing Fiction, Poetry, Creative Nonfiction, Plays and Translation from emerging and established writers. Ozone Park is edited and designed by graduate students in the Queens College MFA program in Creative Writing and Translation. Ozone Park accepts online submissions from October 15th through June 15th.

Contributors to the first issue include: Oscar Bermeo, Donna Brook, Robert Calero, Christie Casher, Cyrus Cassells, Eric Darton, Mary Christine Delea, Deborah Di Bari, Judy Gerbin, Robert Hershon, Ry Kincaid, Cathy McArthur, Lynne Martens, Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, Michael Morical, Mihaela Moscaliuc, Rena J. Mosteirin, Susan O’Doherty, Lisa Romeo, Thaddeus Rutkowski, and Diane Shakar.

Annual Prairie Schooner Writing Prizes

Prairie Schooner, the quarterly literary magazine published at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for 83 years has given eighteen writing prizes for work published in its 2008 volume. Thanks to generous supporters, total prize money awarded was $8,500, with the highest individual prize worth $1,500. (Read more about the writers on the PS Blog.)

The Lawrence Foundation Award of $1,000 was won by Paul Eggers for the story “Won’t You Stay?” from the Winter issue.

The $1,500 Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award was won by Marilyn Chin for her “Fables” published in the Summer issue.

Paula Peterson won the Virginia Faulkner Award for Excellence in Writing of $1,000 for her story “Shelter” from the Spring issue.

Bradford Tice is awarded the Edward Stanley Award of $1,000 for his three poems from the Winter issue.

The Bernice Slote Award of $500 for the best work by a beginning writer was won by James Crews for his four poems published in the Fall issue.

The Annual Prairie Schooner Strousse Award of $500 goes to Christianne Balk for her poems from the Fall issue.

The Jane Geske Award of $250 is awarded to Adrienne Su for three poems from the Summer issue.

Nicholas Rinaldi wins the Hugh J. Luke Award of $250 for his story, “An Insanity, a Madness, a Furor,” from the Summer issue.

There were ten winners of the Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Awards of $250 each. These awards are made possible through the generosity of Glenna Luschei.

Mitch Wieland for his story, “Swan’s Home,” in the Fall issue
Allison Amend for her story, “Dominion Over Every Erring Thing,” in the Summer issue
Colette Sartor for her short story, “Lamb,” in the Spring issue
Maggie Anderson for her poem, “Black Overcoat,” in the Summer issue
Ander Monson for five poems in the Spring issue
Valerie Sayers, for her story, “Age of Infidelity,” in the Summer issue
Todd Boss for three poems in the Spring issue
Asako Serizawa for her story, “Luna,” in the Summer issue
Annie Boutelle for her poem, “Hypothesis,” in the Fall issue
Erinn Batykefer for her seven poems in the Fall issue.

NewPages Updates :: Literary Magazines :: March 2009

The following have recently been added to NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines:

Twelve Stories – fiction
nanomajority – literature, art
shaking like a mountain – creative non-fiction, fiction, poetry
Fogged Clarity – fiction, poetry, essay, art, music
Stone’s Throw Magazine– poetry, fiction, nonfiction, art
Zoland Poetry – poetry
The Meadow – poetry, fiction, screenplay, nonfiction, artwork, graphic design, comics, photography

ReLit on the Block :: New CollAge

In 1964, Professor A. McA. Miller founded New CollAge magazine, housed on the New College of Florida campus, and welcomed “submissions of poetry from anyone, anywhere.” When Professor Miller retired in 2005, so did New CollAge.

Today, a group of New College undergraduates plunge headfirst into the literary conversation to resurrect a magazine and discover – to steal a line from Mark Strand – “the blaze of promise everywhere.”

The reborn New CollAge magazine is seeking your poetry submissions for a late spring printing and a spiffy new website! Deadline April 15

Independents :: Survival and Rescue

Hirsh Sawhney is not only hopeful for the survival of independent publishing in these trying times, he’s practical in his understanding of just how independents may be the ones to save literature: “Could literary culture really be breathing its last? Should readers and writers be running for cover? Of course not. But what, then, will save literature from economic disaster? Simple: independent publishing. Yes, independents – the ones who struggle to sell enough books to make payroll – will ensure that engaging, challenging books continue to be produced and consumed. It’s they who’ll safeguard literature through the dark economic days ahead.” [read the rest here]

Poems About Radio

Local public radio station wants to feature poems about radio experiences of any kind and/or fundraising to be read by area poets during the final day of pledge drive, April 4, in the afternoon. Station streams on internet so you can hear your poem. If you have anything, please mail to [mme642-at-yahoo.com] WMUK (Kalamazoo, Michigan) is the station. Humor good. Sentiment good. No cussin’. (Elizabeth Kerlikowske)

Awards :: Glimmer Train Family Matters – 2009

Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their January Family Matters competition. This quarterly competition is open to all writers for stories about family, with a word count range of 500-12,000.

First place: Jeremiah Chamberlin of Ann Arbor, MI, wins $1200 for “What We Can”. His story will be published in the Summer 2010 issue of Glimmer Train Stories, out in May 2010.

Second place: Yuval Zalkow of Portland, OR, wins $500 for “God and Buses”. His story will also be published in an upcoming issue of Glimmer Train Stories, increasing his prize to $700.

Third place: Adam Rensch of Bronxville, NY, wins $300 for “Everything in Its Right Place”. His story will also be published in an upcoming issue of Glimmer Train Stories, increasing his prize to $700.

A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found here.

Also: Fiction Open competition (deadline soon approaching! March 31)

Man Booker Prize Judge’s List Announced

The Man Booker International Prize
14 authors from 12 countries make it on to Judges’ List

The Man Booker International Prize differs from the annual Man Booker Prize for Fiction in that it highlights one writer’s continued creativity, development and overall contribution to fiction on the world stage. It is awarded every two years.

The winner of this year’s Man Booker International Prize will be announced in May 2009, and the winner will be presented with their award at a ceremony in Dublin on 25 June 2009. Seven of the authors are writers in translation. They are:

Peter Carey (Australia)
Evan S. Connell (USA)
Mahasweta Devi (India)
E.L. Doctorow (USA)
James Kelman (UK)
Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)
Arnošt Lustig (Czechoslovakia)
Alice Munro (Canada)
V.S. Naipaul (Trinidad/India)
Joyce Carol Oates (USA)
Antonio Tabucchi (Italy)
Ngugi Wa Thiong’O (Kenya)
Dubravka Ugresic (Croatia)
Ludmila Ulitskaya (Russia)

CW Residency :: Lyon College

Creative Writing Residency
Lyon College, Batesville, Arkansas, a highly selective four-year liberal arts college, seeks a distinguished writer of fiction for its 4th biennial Visiting Fellowship in Creative Writing, a semester-long residency scheduled during the autumn 2009 semester. April 1, 2009 deadline.

Zissner on On Writing Well

“Visions and Revisions” follows the 35-year history of multiple editions of William Zissner’s best-selling book On Writing Well. From its inception (“”You should write a book about how to write,’ my wife said in June of 1974 when I was complaining to her, as I often did, that I had run out of things to write about.”), Zissner discusses each of the subsequent editions and their changes:

“By 1990, however, America had changed considerably. On Writing Well was a child of the 1970s. I knew that its principles were still valid. But what about its references and its tone? Would it strike a new generation of readers as an old man’s book? I took a closer look and saw that my 14-year-old product was slowly slipping out of touch. Without a major overhaul it would wither and die.

“Most obviously, much of the nonfiction I now admired was written by women. Yet my excerpted passages were still mostly by men—the graybeards who had been models for my generation of journalists, now gray-bearded ourselves. The language was also lopsidedly male; he and him were still the prevailing pronouns, though women readers had chided me for referring to the reader as he, pointing out that they did much of the nation’s reading and resented having to picture themselves as men….”

Read the rest on American Scholar.

Just When You Thought Canada Was Better

Literary publishers protest cuts
Malahat Review among smaller periodicals facing loss of funding
By Randy Boswell, Canwest News Service
March 11, 2009

“The new Canada Periodical Fund, announced last month by Heritage Minister James Moore and still being designed by government officials, would deny certain federal grants to most publications with annual sales of fewer than 5,000 copies. ‘The government is improving the way it does business to meet the changing needs of Canadians,’ Moore said when the program was announced in February. ‘The way in which support to Canadian periodicals is delivered will be reformed to maximize value for money and to seize opportunities in today’s global, technological environment.'” [read the rest here]

New Literary Magazine Reviews

Visit NewPages Literary Magazine Reviews to read thoughtful commentaries on the following print publications and online publications – 20×20 :: Amarillo Bay :: Antigonish Review :: Boston Review :: Hudson Review :: Isotope :: Main Street Rag :: MiPOesias :: Ninth Letter :: The Normal School :: One Story :: Underground Voices :: Waccamaw :: Washington Square.

For information on having your publication considered for review, please visit the NewPages FAQ page.

CFP :: Split this Rock Poetry Festival

“Split This Rock Poetry Festival 2010 invites poets, writers, and activists to Washington, DC, for poetry, community building, and creative transformation as our country continues to grapple with a crippling economic crisis and other social and environmental ills. The festival will feature readings, workshops, panel discussions, youth programming, film, activism – opportunities to imagine a way forward, hone our activist skills, and celebrate the many ways that poetry can act as an agent for social change. We invite you to send proposals for panel discussions, group readings, roundtable discussions, workshops, and small-scale performances on a range of topics at the intersection of poetry and social change. Possibilities are endless. Challenge us.” The deadline is May 30, 2009.

2009 Poetry Contest Deadline Extended to March 23!
The deadline for the 2nd annual Split This Rock poetry contest, to be judged by poet and National Book Award finalist Patricia Smith, has been extended.

Pitch Black Makes Top Ten

I am happy to see Pitch Black by Youme Landowne and Anthony Horton (Cinco Puntos Press) made the 2009 Top Ten Graphic Novels for Teens named by the Young Adult Library Services Association. Landowne and Horton’s work, which at the start of reading I thought might be “too dark” for teens, is indeed dark, but in a realistically compelling manner of story, character, and style. It’s the kind of graphic story teens can read and be informed and educated in a way that they’ll feel is subversive to their 8-4 schoolwork, while being completely acceptable to adults who want teens to know “the truths” that exist in life.

Others on the top ten list (and visit the site for even more complete lists):

Life Sucks
Jessica Abel, Gabriel Soria and Warren Pleece
First Second, 2008

Sand Chronicles, v. 1 – 3
Hinako Ashihara
VIZ, 2008

Atomic Robo: Atomic Robo and the Fightin’ Scientists of Tesladyne
Brian Clevinger and Steve Wegener
Red Five Comics.

TakeReal, v. 1 & 2
hiko Inoue
VIZ

Uzumaki, v.1.
Junki Ito
VIZ

Japan Ai: A Tall Girl’s Adventures in Japan
Aimee Major Steinberger
Go Comi

Skim
Mariko Tamaki and Jilliam Tamaki
Groundwood Books

Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite
Gerard Wayand Gabriel Ba
Dark Horse

Cairo
G. Willow Wilson and M. K. Perker
Vertigo

Detroit Poet Kim Hunter

Eating from the skull of the fallen angel
Music, myth and the spiritual in the poetry of Kim Hunter
Detroit Metro Times
By Norene Smith

Detroiter Kim Hunter’s new collection of poems, edge of the time zone, is a winding road lined with imagery, political thought and courageous dreaming. That beautiful stretch of imagination parallels a real-life journey. As much as it represents his own growth as a poet and an advocate of poetry, it charts changes and realities he’s observed in the world around him, especially in the realms of politics, media and race.

“I’m obsessed with the interplay between capitalism and media,” he says. “And the dehumanization that can happen when those two things cross.”

Read the rest.

The Antigonish Review – Autumn 2008

This issue includes the Great Blue Heron poetry and Sheldon Currie fiction first, second, and third prize contest winners, poems from an additional 20 poets, three short stories, short book reviews, a review essay, and what is classified as an “article,” an “academic” style analysis of poet Anne Compton’s award-winning poetry book Processional. Solid and satisfying reading from cover to cover. Continue reading “The Antigonish Review – Autumn 2008”

Boston Review – January/February 2009

Boston Review essays tend to follow a somewhat predictable pattern, and I couldn’t be happier about it. A serious, well-informed, literate, critical mind challenges the conventional wisdom about a controversial and highly politicized subject or issue of undeniable significance and urgency. Here are the two opposing views we commonly hear and debate, the writer begins, but there is something wrong with each of them, and I want to offer an alternative, he concludes. Subjects covered in the current issue of the Review include the “post-racial” in the Obama era (Stephen Ansolabehere and Charles Stewart III); free market regulation (Dean Baker, Robert Pollin); tax cuts (Jeff Madrick); Guantanamo (David Cole); Afghanistan (Barnett R. Rubin); Iran (Abbas Milani); and new (old?) philosophical approaches to God (Alex Byrne). Continue reading “Boston Review – January/February 2009”

The Hudson Review – Winter 2009

The “translation issue” begins with a tribute to the late Hayden Carruth (1921-2008) by poet David Mason, which concludes: “I wish to remember . . . an understanding of what is centrally important in life, what is truly marginal, and how poetry unites us more than it divides us, how language touches what we love, and how the love remains.” A beautiful tribute to a fine American poet, but also a fitting introduction for considering works in translation. Continue reading “The Hudson Review – Winter 2009”

Isotope – Fall/Winter 2008

Isotope (literary nature and science writing) has made some attractive changes. Perfect binding, expanded contents, recycled paper (for nature and science writing!), pleasing coated paper that really shows off the artwork. This issue’s art portfolio (and the cover art, too) is stunning: impeccable reproductions of paintings by Deborah Banerjee, “The Edge of Sight: The JPL Paintings.” JPL stands for Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California where the painter lives. The tension between Banerjee’s still life oils and the concept and imagined vision of propulsion, the spacecrafts’ raison d’être, is both restrained and explosive. The relationship of spacecraft to space (background) is fascinating and entirely unique from painting to painting. The painter’s explanation/description of what she has attempted to do is as beautifully composed, and as interesting, as her paintings. Continue reading “Isotope – Fall/Winter 2008”

Main Street Rag – Winter 2008/2009

I sit down to read and suddenly I have company. There are a few dozen people I’ve never met in my living room telling me how they do their work (interviews with Cathy Smith Bowers and Robert Boisvert); who they are; what they think; and entertaining me with stories. I even know where they are from (which is listed with their names at the top of the page). Their voices are casual, direct, unadorned. Some angry, some wistful, some yearning. It’s almost as if I can feel them tugging at my elbow for my attention. Continue reading “Main Street Rag – Winter 2008/2009”

MiPOesias – July 2008

A fun, quirky look. Editor and publisher Didi Menendez calls this issue “a carousel of poetry, short stories, and recipes.” The carousel image is an extension of the magazine’s cover, a full-bleed photograph of a woman clearly enjoying her ride on a beautiful merry-go-round. MiPOesias is as colorful and bold as a carousel with its full-color half and full page author photos; blue, teal, lime, evergreen, pink, brown, yellow, and tan page borders; large sans serif fonts and reverse type; and recipes, complete with color photos of pasta, muffins, Cuban meatloaf, and breaded catfish. If there is a relationship between the poems and stories and the recipes, it escapes me, although the recipes were provided by writers (though not by writers whose work appears in this issue of the magazine). Continue reading “MiPOesias – July 2008”

Ninth Letter – Fall/Winter 2009

Ninth Letter is part literary journal, part coffee-table book – the kind of coffee-table book you go back to again and again, admiring the gorgeous artwork and spectacularly designed pages each time with the same sense of awe, surprise, and delight. You’re proud to display it in your living room, you want to show it to everyone who visits. You find something new you’ve never seen before every time you look at it. It’s big, heavy, substantial, hard to hold, and harder to put down. Continue reading “Ninth Letter – Fall/Winter 2009”

The Normal School – 2008

Only one issue into its run, The Normal School has an enviable hit/miss ratio to go along with the ambition behind the magazine’s creation. The fiction, poetry and nonfiction between the covers inspire the reader to question “their own motives, sense of place, or quantum mechanics and the boundaries of art.” In more plebian terms: you’ll laugh, you’ll cry and you’ll remember the pieces long after you’re done. Continue reading “The Normal School – 2008”