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!
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.
Applause is an international undergraduate literary journal. They are currently seeking submissions of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, art, and cross-genre work for Issue 33: (In)Evitable Ending. $3 fee. They are a paying market.
Trick or Treat? The Halloween issue of Southwest Review is all literary treats with fiction by Edmudo Paz Soldán (tr. Jenna Tang), Angela Sylvaine, Marina Perezagua (tr. Miriam Tobin), Noelle De La Paz, Cristhiano Aguiar (tr. Zoë Perry), Adrian Van Young, Carolina Rodriguez Mayo, Gabriel Carle (tr. Heather Houde), José Natividad Ic Xec (tr. Nicole Genaille), Makenzy Orcel (tr. Nathan H. Dize), Susan L. Lin, Natalia García Freire (tr. Victor Meadowcroft), Antonio Díaz Oliva (tr. Lisa Dillman), Óscar Molina V. (tr. Julia Sanches), Jesse Bullington, Gabriela Damián Miravete (tr. Robin Myers), Gabino Iglesias, Victoria Buitron (tr. Sarah Blanton), Alexis Dubon, Jac Jemc, and Alex Luceli Jiménez, and poetry by Leira Araüjo (tr. Katherine M. Hedeen and Olivia Lott), Lillian Hochwender, Susan Cronin, and Carlos Cortés (tr. Pili Cuairán).
Carve Magazine has announced they are accepting submissions of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry for their 2022 Prose & Poetry Contest. Online submissions only ($17 fee). This year’s guest judges are Maurice Ruffin, Thirii My Kyaw Myint, and David J. Daniels.
The newly launched ISSUED: Stories of Servicesis accepting submissions of stories by active-duty military, veterans, and family members in the form of poetry and flash prose. Appropriately, the deadline is Veteran’s Day, November 11, 2022. Editors hope for works that express the “spectrum of experiences within military life, including gender and sexuality, BIPOC voices, physical and mental health combat, enlisting and separating, family and relationships, and reintegration into society.” The publication also welcomes visual art in any genre. ISSUED is supported by the Office for Veteran and Military Academic Engagement at Arizona State University. For more information and submission guidelines, visit the publication’s website.
The 2023 Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference will take place May 18 through 21 in Brevard, North Carolina. They are currently accepting applications through December 15. Faculty include Camille Dungy, Jamie Ford, and Margaret Renkl. Workshops are limited to 12 participants and there are scholarships available.
If This Should Reach You In Time Poetry by Justin Marks Barrelhouse Books, December 2022
If This Should Reach You in Time sounds the alarm of climate change and democratic collapse with tender lament and guarded hope from award-winning poet Justin Marks. In “Along for the Ride,” Marks writes, “There’s no way around / not being part // of the problem” and “The best case scenario / is long term disaster.” In this fourth collection of poetry, Marks renders global threats as intimate and personal. As we turn inward, terror and sadness take hold. This is a book of crisis and dread, both human and spiritual. Through these poems, Marks shows readers what could be and what might have been. In the titular poem, he writes, “know / that we didn’t see / the disaster coming / That it wasn’t / imaginable, hadn’t / existed until, gradually / it was, and did / Or that we saw it / and refused to believe / Or saw it and thought / something or someone / else would save us.”
An iconoclastic ecopoet who has led the way for many young and emerging artists, Brenda Hillman continues to re-cast innovative poetic forms as instruments for tracking human and non-human experiences. At times the poet deploys short dialogues, meditations or trance techniques as means of rendering inner states; other times she uses narrative, documentary or scientific materials to record daily events during a time of pandemic, planetary crisis, political and racial turmoil. Hillman proposes that poetry offers courage even in times of existential peril; her work represents what is most necessary and fresh in American poetry.
Publishing quarterly online on the last day of January, March, June, and September, there’s still plenty of time to enjoy the newest Brilliant Flash Fiction, featuring works by CJ Erick, Emma Louise Gill, Karthik G. Nambiar, Abha Iyengar, John Salter, Mary Sloat, Barbara Kurzak, Danny Riordan, Joe Baumann, and Michael Harper. Brilliant Flash Fiction welcomes submissions of stories of1000 words or less and pays $20 per piece accepted.
Among the first four poems of Stephanie Berger’s Interior Femme, the 2020 Betsy Joiner Flanagan Poetry Prize winner, there’s a “Foreword,” a “Prelude,” and a “Preface,” as if there is an anxiety about beginning or that beginning takes time: “she opened up gradually to the possibility of beauty and a city.” The bicoastal cities of San Diego and New York are among the urban settings for these poems as they trace archetypes of the feminine and the matriarchy of family, society, and art—“a lineage // of pain”—focusing primarily on “two subjects: death / & domesticity” while vying for “survival / of the beautiful.” Survival from whom or what might dominate is a central pursuit of these poems. What has power and influence: memories—“a sadness took / my mother to the movies one day / & never brought her back.” The poems puzzle over the implications of the first woman in our lives and the primal feminine being lost to violence. Memories, based in gender dominance and sexual degradation, are “the mercurial knee-jerk / of the patriarchy.” The poet beseeches: “strip me / from what abyss of memory I dragged.” Ultimately, Berger’s is a poetry of ascent; Persephone emerges and “imagination dominates.” In these poems, imagination has the power to counter and save; even “a pit at the bottom // of the kitchen sink, available / for discovery.” Dear reader, in Interior Femme, Stephanie Berger is “a real woman [and poet] / with the scars to prove it,” who understands it is “important to remember / there are windows in the water.” Dear reader, Interior Femme is a window.
Interior Femme, Stephanie Berger. University of Nevada Press, January 2022.
Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona, and three chapbooks, including Mind of Spring (Vallum, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. Jami’s writing has been honored by financial support from Arizona Commission on the Arts, British Columbia Arts Council, and by editors at magazines such as The Capilano Review, Concision Poetry Journal, Interim, Redivider, Vallum, and Volt, where Jami’s poems appear. More at https://jamimacarty.com/
Cleaver online literary magazine has announced the winners of their 2022 Flash Contest. Winners, honorable mentions, and finalists will be published in Cleaver Issue No. 40, their 10th-anniversary issue.
Judge: Meg Pokrass
First Place: Sabrina Hicks “When We Knew How to Get Lost”
Second Place: Janet Burroway “The Tale of Molly Grimm”
Third Place: Dawn Miller “The Egg”
HONORABLE MENTION Laura Tanenbaum Fannie H. Gray Andrea Marcusa Lisa Lanser-Rose Andrew Stancek Luke Tennis Emily Hoover James LaRowe Paul Enea Kris Willcox Christina Simon
FINALISTS Theo Greenblatt Meredith McCarroll Amanda Hadlock Madeleine Barowsky K Moore Ron Tobey Sarah Freligh Nicholas Claro Joe Artz Lyn Chamberlin
Douglas Bauer’s newest work, The Beckoning World, is set in the first quarter of the twentieth century and follows Earl Dunham, whose weeks are comprised of six days mining coal followed by Sundays playing baseball. Then, one day, a major-league scout happens on a game, signs Earl, and he begins a life he had no idea he could even dream. But dreams sometimes suffer from a lovely abundance, and in Earl’s case, her name is Emily Marchand. They fall quickly and deeply in love, but with that love comes heartbreaking complications. The Beckoning World gathers a cast of characters that include Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, a huge-hearted Pullman steward offering aphoristic wisdom, and countless others, not least of which is the 1918 Spanish flu taking vivid spectral form. At the center is a relentless love that Earl and Emily are defenseless against, allied as they are “in this business of their hearts.” Douglas Bauer has written several books, including Prairie City, Iowa: Three Seasons at Home (Iowa, 2008). He teaches writing at Bennington College and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
A “Journal of Progressive Working Class Literature,”Blue Collar Review Editors never shy away from work that addresses some of our society’s most pressing concerns. This newest issue is no exception: “The contributors in this summer issue understand the growing threat of competitive corporate dominance, of fascism and war, especially in this time of climate emergency. Close to 80% of working people support universal healthcare, climate action, voting rights, and women’s reproductive freedom. These priorities are subverted by corporate media and politicians funded by big business interests whose priorities are legislated at the expense of our freedoms, our health, and the future of life on earth. Democracy, unlike fascism, is defined by authentic public participation. Getting there from here is a continuing struggle upon which our rights and existence depend. [. . . ] This issue [of Blue Collar Review] completes twenty-five years of publication. We are grateful to be able to continue doing our part to demonstrate and encourage a mindset of social and class solidarity necessary to our struggle for a livable world and for authentic democracy.” Sample works from the most recent issues can be read online at Blue Collar Review.
As the newly established editor of this long-standing publication, Poetry Magazine, Adrian Matejka welcomes readers with an ethusiastic Editor’s Introduction, expounding on all the ways she had intended to drive the content to “showcase the beautiful confluence of voices in contemporary poetry” and “to offer an idea of what Poetry might look like in the future.” Instead, Matejka admits, she “began this job in a convergence of ignorant and well-meaning ambition,” and she has no reservations in sharing this, as “one of the things you’ll get from me while I’m an editor here is transparency of process and editorial proclivity.” Tempering the ambitions, Matejka assures, “Instead of trying to curate a single issue celebrating the 110th year of Poetry, we are using this historic issue to begin a multi-year, long-form interrogation of the magazine’s complicated archive in hopes of illuminating some of the brilliant poets who weren’t given access in the previous decades. You get to see the beginning of that excavation in this issue as we highlight the gorgeous work of Carolyn Marie Rodgers, author of numerous books, cofounder of Third World Press, long-time Chicago resident, and a vital Black poet whose work never appeared in the pages of Poetry until now.”
Other poets whose works are featured in this issue include Adrian Matejka, Alex Dimitrov, Dāshaun Washington, Martín Espada, Ruth Ellen Kocher, Yusef Komunyakaa, Karyna Mcglynn, Trevor Ketner, Edgar Kunz, Eugene Gloria, Victoria Chang, Myronn Hardy, Winniebell Xinyu Zong, Ladan Osman, and Diane Seuss.
The Six-Minute Memoir: Fifty-Five Short Essays on Life Memoir by Mary Helen Stefaniak A Bur Oak Book University of Iowa Press, October 2022
Culled from two decades’ worth of Mary Helen Stefaniak’s “Alive and Well” column in the Iowa Source, each essay invites readers into the ordinary life of a woman “with a family and friends and a job . . . and a series of cats and a history living in one old house after another at the turn of the twenty-first century in the middle of the Middle West.” One great aunt presides over nineteen acres of pecan grove profitably strewn with junk. A borrowed hammer rings with the sound of immortality. Famous poets pipe up where you least expect them. Living and dying are found to be two sides of the same remarkable coin. Writing prompts at the end of the book invite readers to search their own lives for such moments—the kind that could be forgotten but instead are turned, by the gift of perspective and perfectly chosen detail, into treasure. The Six-Minute Memoir encourages people to tell their own stories even if they think they don’t have the kind of story that belongs in a memoir.
Deadline: December 10, 2022 Pangyrus announces its first Fiction Contest. Calling all writers of short stories! The contest is an open theme and the judge is novelist Jennifer Haigh. Cash prizes and publication for the top three winners! Please see Pangyrus‘s Fiction Contest 2022 Submittable page or view flyer for more details.
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Application Deadline: January 15 UNC Greensboro’s MFA is a two-year residency program with fully funded assistantships and stipends. UNCG offers courses in poetry, fiction, publishing, and creative nonfiction, plus teaching opportunities and editorial work for The Greensboro Review. Students work closely with faculty in one-on-one tutorials and develop their craft in a lifelong community of writers. Note our new December 15th priority consideration deadline! Visit our website and view our flyer to learn more.
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Deadline: December 31, 2022 The Tartt First Fiction Award from Livingston Press at the University of West Alabama is given annually to a collection of short stories written in English by an American citizen. Writers cannot have already published or be under contract to publish a fiction collection. Winner will receive $1000, plus standard royalty contract, which includes 60 copies of the book. Visit the Livingston Press website or view flyer to learn more.
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Madville Publishing congratulates Pauletta Hansel, Susan O’Dell Underwood, and Jeff Hardin, all featured authors at The Southern Festival of Books this year, Friday, October 14, 12 PM – Sunday, October 16, 5 PM, in Nashville, Tennessee. We hope to see you there! (We’ll be in booth #15!) View flyer or visit our website.
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