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!
This We in the Back of the House Poetry by Jacob Sunderlin Saturnalia Books, October 2022
Winner of the Saturnalia Book Editors Prize, Jacob Sunderlin’s first book of poems is measured in long shifts, out of sight of customers, written out in bleach, cigarette butts, and cheers to that we who work in the back of the house. Poems written the way stock pots are scoured with steel wool, the way bricks are laid with violent precision and exhausted resignation. These poems were dreamed by a head stuck inside a cement mixer, drunk on the language of work and the spoken we language creates. This is not the romanticized imaginary “Midwest” exploited by cynical politicians but a lyrical and even occult working-class landscape. Its we is made gentle by listening, by being in garages with apple-juice jugs of antifreeze underneath a sky hazed by contrails in the shape of Randy Savage and bootlegged diamonds of anti-helicopter lights while Appetite for Destruction whispers from a pile of burning leaves. This we is made of brothers, of the teenage bricklayer scamming free nuggets from Mickey Dees. These poems are sharp but loving, spoken in the light of a Coleman lantern from a boombox spread out on a blanket down by a river Monsanto owns. This we rides in a 1957 Chevrolet Bel-Air left parked out in a shed, windows half-down.
reading’s at a loss for punctual and capital in abraham smith’s 125-page Insomniac Sentinel so’s that the rarely contractions and possessions make em half known
each poem puts on a voice that’s not his self’s but’s still his own, like “Hoodwink Aubade” leans on a big stick to jaw about u.s. gun culture’s manliest ideas
the enjambments leave “a black eye / everywhere on the body” & insist asking how’s the commonplace meet divine as “god does / teeth to babies”
you start to notion how well organized & awake verge on disorder maybe or past it
it’s often we see little how “we / are one musical family” yet the book stays awake & ever watchful over tercet-storied dialects interjecting bits of punt nonce scents and elide how endings end in ing
that hurts to watch if you’re not so careful as him
here’s then tales to hand stories over to unspeaking & such fanciful finds we earn in the barest sense of the word
enough to veil up a skyfull of featheries
there’s cranes or crayons to keep color in the clouds run through all the pages
you’ll see for yourself if you’ve the patience & alertness
Reviewer bio: Nicholas Michael Ravnikar is a disabled neurodivergent writer, artist & critic who lives in southeast Wisconsin. He once ate peanut butter off a landline. It’s a long story. A father and spouse, he enjoys lifting weights, yoga, and meditation in his spare time. Connect with him on social media and download free books at bio.fm/[email protected]
The Common, the award-winning literary magazine based in Amherst, MA, is opening its ninth annual Author Postcard Auction on November 7, 2022. Authors will write and send postcards in time for the holidays! This unique online auction gives book lovers from around the world the opportunity to bid on handwritten, personalized postcards from their favorite writers. The Common, whose mission is to deepen society’s sense of place through literature and nurture the careers of new and international writers, is directly benefited by proceeds from the auction. They support payment to and mentorship of emerging authors as well as The Common’s post-grad editorial fellowship.
2022 Postcard Auction Authors: Rumaan Alam, Rabih Alameddine, Gina Apostol, Christina Baker Kline, Alison Bechdel, Matt Bell, Alexander Chee, Tara Conklin, Jennifer Croft, Edwidge Danticat, Anthony Doerr, Esi Edugyan, Jennifer Egan, Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Craig Finn, Jonathan Franzen, Neil Gaiman, Andrew Sean Greer, Lauren Groff, Joe Hill, Leslie Jamison, Hari Kunzru, Fran Lebowitz, Min Jin Lee, Megha Majumdar, Elizabeth McCracken, Natalie Merchant, Claire Messud, Christopher Moore, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Tommy Orange, Julie Otsuka, R. J. Palacio, Ann Patchett, Jonathan Safran Foer, George Saunders, David Sedaris, Jim and Karen Shepard, Amanda Shires, Lynn Steger Strong, Elizabeth Strout, Donna Tartt, Jeff Tweedy, Anne Tyler, Claire Vaye Watkins, Chris Ware.
Fictive Dream is an online magazine for short stories (500-2500 words) that give an insight into the human condition. The publication features stories “with a distinctive voice, clarity of thought, and precision of language. They may be on any subject. They may be challenging, unsettling, uplifting, cryptic but, above all, they must be well-crafted and compelling.” The publication accepts submissions on a rolling basis and publishes one story every Friday and Sunday. Recent contributors include Gary Duncan, D.P. Snyder, Mike Fox, Len Kuntz, Douglas A. Wright, Sandra Arnold, A. J. Ashworth, and Jo-Anne Cappeluti. Fictive Dream also hosts the annual Flash Fiction February, featuring new flash throughout the month. Submissions are open to works 200-850 words until December 31, 2022.
Butcher’s Work: True Crime Tales of American Murder and Madness Nonfiction by Harold Schechter University of Iowa Press, November 2022
In Butcher’s Work, Harold Schechter explores the story of a Civil War veteran who perpetrated one of the most ghastly mass slaughters in the annals of U.S. crime. A nineteenth-century female serial killer whose victims included three husbands and six of her own children. A Gilded Age “Bluebeard” who did away with as many as fifty wives throughout the country. A decorated World War I hero who orchestrated a murder that stunned Jazz Age America. While other infamous homicides from the same eras—the Lizzie Borden slayings, for example, or the “thrill killing” committed by Leopold and Loeb—have entered into our cultural mythology, these four equally sensational crimes have largely faded from public memory. A quartet of gripping historical true-crime narratives, Butcher’s Work restores these once-notorious cases to vivid, dramatic life. Harold Schechter is professor emeritus at Queens College, CUNY. Among his more than forty books are a series of historical true-crime narratives about America’s most infamous serial killers, including Hell’s Princess. He is married to the poet, Kimiko Hahn.
Where Was I Again, Olivia Muenz’s debut nonfiction chapbook from Essay Press, presents readers a glimpse into the mind of a neurodivergent reader and uses the power of language to emphasize how “we are in this together” by inviting all types of readers into her mindset and personal struggles. Muenz’s work reads like one is living inside the fragmented and constantly shifting mindset of a human. Her writing style consistently shifts between fragments, short paragraphs, and pages dedicated to a single sentence. Drifting like a “dusty balloon” she captures the truth of processing life as small moments that continue to live with us. “I am a big memory box,” Muenz proclaims, a statement that all readers can relate to yet one that distinctly reflects the author’s neurodivergent experience, the truth of her personal journey. She manages to reach her audience without compromising her own narrative. Muenz is not looking for her reader to sympathize with her or pity her, and she makes it clear that if her readers do not enjoy her narrative or don’t agree with what she says, they don’t have to stay. “I’m giving you an out,” she writes. “Well if you don’t want to take it. That’s not on me.” Her unapologetic attitude and conviction in her narrative are an admirable display of strength, especially in the face of talking about being in such a vulnerable state. Muenz expertly shows the ability of language to articulate the difficulties of reconciling body and mind, and the power of the written word to unite people in an understanding of the basic habits that all humans experience, no matter their background.
Reviewer bio: Catherine Hayes is a graduate student in English at Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts and resides in the Boston area. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in Blood & Thunder: Musings of the Art of Medicine, Atticus Review, NewPages, and an anthology with Wising up Press. She can be found on Twitter @Catheri91642131
Exposition Review is an independent, multi-genre literary journal that publishes narratives by new, emerging, and established writers in the genres of fiction, flash fiction, nonfiction, poetry, scripts for stage & screen, film, experimental narratives, visual art, and comics. The newest issue (Vol. VII) is themed “Flux” which means to “capture moments of change—gradual and sudden, subtle and profound, intensely personal and immensely public.”
Readers can find Fiction by Laura Freudig, Sara Landers, Mandy Shunnarah, Bernard Steeds, Kylee Webb; Flash Fiction by Carolyn Oliver, Cathy Ulrich, Lucy Zhang; Nonfiction by Jodi Scott Elliott, Charles Jensen, Achiro Patricia Olwoch (DREAMing Out Loud Contributor), Tania Perez Osuna; Poetry by Marianne Chan, jason b crawford, Lynda V. E. Crawford, Stephanie Kaylor, Alejandra Medina (WriteGirl Contributor); Stage & Screen by F. J. Hartland, Uma Incrocci, Alec Silberblatt; Experimental Narratives by Zachary Guerra, Kathryn Stam; Visual Art & Comics by ARTARIANICA (the collaborative effort of Jessy Randall and Briget Heidmous), Dmitry Borshch, Roger Camp, Meg Reynolds, Rebekah Scotland, Lorna Simpson, Film by Nate Hapke, Flora Rees-Arredondo; and an interview with Justin Chang,
Composition Poetry by Junious Ward Button Poetry, February 2023
In this debut full-length collection, Junious ‘Jay’ Ward dives deep into the formation of self. Composition interrogates the historical perceptions of Blackness and biracial identity as documented through a Southern Lens. Utilizing a variety of poetic forms, Ward showcases to his readers an innovative approach as he unflinchingly explores the way language, generational trauma, loss, and resilience shape us into who we are, the stories we carry, and what we will inevitably pass on. Signed copies are available for preorder now. Jay Ward is a poet living in Charlotte, NC, and the author of Sing Me a Lesser Wound (Bull City Press). He is a National Poetry Slam champion, an Individual World Poetry Slam champion, and Charlotte’s inaugural Poet Laureate. He has attended and/or received support from Breadloaf Writers Conference, Callaloo, The Frost Place, Tin House Winter Workshop, and The Watering Hole, and currently serves as a Program Director for BreatheInk and Vice-Chair for The Watering Hole.
NewPages receives many wonderful titles each month to share with our readers. You can read more about some of these titles by clicking on the “Books” tag under “Popular Blog Topics.” If you are a publisher or author looking to be listed here or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us!
Anthology
An Adventurous Spirit, ed. Nicholas Litchfield, Lowestoft Chronicle Press At the Ogre’s Table: A Red Ogre Review Anthology
Poetry
An Audible Blue, Klaus Merz, White Pine Press Around Here, J.R. Solonche, Kelsay Books The Bright Invisible, Michael Robins, Saturnalia Books Common Life, Stéphane Bouquet, Nightboat Books Composition, Junious “Jay” Ward, Button Poetry Defying Extinction, Amy Barone, Broadstone Books Dolore Minimo, Giovanna Cristina Vivinetto, Saturnalia Books Elizabeth/The Story of Drone, Louise Akers, Propeller Books Handling Filth, Jared Schickling, Unlikely Books If This Should Reach You In Time, Justin Marks, Barrelhouse Books In a Few Minutes Before Later, Brenda Hillman, Wesleyan University Press A Life Lived Differently, Kathryn Jacobs & Rachel Jacobs, Better Than Starbucks Publications
Julia Lisella’s title poem, “Our Lively Kingdom,” opens with the lines, “Our lively kingdom’s now broken / into village plots that others love to visit.” Themes of brokenness, healing, and finding joy weave through these poems like a river through a private landscape. My nine-year-old noticed the cover looks like a map with “tracks like a secret language.”
The covering painting, “Stories Untold,” by Sharon Santillo, sets the tone for the reader. Lisella illustrates a life of attention with lines like “All life is like that / a pursuit to satiate hunger” from “Thoughts About Hunger on a Morning Walk,” and “Is that the way of my work these days, conjuring you into existence . . . ” from “In At Home Depot 15 Years After Your Death.” Indeed, these poems resurrect and remember.
The poem "Hot Flash" has my heart (hormones?) forever. Previously, so little has been written wisely about perimenopause and menopause. Lisella writes, “is my body just grieving” and “The body’s history feels different than mine / as does the earth’s, and yet in unions / we keep telling this short story without words / with spasm and fit like lyric like labor."
The poems in Our Lively Kingdom give glimpses of time from the narrator’s childhood through to the pandemic, from private and familial places to nature and to her classroom. In “I’m Receiving Now,” Lisella ends the book with the line, “I’m receiving all the grief here it is here it is.” This ars poetica offers instructions on life and the poetic craft.
Reviewer bio: Chloe Yelena Miller lives in Washington, D.C., with her family. She is the author of Viable (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2021) and Unrest (Finishing Line Press, 2013). Chloe teaches writing at American University and University of Maryland Global Campus, as well as privately. Find her at chloeyelenamiller.com and @ChloeYMiller.
Published online four times per year from the Department of English at Trevecca Nazarene University, Cumberland River Review has held a prominent name for itself among our great reading recommendations. Accepting submissions from September – April with a response time of three months, now is the time to read up and decide if this is a good venue for your work! This most recent issue features poetry by Garret Keizer, Austin Segrest, Therese Gleason, Grant Clauser, Anna Girgenti, Jane Qwart, John A. Nieves, Kelsey D. Mahaffey, Elisabeth Murawski, and Jeff Hardin, with artwork (Cloud Shadow) by Chuck Thomas.
Publishing nonfiction prose only, bioStories offers submission guidelines that help writers focus their craft on what the editors are looking for, and express the understanding that “real life is messy,” yet acknowledge: “human nature is idiosyncratic and frequently contradictory, and, quite often, when you look close enough, it is downright graceful.” The publication features a weekly essay on its homepage and prints two issues each year. Recent online contributors include Alisa Vereshchagin, Jane Frances Hacking, Elizabeth Bird, Alden S. Blodget, Joseph O’Day, Mary Ittelson, James Seawel, Liza Wieland, and Rhiannon Koehler.
A Life Lived Differently offers readers a portrait of autism in verse and prose. The poet speaks in the voice of the autistic child, whose name is Dan. The prosaist speaks in the voice of the parent. Although Dan is fictional, he is based on real people. Kathryn Jacobs, who identifies as autistic, writes his viewpoint in poetry which is both lyrical and down to earth. She is Dan, in writing and sometimes in emotional reality also. Rachel Jacobs writes as the mom and Dan’s primary caregiver. Dan also has a brother, but their father is absent from the narrative. Dan’s parents seem to be divorced, in part due to the pressure of parenting a special-needs child. This portrayal of autism opens a door to the world and experiences of a child who faces the challenges we all do but sees and understands in a different way. At times amusing, sometimes wry, often surprising, this account offers an unparalleled view into living on the spectrum while at the same time celebrating the strength and beauty of a unique individual living with neurodiversity/Autism.
Established in cooperation with the University of Chicago Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation in 2000, The Awakenings Review is one of the nation’s leading literary reviews entirely committed to publishing the works of artists, writers, and poets with mental illness. The Awakenings Review looks for submissions from writers and poets who have a distinct relationship to mental illness-either self, family member, or friend. The hard-copy journal publishes original poetry, short stories, dramatic scenes, essays, creative nonfiction, photographs, interviews, excerpts from larger works, and black-and-white cover art.
The Fall 2022 issue features works by Bibhu Padhi, Zac Walsh, Liza Potvin, Pauline Milner, Arya F. Jenkins, Zan Bockes, Eileen Coughlin, Sandy Olson Hill, Louis Girόn, Lloyd Jacobs, Gerard Sarnat, Raymond Abbott, Skye Gill, Eoin Begley, Alan Sugar, Murray Alfredson, Aileen Shaw, Jennifer Cimmerian Urbanek, Benjamin Robinson, Julia Morris Paul, Christine Andersen, Janice O’Mahony, Kate Marshall, Marie Marchand, Elizabeth Kerlikowske, Tricia Himmel, A.L. Gordon, Joshua Gage, George Drew, Joyce Cote, Cierra Corbin, and Mohineet Kaur Boparai in a free, online reading format.
Beginning in 2023, The Awakenings Review will be published twice a year – once in the spring and once in the fall. Submissions are free and open year-round via email as well as USPS.
California is Going to Hell Poetry by Sydney Vogl perhappened press, November 2021
In case you missed the debut of Sydney Vogl’s debut chap collection of poetry, California is Going to Hell (cover art by Claire Morales Design) is still available for purchase from perhappened press. These poems weave themes of family, sexuality, trauma, and healing with nostalgic images meant to immerse the reader “in color and sound.” Teacher/Writer Sydney Vogl was the winner of the 2021 Jane Underwood Poetry Prize, the 2020 AWP Intro Journals Awards, and was chosen as the poetry fellow for Martha’s Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing Teach! Write! Play! Fellowship. Vogl’s work can be found in Iron Horse Literary Review, Hobart, Honey Literary, and Booth among others.
Enjoying the final long days of sunshine here in the midwest, Spoon River Poetry Review Summer 2022 issue is just out. Each year, SRPR selects an Illinois-featured poet pairing to include as an extended feature of new poetry by one poet from the pair, while the other poet conducts an interview with the poet on their writing, matters of craft, and contemporary poetics. This year, the pairing is poetry by Tara Betts with an interview of the poet by Bryanna Lee. Also in this issue is new poetry by Rodrigo Flores Sánchez translated by Robin Myers, Ryan Clark, Michael Boccardo, Cynthia J. Patton, Emad Bashar translated by Bryar Bajalan and Shook, and many more. The SRPR Review Essay is “Redefining Our Futures: Recent Abolitionist Poetic Practice” by Allison Serraes, who reviews books by DaMaris B. Hill (A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland), Mahogany L. Brown (I Remember Death by Its Proximity to What I Love), and Shayla Lawz (speculation, n.). Cover art by Alondra Cervantes.
“I started to narrate my choking to myself, as if transforming it into a story would keep me connected to a future in which I might tell it.”
Ben Lerner’s New Yorker short story, “Café Loup,” describes, in an almost comedic manner, the narrator’s fear of dying, his skepticism regarding the circumstances surrounding death, (how his family would react if he passed, the manner in which it happened, et cetera), life regrets, and the concept of mentally postponing his own demise. The piece opens, “When I became a father, I began to worry not only that I would die and not be able to care for my daughter but that I would die in an embarrassing way. . . ” In the story, the narrator chokes on a piece of steak at a restaurant, and in the first few moments, he looks back on his life. Readers get glimpses of his past, his values, his inner turmoil, and his regrets through Lerner’s use of exemplary imagery with each of his rambling – though always connected – thought loops. One of the more important elements highlighted in this piece was his relationship with his daughter, and how he felt that he deserved to die in the cafe because he wasn’t adequate enough or somehow deserved it. It truly highlights that we cannot afford to take any moment for granted, for we do not choose our time.
“Café Loup” by Ben Lerner. The New Yorker, 29 Aug. 2002.
Reviewer bio: Sade Frame is a Hawaii resident who is an aspiring recording artist and avid book reader.
Happy Friday! Sorry for the unintended break last week. But our Where to Submit Round-up is back again this week to help you discover new and ongoing submission opportunities to help keep your submission goals going strong.
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!
Many literary ventures begin in response to some need, and in doing so, become a vital component in building a literary community. Rivanna Review is just such a venture. Founder and Editor Robert Boucheron took a look around him and comments on what he observed, “Charlottesville is a university town, a hotbed of readers, and home to many writers, yet it lacked a publication for books, book reviews and literary news. Rivanna Review is here to fill the gap. It exists ‘for your reading pleasure.’ At the same time, it promotes small presses, American writers, and Virginia.”
Indeed, the name itself is reflective of its community, as Charlottesville is located on the Rivanna River, a tributary of the James. But writers and readers, know that contributors to the magazine come from around the globe and write about “places far and wide.” The most recent issue invites readers “to visit small town New England, downtown Atlanta, rural Highland County, Virginia, the Silk Road in Kazakhstan, a high school in suburban New Jersey, and the shadow world of hoaxes, malls, and Bigfoot.” Some recent contributors include Lynne Barrett, Jonathan Russell Clark, Maxim Matusevich, Ed Meek, Lisa Johnson Mitchell, Karl Plank, Christine Sneed, and Lucy Zhang.
The Bright Invisible Poetry by Michael Robins Saturnalia Books, October 2022
The Bright Invisible, the fifth collection from Michael Robins, investigates domesticity and desire, reenactment and reclamation, as well as the promise of love alongside the certainty of absence. “Sometimes the sun,” Robins writes, “elbows the ordinary, archival cloud” and sometimes we “close our eyes / & describe for each other what colors appear.” These poems are imbued with the “soft collisions” of our dazzling existence, and they offer the possibility for even the darkest season to guide us once more into spring. Michael Robins is the author of four previous collections, including In Memory of Brilliance & Value and People You May Know, both from Saturnalia Books. He lives in the Portage Park neighborhood of Chicago.
The newest issue of The Apple Valley Review online literary magazine has been released. Readers can enjoy short fiction by Emmanuel Nwafor, K. A. Polzin, Conor Barnes, and Magda Bartkowska; creative nonfiction by Yuko Iida Frost; and poetry by Eric Braude, Tina Blade, Miriam Levine, Paul Dickey, Devon Brock, Hedy Habra, and Matthew Johnson. Cover artwork by Japanese woodblock printmaker Hasui Kawase. Founded in 2005 by its current editor, Leah Browning, The Apple Valley Review is published in the spring and fall, and submissions are open on a rolling basis with no fee for short stories, flash fiction, personal essays/creative nonfiction, poetry, and prose poetry.
Dreams of relationships past and romances dead are a bittersweet experience; a haunting reminder of what almost was and a bubble of joy amidst otherwise bleak times. In Sydney Vogl’s “In January, My Body Becomes a Graveyard of Want,” the willful delusions of our dreamer manifest in the form of a lost lover.
Vogl delivers a hauntingly charming image of a willfully ignorant romance, which sneaks by the problems present in their bond rather than addressing them. “i don’t want to / talk too loud. i’m worried one of us will wake up. / we walk by a field of tulips & i almost notice / each one is shaped like an open wound, but i don’t.” They happily ignore the disturbances of their flower field, choosing to not address things in fear of waking the other up to the problems present.
It’s a gripping narrative that almost inspires a yearning to experience love and loss so strongly it haunts my dreams. “i wake up / alone. it’s february.” is a line piercing in its finality but perfectly embodies the loneliness and sense of grief that causes her dreamscape to feel like a graveyard.
A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School Nonfiction by Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire The New Press, February 2023
In A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, the co-hosts of the popular education podcast Have You Heard expose the potent network of conservative elected officials, advocacy groups, funders, and think tanks that are pushing a radical vision to do away with public education. “Cut[ing] through the rhetorical fog surrounding a host of free-market reforms and innovations” (Mike Rose), Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire lay bare the dogma of privatization and reveal how it fits into the current context of right-wing political movements. A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door “goes above and beyond the typical explanations” (SchoolPolicy.org), giving readers an up-close look at the policies—school vouchers, the war on teachers’ unions, tax credit scholarships, virtual schools, and more—driving the movement’s agenda.
The Fall issue (27.1) of The 2River View online poetry magazine is now available, with new works by Sara Ries Dziekonski, Anon Baisch, Blair Benjamin, Daniel Bourne, Brian Builta, Andrew Cox, Nicelle Davis, Michael Hettich, Sharon Venezio, Patricia Whiting, and Jane Zwart. Published online quarterly, The 2River View accepts submissions on a year-long rolling deadline calendar. The magazine is available to read free online and can also be downloaded as a PDF or in a “Make the Mag” format that can be reproduced for traditional print reading – great for classroom use, teachers! 2River also publishes eChapbooks that can also be read online or downloaded (“Chap the Book”) in a book-layout format. Recent chaps include The Lingering Would by Simon Anton Niño Diego Baena (October 2022) and One Hundred Moving Parts of Love by Lenny Dellarocca (September 2022). There is also a short video of each author reading from their collection. Visit 2River View today and dig in!
“Leaving” by Jesús Papoleto Meléndez comes from his poetry collection, Borracho [Very Drunk]: Love Poems & Other Acts of Madness, first published in 2020 by 2Life Press and now available to read on the Poetry Foundation website. If you are a sucker for love poems, “Leaving” will take you down a path to feel the hurt and the emotions from the point of view of the significant other. It starts, “The storm came.” Meaning a fight just happened or an argument just occurred. The speaker goes into how they saw it coming, the tension was building, “We had already felt / the tremor / of its warning. . . ” It was there, and at any time, it was going to explode, it was just a matter of when. When it did explode, the partner realized that no fight is worth losing someone you love and care about. However, the end is what made me sympathize with the speaker: “But you walked out, / To meet the wind / & the rain / intotheStorm / without me.” It makes my heart break a little to feel the hurt when the speaker realizes that they just lost someone they truly love and care about. That they are never coming back. This poem is short, yet it speaks so loudly.
“Leaving” by Jesús Papoleto Meléndezcomes. Poetry Foundation, reprinted by permission of 2LeafPress, 2020.
Reviewer bio: Jennifer Grotzinger is a student in an intro to poetry class. Her Instagram handle is @jenniferrodd_
Patterns of Orbit Poetry by Chloe N Clark Baobab Press, April 2023
Available now for pre-order, Chloe N Clark’s Patterns of Orbit spans genres, perspectives, and styles to articulate contemporary uncertainties in a rapidly changing world. Steadily gazing into and across the uncanny valley, Clark examines those jarring or subtle shifts in familiar stories, writing light into dark, and offering slivers of hope despite the longest of odds. Navigating a potent concoction of science fiction, folktale, and horror this collection of literary, character-driven stories combines the accumulated forces and darker natures of those genre elements, unleashing the terrors of alien fungi, forest demons, and interplanetary specters upon her characters. While these characters, capable and intelligent, face off against their prescribed monsters, it is their existential misgivings on the state of their worlds or conditions that will leave an indelible mark on the reader. As a notable contribution to the literary/genre hybrid canon, this collection offers a crossover read to the connoisseurs of both genre and literary fiction.
I feel as though I know Chestnut Review almost better than any other literary magazine out there because of how much they are constantly doing both in the larger literary community and in creating a community of “stubborn artists” of their own. In addition to their quarterly, online publication and print annual, they are currently planning a January retreat in Mexico (one spot left at the time of this writing) and another in North Wales in June. They also offer affordably-priced (because I’ve seen the gamut) workshops for drop-in writing, NaNo, chapbook editing and publishing, submissions and editorial processes, flash fiction, professional series topics, and more. And right now, they’re holding a raffle (free to enter) to win an exclusive call with editor Maria S. Picone along with their Free Feedback Friday Twitter drawings. So much going on! But let’s not forget the reason for this post – the Fall 2022 issue! It opens with a conversation with Seif-Eldeine Och, Poetry Chapbook Winner, and Mark Blackford, Chapbook Editor, and includes prose, poetry, and art by Mike Yunxuan Li, Noel Cheruto, Eileen Tomarchio, Lana Hall, Rachel Lastra, Maya Hersh, Abduljalal Musa Aliyu, Isibeal Owens, Njoku Nonso, Jessie Zechnowitz Lim, Claire Scott, Guy D’Annolfo, Biswadarshan Mohanty, Joan Kwon Glass, Taylor Yingshi, Denny Marshall, Lindsey Grant, Matina Vossou, and Kelly Sargent.
In Morality Play, Lauren Hilger forges a restless path between the impressionable folly of youth and the boundlessness of individual becoming. A motley bildungsroman of fierce imagination, Morality Play reveals, and revels in, the paradox inherent in its title, angling for a tender virtue in the sensuousness of words. “Raised on a fast pencil, a sound expiring,” Hilger reminds us that “From the world’s first cities, it was always a woman / telling the future.” Like a wild song fluent in, or flung against, awkward self-delusion and constrictive cultural norms, Morality Play offers a vision of womanhood as expansive as lucid dreaming, where all the “wrong words” become our “mother tongue.” Lauren Hilger is the author of Lady Be Good (CCM, 2016). Named a Nadya Aisenberg Fellow in poetry from MacDowell, she has also received fellowships from the Hambidge Center and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her work has appeared in BOMB, Harvard Review, KenyonReview, Pleiades, The Threepenny Review, West Branch, and elsewhere. She serves as a poetry editor for No Tokens.
The newest issue of the online quarterly Radar Poetry is a celebration of the winner and finalists of their annual Coniston Prize, an annual award that recognizes an exceptional group of poems by any poet who identifies as a woman writing in English. This year’s judge was Dorianne Laux, and she selected the following:
Winner: Amy Miller
Finalists: Kenzie Allen, Jessamyn Duckwall, Jenny Grassl, Abi Pollokoff
Radar Poetry 34 features several works from each poet, rounding out the entire issue. Submissions for the next Coniston Prize are open from June 1 – August 1, 2023. The 2022 winner received $1000 and each finalist received $175. In 2022, during the first seven days of contest submissions, Radar Poetry waived fees for BIPOC poets. For more information about the upcoming contest as well as general submissions, visit the Radar Poetry website.
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” tag under “Popular Topics.” Find out more about many of these titles with our Guide to Literary Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed here or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us!
2River View, Fall 2022 The Apple Valley Review, Fall 2022 Awakened Voices, Issue 14 The Awakenings Review, Fall 2022 Baltimore Review, 2022 Bellevue Literary Review, Fall/Winter 2023 bioStories, October 2022 Blue Collar Review, Summer2022 Bomb, Fall 2022 BoomLitMag, VII.1, 2022 Brilliant Flash Fiction, September 2022 Catamaran, Fall 2022 Chestnut Review, Fall 2022 Cholla Needles, 71 Cholla Needles, 70 Cleaver, Issue 39, Fall 2022 Club Plum, 3.4 Copper Nickel, Fall 2022
In “The Hill,” poet Lena Moses-Schmitt offers readers a short, beautiful experience into pure unadulterated emotion of what it feels like to love something or someone so much, but to then lose it, and in the process of dealing with that loss, find yourself once again. The poem begins:
I remember I used to receive love letters from him and found them so pleasurable I could only read in quick gulps, trying not to get brain freeze, skipping whole phrases so that they slid straight down the back of my throat.
“The Hill ” spoke out loud in a way to say to the reader that it is okay to feel like you are on top of the world, or in this case top of the hill, as Moses-Schmitt continues,
I reached the top and cried with no warning. I used to be very new to myself and now I was accustomed to everything. How embarrassing.
But, as the work concludes, sometimes you have to come back down and make sure to not lose yourself in that process.
“The Hill” by Lena Moses-Schmitt. 32 Poems, No. 39, Summer 2022.
Reviewer Bio: Kekoa is a student of the literary arts looking to further his knowledge and understanding of the abundance of forms.
An Adventurous Spirit: A Lowestoft Chronicle Anthology Edited by Nicholas Litchfield Lowestoft Chronicle Press, October 2022
A brief stop in Missouri to see a buzzworthy dead pig and a local pickler assist a Californian family in avoiding a menacing encounter with drug smugglers. In New York City, a riled, hotshot salesman endeavors to hunt down the brazen thieves who made off with his briefcase and wallet in a crowded subway car. And a subway train driver with a history of fatalities on his service record is on the hunt for another victim. An Adventurous Spirit shimmers with high adventure, comedy, drama, introspection, and intelligent observation. From psychedelic taxi rides and dubious genealogical quests across the United States heartland to farcically troublesome road trips and intense ancestral pinball duels in Europe, this collection features poetry and prose by Linda Ankrah-Dove, Robert Beveridge, Jeff Burt, DeWitt Clinton, DAH, Rob Dinsmoor, Mary Donaldson-Evans, Catherine Dowling, Tim Frank, James Gallant, Bruce Harris, Marc Harshman, Jacqueline Jules, Richard Luftig, Robert Mangeot, George Moore, James B. Nicola, and Robert Wexelblatt. Plus, exclusive interviews with award-winning authors Abby Frucht and Sheldon Russell. Founded in September 2009, Lowestoft Chronicle is an online literary magazine, published quarterly, accepting flash fiction, short stories, poetry, and creative non-fiction with preference given to humorous submissions with an emphasis on travel. An anthology of the best work is published annually. The mission of Lowestoft Chronicle is “to form a global ‘think tank’ of inquisitive, worldly scribblers, collectively striving towards excellence and, if possible, world domination.”
Founder and Editor of Club Plum Literary Journal, Thea Swanson, opens the fall 2022 issue on a somber note, “I wish I could introduce this year’s Literary Horror issue, Volume 3, Issue 4 of Club Plum, with something light, paying homage to breath-stopping make-believe horrors that entertain or instruct, or nodding to wondrous non-horror works, bringing it full circle to this issue. But we are in the midst of real horror that I must speak to instead: Schoolgirls are being murdered for refusing to wear cloth over their heads. There is so much to say here–volumes and millennia to say here–but I will only say a breath’s worth, a hijab’s worth, just one layer of the many heavy truths one piece of material contains, and it is this: the head-covering is a lie. A trick. To make one think a certain way [. . . ] I speak from experience. In a previous life, I wore a head-covering at a church for all the reasons women do this, for all those reasons imposed on us as we are brainwashed, as women are plugged into categories.” Read the full introductory remarks here.
While we do create our own horrors to entertain this time of year, there is a poignancy to many of the pieces within, perhaps reflections of the real-life horrors others cannot escape. Readers are invited to access Club Plum online and delve into works by Paige Swan, Marina Giacosa Esnal, Lalini Shanela Ranaraja, J. M. Bédard, Archangel Belletti, Salena Casha, Jacob Kamp, Noah Cohen-Greenberg, Macy Lu, Wilson Taylor, Julie Bolt, Sarah DiSilvestro, and Irina Tall Novikova.
The Happy Valley Fiction by Benjamin Harnett Serpent Key Press, October 2022
In the early 1990s, in Harmony Valley, a rural, Upstate New York village faded from its 18th and 19th-century heyday, a group of teens engaged in an idiosyncratic role-playing game cross paths with June, a mysterious girl whose family has deep roots in the area, and Clyde Duane, a janitor who makes weekly visits to a strange room – the headquarters of a secret society – opening its door with a golden, serpent-headed key. Meanwhile, an eccentric Utica lawyer pulls his young Vietnamese protégée into their firm’s special case, which stretches back to the 1840s. Decades later, in 2034, as the United States is breaking apart and a new way of life taking shape, June has disappeared. The mystery of her disappearance inspires a journey back to “The Happy Valley,” and a reevaluation of the past that exposes the dark personal and societal secrets betraying our founding myths. Harnett’s debut novel is 412 pages, with 66 full-page b&w illustrations by the author, and includes an Appendix with a Timeline, and a detailed Reading Group Guide.
Publishing in an open access online quarterly format, The Writing Disorder welcomes readers to their Fall 2022 issue featuring fiction by Don Donato, Richard Evanoff, Stephanie Greene, Christina Phillips, Em Platt, Richard Risemberg, Robert Sachs, and Dvora Wolff Rabino, poetry by Gale Acuff, C.L. Bledsoe, billy cancel, DeWitt Clinton, Mark DeCarteret, Megan Denese Mealor, and Stephanie Russell, nonfiction by Stephen Abney, and Greg Sendi, Risa Denenberg’s review of The Land of Stone and River by Claudia Putnam, and the art of R.S. Connett. Submissions of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, art, reviews, interviews comic art, and experimental work are welcome year-round, and the editors add that they would like to see more poetry, long fiction, nonfiction, artwork, and interviews. So – step up writers and contribute to the disorder!
Although the online Red Rover Magazine is fairly new and has only produced one annual issue in Winter 2021, what they have holds deep messages for those who need them. I was particularly drawn to the poem “valleys to the heart” by Marciel Laquindanum, which speaks of how there are those who have gone through similar situations before:
there i saw in the reflection of the river people who found their emotions and cried because they saw them for the first time . . .
But also, how they were (and now the speaker is) able to find their way through the hardships that filled their short lives:
and at that moment i knew
those before me needed to cross the valley to see what was in their heart so now i walk through this valley with their flowers in my hand ready to see what is in mine
Red Rover is a publication focused on mental health but does not limit itself to works of “well-being as a product.” Rather, the editors “are more interested in works that inspired well-being as a process.”
As a resource for those who are dealing with mental issues, magazines like Red Rover show that they are not alone, what they are going through is normal, and there are people out there who have gone through similar situations. Having magazines with a mental health and well-being focus allows people to have creative outlets to share their stories through poetry, photos, and fiction. It gives them a sense that they are not alone and perhaps gives them the strength to move forward in their life so they can also assist someone else who is lost.
Red Rover is currently accepting submissions through October 31, 2022, for its second issue.
The editors of Waterwheel Review online literary magazine open the October 2022 issue with these words: “We’re exploring beauty and loss in Issue 20. Anne Myles pushes hard in ‘An Origin Story’ on the relationship between truth and beauty; when is truth forever ugly, she asks, in a story about loss. ‘Bloom’ is a master class by Elana Wolff on how to weave beauty from a meditation on the details of ordinary life—’We’re all just passing through here,’ she says, so let’s not grow weary of gazing at trees. The portrait of ‘Sarah’ from Christina Rauh Fishburne is beautiful, too, and a paean to the loss of what might have been. Each of these three pieces makes loveliness from something broken. Beauty as defiance.” The publication along with full archives is free and open access online. Submissions are open year-round with a response time of three months. “No labels” all genres accepted and encouraged by the editors’ comment, “We hope authors will take advantage of our refusal to define what we publish, and send us un-name-able bits and pieces.”
RCC MUSE Literary Journal is open to submissions of poems about a child or childhood for their 2023 Holden Vaughn Spangler Award. Winner receives $200 and publication in the Spring 2023 issue.
Many creatives lament not having time to “create” and the nagging feeling of void it wedges into our daily lives. No longer willing to suffer the absence, Melissa Martini founded Moss Puppy Magazine, an open-access online and print-on-demand biannual of poetry, prose, and artwork.
The name is unique, but indicative of Martini’s joyful approach, “The Moss Puppy is a creature I imagined many moons ago with the intention of creating my own vivid world of critters similar to Neopets or Pokemon. Moss Puppy has stuck with me through the years, and when I decided I wanted to start my own literary magazine, it only seemed fitting to name the magazine after her. She has a few other friends who may make appearances within the magazine’s lore in the future, too!” If it’s difficult to imagine what a Moss Puppy might look like, the publication ran a fanart contest this year asking readers to spark their imaginations. The resulting gallery is a fun stop on the site to visit.
Martini’s own commitment to the literary community started early, as she recounts, “I was the co-editor-in-chief of my high school’s literary magazine, and it was the highlight of my high school career. From reading submissions to designing issues, I couldn’t get enough. When I graduated high school and started college, one of the first things I did was find out if there was a literary magazine – and I joined the team as soon as I could. I eventually became co-editor-in-chief of that magazine, too, taking publishing courses as I learned the ropes of running a more serious publication.”
Martini continued her education to earn a bachelor’s in creative writing and a master’s in English, and that’s when the void began. “After graduate school, I started a full-time job and no longer found myself shuffling through stacks of submissions. After two years of having that hole in my heart, I quit my job and decided to start Moss Puppy Magazine. Editing a literary magazine is an incredibly fulfilling job; I feel as though I was meant to be an editor, consistently seeking out the role in each chapter of my life.”
For writers, this means they can expect professional and respectful treatment of their submissions, as Martini explains, “Throughout the week, submissions are made available to our team of readers. Over the following week, we read and discuss submissions from the previous week, finalizing our decisions within two weeks of receiving submissions. I then send out responses each Sunday.”
Martini asked the Moss Puppy Magazine submissions readers what they look for. Veronica Jarboe, one of the Poetry Readers, stated: “I, personally, look for authenticity and that one unique thing that makes the work stand out from all the rest. I look for work that stays with me long after I’ve read it, which means I know it had an effect on me in some way.” Prose Reader Shelby Petkus echoed this, adding: “I also feel like we’re all very similar in our judgment of writing quality, so I think we have really well-written works we select.” Laura Bibby, who serves as both a Poetry Reader and a Prose Reader, also agreed, noting that she enjoys “written pieces that work in the theme in unique and inventive ways.”
Knowing what Moss Puppy wants for its readers adds further insight, as Martini comments, “I initially advertised Moss Puppy as housing the ‘weird, muddy, and messy.’ I still think that’s pretty accurate. Between myself and my team, we tend to lean towards pieces that get us talking to each other – pieces that rustle our emotions. Readers can expect pieces that flirt with darkness, have comedic undertones on occasion, dabble in sadness while appreciating the sunshine, and aren’t afraid to get lost in the woods.” Some recent contributors who satisfied this expectation include Beth Mulcahy, Bex Hainsworth, Charlie D’Aniello, Rachael Crosbie, Matthew McGuirk, Arden Hunter, Linda Hawkins, Rick Hollon, Melissa Flores Anderson, Anna Lindwasser, and Catie Wiley.
It’s hard to imagine leaving one path in life to pursue another, and Martini offers a balanced reflection on this: “The greatest joy I have experienced with Moss Puppy so far is the release of Issue 1: Swampland. I was absolutely blown away by the response. Each tweet and retweet put a smile on my face, and I watched as so many writers shared that their work was featured in the issue. People were complimenting each other’s writing, having engaging conversations, and I put that issue together all on my own – that was before I had a team. I was struggling with feeling like a failure for quitting my full-time job and pursuing a passion project that made me no money – but when I saw the response to the first issue’s release? I knew I’d made the right choice.”
Forging ahead to continue making it the best decision, Martini is positive about the future of Moss Puppy, “I would love to expand on Moss Puppy’s lore, explore her world a bit more, and incorporate additional characters into her story. This may be through pop-up issues, chapbooks, contests, workshops, and more. I have a lot of ideas I want to look into, but nothing is set in stone just yet.”
For future submissions, each issue of Moss Puppy has its own theme. Issue 1 was Swampland, Issue 2 was Puppy Love, and Issue 3 is Blades. Martini will be announcing Issue 4’s theme on Twitter once they reach 4,000 followers. At the time of publication, Moss Puppy had 3867 Followers, so c’mon people! @mosspuppymag
The Common, the award-winning literary journal based at Amherst College, is announcing an open call for writing submissions from the farmworker and farm laborer community—the migrant, seasonal, and often immigrant laborers who make up much of the US agricultural workforce—to be published as a special portfolio in the fall of 2023.
The Common invites work from current and former farmworkers of all ages, as well as those raised in farmworker families who experienced the stories and effects of this work through their parents or other relations. This portfolio offers space to work that voices the diversity of farmwork and farmworkers and their wide range of experiences: the physical, emotional, and financial struggles, the dangers and injustices, but also the rituals and celebrations, and the profound strength, skill, ingenuity, and resilience that are essential to this life.
This portfolio will be edited in collaboration with guest co-editor Miguel M. Morales, a Lambda Literary Fellow and an alum of VONA/Voices and of the Macondo Writers Workshop who grew up in Texas working as a migrant and seasonal farmworker.
Submissions close February 1, 2023. Payment for accepted work is $200 for prose pieces and $40 per poem.
Strong Feather Poetry by Jennifer Reeser Able Muse Press, March 2023
The poems in Jennifer Reeser’s Strong Feather center on a Native American Indian female character of the author’s creation. She is a poet/prophet/warrior of sorts. All the poems are masterfully deployed in form, but they vary in tone and content. While many of the poems use the Strong Feather character, there are also personal poems, and translations and tales from actual Cherokee and other indigenous traditions. The title poem opens the collection:
End of the winter, middle March, Waking, I find it beneath my quilt Clinging to linens the hue of larch, Softer and whiter than milk when spilt— One petite feather. Its hollow “hilt” Pointing toward me, is curved and long, Slightly translucent, and at a tilt. How has this feather stayed so strong? . . . .
Jennifer Reeser is the author of six collections of poetry, and her poems, reviews, and translations of Russian, French, along with the Cherokee and various Native American Indian languages, have appeared in numerous publications. A biracial writer of European American and Native American Indian ancestry, Reeser was born in Louisiana. She studied English at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana. She now divides her time between Louisiana and her land on the Cherokee Reservation in Indian Country near Tahlequah, Oklahoma, capital of the Cherokee Nation of which her family is a part.
Though the leaves are turning their fall colors, there is still plenty of summer left to enjoy in the latest issue of The Courtship of Winds online literary journal publishing fiction, nonfiction, poetry, art, and drama twice each year. Featured contributors to the newest issue include Duane Anderson, Cynthia Baker, Amita Basu, Ralph Bland, Holly Day, Nickolas Duarte, S.C. Ferguson, Joan Gelfand, Carol Graser, Michael Green, John Grey, Cordelia Hanemann, Paul Ilechko, Rimah Jabr, Mark Jacobs, Alec Calder Johnsson, Tiffany Jolowicz, Judy Klass, Sandra Kolankiewicz, Christopher Kuhl, Stephan Lang, Tracy A. Lightsey, Naomi Ruth Lowinsky, Richard Luftig, R. Nikolas Macioci, Rex McGregor, Güliz Mutlu, Yvette Naden, Stephen Policoff, Paige E. Reecer, John Repp, Daniel Sundahl, Robert Wexelblatt, Anne Whitehouse, and Arnie Yasinski. Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis for each of the two yearly issues.
Always free to all readers with no paywall, the newest issue of Cleaver: Philadelphia’s International Literary Magazine is waiting for you! This issue features Stories by Madeleine Gavaler, Amy Savage, Suphil Lee Park, Andrew Vincenzo Lorenzen, Hannah Garner, Candice Morrow, and Kim Magowan; Poems by John Schneider, Alison Lubar, Lydia Downey, Varun Shetty, and Michelle Bitting; Flash by Josh Krigman, Emma Brankin, Dan Shields, Jeff Friedman, Alison Sanders, and Devon Raymond; Creative Nonfiction by Phil Keeling, Emily Parzybok, and Beth Kephart. Among these contributors are those Cleaver recognizes as “Emerging Artists” who are under 30 and “still in the early stages of their careers.” Cleaver also regularly offers online generative workshops for writers to find community and grow their craft, in both synchronous and asynchronous formats. Visit their website for more information.
The literary magazine from Riverside Community College MUSE Literary Journal is currently accepting submissions for its 2022 open reading period. They especially looking to publish work from under- or misrepresented groups. Submissions open through December 15.
If you are in the mood to read anything strange and out-of-the-box, Bending Genres is the magazine for you! Issue 28 of Bending Genres has plenty of short genre-mixing (and breaking) pieces of prose, poetry, and everything in between. In “The Grease Ant” by William Musgrove, a man goes about trying to rid his house of grease ants. Only the ants don’t go away, and bit by bit they steal pieces of the man’s life. In “Statue Thinks of Nothing but Murder All Day” by Chelsea Stickle, part short story, part ekphrastic prose, James Pradier’s “Sapho” comes to live in the Musée d’Orsay hell-bent on achieving vengeance. “Kindling” by Keith Powell sees its narrator attempting to live in a house that’s constantly on fire; but the narrator comes to realize that they are steadily being consumed by a “Sisyphean rhythm.” And finally, Lindsey Pharr’s “Circe at the Strip Club” sees its eponymous witch still up to her old tricks in a modern setting.
At times heartbreaking, and heartfelt, Bending Genres’ short works are utterly memorable. For those who wish to find examples of how to mix genres, craft, and form, Bending Genres is the perfect venue to display such experimentations.
Nonprofit Third Street Writers has announced they are launching their very own literary magazine – Third Street Review. They are currently accepting submissions for the inaugural issue. They are a paying market and welcome work from writers and artists from all cultural backgrounds and experience levels.
Late Work: A Literary Autobiography of Love, Loss, and What I Was Reading Nonfiction by Joan Frank University of New Mexico Press, October 2022
Curious, ruminative, and wry, this literary autobiography tours what Rachel Kushner called “the strange remove that is the life of the writer.” Frank’s essays cover a vast spectrum—from handling dismissive advice, facing the dilemma of thwarted ambition, and copying the generosity that inspires us, to the miraculous catharsis of letter-writing and some of the books that pull us through. Useful for writers at any stage of development, Late Work offers a seasoned artist’s thinking through the exploration of issues, paradoxes, and crises of faith. Like a lively conversation with a close, outspoken friend, each piece tells its experience from the trenches. Joan Frank is the award-winning author of twelve books of literary fiction and essays including Because You Have To: A Writing Life and Try to Get Lost: Essays on Travel and Place (UNM Press).
A print annual of “international writings for liberation,” Ganga Review, named for the River Ganga that is an expression of Divine Mother, was inspired by a pilgrimage through India in 2004 wherein the editors “traveled from village to village, seeking to alleviate the sorrows that come with poverty, illness, and plain loss of hope.” In simply flipping through the pages, I was struck by a number of works, and this one in particular resonated with my own locus of need. Perhaps it will serve others as well:
SAY IT by N. Mimmick
The Hopi word is sipala, which requires little articulation and no teeth. It is almost a whisper as is the Hindu shantih, the Persian sula, the English peace.
With over 200 pages of fiction, essays, poetry, interviews, translation, and fine art that represents diverse faiths and cultures from around the world, contributors include Emily Adair, Faiz Ahmad, Essam M. Al-Jassim, Paul Bamberger, Sacha Bissonnette, Richard Alan Bunch, Steve Carr, Jeffrey S. Chapman, Holly Day, Joe De Quattro, Tejan Green, Marlon Hacla, Ghaliya Hasan, Claudia Hinz, Lidia Kosk, Danuta E. Kosk-Kosicka, Andrew Lafleche, Linda Lamenza, Edward Lee, Xiaoly Li, Catherine Lieuwen, Diego Luis, Charles J. March III, Megan McGibney, Jack Brendan Miller, N. Minnick, Kristine Ong Muslim, Ayaz Daryl Nielsen, Sarah Odishoo, Scott Pedersen, Christina Petrides, Patrick Pfister, Fabrice Poussin, Richard Risemberg, Andrew Ross, Michael Salcman, Rema Sayers, Mary Shanley, Paul Smith, Don Stoll, Bradley R. Strahan, and Mercury Marvin Sunderland.
In Memphis, Tara Stringfellow’s debut novel, she traces three generations of African American women from the 1930s to the early 2000s. The four main characters—Joan, her mother Miriam, her aunt August, and her grandmother Hazel—all encounter the obstacles one would expect African American women living through those decades to struggle against; however, Stringfellow goes beyond stereotypical concerns to craft fully-realized characters who have hopes and dreams of their own. Hazel wants to live a long, stable life with the man she loves; Miriam wants to create a safe space for her and her children while also carving out a meaningful career. August not only nurtures her nieces, but she tries to save her son from the childhood he had, while Joan wants to create art and beauty. As the title implies, they all pursue their desires in Memphis, which changes over the decades but still provides stability in the midst of chaos for each generation. Though some of the references to historical events seem predictable and almost obligatory, Stringfellow’s fleshing out of her characters enables the reader to enter into their lives and their city, to provide the empathy that all literature strives to evoke.
Memphis by Tara Stringfellow. The Dial Press, April 2022.
Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite or kevinbrownwrites.weebly.com/.
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Elizabeth/The Story of Drone Poetry by Louise Akers Propeller Books, September 2022
In this hybrid poem about militarized drones and militant angels, Elizabeth abandons her career as a physicist to become a museum administrator, finds god in the basement below the galleries, and dies there. But that is not the end. A blend of form and genre, Elizabeth/The Story of Drone takes readers on a journey through terrain in which the personal and the political collide. Louise Akers is a poet living in Brooklyn, New York. They earned their MFA from Brown University in May of 2018, and received the Keith and Rosmarie Waldrop Prize for Innovative Writing in 2017 and the Confrontation Poetry Prize in 2019. Their chapbook, Alien Year, was selected by Brandon Shimoda for the 2020 Oversound Chapbook Prize.
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