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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 :: Testament

Testament by Luke Hankins book cover image

Testament by Luke Hankins
Texas Review Press, February 2023

The poems in Testament by Luke Hankins bear witness to traumas—cultural, personal, and spiritual—as well as moments of revelatory transport. While the catalyzing tragedies and dilemmas are never out of mind, these nuanced poems maintain faith in the act of speaking as a pathway through despair and toward transformation. Hankins is the author of two poetry collections and a collection of essays. He is the founder and editor of Orison Books, a non-profit literary press focused on the life of the spirit from a broad and inclusive range of perspectives.

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 :: Sita in Exile

Sita in Exile by Rashi Rohatgi book cover image

Sita in Exile by Rashi Rohatgi
2022 Novella Prize selected by Misha Rai
Miami University Press, May 2023

When Indian American Sita moves to the Norwegian Arctic, she finds a warm welcome from Mona, a local surfer from a refugee family who sees her as someone with whom she can be herself. But Sita’s not sure how to reciprocate, for as she begins to discover impossible fruits in the forest, she grows more unsure of who she is: a happy wife, when her husband seems impatient with her inability to assimilate? A good mother, when she can’t fathom what her baby wants? A pet-killer, when she was just acting on instinct? A terrible person, for leaving behind her grieving father and her best friend Bhoomija, a brown feminist artist struggling to get by during the pandemic? Or someone even worse, as she finds herself drawn to Mona’s partner, Morten, who owns the only land on which she feels whole? When Bhoomija asks her to return home, Sita must take stock not only of the life she’s made in the far north with Mona, but also of the self she’s held back, lying in wait for forgiveness, and choose which version to make real. Drawing upon Hindu mythology, Sita in Exile is a lyrical exploration of migrant sisterhood and brown motherhood in today’s Europe.

New Book :: Dreamer: Poems in Culture

Dreamer: Poems in Culture by Alan Botsford book cover image

Dreamer: Poems in Culture by Alan Botsford
Cyberwit.net, January 2023

Dreamer: Poems in Culture, a companion volume with Possessions: Poems in American Poetry, features poems spoken in the voices of 170 contemporary cultural figures east and west, high and low, among them Lady Gaga, Clint Eastwood, Toni Morrison, Saul Williams, John Berger, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Roger Federer, Joan Baez, Bong Joon Ho, Tom Hanks, Bill Maher, Jerry Seinfeld, Bob Dylan, Dave Chappelle, Rihanna, Claire Danes, Diane Seuss, Ocean Vuong, Pico Iyer, George Clooney, Angela Carter, Wendy C. Oritz, Maggie Nelson, Cheryl Strayed, Patti Smith, Julian Assange, Barack Obama, Marilynne Robinson, Camille Paglia, Laura Kipnis, Oprah Winfrey, Mary Gaitskill, Rachel Cusk, Kendrick Lamar, Yuval Noah Harari, and Lewis Hyde, to name a few. It is also an attempt to lay bare the workings of the shadow economy rooted in vernacular energies, exploring how our rational thought process is linked to our dream life.

New Book :: Chasing Giants

Chasing Giants: In Search of the World's Largest Freshwater Fish by Zeb Hogan and Stefan Lovgren book cover image

Chasing Giants: In Search of the World’s Largest Freshwater Fish by Zeb Hogan and Stefan Lovgren
University of Nevada Press, April 2023

Seeking to answer the question Which of the giant freshwater species is the largest? motivates Zeb Hogan to understand the various species he studies. The megafish’s numbers are dwindling, and the majority of them face extinction. He teams up with award-winning journalist Stefan Lovgren to tell, for the first time, the remarkable and troubling story of the world’s largest freshwater fish. It is a story that stretches across the globe, chronicling a race against the clock to find and protect these ancient leviathans before they disappear forever. Chasing Giants combines science, adventure, and wonder to provide insights into the key role the massive fish of our lakes and rivers play in our past, present, and future.

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 :: Hope for the Worst

Hope for the Worst by Kate Brandt book cover image

Hope for the Worst by Kate Brandt
Vine Leaves Press, March 2023

Ellie is twenty-four years old, stuck in a dead-end job, and questioning the meaning of life when she meets the much older Calvin. It’s as if her deepest wish has been granted. Star of the Buddhist teaching circuit in New York’s Greenwich Village, his wisdom is exactly what she’s been seeking. When she becomes the center of his attention, it’s almost pure bliss…until it becomes clear that Calvin expects sex as part of the bargain. At first reluctant, Ellie gradually falls ever more deeply in love, until Calvin is all she can think about. Calvin’s lectures stress the Buddhist concept of non-attachment, but that doesn’t salve her wounds when he abandons her. Suddenly alone, Ellie must find a way to heal from her loss, but not before devotion to her teacher takes her halfway across the world to Tibet, and puts her life in real danger. Hope for the Worst asks just how far someone will go for love.

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 Grand Promise

The Grand Promise by Rebekah Anderson book cover image

The Grand Promise by Rebekah Anderson
Empty Bowl Press, June 2022

The Grand Promise by Rebekah Anderson takes readers back to the 1930s New Deal public works program. An Eastern Washington town is uprooted and a family grapples with personal and financial dilemmas. A father resists inevitable change and enters into a fierce conflict with his son. The historic construction of the Grand Coulee Dam, a massive project destined to bring prosperity to the Pacific Northwest, will also destroy the family’s home and their town, but it will change the lives of their community and the lives of indigenous people who have sustained themselves on the Columbia River for generations. The Grand Promise is a work of literary fiction loosely based on Anderson’s family history.

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 :: Sinners on Fox Street

Sinners on Fox Street: A Novella and Stories by Yolanda Gallardo book cover image

Sinners on Fox Street: A Novella and Stories by Yolanda Gallardo
Arte Público Press, November 2022

In this poignant and often humorous account of growing up in the Bronx in the 1950s, Yolanda Gallardo’s mischievous young character vividly recalls her childhood as the neighborhood changed from Jewish to Latino. She and her siblings swam in the East River, despite the rats and garbage; watched police beat up local kids; and got involved in gangs, like the Royals and Young Sinners. Their family was financially impoverished, but there were many happy times as they watched their parents dance to “hick Spanish records,” helped their mom cook pasteles and learned to dance the mambo and cha-cha.

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 :: adjacent islands

adjacent islands by Nicole Cecilia Delgado book cover image

adjacent islands by Nicole Cecilia Delgado
Translated by Urayoán Noel
Ugly Duckling Presse, December 2022

Nicole Cecilia Delgado’s poetry in adjacent islands is intimate yet poised toward the radically communitarian, both in the people and histories evoked and in the collaborative and unabashedly political orientation of her editorial and publishing work. adjacent islands / islas adyacentes is a bilingual edition of her artist books amoná (2013) and subtropical dry (2016), both based on camping trips to islands in the Puerto Rican archipelago: the uninhabited Mona to the west of the main island and the municipality of Vieques to the east (Amoná and Bieké in the reconstructed indigenous Taíno language). Challenging the insularist logic that has historically defined Puerto Rican national imaginaries, on these adjacent islands, people and nature connect in unexpected ways, as Delgado documents the art of survival under military occupation, extractivism, and the surveillance state. Part of a larger corpus of what Delgado calls “camping books,” adjacent islands / islas adjacentes seeks to translate the intemperie (open sky) of the camping trip onto the confines of the page. Delgado follows the late Ulises Carrión in enacting a networked book art where “communication is still inter-subjective, but it occurs in a concrete, real, physical space—the page.” Call it book art as counterarchive.

Book Review :: Magic Nation #1 by Ellen O’Grady

Magic Nation #1 by Ellen O'Grady book cover image

The title for Magic Nation #1 by Ellen O’Grady comes from her having misunderstood her mother, who said, “You sure have an imagination.” Instead, Ellen hears, “magic nation.” Indeed much more fitting for what she offers readers in this first installment of her ongoing graphic autobiography. Originally published on SOLRAD, Magic Nation recounts memories from O’Grady’s childhood of time spent meandering a wooded lot near her home. She sings lines from the Grizzly Adams television theme song, at times having him and his friend Nakoma join her as she goes wandering. She takes readers on an exploration of an abandoned pool and pool house, conjuring past lives lived in darkly shaded imagery, then back out into the brilliantly colored natural world. Her interactions with natural life are as delicate as her graphic style, using fine lines in a mixture of semi-realism and minimalism. Most striking are the unfinished lines that don’t complete figures and white spaces where she doesn’t take the watercolors right to the edge. This creates a kind of soft invitation for viewers to participate in completing the pictures, bringing their own imaginations into play. A beautiful and thoughtfully paced narrative and a welcome meditative escape to visit again and again.


Magic Nation #1 by Ellen O’Grady. Fieldmouse Press, September 2022.

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

New Book :: suddenly we

suddenly we by Evie Shockley book cover image

suddenly we by Evie Shockley
Wesleyan University Press, March 2023

In her new poetry collection, suddenly we, Evie Shockley mobilizes visual art, sound, and multilayered language to chart routes toward openings for the collective dreaming of a more capacious “we.” How do we navigate between the urgency of our own becoming and the imperative insight that whoever we are, we are in relation to each other? Beginning with the visionary art of Black women like Alison Saar and Alma Thomas, Shockley’s poems draw and forge a widening constellation of connections that help make visible the interdependence of everyone and everything on Earth. Evie Shockley, poet and scholar, is the Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English at Rutgers University. A Lannan Literary Award-winner, she is the author of multiple books of poetry and a 2018 Pulitzer Prize finalist.

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 :: Canadian Policing

Canadian Policing: Why and How it Must Change by Kent Roach book cover image

Canadian Policing: Why and How it Must Change by Kent Roach
Delve Books, May 2022

Kent Roach’s Canadian Policing: Why and How It Must Change is a comprehensive and critical examination of Canadian policing from its colonial origins to its response to the February 2022 blockades and occupations. Police shootings in June 2020 should dispel any complacency that Canada does not face similar policing problems as the United States, and a vicious circle of overpolicing and underprotection plagues many intersecting disadvantaged groups. Multiple accountability measures — criminal investigations, Charter litigation, complaints, and discipline — have not improved Canadian policing. What is required is more active and proactive governance by the boards, councils, and ministers that are responsible for Canada’s police. Governance should respect law enforcement independence and discretion while rejecting overbroad claims of police operational independence and self-governance.

New Book :: Dioramas

Dioramas by Blair Austin book cover image

Dioramas by Blair Austin
Dzanc Books, March 2023

Winner of the Dzanc Prize for Fiction, Blair Austin’s debut Dioramas tells of a city far in the future, in a society that has come through a great upheaval. Retired lecturer Wiggins moves from window to window in a museum, intricately describing each scene. Whales gliding above a shipwreck and a lost cup and saucer. An animatronic forest twenty stories tall. Urban wolves in the light of an apartment building. A line of mosquitoes in uniforms and regalia honored as heroes of the last great war. Bit by bit, Wiggins unspools the secrets of his world—the conflict that brought it to the brink, and the great thinker, Michaux, who led the diorama revolution, himself now preserved under glass. In this hybrid novel—part essay, part prose poem, part travel narrative—Blair Austin brings readers to witness our own vanishing world, what we preserve and at what cost.

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 Gettysburg Review – 34.2

The Gettysburg Review 34.2 magazine cover image

Issue 34.2 of The Gettysburg Review features paintings by Tidawhitney Lek, fiction by Kate Jayroe, Marina Petrova, Rachel Klein, and Caitlin Boston Ingham; essays by James Whorton Jr., Samuel Ligon, Nicole Graev Lipson, and Catherine Niu; poetry by Will Brewbaker, Pablo Piñero Stillmann, James Davis, Sara Borjas, Jill McDonough, Tina Barr, Susan Rich, Jill Osier, Margaret Gibson, Colin Cheney, Philip Schultz, J. P. Grasser, Jim Daniels, Mihaela Moscaliuc, Brianna Noll, Fleda Brown, Joy Manesiotis, Mary Leauna Christensen, Anushka Shah, Laura Read, and Albert Goldbarth.

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 :: Crisis Inquiry

Crisis Inquiry by Tony Iantosca book cover image

Crisis Inquiry by Tony Iantosca
Ugly Ducking Presse, December 2022

Crisis Inquiry by Brooklyn writer and educator Tony Iantosca is a collection of poems in three parts that unsettles the lyric poem from within its constraints in ways that are both sardonic and searching. These poems probe the corners of a crisis of inquiry both intimate and general, inquiring into the registers, rhetorics, and scales of the various ongoing crises we live through daily. Iantosca’s third full-length collection of poetry, Crisis Inquiry stages satire and candor as alternating strides of the same figure, walking to and fro between you and me.

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 :: Successful Aging by Daniel Levitin

Successful Aging by Daniel Levitin book cover image

Guest Post by Kevin Brown

Author of Successful Aging, Daniel Levitin is a neuroscientist and cognitive psychologist who brings both of his specialties to bear in this book. Levitin explores how people’s behaviors affect their brains and vice versa as they age, with the ultimate goal of helping people navigate their later years with a better quality of life, focusing on health over longevity. Levitin pored through thousands of articles to determine what the latest science says about aging, and he comes out of that reading quite optimistic. One of my few complaints about the book, in fact, is that he seems too optimistic about science’s answers, too trusting of continued progress. However, he encourages readers to stay involved in some sort of meaningful work; to continue to develop relationships; to get outside and exercise, no matter the difficulty, choices most of us could integrate into our lives, in order to have a more enjoyable and healthier life. My other complaint is that there are times when the science gets overwhelming for a lay reader, as I skimmed the jargon, wanting to get back to more of his summary conclusions from that science. Levitin provides readers with practical, research-based techniques for moving into one’s sixties, seventies, and beyond in the best mental and physical health possible.

Successful Aging by Daniel Levitin. Dutton, December 2020.

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 History Hotel

The History Hotel by Baron Wormser book cover image

The History Hotel by Baron Wormser
CavanKerry Press, March 2023

In The History Hotel, his eleventh poetry collection, Baron Wormser offers the range of subjects and imaginative approaches his readers have come to expect—from the life of a candle to the life of a Jewish Résistance fighter, from elegy to monologue, from a Godard film to the National Football League. The historical circumstances that touch, anneal, shatter, and buttress a life are paramount. The reality of consequences remains the ongoing, ineluctable drama. We all live in the ‘History Hotel’ where love and betrayal, hope and despair go hand in hand. Showing those entangled hands is the work of these poems.

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: February 24, 2023

Where to Submit Roundup 2023

It is the last full week of February. Next week starts March and if the weather reports are to believed…it just may roar in like a lion because it needs to compete with February for being a stormy month. So let’s keep ourselves indoors a little longer and work on keeping our submission goals. NewPages is here to help with our Weekly Round-up for the week of February 24, 2023.

Want early access to these opportunities, many before they go live on our website? Become a paid subscriber to our weekly newsletter. The cost is just $5 a month or you can subscribe for a year for only $50.

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

Books Received February 2023

NewPages receives many wonderful titles each month to share with our readers. You can read more about some of these titles by clicking on “New Books” under the NewPages Blog or Books tab on the menu. If you are a publisher or author looking to be listed here or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us!

Poetry

Animal Afterlife, Jaya Stenquist, Airlie Press
Binded, H Warren, Red Hen Press
Border Line, Miriam Sagan, Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library
Cherubims, Edward Clarke, Kelsay Books
Come Closer, Laurie Blauner, The Bitter Oleander Press
Complete Poems 1965-2020, Michael Butterworth, Space Cowboy Books
Faith and Dreams for Zion, Shoshanah Weiss, Poetica Publishing
Field Guide to the Human Condition, Adrian S. Potter, CW Books
Ghost Apples, Katharine Coles, Red Hen Press
How Much?, Jerome Sala, NYQ Books

Continue reading “Books Received February 2023”

New Lit on the Block :: Under the Madness Magazine

Under the Madness Magazine logo

Under the Madness Magazine began in the summer of 2021, the pandemic looming large, among so much other chaos, but imagine being a teenager during this time, trying to make sense of it all. Created by and for young writers 13-19 years old under the guidance of Alexandria Peary, New Hampshire Poet Laureate, Under the Madness Magazine got its name from the staff who felt it spoke to the confusing whirlwind teenagers face—political polarization, global warming, and inequity. “The whole phrase that came to mind,” Peary says, “was ‘under the madness lies literature,’ but it was too long for a magazine name. It was refined to retain the spirit of the name: how writing and creative expression help teens stay grounded when the adult-made sky seems to be spinning.”

Continue reading “New Lit on the Block :: Under the Madness Magazine”

New Book :: The Rwanda Poems

The Rwanda Poems: Voices and Visions from the Genocide by Andrew Kaufman book cover image

The Rwanda Poems: Voices and Visions from the Genocide by Andrew Kaufman
NYQ Books, March 2023

The only book of poetry to date devoted to the Rwanda genocide and published in this country, this is a work of nonfictional poetry, a cousin in genre to the nonfictional novel. It is based not only on the poet’s observations and encounters during months spent in post-genocide Rwanda, but on his numerous extensive interviews with survivors, all of whom lost most if not all of their families, and with convicted genocide perpetrators, conducted in prisons. The result is a startling book of poems that by turns is unthinkably horrifying, heartbreaking, and enraging, yet which at times breaks unexpectedly into stunning revelatory moments of grace.

As a poetry of witness this book reveals what it is like to carry on with daily life in a society where nearly every adult male is either a genocide survivor or perpetrator, almost every woman either a survivor or the wife of a perpetrator, and where nearly every child at the time of the genocide witnessed multiple killings, often of immediate family members. Ranging from free verse to stanzaic forms, this book by an NEA-award-winning poet uses tools and methods of poetry to distill each of its many varied voices to its essence, allowing those who are heard in these poems to speak for themselves, often in juxtapositions that lend the book the structure and tension of a drama. Considered more broadly, The Rwanda Poems is a book about the extremities of evil that the human psyche is capable of enduring and inflicting, and the resulting psychic costs to survivors and perpetrators.

New & Noted Lit & Alt Mags – February 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!

Alaska Quarterly Review, Winter/Spring 2023
All My Relations, Volume 3
Barrow Street, Winter 2022-23
Big Muddy, 22/23
Black Warrior Review, Fall/Winter 2022
Carve, Winter 2023
Cream City Review, Fall/Winter 2022
Cutleaf, 3.3
Dreamers Magazine, Issue 13

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

Terrain.org Podcast is Back!

Terrain.org new logo

After a brief hiatus, the Terrain.org podcast curated by Miranda Perrone, Soundscapes, is back. Their seventh new episode is “Wildness: Life, or Death?” This 36-minute podcast features Janisse Ray reading her essay “I Have Seen the Warrior: Crossing the Okefenokee,” in which she shares her three-day experience “crossing the largest swamp east of the Mississippi.” This is enhanced by a conversation between Janisse and Miranda. The episode opens with a poem by Robert Morgan, “Portal,” and ends with a poem by Kim Parko, “Our Woman.” Terrain.org also offers a full transcript of the program with time cues.

New Book :: North Country

North Country: A Pedagogical Almanac by Carolyn Dekker book cover image

North Country: A Pedagogical Almanac by Carolyn Dekker
Black Lawrence Press, February 2023

North Country: A Pedagogical Almanac by Carolyn Dekker is a memoir-in-essays about teaching and family life in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The book follows the cycle of seasons in this remote and beautiful place by the waters of Lake Superior during the years in which the author finds a place there. It’s also a look at higher education on the razor’s edge at a tiny and struggling liberal arts college. Above all, the memoir is about a life lived alongside books and what they might teach us about how to love, parent, mentor, and care for 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!

Book Review :: Good for a Girl by Lauren Fleshman

Good for a Girl by Lauren Fleshman book cover image

Guest Post by Kevin Brown

Lauren Fleshman, author of Good for a Girl: A Woman Running in a Man’s World and one of the top professional runners of her generation, never achieved the highest levels of success as she (at the time) and others defined it. She talks about her running career in her memoir, but her interests lay beyond training times and significant races, as she’s much more interested in why she and so many other female runners struggled to perform as well as they (and others) expected. She redefines success away from making the Olympic team to being able to run to one’s potential and still live a healthy life. While acknowledging her limited point of view and knowledge, she talks about the obstacles and struggles that come with being a female runner: unhealthy relationships with food and body image; coaches and trainers who treat females’ bodies as if they’re interchangeable with those of men; sponsors and marketers who objectify women or fail to take into account their different physical development. While she shares the clear events of misogyny and sexism, she also conveys the less-clear, more-frequent ways in which a patriarchal sport and society ignore women’s potential, hindering them from becoming the runners and people they could be.

Good for a Girl by Lauren Fleshman. Penguin, January 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 :: Music for Ghosts

Music for Ghosts by Christopher Locke book cover image

Music for Ghosts by Christopher Locke
NYQ Books, May 2022

Christopher Locke’s new collection of poetry Music for Ghosts is a visceral testament to youth and hubris, erasure, and forgiveness. The heart of these poems straddles the space between the personal and the universally lived, where the past can shatter our best intentions at love, while the future holds us wanting at the precipice of joy. From his Pentecostal childhood to the blazing religion of punk rock, Locke caromed straight into the void of addiction, even as marriage and fatherhood hinted at something better. But in spite of loss, or maybe because of it, Locke remains steadfast in his quest to seek fearlessly and intentionally, reclaiming every light offered in hope’s name.

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 :: Boy

Boy by Tracy Youngblom book cover image

Boy by Tracy Youngblom
CavanKerry Press, February 2023

Boy brings readers Tracy Youngblom’s second full-length collection of poetry. The death of a youngest sibling as a child, an alcoholic and distant father, a grief-stricken family, a tentative faith: these are the building blocks of the narrative of Boy, a sequence of poems that explores how death and loss color memory and influence the ways family members relate to each other and to their shared history.

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 :: World Literature Today – March 2023

World Literature Today March 2023 cover image

“The Russophone Literature of Resistance” headlines the March 2023 issue of World Literature Today. The eight writers included in the cover feature all oppose the Russian Federation’s current regime, whether from inside the country or beyond its borders. Additional writers highlighted inside include Alexandra Lytton Regalado (El Salvador), Siphiwe Ndlovu (Zimbabwe), and Bridget Pitt (South Africa), along with essays on “The New Cadre of Latin American Women Writers,” a postcard tour of unique bookstores along the US–Mexico border, and three dispatches from literary Istanbul. Be sure to check out the latest must-read titles in WLT’s book review section, three recommended Indigenous horror novels, and much more!

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 :: Hood Vacations

Hood Vacations by Michal 'MJ' Jones book cover image

Hood Vacations by Michal ‘MJ’ Jones
Black Lawrence Press, January 2023

Michal “MJ” Jones’ debut poetry collection Hood Vacations is a rhythmic & quiet rumbling – an unflinching recollection of Blackness, queerness, gender, and violence through lenses of family lineage and confessional narrative. A nostalgia for an unreachable home permeates these poems: “We were mighty beautiful once, in golden dust.” The speaker of Hood Vacations tells of magic: of praying mantises, bathtub octopuses, Black ghosts, and bringing back “rainbow soap colors.” It is a book of passing – as, through, and on. Hop on in.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

February 2023 eLitPak :: Register for the 2023 Jackson Hole Writers Conference

Screenshot of the 2023 Jackson Hole Writers Conference flyer for the NewPages eLitPak Newsletter
click image to open flyer

For more than thirty years, diverse groups of passionate professional and novice writers have gathered at the Jackson Hole Writers Conference. While attending workshops and keynote addresses at the Jackson Hole Center for the Arts, writers learn about the craft of writing, share ideas, and make new friends while networking with authors, editors and agents from myriad backgrounds. Early-bird registration pricing available through May 12th. Join us! View flyer.

Want early access to our eLitPak flyers? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter! You can also support NewPages with a paid subscription and get early access to the majority submission opportunities, upcoming events, and more before they are posted to our site.

Interested in advertising in the eLitPak? Learn more here.

February 2023 eLitPak :: 2023 Housatonic Book Awards Now Open

Screenshot of the 2023 Housatonic Book Awards flyer for the NewPages eLitPak Newsletter
click image to open flyer

WCSU’s MFA in Creative and Professional Writing is thrilled to announce that their 2023 Housatonic Book Awards are now open. All books published in 2022 are eligible. Winners receive $1,500 and present a reading and master class at residency. See full details here and view flyer here.

Want early access to our eLitPak flyers? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter! You can also support NewPages with a paid subscription and get early access to the majority submission opportunities, upcoming events, and more before they are posted to our site.

Interested in advertising in the eLitPak? Learn more here.

New Book :: A Promise Kept

A Promise Kept: The Muscogee (Creek) Nation and McGirt v. Oklahoma by Robert J. Miller and Robbie Ethridge book cover image

A Promise Kept: The Muscogee (Creek) Nation and McGirt v. Oklahoma by Robert J. Miller and Robbie Ethridge
The University of Oklahoma Press, January 2023

“At the end of the Trail of Tears there was a promise,” U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the decision issued on July 9, 2020, in the case of McGirt v. Oklahoma. And that promise, made in treaties between the United States and the Muscogee (Creek) Nation more than 150 years earlier, would finally be kept. With the Court’s ruling, the full extent of the Muscogee (Creek) Reservation was reaffirmed—meaning that 3.25 million acres of land in Oklahoma, including part of the city of Tulsa, were recognized once again as “Indian Country” as defined by federal law. A Promise Kept explores the circumstances and implications of McGirt v. Oklahoma, likely the most significant Indian law case in well over 100 years. Combining legal analysis and historical context, this book gives an in-depth, accessible account of how the case unfolded and what it might mean for Oklahomans, the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, and other tribes throughout the United States.

Magazine Stand :: South Dakota Review – 57.2

South Dakota Review 57.2 cover image

Since its inception in 1963, South Dakota Review has maintained a tradition of supporting work by contemporary writers writing from or about the American West. The newest issue, South Dakota Review 57.2, continues this tradition, featuring poetry by Mercedes Lawry, Jane Zwart, Jessica Goodfellow, Josh Mahler, Elizabeth Tracey, Emma Aylor, Jey Ley, Carol Everett Adams, Brooke Harries, Michelle Otero, Dianna Vega, Nathan Whiting, E.B. Schnepp, and Jonathan Louis Duckworth; short stories by Elizabeth Tracey, Emily García, Vinh Hoang, and Jarrett Kaufman; as well as essays by Sihle Ntuli, Dannielle Shorr, and Joe Sacksteder.

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!

February 2023 eLitPak :: The Washington Prize Call for Entries

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Deadline: March 15, 2023
The Word Works is accepting entries of original volumes of poetry by a living American or Canadian writer for their Washington Prize. Winner receives $1,500 and publication. Visit website and view flyer to learn more.

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February 2023 eLitPak :: Gival Press Open Submission Period

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Visit the Gival Press website & Gival Press Submittable account for information about the Gival Press open reading period and contests. View full flyer.

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February 2023 eLitPak :: Award-winning Affordable, Professional Poetry Editing, Book Coaching, & Marketing

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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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Book Review :: All Men Glad and Wise by Laura C. Stevenson

All Men Glad and Wise by Laura C. Stevenson book cover image

Guest Post by Laureen Mathon

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!


All Men Glad and Wise by Laura C. Stevenson. Rootstock Publishing, April 2022.

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.

February 2023 eLtiPak :: Affordable Poetry, Publishing, & Critique Workshops

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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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February 2023 eLitPak :: 2023 Nova Scotia Writers Retreat

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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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February 2023 eLitPak :: Last Call to Enter 17th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards

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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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February 2023 eLitPak :: Last Month to Enter the 2023 Permafrost Book Prize in Poetry

Screenshot of Permafrost's flyer in the February 2023 eLitPak for their 2023 Permafrost Book Prize in Poetry
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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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February 2023 eLitPak :: 2023 Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest

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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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February 2023 eLitPak :: Our Lady of the Lake University Online MFA & MA Programs

screenshot of Our Lady of the Lake University Online MFA & MA Program flyer for the June 2022 eLitPak

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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Where to Submit Roundup: February 17, 2023

Where to Submit Roundup 2023

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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Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: February 17, 2023”

New Book :: A Plucked Zither

A Plucked Zither by Phuong T. Vuong book cover image

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!

Event :: YA Literature Summit 2023

YA Literature Summit logo image

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.

New Lit on the Block :: The Cloudscent Journal

The Cloudscent Journal logo image

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.”

Continue reading “New Lit on the Block :: The Cloudscent Journal”

New Book :: Pink Noise

Pink Noise by Kevin Holden book cover image

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!

New Book :: The Taco Boat

The Taco Boat by Al Ortolani book cover image

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!

Book Review :: Jane Austen’s Little Book of Wisdom by Andrea Kirk Assaf

Jane Austen's Little Book of Wisdom by Andrea Kirk Assaf book cover image

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.

New Book :: Only and Ever This

Only and Ever This by J. A. Tyler book cover image

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!