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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!

Magazine Stand :: Waxing & Waning – The Blackout Edition

Waxing & Waning The Blackout Edition literary magazine cover image

Waxing & Waning publishes one print and one online issue per year, along with one special edition contest, the Waxing & Waning Presents Series, that amplifies voices of underrepresented populations.

For the 2022 Blackout Edition, the writers’ prompt was:

“As 2021 draws to a close, George Floyd’s killer behind bars, Breonna Taylor’s still enjoying their time of freedom, and countless other BIPOC people’s deaths still without justice, our humble literary and arts journal is seeking writing and art that exemplifies the BIPOC experience worldwide. In a time of racial unrest, where privileges are being called out and people are being asked to change their behaviors to make the world we live in accountable for its unfairness and injustices, we at Waxing & Waning are looking for creative work that both includes this aspect, but we are also looking for any and all work about the modern BIPOC experience, even outside of race. Give us your poems about sunsets, stories that strike a chord in the human experience, art that screams to be heard. Be deep, true, honest. Here is not where limits lie. We want it all.”

The contributors for The Blackout Edition Prose: Winner Rim Chon, Runner-up Emil Rem, Marian Fredal, Leslie Grover, and Patrice Washington; Poetry: Winner Shamon Williams, Runner-up Glenn Marchand, Biman Roy, and Sabrina Spence; Art: Winner Christina Sayers.

The 2023’s special edition contest will be titled The Pride Edition and will be open to all writers and artists in the LGBTQIA+ population. Submissions for this will open at the beginning of the year.

Waxing & Waning is published under the April Gloaming Publishing imprint, which includes a special focus on Southern literature as well as novels, memoirs, poetry collections, and anthologies. Print copies of Waxing & Waning and the Waxing & Waning Presents Series can be purchased here: www.aprilgloaming.com/shop

New Book :: Trouble Funk

Trouble Funk by Douglas Manuel book cover image

Trouble Funk by Douglas Manuel
Red Hen Press, April 2023

The speaker of Douglas Manuel’s Testify, a book of elegiac interrogations of race in America, returns to divulge his parents’ love story in the forthcoming poetry collection, Trouble Funk. Set in Anderson, Indiana in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, Trouble Funk exposes ways Black Love is thwarted but never destroyed by racism, classism, and sexism. Eschewing the “lyrical I” in favor of a third person omniscient point of view, Manuel exhibits how the latter half of the twentieth century rhymes with our current moment when it comes to political division, the hardships that Black folks face, and the rise of toxic right-wing policies. In many ways, Trouble Funk serves as a prequel to Testify, in which Manuel seeks to better understand and love himself, his family, and his country.

Book Review :: Animal, Roadkill, Ashes, Gone by Emily Pittinos

Animal, Roadkill, Ashes, Gone essays by Emily Pittinos book cover image

Guest Post by Alice Verlezza

In her heartfelt memoir of four chapbook essays, Animal, Roadkill, Ashes, Gone, Emily Pittinos animates familial memories and the personal process of grief. This collection pays tribute, not only to the memory of our passed loved ones, but to the exponential growth of their children in their absence. As we learn the details of her ancestral losses, the narrator weaves in and out of time and space. Through the iterative process of processing her father’s unexpected death we “[become] squires of each other’s grief.” Pittinos’s familiar trauma is rendered stark and bare in this “summary of his body.” 

Our relatable Gen-X protagonist, a wry wit demonstrating vulnerable frankness, reminds us that, “We’ll live in cardboard boxes until we die poor and alone” in the inevitably “promise-less future.” Pittinos’s voice powerfully echoes generational attitudes of frustration and hopelessness without getting bogged down. “Nothing will ever be the same,” and we are “always preparing for the worst,” but these essays gracefully illuminate that “the mind abuses its license to change.” In the face of trauma and loss, the mind finds a way to connect back to its natural state, one of peace, gratitude, and remembrance.

Animal, Roadkill, Ashes, Gone by Emily Pittinos. Bull City Press, November 2022.

Reviewer bio: Alice Verlezza, educator, writer, and mother of two was raised in Rhode Island. An MS graduate of Queens University in Sociology, Alice continues her scholarly work earning an English Masters at Bridgewater State University where she researches gender identity and mental health in narrative.

Magazine Stand :: December – 33.2

December literary magazine issue 33.2 cover image

“A literary legacy since 1958,” December‘s newest issue (33.2) features the 2022 Curt Johnson Prose Award Winners: “Goodnight, Irene” by Miriam Gallou, Fiction Winner; “Slow Dance” by Garnett Cohen, Fiction Honorable Mention; “On Her Waters Summoning Us Down” by Gisselle Yepes, Nonfiction Winner; “Of Cats and Men” by Anjanette Degado, Nonfiction Honorable Mention. Other contributors to this issue include poetry by Joanne Allred, David Axelrod, Nancy Botkin, Mary Crow, Kim Ports Parsons, Ricardo Pau-Llosa, Dan Rosenberg, John Schneider, Steven Schreiner, Heidi Seaborn, Mark Smith-Soto, Carole Stone, Florence Weinberger, John Sibley Williams, Erin Wilson; fiction by Quinn Adikes, Bruce Kilstein, A.C. Koch, Jenna-Marie Warnecke; nonfiction by Jacob Aiello, Jiadai Lin, Neha Potalia; art by Joy Curtis, Basil Kincaid; illustration by Sherry Shahan; and cover art by JJ Manford.

New Book :: Her Birth and Later Years

Her Birth and Later Years: New and Collected Poems, 1971-2021 by Irena Klepfisz book cover image

Her Birth and Later Years: New and Collected Poems, 1971-2021 by Irena Klepfisz
Wesleyan University Press, December 2022

A trailblazing lesbian poet, child Holocaust survivor, and political activist whose work is deeply informed by socialist values, Irena Klepfisz is a vital and individual American voice. This book is the first complete collection of her work. For fifty years, Klepfisz has written powerful, searching poems about relatives murdered during the war, recent immigrants, a lost Yiddish writer, a Palestinian boy in Gaza, and various people in her life. In her introduction to Klepfisz’s A Few Words in the Mother Tongue, Adrienne Rich wrote: “[Klepfisz’s] sense of phrase, of line, of the shift of tone, is almost flawless.” Irena Klepfisz taught Jewish Women’s Studies at Barnard College for 22 years. She is the author of four books of poetry, a collection of essays, and was co-editor of The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women’s Anthology. An advocate of the Yiddish language and active in its renaissance in the United States, she has published poetry and essays have appeared in Jewish Currents, Tablet Magazine, In Geveb, Sinister Wisdom, The Manhattan Review, Conditions, The Georgia Review and Languages of Modern Jewish Cultures.

New Book :: In the Current Where Drowning Is Beautiful

In the Current Where Drowning Is Beautiful by Abigail Chabitnoy book cover image

In the Current Where Drowning Is Beautiful by Abigail Chabitnoy
Wesleyan University Press, November 2022

In the Current Where Drowning Is Beautiful, poetry by Abigail Chabitnoy, is a meditation on water, land, women, and violent environmental changes as they affect both the natural world and human migration. The poet reckons with the unsettling realities that women experience, questioning the cause and effect of events and asking why stories of oppression are so often simply accepted as the only stories. Alutiiq language is used throughout these poems that are in conversation with history, ancestors, and an uncertain future, in imagery that moves in waves, returning again and again to the ocean, and a deep visioning of the “current.” Abigail Chabitnoy is a Koniag descendent and a member of the Tangirnaq Native Village in Kodiak, Alaska. Her first book, How to Dress a Fish, won the Colorado Book Award in the Poetry category and was shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize. She is an assistant professor at UMass Amherst.

Book Review :: Souvenirs from Paradise by Erin Langner

Souvenirs from Paradise by Erin Langner book cover image

Guest Post by Shauna Briggs

Grief and loss in Sin City. Erin Langner’s debut essay collection, Souvenirs from Paradise, hits on the allure and beauty of one of America’s favorite tourist destinations – Las Vegas. The backdrop of the classic Vegas casinos led Langner to receive the Wendy S. Walters’ 2021 Creative Nonfiction Book Award from publisher Zone 3 Press. Weaving in the city’s history – the fabled old strip, various casino myths, and celebrity stories – with her own experiences and emotions are what makes this collection so hard hitting. Langner convinces the reader of all the charm and complexity of Vegas’s most popular casinos, driving us with her when she writes about her first road trip into town. She captures the outsider-moved-in perspective seamlessly while reconciling the irreparable pain of loss: “People had been telling me for years that I would love Las Vegas, but I refused to believe them.” Neon lights, ringing slot machines, musical impressions, mob memories, and painful history. . . what’s not to love? Langner expresses a complicated and scintillating love in brilliant lyrical prose.

Souvenirs from Paradise by Erin Langner. Zone 3 Press, November 2022.

Reviewer bio: Shauna Briggs is an English teacher on Cape Cod and is currently pursuing her MA in English at Bridgewater State University. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband, dog, and two cats.

Magazine Stand :: Wordrunner eChapbooks – Issue 47

Wordrunner eChapbooks issue 47 cover image

Wordrunner eChapbooks‘ 47th issue, Winter 2022 fiction echapbook, is Death in the Cathedral: A Novella in Five Stories by Malcolm Dixon. These five linked stories immerse readers in the turbulent, disturbing and sometimes hilarious misadventures and rivalries of Catholic schoolboys in late 20th century Liverpool—Stephen Mattimore, the boy who tries to play by the rules, his rebellious and scornful classmates who torment their cassocked teachers, the misfit who runs the campus sundries shop. Death, lurking in the title story, whether sudden or anticipated, alters everyone. Outside the confining Cathedral College flows “the inky black waters of the Mersey, opaque to the point of invisibility, like the dark unwritten page of [Stephen’s] future.” This collection may be read free online or you can purchase an ebook edition for only $2.99. Authors receive 50% of all royalties, it’s a way to support a small press, and they make thoughtful gifts during the holiday season!

Magazine Stand :: The Conversationalist – December 2022

The Conversationalist December 2022 online alternative magazine cover image

If you’re in search of some new media outlets, The Conversationalist is a nonprofit feminist media outlet publishing online journalism focused on a global perspective, from the personal to the political. The Conversationalist is a platform for original reporting and commentary from writers with under-amplified perspectives. The publication takes an empathetic approach to increase media literacy and inspire conversation around sensitive challenges in global affairs. Recent articles include “Made in Pakistan” by Anmol Irfan, “Buffalo and Uvalde, Six Months Later” by Raina Lipsitz, “Russia’s New Anti-LGBTQ Legislation is Just More of the Same Authoritarianism” by Chrissy Stroop, “Freedom to Want” by Melissa Chadburn, “Can We Writer Our Way to a New Word?” by Racel Pafe, and numerous others on topics like adult friendship, climate change, books, travel, community, abolition, food, and more. “Feminist stories. Global Perspectives. Zero BS.” Find more great reading at the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines.

Magazine Stand :: Jewish Fiction .net – Issue 32

Jewish Fiction .net online literary magazine Issue 32 cover image

The newest issue of Jewish Fiction .net is its Chanukah issue, which includes 12 stories originally written in Yiddish, Hebrew, and English. This brings to almost 550 the number of works published by Jewish Fiction .net, that were either written in English or translated from 18 languages. Readers can find works by Tsilye Dropkin, Wayne Karlin, Hamutal Bar-Yosef, Peter Alterman, Avital Gad-Cykman, and many more. All available to read free online. And some exciting news: Academic Studies Press will be publishing an anthology of fiction from Jewish Fiction .net – 18 stories, each translated into English from a different language! This book will come out this fall, so keep your eyes open for updates.

New Book :: Steinbeck’s Imaginarium

Steinbeck's Imaginarium: Essays on Writing, Fishing, and Other Critical Matters by Robert DeMott book cover image

Steinbeck’s Imaginarium: Essays on Writing, Fishing, and Other Critical Matters by Robert DeMott
University of New Mexico Press, November 2022

In Steinbeck’s Imaginarium, Robert DeMott delves into the imaginative, creative, and sometimes neglected aspects of John Steinbeck’s writing. DeMott positions Steinbeck as a prophetic voice for today as much as he was for the Depression-era 1930s as the essays explore the often unknown or unacknowledged elements of Steinbeck’s artistic career that deserve closer attention. He writes about the determining scientific influences, such as quantum physics and ecology, in Cannery Row and considers Steinbeck’s addiction to writing through the lens of the extensive, obsessive full-length journals that he kept while writing three of his best-known novels – The Grapes of Wrath, The Wayward Bus, and East of Eden. DeMott insists that these monumental works of fiction all comprise important statements on his creative process and his theory of fiction writing. DeMott further blends his personal experience as a lifelong angler with a reading of several neglected fishing episodes in Steinbeck’s work. Collectively, the chapters illuminate John Steinbeck as a fully conscious, self-aware, literate, experimental novelist whose talents will continue to warrant study and admiration for years to come.

New Book :: apocrifa

apocrifa by Amber Flame book cover image

apocrifa poetry by Amber Flame
Red Hen Press, May 2023

apocrifa imagines a love that sits comfortably at the crossroads of commitment and freedom. The developing intimacy between a lover and their beloved is propelled by a compendium of words for love, romance, sex, relationships, and affection that do not lend to direct translation in English. Serving as both titles and markers of the progression of time, these poetically defined words highlight the growing tension of one who claims “i cannot love you enough / to unlove the wide world” and yet is inextricably drawn to the offer of “a place of sustenance, rest, and my delight in your very bones.” Heavily inspired by the metaphors and structures of Song of Songs (or Song of Solomon), from the Apocryphal books of the Bible, the characters speak to each other with contrapuntal call-and-response while letting readers into their private thoughts through epistles, sestinas, odes, and other poetic forms.

Book Review :: If There Is No Wind by Margaret R. Sáraco

If There Is No Wind by Margaret R. Saraco book cover image

Guest Post by R. Bremner

Margaret R. Sáraco’s solid debut poetry collection, If There Is No Wind, begins with a paean to a once-imposing, now-deceased maple tree, skillfully interweaving emotions and memories: “we sat on the stump remains, holding vigil, wishing her well in the afterlife.” It ends with a poem that transforms her into a seabird, exchanging the anguish of being shut in for the joy of freedom, “swimming in warmth, bathing my afterimage away.” In between are 77 pages of sometimes melancholy, sometimes uplifting, but always affecting, poetry. With a personal bias toward surrealism, perhaps my favorite poem in this collection is the lightly surrealism-tinged “Lifeline,” in which Saraco considers that her life has been spent “seated in a kayak / paddling rivers I’ve never seen.” She is waiting for her turn

To pull the kayak
ashore, climb out
discover what
is buried
in my
dense weeds.

In the next-to-last poem in this book, “Quiet Moment,” Sáraco views a reflected moon in a puddle on a clear night and is waiting “for a message / to tell me what this means.” It is indeed a feeling that many of us have had.

If There Is No Wind by Margaret R. Sáraco. Human Error Publishing, September 2022.

Reviewer bio: R. Bremner has been writing of incense, peppermints, and the color of time since the 1960s in journals and anthologies including International Poetry Review and Climate of Opinion: Sigmund Freud in Poetry. Eight published books and chapbooks bear his name, including Hungry Words (Alien Buddha Press).

New Book :: What Small Sound

What Small Sound by Francesca Bell book cover image

What Small Sound by Francesca Bell
Red Hen Press, May 2023

Francesca Bell’s second collection of poems, What Small Sound, interrogates what it means to be a mother in a country where there are five times as many guns as children; female in a country where a woman is raped every two minutes; and citizen of a world teeming with iniquities and peril. In poems rich in metaphor and music and unflinching in their gaze, Bell offers an exacting view of the audiologist’s booth and the locked ward as she grapples with the gradual loss of her own hearing and the mental illness spreading its dark wings over her family. This is a book of plentiful sorrows but also of small and sturdy comforts, a book that chronicles the private, lonely life of the body as well as its tender generosities. What Small Sound wrestles with some of the broadest, most complicated issues of our time and also with the most fundamental issue of all: love. How it shelters and anchors us. How it breaks us and, ultimately, how it pieces us back together.

Book Review :: Borealis by Aisha Sabatini Sloan

Borealis by Aisha Sabatini Sloan book cover image

Guest Post by Alexandria Machado

In Borealis, a stunning long form essay published by Coffee House Press, Aisha Sabatini Sloan reckons with the vast expanse of nature, simultaneously negotiating her relationship to queerness, blackness and the Alaskan landscape. Written lyrically with the use of white space as a conduit for understanding solitude as a person of color in an overwhelming white population, Sloan wonders “when there is no Black figure, what am I supposed to like looking at?” She artfully explores interactions as intimate collisions and reconciliations, whether that be a lover or the way color displays in the sky; all experiences are showcased as this prismatic aurora. Sloan paints her images with dazzling natural light, calling us to take a moment to look and listen to the world around us. Borealis is one great luminous moment, a meditation of self-reflection in contrast to the wilderness. What is similar and what is starkly different becomes resigned to the mystery of images, the way they mimic and shift: “The fog has lowered itself like haunches over a toilet across the tops of mountains.” This essay is as concerned with music as it is silence; we hear “The opening strains of Bjork’s ‘Bachelorette’ play as a bald eagle opens its wings above a lamppost on the spit,” or how “Beaches tend to mean your ear hurts a little; the wind is loud.” Lists give way to observations and letters to a nephew in jail expose how captivity is not just the body in a physical place. Sloan creates collages of color and revelations, “Now I think crying is like touching time. A half-hearted attempt to crash into now.” Sloan’s essay encourages readers to spend time with nature in a way that is patient, humorous and imaginative, with the reminder to not look past any moment, as there is magic and horror everywhere.

Borealis: An Essay by Aisha Sabatini Sloan. Coffee House Press, November 2021.

Reviewer Bio: Alexandria Machado is a graduate student studying English at Bridgewater State University and a writer living in Providence, RI. Her poems, essays and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Boshemia, Vagabond City, The Merrimack Review, 86 Logic and other publications.

Magazine Stand :: The Iowa Review – Double Issue 2022

The Iowa Review double issue summer 2022 cover image

The Iowa Review Editor Lynne Nugent introduces contributions to this 2022 double issue as diverse, including “an ode to a drag queen, an account of growing up with a Chinese last name in small-town Minnesota, and a meditation on a cane used as a mobility aid.” Nugent emphasizes The Iowa Review‘s evolution while also acknowledging its inheritance: in their first issue, The Iowa Review featured Donald Justice’s poem “ABC”; this issue features his letters, edited by Jerry Harp. Though that first issue was made up entirely of white, cisgender, heterosexual men (“brilliant men, mind you,” Nugent reminds us: “Donald Justice, William Stafford, Robert Coover, Galway Kinnell”) to her, Justice’s “poem reads like a manifesto for TIR. To launch a literary magazine in 1970 meant asserting against larger cultural forces the value of syllables, words, stanzas. Each of the diverse array of writers in this issue takes up the same cause. A, then B, then C, and building a new world from there.” Works in this issue include fiction by Pallavi Wakharkar , Serkan Görkemli, Rajnesh Chakrapani, Ernesto Barbieri, Kenneth Tanemura, Nikki Ervice, Lindsey Drager; nonfiction by Alison C. Rollins, Lisa Argrette Ahmad, Xujun Eberlein, Christopher Kempf, Michael M. Weinstein, Jonathan Wei, Michaela Django Walsh; poetry by Donald Platt, Sarah Heston, Alisha Dietzman, Samyak Shertok, Derek A. Denckla, Alisha Acquaye, Gunnar Wærness, translated by Gabriel Gudding, Meghan Maguire Dahn; and artwork by b. Robert Moore. Some content is available to read free online.

New Book :: Secret Waltz

Secret Waltz by Karen Lee Boren book cover image

Secret Waltz by Karen Lee Brown
Flexible Press, June 2022

Secret Waltz by Karen Lee Brown follows the coming-of-age journeys of three teens whose lives are turned upside down by the secrets they keep. Four best friends, Will, Kirstin, Leo, and Emelia, are growing up together, finding themselves and what it means to be a budding adult. They do all the things teens do—hang out at the pool, bike everywhere, and discover their bodies. But this growing up thing is hard. On her 16th birthday, Emelia receives stunning news from her aunts who raised her. Seems they’ve been keeping a secret from her for her entire life, one that forces Emelia to re-evaluate everything she thought she know about her family and herself, sending her on a journey of discovery with few tools and no idea what she might find along the way. Meanwhile, Leo is struggling with his abusive father, who leads a polka band, drinks too much, and cheats on Leo’s mother. Leo plays the guitar. He’s good, too. But his father wants Leo to stay away from that so-called music of rock and roll. Their relationship is complex: Leo both looks up to and hates his father for the control he has over his music and his life. All that is hard enough, but then Leo and Emelia and their friends Will and Kirstin stumble across Sonya, someone they’ve seen at school but don’t really know, doing what to them is an inexplicable and horrifying act. What should they do? What can they do? This begins a chain of actions that escalate and spiral out of their control. In the end, Secret Waltz asks, what does it mean to be a “good girl” or a “good boy”? If you have a secret, do you get to still be “good”?

Book Review :: I Am Jonathan Scrivener by Claude Houghton

I Am Jonathan Scrivener by Claude Houghton book cover image

Guest Post by Colm McKenna

Orphaned from the age of 19, James Wrexham finds himself employed in a dreary office. Without friends or family, he is merely “a spectator in life”. James’ humdrum existence comes to an end after being hired as secretary to Mr. Jonathan Scrivener, an independent gentleman soon leaving England. He is set to receive a lavish salary and live in Scrivener’s flat while he is away. Scrivener remains a shadowy figure throughout; details about him come from a cast of his friends who in turn come to know James. Initially, they are all unaware of each other, and all describe Scrivener as a completely different person.

I am Jonathan Scrivener revolves around two central themes, the first being the existence of an untapped potential in the men and women of inter-war Britain. Instead of painting his characters as gloomy hollow men (seemingly well adjusted and successful people, yet spiritually bankrupt), Houghton is more optimistic. Wrexham writes countless formulaic job applications, but what he submits to Scrivener is a long epistle about himself, which he doesn’t reread. There is something in Wrexham that Scrivener appreciates, even if he is blind to it himself.

Houghton protects his characters from material constraints, because “leisure reveals us”. Work and physical necessity don’t allow us to understand ourselves: “of course people behave themselves on a treadmill; what the hell else can they do?” Wrexham was a shell of a man before being hired by Scrivener. The job he is hired into plays a minor part in the story. It simply functions as a springboard to leisure, the realm in which introspection begins, as well as life’s “real” problems. Though no doubt controversial, it is a profound thesis.

Although Valancourt Books have republished six of Houghton’s novels, there remains a dearth of content out of print. He wrote essays, theatre, poetry and plays; reprinting these would be a good way to show a newfound audience the other strings to Houghton’s bow. Many of his works are nearing their centenary; as the copyright is coming up for some of his underrated pieces, hopefully someone will resurrect them.

There is no biography on Houghton, and little else remains to pad out his life beyond a brief interview given to a writer’s directory in 1950. I Am Jonathan Scrivener was eventually dramatized in 1953, but this was 22 years after the book’s release, and by then Houghton’s fame had already begun to dwindle. He shared an agent with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Agatha Christie and William Faulkner (to name a few), and had a host of celebrity admirers. Whatever the reason for his lost fame, it will be obvious to his readers that it has nothing to do with literary merit.

I am Jonathan Scrivener by Claude Houghton. Valancourt Books, April 2013.

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.

Magazine Stand :: Topical Poetry – December 2022

Topical Poetry December 2022 cover image

Topical Poetry contributors share poems based on a recent public news/event, preferably from the previous or current week. Editors select the best ones and publish them on the website twice a month, on every other Sunday. “Poetry on current events can be transformational, thought-provoking, and everlasting.” Recent works include “Always” by Dustin Brookshire, “Carrier of Souls” by David Chorlton, “None of This Had to Happen- Channeling Jane Hirschfield” by Lynne Kemen, “A Tale of Black Friday” by Lois Perch Villemaire, “On the Many Shades of Protest (& Prayer)” by Jen Schneider, and “The Pen” by Bänoo Zan. All content is free to read online.

New Book :: Secret Agent Gals

Secret Agent Gals a novel by Richard Gid Powers book cover image

Secret Agent Gals by Richard Gid Powers
Livingston Press, February 2023

Called “the female version of a bromance,” Richard Gid Powers has created a world in which quick-witted Secret Agent Gals outwit bumbling Nazi assassins, boneheaded Communist spies, and slick Irish manure cart bombers, and must rescue dimwitted FBI Directors, fellow secret agents, crazy Presidents and First ladies from the dumb messes they get themselves into. Peggy Guggenheim and Baroness Hilla Rebay, both famous art collector/museum directors, are recruited by the FBI to plow through the painters the two women have been helping escape the Nazis, to see if there are any spies. That’s their start as counterspies, and how the story begins. In the end, they win the war and have lots of laughs doing it. They go through Special Agent basic training, bond with each other against their drill sergeant, learn to march, tie knots, practice jabs and jiu-jitsu, shoot John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd targets, work their Secret Decoder rings and get fitted for designer G-girl suits. The plot starts to get complicated à la Indian uprisings, revolts in the Japanese-American internment camps, and Irish terrorists. The Nazis kidnap General Eisenhower’s girlfriend, and Ike refuses to invade France until he gets her back. The G-Girls are sent to England, where they meet James Bond’s dad, Jonquil “Junk” Bond. Ike’s girlfriend is also a secret agent, in fact almost everyone in the book is a secret agent, and she has a plan to rub hair remover on Hitler’s moustache and steal his mojo. There is a supervillain, who is, by turns, a rogue FBI agent, an atomic spy, a Nazi traitor, an agitator at the Japanese-American internment camps, and finally head of a terrorist campaign by rebel FBI agents disguised as Irish manure cart bombers to kill Hoover and take over the Bureau. These Gals have seriously got their hands full, which makes for a rollicking read!

Book Review :: Impossible Naked Life by Luke Rolfes

Impossible Naked Life stories by Luke Rolfes book cover image

Guest Post by Justin Courter

Betcha can’t eat just one! Reading the flash fictions in Luke Rolfes’s Impossible Naked Life, winner of the Acacia Fiction Prize from Kallisto Gaia Press, you’ll tell yourself: Okay, maybe just one more. . . and then read another half-dozen of them. These stories are, by turns (and turns of the pages that keep you wondering what the author will think of next) heartfelt and hilarious. The first sentence of each is a runway from which Rolfes takes an imaginative flight, and the only regret is that sometimes the ride seems too short. Some of the best of these stories are the longer ones—longer, in this case, meaning about ten pages.

One of the funniest, “My Neighbor, Ray,” begins: “On day three of the global crisis, a person crawls out of my mouth. The person is small at first—the size of a marble—but then he grows and grows until full sized.” The person is essentially the narrator’s (Luke’s) alter ego; he befriends the next-door neighbor, who moves in with Luke and his family. Covid cabin fever induces late-night discussions on subjects such as what the concerns of the toothbrush and razor might be if inanimate objects had feelings; and an afternoon when Luke’s kids use some of the overstock of toilet paper to wrap Ray up like a mummy in the backyard.

Not all the stories are surreal but, as does the one described above, all have an emotional accuracy. You aren’t sure where you’re going in Impossible Naked Life, but you’re enjoying a Denis Johnson kind of trip.

Impossible Naked Life by Luke Rolfes. Kallisto Gaia Press, March 2022.

Bio: Justin Courter’s books include the novels The Heart of It All and Skunk: A Love Story. He lives in New York City.

December 2022 eLitPak :: Sixteen Rivers Press 2023 Call for Book-Length Poetry Manuscripts

Screenshot of Sixteen Rivers Press 2022-23 Submissions call flyer
click image to open PDF

We invite Northern California authors to submit book-length poetry manuscripts. All manuscripts will be read blind. Sixteen Rivers values diversity. We encourage poets of color, young poets, and LGBTQ writers to submit. Sixteen Rivers Press is a shared-work collective, with a three-year commitment. PDF email submissions from November 1, 2022 to February 1, 2023. View flyer and see complete guidelines on our website.

View the full December 2022 eLtiPak Newsletter here. Subscribe to the NewPages Newsletter to get first access to these opportunities.

December 2022 eLitPak :: Affordable Poetry, Publishing, & Critique Workshops

Screenshot of Caesura Poetry Workshop's flyer for the December 2022, January 2023, and February 2023 eLitPak newsletters
click image to open PDF

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 experimenting with punctuation, sharpening poem titles, erasure poetry, New Year’s poetry, building a chapbook, monthly critique workshops, and more. View flyer and visit website for more information.

View the full December 2022 eLitPak here. Subscribe to the NewPages Newsletter to get early access to these flyers.

Magazine Stand :: The Woven Tale Press – Vol 10 No 8

The Woven Tale Press Vol 10 No 8 cover image

The Woven Tale Press editors for Vol 10 No 8 promise readers “haunting images, eco-friendly sculpture, unusual mixed media, poetry, fiction and more!” Contributors include Craig Cotter, Stacey Fletcher, Jana Harris, Nell Jungyun, Kenneth Kesner, Roberto Loiederman, Joseph A. Miller, Natalie Oliphant, Craig Palmer, Sara Joyce Robinson, Susan B. Wadsworth. The Woven Tale Press welcomes fiction and creative nonfiction prose writing, poetry, and all mediums in the visual arts, including installation works; galleries are invited to submit the work of artists they represent. For their site, The Woven Tale Press seeks posts by both visual artists and writers, on any aspect of their creative process. Artists can submit their website URL for review consideration. If you are interested in becoming an art correspondent for The Woven Tale Press — to report on your local art scene— WTP would love to hear from you! Visit their website for full details.

December 2022 eLitPak :: Now Open for Entries: The 17th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards

17th annual National Indie Excellence® Awards flyer for the NewPages eLitPak
click image to open PDF

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.

View the full December 2022 eLitPak Newsletter here. Want to get our eLitPak opportunities delivered straight to your inbox? Subscribe today!

New Book :: Losing the Precious Few

Losing the Precious Few: How America Fails to Educate Its Minorities in Science and Engineering by Richard A. Tapia book cover image

Losing the Precious Few: How America Fails to Educate Its Minorities in Science and Engineering by Richard A. Tapia
Arte Público Press, April 2022

A professor for almost 50 years in Rice University’s Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics, nationally acclaimed scholar Richard Tapia is struck by the number of Chinese students in the hallways and wonders how the United States can remain globally competitive. Tapia asserts it is critical to the nation’s health and well-being to improve the representation of “the precious few,” or domestic minority groups, in STEM education and careers. African Americans and Latinos alone make up 31% of the population, and he writes the country cannot maintain its economic and scientific health when such a large part of the population is left out of science and engineering. In addition, he contends the United States will not have racial justice without educational justice. Underrepresented groups must have equal access to higher education. Providing a road map to increase the representation of domestic minority learners in academia and STEM fields, this is a must-read for university administrators and professors who want to attract and retain a diverse student body. In addition, Tapia includes advice for students, their parents and teachers, who will also benefit from his wisdom and years of experience serving as a mentor to those from diverse backgrounds.

December 2022 eLitPak :: Our Lady of the Lake University’s Online MFA & MA Programs

screenshot of Our Lady of the Lake University Online MFA & MA Program flyer for the June 2022 eLitPak
click image to open PDF

Our Lady of the Lake University’s 100% online Master of Arts-Master of Fine Arts (MA-MFA) and Master of Arts (MA) in Literature, Creative Writing, and Social Justice 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.

If you’re not subscribed to our weekly newsletter, view the full December 2022 eLitPak here.

Where to Submit Round-up :: December 16, 2023

hand holding a pen and writing in a notebook

Sorry for the long delay in getting back to doing our Weekly Where to Submit Roundups! I am including all opportunities from the end of November until now. We were working hard on getting our site ready for its updated launch. We hope you are enjoying the new look and feel of NewPages. Enjoy the round-up of submission opportunities below for the week of December 16, 2023, and earlier.

Want to get alerts for new opportunities sent directly to your inbox every Monday afternoon instead of waiting for our Friday Where to Submit Round-ups? For just $5 a month, you can get early access to new calls for submissions and writing contests before they go live on our site, so subscribe today! Free subscribers get access to the latest submission opportunities on the following Monday.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Round-up :: December 16, 2023”

Book Review :: Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng book cover image

Guest Post by Kevin Brown

Our Missing Hearts by Celest Ng is a dystopian novel in the vein of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Ng says she drew everything in her fictional world from real life, which makes her United States scarily believable. The government has passed the PACT act, which prohibits discussion of un-American ideas; targets people of Chinese descent; and uses the government’s right to remove people’s children as a means of control. This law leads to rampant discrimination and violence against Asian Americans, ultimately forcing the mother of the main character to flee. While there are parts of exposition to explain this alternate America, the heart of the book is Margaret’s difficult decision to leave Bird when he was nine. He has spent several years without her, but he ultimately goes looking for her, partly because of a cryptic note he receives, but also because of the disappearance of one of his classmates, Sadie, who has been removed from her family and relocated. By centering the novel on these relationships and the effects of such a law on parents and children, Ng reminds readers that laws don’t exist in a vacuum: there are always real individuals who suffer, whether we choose to see them or not.

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng. Penguin, 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/.

Review :: “Porous” by Jessica Moore

Brick summer 2022 literary magazine cover image

Guest Post by Megan Eralie

Published in the summer 2022 issue of Brick, “Porous” by Jessica Moore investigates motherhood and imagines the many types of containers in and around pregnancy, birth, and life. Moore opens by stating, “I have an affinity for the liminal.” This fascination of “spaces between” opens an exploration of moments and feelings “beyond the physical.” Reflecting on motherhood, both years before and after giving birth to twins, Moore muses on the space love contains and the boundaries, containers for love, that also grow with motherhood. A car crash eight years before giving birth results in a head injury which causes Moore to pay closer attention to losses and to memorize a passage from John Berger that sparks an unintended attention towards how the mind “alter[s] and appropriate[s]” our own words—memorized words are, themselves, unable to be contained. The containment of words read and memorized culminates in an observation that words, like fetal cells from a pregnancy, live in the body long after birth. The essay itself is a container of Moore’s words blended with other writers’, a container that goes on to live within the reader, revealing the liminality of language.

“Porous” by Jessica Moore. Brick: A Literary Journal, issue 108, Summer 2022.

Reviewer bio: Megan Eralie (she/her) is a nonfiction writer, poet, and graduate student living in Logan, Utah, who thinks having two cats is a personality trait. You can find her on twitter @smeggggs.

Magazine Stand :: About Place Journal – December 2022

About Place Journal December 2022 cover image

About Place Journal editors invite readers to their December 2022 issue themed “Center of Gravity” with these comments: “Justice is the center of gravity and resistance is how we get there. While the fight for social justice, reproductive rights, and the environment has been an ongoing struggle, the present moment demands an even more urgent response to these grievous times. As James Baldwin reminds us, ‘the role of the artist…is to illuminate that darkness [and] to make the world a more human dwelling place.’ In this light, the Center of Gravity issue explores poetry, prose and visual art that articulate the possibilities of resistance and envision worlds in which justice is a reality.” Contributors include Natiq Jalil, Gerburg Garmann, Michele Reese, Alison Palmer, Helen Stevens Chinitz, Joe Milazzo, Cheryl Byler Keeler, Jeremy Paden, Cristina Correa, Hannah Dierdorff, Lisa Kwong, Mary Newell, Joanne Diaz & Jason Reblando, H. E. Riddleton, Petra Kuppers, Akua Lezli Hope, Ingrid Wendt, Allison Cummings, Carla S. Schick, Joseph Ross, Evelyn Reilly, Julie Runacres, Ariel Resnikoff, Allison Cobb, Mariana Mcdonald, Cassandra Rockwood Ghanem, Gail Folkins, Gerburg Garmann, Jorge Losoya, Bunny McFadden, RBD, Mary Edna Fraser, and Jack Bordnick.

New Book :: Lords of Misrule

Lords of Misrule 20 Tears of Saturnalia Books book cover image

Lords of Misrule: 20 Years of Saturnalia Books
Edited by Henry Israeli and Rebecca Lauren
Saturnalia Books, December 2022

Twenty years ago, Saturnalia Books opened its doors for business, and soon thereafter published, The Babies, an astonishing collection of poetry by Sabrina Orah Mark. Since then, Saturnalia Books has published some of the most innovative new voices in the poetry world, including poets Sarah Vap, Catherine Pierce, Kathleen Graber, Kristi Maxwell, Natalie Shapero, Peter Jay Shippy, Martha Silano, Timothy Liu, Cortney Lamar Charleston, Hadara Bar-Nadav, and Kayleb Rae Candrilli, as well as the groundbreaking Gurlesque anthology. This collection gathers poems from all of our poet’ s books, giving readers a good taste of twenty years’ worth of Saturnalia Books publications. With an introduction by poet and founder Henry Israeli and managing editor Rebecca Lauren.

MAYDAY seeks applicants for the volunteer part-time positions of Production Editors and Poetry Editors

We invite applications for Production Editors and Poetry Editors until the positions are filled.

We will begin scheduling interviews on December 16, 2022.

PRODUCTION EDITORS: As an integral part of the managing editor’s office, production editors are responsible for layout and formatting of all content prior to posting at MAYDAY. In addition to an interest in literary publishing, strong applicants might also have experience with digital journalism, publishing, and/or proofing or editing copy. MAYDAY is published on WordPress, so experience with this platform will be helpful, but it’s not prohibitively difficult to learn, either. We provide staff training and ongoing support. Familiarity with the Chicago Manual of Style will also be helpful, though it is also not an immediate requirement.

POETRY EDITORS: In addition to reading submissions and selecting work for publication, poetry editors will be encouraged to solicit work for the magazine and help develop various feature series and ongoing projects in collaboration with other editors on staff. Ideal candidates for the poetry editor positions may or may not have an educational background in writing or literary studies, but should have experience publishing their own work and/or editing the work of others.

Review :: “Tom Is Dead” by Catherine Sinow

Marrow literary magazine logo

Guest Post by Virginia

A succinct nonfiction essay by Catherine Sinow, but one that will sit in the mind long after you’ve finished reading it, “Tom Is Dead” is about tragedy befalling a family and the complications of grief that come from no longer being close to that family. The work, published in Issue 3 of Marrow Magazine, is about rifts between people but also about closeness, and how those two things can co-exist sometimes in strange and painful ways. Sinow utilizes the small space the essay takes up well, and while the word count is low, the content is packed with effective language, like these opening lines, “Once I was friends with two brothers. I had a falling out with both of them. Eight months later, their dad was hit by a car and killed.” The blend of craft and content makes the essay a real brain-worm of a piece, and it’s a slightly morbid, slightly bittersweet, altogether powerful read.

“Tom Is Dead” by Catherine Sinow. Marrow Magazine, Issue 3, 2022.

Reviewer bio: Virginia is an English graduate student at Utah State University. They like talking with cats better than talking with people.

Magazine Stand :: Aji Magazine – Issue 17

Aji Magazine Fall 2022 Issue 17 cover image

Aji Magazine Editor in Chief Erin O’Neill Armendarez writes of Issue 17: “Every poem, story, essay, photograph, or work of graphic art in this issue invites readers to consider alternative experiences and ways of being, coaxes us out of our day-to-day normal into someone else’s world. Pieces in this issue will inspire laughter, pathos, and perhaps deep reflection. In a world where writers, musicians, and artists are being silenced, threatened, imprisoned, even killed, we are so thankful for all of you, for the communities from which you come, for the unique perspectives you share with Aji, a small magazine, to some degree a speck on the stage of contemporary national art and literature.” The online magazine includes partner and director of Continuum Art Studios Shelley Schrieber as the featured artist, an interview with Keith Hamilton Cobb that “delves into critical conversations on racism, action, and difficult truths,” and over 100 pages of writing and artwork from four dozen contributors. All for free online, so head on over and take a look today!

New Book :: Sound Fury

Sound Fury poetry by Mark Levine published by University of Iowa Press book cover image

Sound Fury Poetry by Mark Levine
University of Iowa Press, November 2022

Throughout Sound Fury, poems by metaphysician Robert Herrick are refashioned into phantasmagorical oddities of likeness and difference. Figures from the fringes of popular imagination—Zane Grey, Robinson Crusoe, Porfirio Díaz—surface as cobbled-together avatars on the theme of identity. Brilliantly asserting the necessity of humane and resistant modes of speech against the vapid sounds and enforced silences of orthodoxy, Sound Fury finds the poet “Now, in our former state/ In our current one/ In stately procession,” venturing forth in a world “where things of questionable being go.”

Magazine Stand :: Poetry Magazine – December 2022

Poetry Magazine December 2022 cover image

Poetry Magazine December 2022 includes the special feature “Wholly Seen: The Work of Diana Solís,” which includes Carlos Cumpián’s essay “Encounter Diana Solís,” a portfolio of Chicago poetry community portraits taken by Solís in the 70s-90s, two poems by Solís, and the essay, “Making Light Together” by Robin Reid Drake. Other contributors to the issue’s regular content include Cindy Juyoung Ok, Tacey M. Atsitty, Alan Pelaez Lopez, Peter Mason, Donte Collins, Rebecca Hazelton, Dara Yen Elerath, Dorianne Laux, Marcus Wicker, Diamond Forde, and Charif Shanahan. Poetry Magazine‘s full content can be found on their website along with subscription information for the print copy.

Magazine Stand :: Rivanna Review – Issue 6

Rivanna Review issue 6 December 2022 cover image

Issue 6 of Rivanna Review offers readers an eclectic collection of content “from Virginia and beyond,” with stories by Jerry Gabriel, Christine Schott, Dylan James, and Mitchell Toews; features like “Osoyoos Homecoming” by Sonia Nicholson, “Southwest Petroglyphs” by Edward Boucheron, a tribute to Melody Edwardsen by Ed Meek, an introduction and portfolio of “Venice Watercolors” in full color by Karen Rosasco, a tribute to Isaac Boyd by Carol Cutler, photographs by Raegan Pietrucha, an intriguing series of “Welsh Portraits” by John Thomas (1838-1905), and articles on the Lang Fairy Books and the Little Free Library, book reviews, and the column “News from Hapsburg,” which features “The Bell Ringer,” James Pettigrew. If you appreciate history, literature, arts, and photography – the Rivanna Review has got you covered!

New Book :: The Entre Ríos Trilogy

The Entre Ríos Trilogy fiction by Perla Suez translated by Rhonda Dahl Buchanan published by White Pine Press book cover image

The Entre Ríos Trilogy
Fiction by Perla Suez, Trans. by Rhonda Dahl Buchanan
White Pine Press, November 2022

The three novels in this collection, written by Perla Suez in Spanish, and expertly translated to English by Rhonda Dahl Buchanan, take place in Entre Ríos, the Argentine province where thousands of Jewish immigrants settled at the end of the nineteenth century. Suez weaves history and memory in these tales of passion, violence, and intrigue. Déborah, the protagonist of Lethargy, narrates the traumatic experiences of her youth in Basavilbaso, and captures the stifling atmosphere of intolerance and repression during the 1950s. In The Arrest Lucien Finz, a young Jewish farmer, leaves the rice fields of Villa Clara to study medicine in Buenos Aires, where he becomes a victim of La Semana Trágica, the “Tragic Week” in January of 1919, when government forces arrested, tortured, and murdered striking workers and many innocent people. Complot is an intricate web of lust, deceit, murder, and power, which spans the first three decades of the twentieth century, when Great Britain influenced the growth of the Argentine nation.

Review :: “The Sum of Which Parts” by Beth Kephart

Beth Kephart head shot

Guest Post by Zoe Dalley

“Our ideas of love were different, too. I wanted, I was desperate, to know you truly, Dad.”

Beth Kephart’s [pictured] short nonfiction piece “The Sum of Which Parts” focuses on a collection of items belonging to her now deceased father to let readers into his world at the end of his life during the COVID-19 lockdowns. From his wallet to a picture of his Wii bowling team, Kephart uses these items to help us understand what it was like for her father, and, in turn, what it must have been like at a time of extreme isolation for much of the older generation without the access or mastery over technology. Kephart then pairs the physical distance of the lockdowns, where she wasn’t able to visit her father without the barrier of technology, with the emotional distance she feels existed between her and her father. Beautifully weaving the two together, “The Sum of Which Parts” effectively tackles the complexity of parent/child relationships, in particular during strange and unforeseen circumstances, such as a global pandemic.

“The Sum of Parts” by Beth Kephart. Upstreet, 2022.

Reviewer bio: Zoe Dalley is a graduate student specializing in literature, composition and culture. They have a particular interest in horror, experimental literature, and anything within the realm of the bizarre.

Magazine Stand :: The Greensboro Review – Fall 2022

The Greensboro Review Fall 2022 issue cover image

The Fall 2022 issue of The Greensboro Review (#112) features the Amon Liner Poetry Prize winner, Dom Witten’s “Broken Showerhead,” and an Editor’s Note by Terry L. Kennedy in which he pays tribute to friends who have passed, as well as new work from ​​Todd Davis, Chris Edmonds, Larry Flynn, Cynthia Gunadi, Matt Hart, AE Hines, A. Van Jordan, Sarah MacKenzie, Louise Marburg, Chris Mattingly, Aidan O’Brien, Skyler Osborne, Suphil Lee Park, Carol M. Quinn, Madison Rahner, Sarah Elaine Smith, Caitlin Rae Taylor, Abby Wolpert, and Dean Young, with a folio of Kelly Cherry’s work. This issue is dedicated to Kelly Cherry (1940-2022), Jeff Towne (1929-2022), and Dean Young (1955-2022).

New Book :: Taken to Heart

Taken to Heart: 70 Poems from the Chinese translated by Gary Young and Yanwen Xu published by White Pine Press book cover image

Taken to Heart: 70 Poems from the Chinese
Translated by Gary Young and Yanwen Xu
White Pine Press, November 2022

The seventy poems that comprise this collection constitute an anthology, Elementary School Chinese Textbook (Jiangsu Edition), given to Chinese school children as a text to aid their instruction in Mandarin and to introduce them to China’s rich literary history. The poems are considered representative of China’s highest poetic achievements from the Han Dynasty to the Qing. The study of these poems is also meant to subtly guide students toward an appreciation of traditional Chinese virtues, culture, historical events, and social etiquette. The poems are memorized by every student, and by the end of their course of study, Chinese children will have absorbed a storehouse of Chinese characters and been steeped in a cultural tradition that spans more than two thousand years.

Book Review :: Powder Days by Heather Hansman

Powder Days: Ski Bums Ski Towns and the Future of Chasing Snow by Heather Hansman Hanover Square Press November 2021 book cover image

Guest Post by Keegan Waller

Through a mix of literary journalism and memoir in Powder Days: Ski Bums, Ski Towns and the Future of Chasing Snow, Heather Hansman asks the question: is the ski town dream dead, and did it ever exist in the first place? Hansman uses her own connections and experiences as a former ticket checker, ski patroller, and restaurant worker in a Colorado ski town to tell a story of the realities of working-class skiers who are still “living the dream.”

“We moved to the mountains and let the other facets of our lives fall into place from there.” In dispelling the common perceptions of the archetypical ski bum, Hansman paints a picture of communities in crisis due to stagnant wages and rising housing costs, mental health issues among ski industry workers, racial tensions, and the ever-looming threat of disappearing snow due to climate change. All framed by her nostalgic, months-long road trip to ski towns across the country. Anyone who has ever loaded everything they owned into their car and moved to a ski town – or even considered doing so after a weekend on the slopes – will find something to relate to in Powder Days.

Powder Days: Ski Bums, Ski Towns and the Future of Chasing Snow by Heather Hansman. Hanover Square Press, November 2021.

Reviewer bio: Keegan Waller is a graduate student in Utah State’s creative writing program. His writing has been featured in Door is a Jar, Boston Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. You can find him on Twitter @keeg_wall.

New Book :: Welcome to Dragon Talk

Welcome to Dragon Talk: Inspiring Conversations About Dungeons & Dragons and the People Who Love to Play It by Shelly Mazzanoble and Greg Tito published by University of Iowa Press book cover image

Welcome to Dragon Talk: Inspiring Conversations About Dungeons & Dragons and the People Who Love to Play It
By Shelly Mazzanoble and Greg Tito
University of Iowa Press, December 2022

If you have any D&D fans on your holiday gift lists, then Welcome to Dragon Talk is exactly what you are looking for! Hosts of the official D&D podcast, Shelly Mazzanoble and Greg Tito and their surprising guests show how this beloved pastime has amassed a diverse, tight-knit following of players who defy stereotypes. The authors recount some of their most inspiring interviews and illuminate how their guests use the core tenets of the game in everyday life. An A-list actor defends D&D by baring his soul (and his muscles) on social media. A teacher in a disadvantaged district in Houston creates a D&D club that motivates students to want to read and think analytically. A writer and live-streamer demonstrates how D&D–inspired communication breaks barriers and empowers people of color. Readers will see why Dungeons & Dragons has remained such a pop culture phenomenon and how it has given this disparate and growing community the inspiration to flourish and spread some in-game magic into the real world.

New Book :: All This Thinking

All This Thinking: The Correspondence of Bernadetter Mayer and Clark Coolidge Edited by Stephanie Anderson and Kristen Tapson book cover image

All This Thinking: The Correspondence of Bernadetter Mayer and Clark Coolidge
Edited by Stephanie Anderson and Kristen Tapson
University of New Mexico Press, December 2022

All This Thinking explores the deep friendship and the critical and creative thinking between Bernadette Mayer and Clark Coolidge, focusing on an intense three-year period in their three decades of correspondence. These fiercely independent American avant-garde poets have influenced and shaped poets and poetic movements by looking for radical poetics in the everyday. This collection of letters provides insight into the poetic scenes that followed World War II while showcasing the artistic practices of Mayer and Coolidge themselves. A fascinating look at both the poets and the world surrounding them, All This Thinking will appeal to all readers interested in post-World War II poetry.

To find 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. Click here to sign up for our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

Magazine Stand :: Still Point Arts Quarterly – Winter 2022

Still Point Arts Quarterly Winter 2022 issue cover image

Still Point Arts Quarterly says this about its publication: “a truly beautiful and engaging art and literary journal.” Having held this quarterly in my hands and viewed it online many times over the years, I can attest that this is no hyperbole. Produced four times a year, each issue focuses on a theme and features historical and contemporary art, fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. “The Quarterly has been praised for its rich content as well as its splendid layout and design. Intended for artists, nature lovers, seekers, and enthusiasts of all types.” Themed Cities: Centers of Culture and Creativity, the newest issue holds good to these promises, with art and writing spanning the globe from San Francisco with “Walking Through Time” by Mitchell Near; Nanjing, China with “An Intersection of Time” by Dwight E. Watson; to Carl Boon’s “My Chicago,” Vivien Zielin’s “The Artistic Delicacies of Paris,” and David McVey’s “Glasgow in Squares” – just to name a few. Featured artists include Lorin Cary, Laruen Curtis, Linda Woolven, Theodosia A. G. Tamborlane, Lori Arbel, JoAnn Telemdschinow, David A. Goodrum, Deborah McGill, Caroline de Mauriac, MJU Edwards, Rosalie Sanara Petrouske, Mark Saba, Lu Lius, Nanci Stoeffler, and Jane Gottlieb. The publication is free to read online and available to purchase in print.

Magazine Stand :: Hole in the Head re:View – Issue 3.4

Hole in the Head re:View online magazine of poetry and art November 2022 issue cover image

Celebrating their third year of publication, Hole in the Head re:View has attracted readers, writers, photographers, and artists from around the globe – 130 different countries, from Albania to Zambia, with nearly 200,000 page views and 30,000 unique visitors/readers. Sounds like a good place to read and be read! And though the day has passed, there’s much to be gleaned from this issue’s special section, “Headlines – Thanksgiving recipes, real & imagined” with works from Fannie Flagg, Christopher Rubio-Goldsmith, Virginia Elizabeth Hayes, Pamela Sumners, Phyllis Schwartz, William Welch, Anne Rankin, Diana Tokaji, Jeanne Julian, Maxine Susman, and Tricia Knoll. The rest of the issue is rounded out with poetry and artwork from over 30 more contributors – all free to read online.

Review :: “Sufjan Stevens and How I Taught Myself to Cry” by Robin Gow

Mina Weeks review of "Sufjan Stevens and How I Taught Myself to Cry" by Robin Gow published in Cream City Review literary magazine cover image

Guest Post by Mina Weeks

Like the famous Milwaukee cream-colored bricks, Cream City Review’s Winter 2021 issue stands out from the crowd with its focus on marginalized works and experiences. In Robin Gow’s “Sufjan Stevens and How I Taught Myself to Cry,” the beauty and heartache of the trans experience dance with the anguish of familial trauma and bittersweet aftertaste of romance gone wrong. The inability to cry—and its ties to testosterone and holding oneself together with mere stitches—explores the helplessness of bottled-up emotions through the lens of singer/songwriter Sufjan Stevens, whose famously morose lyrics wield the power of tightened chests and melancholic sighs. Through this, Gow expertly captures the trans experience and its ties to emotional suppression and release.

“Sufjan Stevens and How I Taught Myself to Cry” by Robin Gow. Cream City Review, Fall/Winter 2021.

Reviewer bio: Mina Weeks (they/she) is a multi-marginalised K-pop stan who tweets, teaches, and writes fanfiction to get them through their existence. Find them on Twitter @minami_noel or on Instagram @meena.noel.

New Book :: An Audible Blue

An Audible Blue: Selected Poems 1963-2016 Poetry by Klaus Merz translated by Marc Vincenz published by White Pine Press book cover image

An Audible Blue: Selected Poems 1963-2016
Poetry by Klaus Merz, Trans. by Marc Vincenz
White Pine Press, November 2022

Throughout his career, Swiss Poet Klaus Merz has been praised as an artisan of the understatement, and it is precisely in these smallest of details that the great unexpected has the potential to be illuminated. As Merz himself has said: “The poetry nudges toward a secret, hopefully without ostentation, rather through the power of its own alphabet.” This seminal volume brings together selections from Merz’s fifteen collections of poetry (1963-2016). Marc Vincenz is a poet, translator, fiction writer, editor, musician and artist. He has published over 30 books of poetry, fiction and translation. His newest books are There Might Be a Moon or a Dog (Gazebo, Australia, 2022) and The Pearl Diver of Irunmani (White Pine Press, forthcoming 2023).

Magazine Stand :: The Baltimore Review – Fall 2022

The Baltimore Review online literary magazine Fall 2022 issue cover image

The editors invite readers to the Fall 2022 online issue of The Baltimore Review by considering our relationships to reading and writing and the universe, “When we read and write, aren’t we trying to bring order to the intellectual and emotional universe, at least our small piece of it? With whatever tools we have. Though the landscape is bound to change. Or maybe we just need to go outside and be in the world.” Perhaps a little of each, a balance, which readers can seek in the Fall 2022 Baltimore Review filled with poetry, fiction, and nonfiction by contributors Matt Barrett, Michael Beard, Brecht De Poortere, Gustavo Pérez Firmat, Jared Hanson, Marcia L. Hurlow, Kael Knight, Lance Larsen, Winshen Liu, Susan Blackwell Ramsey, ZG Tomaszewski, Donna Vorreyer, Lydia Waites, and Lucy Zhang.