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!
The author of four award-winning books and a decades-long editor and book coach/marketer, John Sibley Williams can assist with everything from individual poem to manuscript critiques; regular book coaching; 1-on-1 workshops; the creation of pitch letters, press kits, and book proposals; agent/publisher research; and more. His passion is assisting poets and writers by tailoring all strategies to their individual needs. View flyer or visit website for more information.
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Reminiscent of Downtown Abbey, this mystery takes place in 1919 on an English estate owned by Sir Thomas. The fourteen-year-old narrator is Harry, the son of Sir Thomas’s groom. When Harry finds a murdered man, he decides he must help to solve the murder and that will help him become “somebody.” This coming-of-age story as well as a murder mystery offers many surprises around Harry’s life along the way.
Readers follow Harry’s adventures in trying to solve the murder while he experiences many of the societal changes of the time—motor cars vs. horses, class distinctions, and gender roles. Expectedly, Harry is gifted with horses, but it is clear the author knows horses well too. By the end of the book, I felt I knew each of the horses and their distinct personalities, making this a great read for horse lovers.
At the front of the novel, the author provides a map of the farms and estates, as well as a cast of characters. There were times when the references to locations or characters got confusing, so I found these additions helpful.
The bumps in the road Harry encounters kept me turning the pages until it was all tied up with a satisfying ending. Could there be a sequel to find out more about Harry as an adult? I hope so!
Reviewer bio: Laureen Mathon is a retired insurance professional, avid reader, and former library trustee who looks forward to having this extra time to read and pursue new projects.
Registration Deadline: Year-round Caesura Poetry Workshop aims to support, inspire, and energize poets through affordable monthly Zoom workshops hosted by award-winning poet, editor, and teacher John Sibley Williams. All workshops include poem analysis, active group discussion, and writing prompts. Upcoming class themes include nature journaling, book marketing, poetic forms, erasure, sequence poems, monthly critique workshops and writing circles, and more. View flyer and visit website for more information.
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Have you ever considered attending a writers retreat? Gain insight on your writing, deepen your craft, make new writer friends and best of all, gift yourself with a beautiful setting to hone your voice. Writing coach and author Lynne Golodner is hosting an intimate week-long writers retreat in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia from July 24-28, 2023, and there’s only ONE SPOT LEFT. For information and to apply, visit website.
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Deadline: March 31, 2023 The 17th annual National Indie Excellence® Awards (NIEA) are open to all English language printed books available for sale, including small presses, mid-sized independent publishers, university presses, and self-published authors. NIEA is proud to be a champion of self-publishing and independent presses. Monetary awards, sponsorships, and entry rules are described in detail on our website.
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Deadline: March 15, 2023 The 10th Annual Permafrost Book Prize offers publication of a book length work of poetry, $1,000, and distribution through University of Alaska Press. Final judge: Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Deadline: March 15. Entry fee: $20. For complete guidelines, please visit our website. View full flyer.
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No reading fee! 22nd year. Submit one humor poem to Winning Writers’ 2023 contest to win $2,000 and online publication. Accepts published and unpublished work. Co-sponsored by Duotrope. Recommended by Reedsy. Judged by Jendi Reiter and Lauren Singer. Deadline: April 1. Winners announced on August 15. View website or view flyer to learn more.
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Our Lady of the Lake University offers a 100% online Master of Arts-Master of Fine Arts (MA-MFA) and Master of Arts (MA) in Literature, Creative Writing, and Social Justice. These programs prepare critically engaged and socially aware scholars, writers, educators, and professionals. This nationally unique, virtual program combines creativity with practical skills and critical knowledge, while keeping in mind the pursuit of social justice. View flyer or visit website to learn more.
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And just like that February is more than half over already. From unseasonable warm weather to bad storms, it’s a good time to stay inside editing, writing, and submitting. Let NewPages help you out with our Weekly Roundup for the week of February 17, 2023.
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A Plucked Zither by Phuong T. Vuong Red Hen Press, June 2023
A Plucked Zither by Phuong Vuong explores what happens to language and thus emotions and relationships under conditions of migration, specifically refugee migration from Vietnam and its aftermath. Crisscrossing between making a home in the US and a home in Vietnam, the speaker tries nonlinear, multilingual voice(s) that demonstrate the disparate nature of memory and the operation of other ways of knowing. Efforts to speak reflect the severing created by historical forces of war and imperialism, while speaking makes connection possible and remains tied to that very history. Vuong leans on the anti-war Vietnamese singer and songwriter, Trịnh Công Sơn, for a poetic lineage on grief, longing, and justice. Rather than being sunken with loss, the speaker(s) move with it, leaping across gaps.
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!
Sponsored by Oklahoma State University and Aquinas College and facilitated by members of NCTE’s ELATE Commission on the Study and Teaching of Young Adult Literature, the sixth annual Summit on the Research and Teaching of Young Adult Literature will be held fully online Friday, April 21, 2023. The Call for Proposals is open until February 27 and is open to Classroom Practice Sessions, Research Presentations, and Panel Presentations. Registration for the event opens on March 1, 2023. For full details, visit the YAL Summit website.
The Cloudscent Journal is a new online publication of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and art from contributors ages 12-25. With the mission “to provide the space of artistic freedom and safety for youth creatives,” The Cloudscent Journal is aptly named after “the seemingly limitless yet youthful nature of the sky,” which Founder and Editor-in-Chief Vivan Huang says has inspired their desire “to provide artistic freedom and expression of young artists in hopes to publish work that is imaginative, explorative, and transcendent of all boundaries.”
Pink Noise by Kevin Holden Nightboat Books, April 2023
Kevin Holden’s Pink Noise orbits in spaces of memory, longing, violence, solidarity, the ecological, and the mystical. Experimental in its forms and lexicon, in poems ranging widely in style and scale, it moves through layers of musical intensity as it reworks the visual space of the page to generate sensations of presence and revelation. Simultaneously lucid and syntactically disjunctive, these poems are queer and radical not only in their content but in their grammar.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
The Taco Boat by Al Ortolani NYQ Books, October 2022
Al Ortolani’s most recent collection of poems, The Taco Boat, focuses not just on the people of the American Midwest, but on the connection to the humor and pragmatism of working men and women. His poems are vignettes from the fields of Kansas, the hills of the Ozarks, and the streets of Kansas City. They are about good dogs and crazy cats. His people are family and strangers alike. Both are seen with an empathetic eye. They share an attachment to the joys and exasperations of being human, struggling to understand, to thrive. The poems in The Taco Boat step back from the day-to-day with an acceptance of the life its characters have been tossed into. The images are frequently taken from the natural world, but just as often are from the mechanic’s garage, the fast-food restaurant, the baseball diamond, the assisted living cafeteria. The poems in The Taco Boat are about the relationships people build, dismantle, and build again.
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!
For Austen fans and lovers of wise words, Jane Austen’s Little Book of Wisdom: Words on Love, Life, Society, and Literature compiled by Andrea Kirk Assaf, provides a genuine treasure trove. While “little,” this is a chonky volume: 4.25 x 5 inches and a full inch thick with 400 pages. Still, it is perfectly weighted for tossing in a bag without getting lost, and this is definitely one to take along. The book is divided into eight themed sections: Love & Longing; Friendship; Home & Society; On Being a Woman; Life, Death, and Spirituality; The Arts, Intellect, and Literature; Good Manners, Virtue, and Vice; A Philosophy of Life. Each page houses only one quote, making this the perfect “prompt” book for writing, mantra, and meditation. More than I anticipated, and much to my delight, in addition to quotes from Austen’s novels, there are also many entries culled from “her prayers, poems, and amusing, self-deprecating personal letters, most of which were addressed to her best friend and sister, Cassandra.” At the close of the volume are thirty-two blank pages for readers to pen their own favorites or reflections or ‘overheard gems,’ making this a perfect companion only in want of a pen to be complete. Assaf has curated a wonderful collection here, her other works encompassing popes and saints, precisely in line with the reverence Austen deserves.
Jane Austen’s Little Book of Wisdom by Andrea Kirk Assaf. Hampton Road Publishing, March 1, 2023.
Reviewer bio: Denise Hill is Editor of NewPages.com and reviews books she chooses based on her own personal interests.
Only and Ever This by J. A. Tyler Dzanc Books, February 2023
In J. A. Tyler’s newest novel, Only and Ever This, a mother clings to twin sons, desperate to keep them from becoming their father, a pirate forever sailing away. In this rain-soaked township, she will attempt to mummify them, piece by piece, to stop them from growing up, a hope founded in magic and immortality. Meanwhile, their father obsesses the seas with his own belief in ever-lasting life, learning too late that his heart belongs on shore.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
The February 2023 issue of Poetry includes the special feature I Hope You LIke Being Here With Me: The Works of William J. Harris with an introduction by Howard Rambsy II and a collection of twenty poems by Harris, an interview, and additional commentaries by Lauri Scheyer and Cornelius Eady. The issue also includes new works from over a dozen contemporary poets. Poetry can be read in full online for free or delivered to your doorstep by subscription.
A new year is upon us. But, as usual, what has really changed? Fear not, however – if something truly different is what you’re looking for, perhaps The Opiate, Vol. 32 can assist. For it contains audacious fiction from Camille Boulay, Ben Rosenstock, Megan Bowyer, and Ryder LeVieux, as well as piercing poetry from Susie Gharib, Steve Denehan, Rochelle Jewel Shapiro, E Kidd, Cathy Allman, Colleen Surprise Jones, Mike Wilson, Barbara Tramonte, Chiara Maxia, Mark Simpson, Ron Kolm, and Lorelei Bacht. Maybe the new year is off to a promising start after all… So what are you waiting for? Get dosed!
Lilies on the Deathbed of Étaín by Oisín Breen Downingield Press, November 2023
Music, language, and the relationship between love, loss, meaning, and identity shape this second collection from Irish poet Oisín Breen. Lilies on the Deathbed of Étaín is a collection of two of the longer-form works Breen favors alongside a series of shorter naturalistic pieces that take common subjects, from the rearing of ducklings to young lust, then subvert them by employing an atypical gaze. Of the two longer pieces, the title work, “Lilies,” infuses the ancient Irish myth, Tochmarc Etine, into a contemporary story of motherloss, aging, and sexual awakening. The second, “Ana Rua,” is an avant-garde incantation of love. Characterized by unusual and wide use of language and form, Lilies on the Deathbed of Étaín is available through Beir Bua Press.
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!
Stay True by Hua Hsu is a poignant memoir about growing up, friendship, loss, identity, and the Asian-American experience. Hsu, a New Yorker staff writer, reflects on his time as an undergrad at Berkeley and his unlikely friend Ken.
An Abercrombie-wearing frat boy, Ken’s Japanese American upbringing emboldens him while Hsu is quieted by his immigrant Tawainese childhood. For example, Ken refuses to remove his shoes upon entering the house and directly calls out a casting director by asking why there weren’t more Asian-Americans on MTV. Meanwhile, Hsu rejects anything mainstream; he opts to stay in on Friday nights instead of partying and listens to intentionally curated music. Ken lives loudly and “wanted to see himself in the world” whereas Hsu contemplates how “Ken noticed that I never really went out. More important, he noticed that I hoped to be noticed for this.” Ultimately, Ken’s foil forces Hsu to examine his identity while learning how to loosen up and experience life more fully.
When Ken is senselessly murdered, Hsu turns to writing as a means to cope with the loss of a valued friend. His mother believes Hsu and his friends “had to find a way to get on with our lives.”
Stay True is the result of years of reflection about the ways an ordinary friendship shapes our life long after the friend is gone.
Reviewer bio: Taylor Murphy is a sales manager by day and an English graduate student by night. When she’s not juggling work and school, you can find her snuggled up with her adorable pug and a good book, spending time by the sea, or catching a Boston Celtics game. Her twitter handle is @tayfran and is an amalgamation of the aforementioned things she loves most.
Salamander 55 features their 2022 Fiction Contest Winners – Hassaan Mirza and Mark Doyle – as well as fiction by Josie Tolin and Evelyn Maguire, nonfiction by Brad Wetherell, and reviews of work by Artress Bethany White, Chloe Caldwell, Derrick Austin, C.T. Salazar, and Cyrus Cassells. With an art portfolio and cover work by Ruth Marie, this new issue also features the work of over fifty poets, including Keetje Kuipers, Ana María Caballero, Chim Sher Ting, Despy Boutris, William Snyder, Brandel France de Bravo, Xochiquetzal Candelaria, Iris Jamahl Dunkle, S.D. Horvath, Daniel Meltz, Ugochukwu Damian Okpara, Jennifer Saunders, and many more.
Ghost Apples by Katharine Coles Red Hen Press, May 2023
In her ninth collection of poems, Ghost Apples, Katharine Coles interrogates and celebrates her relationship with the natural world and the various creatures who inhabit it, and in doing so asks what it means to be sentient and mortal on a fragile planet. From her own pet parrot, Henri, to the birds her husband attracts to their feeders, to the wildlife who live just outside—and regularly cross—her property on the wild edge of Salt Lake City, she uses her capacity for intense observation and meditation to think her way into other lives and possible shared futures, both good and bad.
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!
In urgent vulnerability, Heather A Warren’s debut collection, Binded, discloses their reality of living nonbinary in the rural context of Alaska – “I sew myself together / again and again.” With breasts bound by compression, these poems explore the space that binds the body into itself, stuck in unrelenting forces of binary politics and violence. Each poem is a stitching and restitching of the self—an examination of trans-survival. This is a courageous collection—an anthem of Queer resilience and a reminder of the healing powers of community care.
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!
Alejandro Zambra’s most recent novel, Chilean Poet, follows budding poet Gonzalo through his adolescence, followed by a fortuitous meeting with his first love Carla, and the family they start together with her six-year-old son Vincente.
It’s a story about poetry and poets in Chile, where it is los sueños de los niños – a child’s dream – to become a poet. It’s also a commentary on family. Gonzalo delves into the Spanish for stepfather – padastro – and is upset by the negative connotations the -astro suffix carries. Though language fails us sometimes, Gonzalo develops a relationship with Vincente that is unrestricted by dictionary definitions.
Chilean Poet is realistic and experimental: Gonzalo and Carla separate, his relationship with Vincente fades. After the separation, the narrative follows Vincente through his teenage years, combating similar issues his father had dealt with. One of his lovers becomes the protagonist, before being abandoned by the narrator upon boarding her flight home. The storytelling is erratic, despite its traditional bildungsroman form. It correlates well with lived experience; years flash by in seconds, people come and go, dreams and expectations are rarely satisfied in full.
Zambra has crafted a glorious story, full of literary references and astute observations on family and growing up. Notice the missing article in the title; the story is about the idea of being a Chilean Poet; Gonzalo and Vincente just happen to instantiate the idea for a while.
Chilean Poet by Alejandro Zambra, translated by Megan McDowell. Granta Books, Febrauary 2023.
Reviewer bio: Colm McKenna is a second-hand bookseller based in Paris. He has published and self-published an array of short stories and articles, hoping to eventually release a collection of stories. He is mainly interested in the works of John Cowper Powys, Claude Houghton and a range of Latin American writers.
The poems in Clint Margrave’s Visitor, travel to distant lands and familiar ones, through museum doors and down the aisles of grocery stores, into the pages of books and along the shared walls of an apartment complex, far out in space and up close in the inner space of love and loss, life and death. Visitor is a collection that calls on readers to let it in. Clint Margrave is the author of several books of fiction and poetry, including Lying Bastard, Salute the Wreckage, and The Early Death of Men. His work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Rattle, The Moth, Ambit, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among others.
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!
February may be one of the shortest months of the year, but it’s not light on submission opportunities. We had a lot of new calls for submissions and writing contests added recently. Granted…not all of them are February deadlines.
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Keşke by Jennifer A. Reimer Airlie Press, October 2022
Wistful memory, future longing, and nostalgia for unrealized possibilities, Jennifer Reimer’s Keşke joins the ancient and the modern to the intense lyric experience of self-discovery. Watery scenes rewrite Homeric myth with a feminist eye while verses unfold inner worlds with tangible sensuality. Experimental yet measured, Keşke is shaped by forgotten caves, ancient ruins, wave-battered ships, and the ragged angularity of the Mediterranean coast. Evoking desire for what is absent, Keşke traverses the slipping movement of time and attachment, hope and impossibility, with a clear eye and a passionate hunger for where and what we might have been.
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!
Chinchillas are amazing little creatures that have grown in popularity as household pets over the years. Touted as quiet, clean, and attractive, even I have been tempted to bring one into the family. But the added responsibility of supporting another life form stops me short, which is why I was all on board for the new young writer’s publication, Chinchilla Lit. Publishing poetry, prose, plays/scripts, and visual art by contributors ages 11-25, the site greets visitors with cuddly chinchilla portraits and an equally soothing graphic layout and design.
“The chinchilla perfectly represents the welcoming, cozy atmosphere we hope to foster in this community,” the Chinchilla Lit Editorial Team says. “When writers submit to Chinchilla Lit, they know they can trust us with their work. As young writers ourselves, we understand how intimidating the publication world can seem, especially for those who are just entering it. In creating our magazine, we aimed to become a friendly, accessible face that encouraged writers instead of scaring them.”
Throughout the Winter/Spring 2023 issue of Kaleidoscope: Exploring the Experience of Disability through Literature and the Fine Arts, unexpected truths are discovered through all genres. Sometimes the truth can be hard to swallow and in other cases, revelations are surprisingly sweet. The featured essay, “Awakening” by Jane Gabriel, recounts the events of a beautiful, sunny, summer day when she picks up her teenager’s phone only to discover her daughter is plotting a murder and has enlisted the help of someone online. Without warning, a fast-moving, dark storm erupts within the home, and what transpires is sure to leave readers stunned. Kaleidoscope hopes readers will enjoy the well-crafted stories, moving poetry, poignant essays, animal portraiture by Katherine Klimitas, much-needed humor, and a review of the book Being Heumann. Other contributors include Matt Flick, Fay L. Loomis, Stephanie Harper, Alpheus Williams, Sharon Hart Addy, Evelyn Arvey, Carol Zapata-Whelan, Judy Lunsford, Vesper North, Courtney B. Cook, Eric Witchey, Judith Krum, Daylyn Carrigan, Jess Pulver, Kristen Reid, Chelsea Malia Brown, Robin Knight, Hudson Plumb, Conny Borgelioen, Dawn Rachel Carrington, Hannah Sward, Kelley A Pasmanick, and Fionn Pulsifer.
Trevor Ketner’s The Wild Hunt Divinations: A Grimoire is a stunning second collection from this National Poetry Series winner. Comprised of 154 sonnets, each anagrammed line-by-line from Shakespeare’s sonnets, the book refracts these lines through the thematic lens of transness, queer desire, kink, and British paganism. The sonnets come together to form a grimoire that casts a trancelike and intense spell on the reader. Centered on love and desire in the English canon, this collection speaks to the ever-emerging and beautiful manifestations of queer love and desire. Relentless, excessive, wild, and tender, The Wild Hunt Divinations: A Grimoire sets itself to chanting from beginning to end.
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!
Jelly Bucket, the print annual of Bluegrass Writer Studio, the low-res MFA program at Eastern Kentucky University publishes creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, art, and 10-minute plays. They are committed to publishing writers from, and writing about, marginalized and under-represented communities. This special section comprises roughly 50% of the issue and is guest-edited by an established writer who is connected in some way to the community being featured. The Summer 2023 issue’s special section is Indigenous Voices and their upcoming issue will feature Nonbinary/Trans Voices. Work from Jelly Bucket has been shortlisted in the Best American anthology series, and they nominate for The Pushcart Prize and PEN America Literary Awards. First-time and emerging authors have appeared alongside Eileen Casey, Ted Kooser, Stuart Dybek, Rigoberto Gonzalez, Sonja Livingston, Frank X. Walker, and Kevin Wilson.
The Poetics of Wrongness by Rachel Zucker Wave Books, February 2023
In her first book of critical non-fiction, The Poetics of Wrongness, poet Rachel Zucker explores wrongness as a foundational orientation of opposition and provocation. Devastating in their revelations, yet hopeful in their commitment to perseverance, these lecture-essays of protest and reckoning resist the notion of being wrong as a stopping point on the road to being right, and insist on wrongness as an analytical lens and way of reading, writing, and living that might create openness, connection, humility, and engagement. Expanded from lectures presented for the Bagley Wright Lecture Series in 2016, Zucker’s deft dismantling of outdated paradigms of motherhood, aesthetics, feminism, poetics, and politics feel prescient in their urgent destabilization of post-war thinking. In her four essay-lectures (and an appendix of selected, earlier prose), Zucker calls Sharon Olds, Bernadette Mayer, Emily Dickinson, Adrienne Rich, Alice Notley, Natalie Diaz, Allen Ginsberg, Marina Abramović, and Audre Lorde—among others—into the conversation. This book marks a turning point in Zucker’s significant body of work, documenting her embrace of the multivocality of interview in her podcasting, and resisting the univocality of the lecture as a form of wrongness in and of itself.
In Dreamers Magazine Issue 13, readers will find the feature story, Rosalind Forster’s nonfiction, “Counselling in the Time of Covid: Healing from the Veranda”; the winning story of the 2023 Pen Parentis Fellowship, “After the Storm”; and the winners of the 2022 Dreamers Flash Fiction Contest: “There is Something in the Mirror,” “Your Every Breath,” and “The Last Shift.” Readers can purchase both the digital and print versions, as well as back issues on the publication’s website. Dreamers is “a heartfelt literary organization and writers retreat” near Sauble Beach, Ontario, Canada. Their magazine is published tri-annually and sent to hundreds of subscribers across North America and Europe.
THIRDOUROBOROS by Richard Kostelanetz NYQ Books, September 2022
Richard Kostelanetz says in his preface to THIRDOUROBOROS, “When I first heard the epithet afterimage as an honorific among visual artists, I recognized it as analogous to the strongest lines in strictly verbal poetry.” In his third installment of this series, Kostelanetz visually lays out words in circles. And just like the ancient symbol, allows them to devour themselves as much as they create themselves as afterimages are embedded in the reader’s mind. The two preceding books in this series are OUROBOROS and SECONDOUROBOROS, also from NYQ Books.
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Animal Afterlife by Jaya Stenquist Airlie Press, September 2022
The voices of near-extinct animals create troubled echoes in Jaya Stenquist’s debut collection, Animal Afterlife, winner of The Airlie Prize 2021. In fragmented reincarnations, these poems reach for the limits of humanity, the boundaries of species, and the laws of embodiment. Here, sensations become the mechanism for insight. With lithe lyric power, Stenquist builds a world of impossibilities, a language for the binturong, the eyeless spider, the siren of Canosa, and wild ponies of England; communications and intermingling with the human that can never be preserved, only imagined. As the Earth continues to change during its Sixth Great Extinction, Animal Afterlife creates an archive of spellbinding ghosts.
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!
River Heron Review‘s double release, Issue 6.1 and River Heron Editors’ Prize, are now live and feature their twice-yearly issue with sixteen talented poets, whose work the editors hope amaze readers, and the winner and three finalists of their recent contest. Included in issue 6.1 are Avery Gregurich, Alison Hurwitz, Lake Angela, Gary Thomas, Ann Michael, Steve Banchko, Frances Klein, Jeremy Griffin, Jane Edna Mohler, Kerstin Schulz, Lindsay Rockwell, Sharon Venezio, Gwen Hart, Violets Garcia-Mendoza, Christine Morro, and Abby Murray. River Heron is also excited to release their recent contest issue and publish the award-winning work of winner Nnadi Samuel and finalists Rebecca Brock, Christine Dengenaars, and Jen Stewart.
Lina Meruane’s novel Nervous System evokes the universal fear of illness and death on nearly every page. The story follows Ella through her struggles to finish a doctoral thesis funded entirely by her father’s savings. Her partner, El, is a forensic scientist, who is recovering from an explosion at a work site. After wishing sickness on herself – so she could concentrate solely on her thesis – Ella is suddenly overcome by an undiagnosable illness.
The story is presented in small fragments, often delving into seemingly innocuous memories, to brutal statistics about illness and the end of life on earth. These fragments match the tone of the half-formed anxious thoughts that fill the story. Death is treated as if its reality was becoming clear for the first time. There are lines that could have come from any textbook – “the heart was a muscle that could give out” – but in Nervous System, they lose their objectivity, inducing only fear. References to the ancients’ explanations of illness abound, reflecting the book’s treatment of these grim subjects; the fear and anxiety they evoke remain largely the same, despite technological advances.
Nervous System concerns itself with issues that are hard to accept, but there is solace to be found in hearing another voice confront the hard facts of life on our behalf.
Nervous System by Lina Meruane, translated by Megan McDowell. Atlantic Books, February 2022.
Reviewer Bio: Colm McKenna is a second-hand bookseller based in Paris. He has published and self-published an array of short stories and articles, hoping to eventually release a collection of stories. He is mainly interested in the works of John Cowper Powys, Claude Houghton and a range of Latin American writers.
The February 2023 issue of The Lake poetry journal is now online and features works by Michele Bombardier, William Ogden Haynes, Mary Beth Hines, Julie Allyn Johnson, Haro Lee, Juan Pablo Mobili, J. R. Solonche, Sarah White, Rodney Wood. The One Poem Review – which helps authors with new publications reach a wider audience of readers by publishing one of their poems on The Lake – features work from Clare Shaw’s Towards a General Theory of Love and Stephen Massimilla’s Frank Dark. The Lake is free and accessible to read online.
It’s About Time by Barry Wallenstein NYQ Books, February 2022
Barry Wallenstein’s poetry, from his first book in 1977 to now, addresses his awareness of time’s swift passing. The poems in It’s About Time continue this time-honored theme and its attendant thoughts and emotions. Now in his eighth decade, this theme is paramount. While time is explicitly central in the first and eighth sections, other sections speak of desire, music, current events, creatures of all sizes, and states of mind. Poems in each of the groups reflect the anxieties of our current period including references to the ongoing pandemic and quarantine, as well as overriding reflections on temporality. These poems also are full of appreciation and gratitude for life’s bounty. While avoiding the “personal” or autobiographical, Wallenstein’s emotional life is more apparent here than in his work of the past.
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Walloon Writers Review is an annual collection of short stories, poetry, and other forms of creative writing, along with nature photography inspired by the natural beauty and uniqueness of northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula. Michigan authors and photographers and those who live here seasonally, have ties to the region, or have visited celebrate the incredible experience of being here.
A Call For Submissions is posted annually, and in 2023, the Eighth Edition of the magazine will be released. Walloon Writers Review print journal is designed to share on the reading table at the cottage, on the bookshelf of the cabin, on hand at camp, and can be found on the Michigan shelves of independent bookstores throughout the state. Writers and photographers are welcome to submit their best “up north” materials; editors welcome contributors “where they are” in their craft. The publication attracts both nationally recognized contributors alongside those just getting underway. The passion for the region is clear in each accepted selection.
Happy Friday and happy February. It’s time to discover new and ongoing submission opportunities with our Weekly Roundup for the week of February 3, 2023.
It’s our first official roundup for February so that means there are quite a few new opportunities to explore.
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Publishing open access online in cycles of eight to ten weeks with short breaks between, the newly established Intrepidus Ink lives up to its name. From the Latin, intrepidus characterizes resolute fearlessness, fortitude, and endurance. Editor-in-Chief Rhonda Schlumpberger wanted to showcase “alarmingly individual characters through a distinct lens of intrepid culture, not subordinate to other themes, with words that are gutsy and characters who overcome in big and small ways. Our stories tell our tale.” To that end, the publication focuses on flash fiction 300–1,000 words and short stories of 1,500–2,500 words.
Schlumpberger’s background is its own intrepidus tale, as she shares, “I’m a Midwest farmer’s daughter who liked climbing silos to watch the sunset and later joined the Air Force and watched setting suns around the world. I completed my career in the military and worked in molecular diagnostics sales and sales leadership for eight years before abandoning my traveling ways to pursue writing.” She earned an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University (emphasis: speculative fiction, romance) and an MA in English and Creative Writing from Southern New Hampshire University, where she also studied professional editing. She was an Editor at Orion’s Belt Magazine, a Priority Editor at Flash Fiction Magazine, and an intern at Entangled Publishing. She currently reads for Space and Time Magazine.
Under Sleep’s New Moon: Rescued Poems 1970-1990 by Joseph Hutchison NYQ Books, September 2021
The road a poet travels is often littered with unrealized fragments, half-realized drafts, and unfinished poems that found their ways into a magazine but never earned their way into a book. If a poet is lucky, a few such left-behinds might be “rescued,” released into their true form thanks to abilities that have ripened over many years of practice. In Under Sleep’s New Moon, Joseph Hutchison (Colorado Poet Laureate, 2014-2019) offers a range of such poems, all rescued from twenty years of writing between 1970-1990. The poems in this new/old collection are by turns personal and public, surreal and naturalistic, musical and plain-spoken. But all explore the liminal regions we live in every day, too often unconscious of what we’re finding there. What this poet found there he has lifted into new configurations, where at last the poems can speak for themselves.
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!
Steam Ticket: A Third Coast Review Spring 2022 is the newest issue of the annual, nationally-distributed journal from the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse. Founded by the English Department in 1996, a dedicated staff of student editors and readers publish the best poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction they can get their hands on. Volume 25 features a craft talk from Joy Harjo, as well as excerpts from craft talks given by numerous writers who have visited U. Wisconsin LaCrosse over the years, such as Brian Turner, Jaki Shelton Green, John McNally, Jesse Lee Kercheval, Robert Lopez, Sam Ligon, and Max Garland. This issue also features new work by authors from six countries, including work from Ukrainian poet Dmitry Bilzniuk, and 22 U.S. States. Award-winning authors and first-time writers are published side by side.
The Kenyon Review’s Winter 2023 issue marks their return to a quarterly publication schedule and the debut of their new magazine design [Gorgeous!], with cover and logo by Janet Hansen and interior design by Sebit Min. It includes a folio of fiction guest edited by Laura van den Berg and Paul Yoon, who selected stories by Tom Comitta, Anna Hartford, Amina Kayani, hurmat kazmi, Danny Lang-Perez, and Sarp Sozdinler. Readers will also find nonfiction by Robert Finch and Diane Mehta; poetry by Megan Fernandes, William Logan, and Maria Zoccola; plus the winner of the 2022 Nonfiction Contest judged by Maggie Nelson, and so much more. The vibrant cover art is a detail of Justify by Krista Franklin, and inside the issue is a ten-page, full-color portfolio of art by Jordan Seaberry.
Swallowing Stones by Lisa St. John Kelsay Books, January 2023
Swallowing Stones is Lisa St. John’s debut book of poetry in which she explores the process of finding a space for grief and regaining joy. Free verse and formal poems collaborate with philosophy and art to tell the story of a widow’s discovery in finding her place in the world again. From “Stomping My Foot,” St. John begins, “I want to channel some of this horror into poetry.” And later, “Give me back the world / of Mexican beaches / and the two of us dancing / alone / late at night / before bed.” Poems that beckon, beg, promise, and deliver.
Lisa St. John lives in the Hudson Valley of upstate New York, where she calls the Catskill Mountains home. Her chapbook, Ponderings, was published by Finishing Line Press, and she has published her poetry in many journals and anthologies. Her poems have won several awards such as The Bermuda Triangle Prize and New Millenium Writing. Her essays and memoir excerpts have been published in magazines and nonfiction collections.
Posit: A Journal of Literature and Art issue 32 offers readers much to cozy into as the winter months settle in around us: new poetry and prose by Michael Brosnan, C Culbertson, Elisabeth Adwin Edwards, Sean Ennis, Peter Gurnis, Dennis Hinrichsen, Andrew Levy, Rahana K. Ismail, Jean Kane, and Julie Marie Wade; text + image by Francesco Levato and Laura Moriarty; and painting, collage, and ceramic sculpture by Ron Baron, Sue Havens, and Jill Moser.
In Easy Beauty: A Memoir, Chloé Cooper Jones shares that she was born with sacral agenesis, a congenital condition that affects her stature and the way she walks. While her memoir focuses on the physical pain she suffers, she is more interested in examining how others see her and how she sees herself. She travels to a variety of locations, often under the guise of doing research—as when she travels to Cambodia to explore why people visit monuments to horrific events—but really to think through her self-image, largely shaped by how others see her as different and lesser-than. Her son’s view of her complicates this search, as she doesn’t want to communicate her emotional discomfort at moving through the world to him (doctors had told her she was unable to get pregnant, so her having a child at all was not a development she expected). Throughout the work, she explores beauty and the myths that have accrued around it, whether that’s through classical art or watching Roger Federer play tennis. While her writing and travels help her develop an idea of beauty that includes her and her view of the world, ultimately her relationships help her find the beauty she already possesses.
Easy Beauty by Chloé Cooper Jones. Avid Reader Press, April 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/.
Field Guide to the Human Condition by Adrian S. Potter CW Books, November 2022
In this newest poetry collection, In Field Guide to the Human Condition, Adrian S. Potter explores how one rebuilds oneself after grief, heartbreak, and challenges. He offers poems that focus on the setbacks and struggles that have the capacity to mold a person into a different version of themselves than the one they once knew. The poems are about grappling with histories, both personal and collective. Potter uses hallmarks from modern life – pop music, discrimination, shifting identities, and toxic relationships – to construct a hall of mirrors, in which each viewpoint reflects a different possibility. Sample poems are available to read on the publisher’s website.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
The Winter 2023 issue of Months To Years marks its five-year publishing anniversary! The editors express, “We are so grateful to you and the community that has grown around Months To Years. When we began, we sought to create both a literary community and a resource for those facing grief. We hope you have found some comfort in what we’ve created.”
This issue brings readers the work of twenty-six creators, consisting of ten pieces of nonfiction, twelve poems, and four visual works. All explore both the universality and unique-to-each-person aspects of death, grief, and loss. Months To Years can be accessed in a variety of digital versions—which include an online flip book, a downloadable PDF, and a web-based experience of each creative work—all available for free. Glossy magazine hard copies can be purchased on the publication’s website via third-party vendor Blurb. A small portion of each hard copy sale helps support the magazine’s work as a nonprofit.
