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!
White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy by Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove Liveright / W. W. Norton, June 2024
One of the most pernicious and persistent myths in the United States is the association of Black skin with poverty. Though there are forty million more poor white people than Black people, most Americans, both Republicans and Democrats, continue to think of poverty—along with issues like welfare, unemployment, and food stamps—as solely a Black problem. Why is this so? What are the historical causes? And what are the political consequences that result?
These are among the questions that the Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II, a leading advocate for the rights of the poor and the “closest person we have to Dr. King” (Cornel West), addresses in White Poverty, a groundbreaking work that exposes a legacy of historical myths that continue to define both white and Black people, creating in the process what might seem like an insuperable divide. Analyzing what has changed since the 1930s, when the face of American poverty was white, Barber, along with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, addresses white poverty as a hugely neglected subject that just might provide the key to mitigating racism and bringing together tens of millions of working class and impoverished Americans.
Brotherless Night, V.V. Ganeshananthan’s Women’s-Prize-winning novel, clearly portrays the horrors of the Sri Lankan civil war of the 1980s and following. Sashi is a teenager when the book opens, and the book follows her over the next decade or so as the civil war affects every aspect of her life. She has four brothers, all of whom have some relationship to the war; the title of the novel, in fact, refers to the first night she spent without at least one of her brothers present, and it represents the beginning of the war.
Sashi works in a field hospital for the Tamil rebels, mainly due to the request of K., a childhood friend she would have married, if not for the war. Ganeshananthan portrays the horrific actions of the Sri Lankan and Indian government armies, but she also clearly conveys what the Tamil rebels do, not only to those government soldiers, but also to the civilian population and other rebel groups.
No entity is innocent here, and Sashi reflects that complexity. Though she disagrees with the Tamil Tigers’ actions, she works in the field hospital to try to make sure nobody dies for lack of medical care. She also works to expose the immoral actions they have taken. Ganeshananthan draws heavily on research, even basing one of Sashi’s professors on a real professor and activist, but it is the humanizing portrayal of the wide range of characters that gives this novel its power. Her care for her characters reflects the suffering so many endured throughout the years of the war, showing the reader just how much so many have lost, while their care for each other reveals how much humanity remains.
Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan. Random House, January 2024.
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
Deadline: July 31, 2024 We won’t be prescriptive beyond the decade in question, except to say that poets and writers should reflect on a subject through a sporting lens. Our guest judges, both SL veterans and contest winners, are also former state Poet Laureates. SL editors read through submissions and send anonymous finalists to Jack Bedell and Sydney Lea, who will pick their favorites. View our flyer for more information and a link to our website.
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Deadline: Year-round The Bluebird Word, an online literary journal for poetry, flash nonfiction and fiction, seeks new writing for our upcoming 2024 publishing calendar. We publish new issues each month and are looking for emerging and established writers. We are a non-paying market. Please send your crisp flash and poignant poetry for consideration in a future issue. View our flyer and visit our website for more information.
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Deadline: August 15 Inverted Syntax will be publishing and debuting between 3-5 full-length poetry books in the fall of 2026. Starting in 2024, we seek to identify up to five exceptional manuscripts for publication. We look for work that risks everything. We favor the hybrid but welcome all writing. If it’s well-crafted, uses language in daring ways, we want it. View guidelines and submission details on our flyer and at our website.
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On Spec (onspec.ca) is an award-winning Canadian journal of short genre fiction and poetry. Since 1989, On Spec has featured original works of science fiction and fantasy from writers around the world, with a mandate to showcase the best in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. Now’s the time to try an issue, and you may win a subscription! View flyer to learn more.
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Deadline: August 1, 2024 The election is looming, and all those thoughts and emotions are getting sharper and at time produce fear and depression. Now is the time to have art be your voice and presence. Visit our website for full information and to submit your work.
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Deadline: August 1, 2024 The Greensboro Review invites submissions for our annual Robert Watson Literary Prizes in Poetry and Fiction. Winners in each genre receive a $1,000 award and publication in the spring issue of the journal. Send us your previously unpublished poems and short stories, now through August 1! To learn more, read past prizewinners, and submit your work, visit our website and view our flyer.
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Unsolicited Press is set to release enchanting literary fiction this year including THE HEDGEROW by Anne Leigh Parrish, LINES by Sung J. Woo, and DEVIL ON MY TRAIL by Danial DiFranco. See our flyer and learn more at our website.
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The summer issue of Kaleidoscope takes a closer look at the ebbs and flows of life, and we hope you will find some treasures in the work we’ve selected. Each issue of the magazine explores the experience of disability through the lens of literature and fine art. Submit your best work to us today! Visit our website and see our flyer for more information.
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Kaleidoscope magazine publishes work that creatively explores the experience of disability through literature and the fine arts. The Summer/Fall 2024 issue (#89) explores the ebbs and flows of life. Just like shells along a beach, readers will find some treasures in the selected works.
The featured essay, “Portrait with a Seagull,” is the sweet story of a family’s visit to the Jersey Shore and one child’s preoccupation with seagulls. Mom and author, Natalie Haney Tilghman, sees her son interacting with a gull and is a bit envious of the effortless, immediate connection they have. Despite her aversion to the creatures that swoop through the sky snatching snacks and squealing, they end up saving the day in an unexpected way, and she is grateful.
Digital artist Diana de Avila is featured in this issue along with various other established and emerging writers: Emma Baker, Jax Bidmead, Marjorie E. Brody, Emma Burnett, Douglas G. Campbell, Deb DeBates, Alexander Etheridge, Joanne Feenstra, Janet Engle Frase, Ben Gooley, Lori Hahnel, Mattie-Bretton Hughes, Shelly Jones, Suzanne Kamata, Grace Kully, Karen McKenzie, Betsy Miller, PMF, Trystan Popish, Ivy Raff, Tara K. Ross, Sheersty Stanton, M.S., Cynthia Stock and Angela Townsend.
35 Submission Opportunities including calls for submissions, writing contests, and book prizes.
Sorry for missing out on our weekly submissions roundup last week. A family emergency took place at the end of the week that through everything into a chaotic tailspin. But we are back this week to help you with your submission goals! It’s hard to believe August will be upon us in two short weeks and then Labor Day will be here before you know it.
Paid newsletter subscribers can get early access to the majority of submission opportunities and upcoming events before they go live on our site, so do consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription today. You also receive our monthly eLitPak Newsletter which features even more opportunities and other literary goodness.
Still Points Arts Quarterly Summer 2024 is themed “The House of My Dreams” and features contemporary works of art, fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Produced by Shanti Arts, this luxuriously printed journal is intended for artists, nature lovers, seekers, and enthusiast of all types. This issue features works by Judith Sornberger, Patty Somlo, Charlene Logan, Susan Eaton Mendenhall, B. D. Ramsey, James Lowell Hall, Cathy Fiorello, Michael Riedell, Lily Ione MacKenzie, Ann Cwiklinski, Christopher Woods, Ellen Pliskin, Rosalyn Kliot, Chris Hero, Theresa M. Pisani, and many more!
I-70 Review announces the winner of the Bill Hickok Humor Award for Poetry for 2024. Alice Friman chose Al Ortolani’s poem “Feeling Blue” to receive the prize of $1,000. Submissions for 2025 start on Jan 1st through Feb 28th.
Most of us are likely at an age when we can recall how quickly carefree younger days seem to have slipped through our fingers as we entered irrevocably into adulthood. Fortunately, for today’s youth, there is Fleeting Daze Magazine, a youth-run literary online quarterly publishing all forms of literary arts and writing from contributors ages 13-24. New issues are available every 2-3 months in open access online forms.
Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief Caroline Zhang explains the intentionality behind the name: “When creating the name, we wanted our magazine to highlight the coming-of-age process and the works we published to be unique to a new generation of creators and thinkers. We recognized that as a youth-run magazine, our knowledge and understanding growing up today was an advantage and a perspective that often is not found elsewhere in today’s media. ‘Fleeting Daze’ had a double meaning – first, symbolizing the glowing haze/dreamlike nature of childhood, having fun, believing in the possibilities of the world. On the other hand, ‘Fleeting Daze’ can also be read as ‘Fleeting Days,’ symbolizing how the best moments of our youthful childhoods can go by in the blink of an eye, and how every second must be grasped onto and enjoyed for as long as possible.”
There’s not much plot to Headshot, Rita Bullwinkel’s debut novel—eight girls engage in a boxing tournament in a run-down gym in Reno, Nevada—but that’s not the point. The novel is largely structured around each fight with chapters getting progressively shorter and each focusing more on the lives and psychology of the two girls involved in the fight than on what actually happens in the fight itself.
There is a line from The Matrix: Reloaded, where Seraph, the character whose job it is to guard the oracle, fights Neo. When he explains to Neo that he had to know that Neo wasn’t an enemy, Neo responds, “You could’ve just asked.” Seraph replies, “No. You do not truly know someone until you fight them.” These eight girls seem to understand each other better than anybody in their lives, and they come to an understanding of themselves, because they fight.
None of them go on to box in the remainder of their lives, some of them even forgetting about this time in their lives, but their understanding of themselves remains. Boxing serves as a metaphor for the lineage of women understanding one another in this world, as they move in concert with one another, responding to one another, partners in a dance that will carry them through their lives.
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
Each issue of THEMA centers on a premise with the Summer 2024 prompt being “The magic of light and shadow.” The theme can be integral to plot, not necessarily central but also not merely incidental. A great challenge for writers, a wonderful resource for teachers, and an enjoyable experience for readers!
This issue’s stories, short-shorts, poems, and photographs were contributed by Victoria Ilemobayo, SPIN, Virginia McGee Butler, Anne Dalziel Patton, Erika Hoffman, R. David Bowlus, Stuart J. Silverman, Sean E. Britten, Nikky Mohandas, Robert Scott Mason, Daniel Crow, Gary Sterling, Madonna Dries Christensen, Ted Burrowes, Tom Gengler, Susan Duke, Beverly Boyd, Hûw Steer, Matthew J. Spireng, Ruth Holzer, R.G. Halstead, Linda Berry, Yvonne Ventresca, Orsolya Karàcsony, Margo Peterson, and Stephen Page.
In Wonder About The, Matthew Cooperman “presents / / a spilling presence” of Colorado’s Cache la Poudre River:
Like an open vein, like a sluiced giant, it rolls on through cottonwood and willow body, through thistle and rabbit brush, grama and blue stem, through drought and illusion, it rolls on beyond us, the river flayed in moonlight (“Thesis”)
Cooperman’s eco- and documentary poetic “pulses in… / a rhythm” of “fluid” enactment, environmental activism, and river ecology, “palimpsesting” on water flow reports, geological surveys, “Colorado homesteading history,” environmental impact studies, and a Colorado oil and gas industry “Well Prediction Map.” Throughout the collection’s three sections, the poems roll like a river lyrically, fragmentarily, and narratively freely mixing reportage, collage, and erasure with homage and elegy. Regardless of their poetic mode or compositional method ultimately the poems aim to “Save the Poudre!”
The poems educate readers about the threats to the waterway’s fragile ecology: “a toil of oil,” the “rhetoric of monuments,” “people on the river,” “lifestyles,” and “progress.” And, the poems raft on inquiry: “what is a river / and what is a season / and what is the reason of oil.” As Cooperman’s poems prompted me to consider “what the river’s for,” I thought about the Diamond-Water Paradox which poses the question: If we need water to survive and we do not need diamonds, why are diamonds expensive and water cheap?
From advocacy and from love, Matthew Cooperman carves a “structure of all / perception” through a channel where the two tributaries of wonder are “alive and shimmering.”
Wonder About The by Matthew Cooperman. Middle Creek Publishing, June 2023.
Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize, forthcoming fall 2024, and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe, forthcoming summer 2024 from the Vallum Chapbook Series, and Mind of Spring (Vallum, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. To learn more about Jami’s writing, editing, and teaching practices visit her author website.
Lit Mag Covers: Picks of the Week recognizes cover art and designs for literary magazines, whether in print or online. These are chosen solely at the discretion of the Editor. Enjoy!
The newest issue of Ecotone: Reimagining Place literary magazine is themed “The Labor Issue,” and features Retablos de Imágenes y Memorias, 2022 by Perla Segovia on the cover as well as including a portfolio of his work inside the publication.
Ian Alam Sukarso’s artwork adorns the cover of Inch, a quarterly “focused on the miracles of compression” – a micro-chapbook featuring the work of a single author. Issue #56 spotlights Jarret Moseley’s Gratitude List.
Leanne E. Smith’s photo on the Spring 2024 cover of East Carolina University’s Tar River Poetry makes me wish I could be taking a meander down that road on a cool summer’s day.
Victim, Andrew Boryga’s debut novel, tells the story of Javi, a Puerto Rican living in the Bronx. He does well in school and, through a meeting with a college counselor who’s volunteering at his school, ends up at an elite college, unlike his best friend, Gio, whose life takes a different path. Through that meeting with the counselor, Javi’s life seems to follow a traditional path toward the American success story, but Javi’s means of achieving what he seeks is complicated.
As the title conveys, Javi presents himself as a victim, whether of oppression or violence or racism, embellishing the stories he writes, first for his college newspaper, then for a national magazine. On the one hand, Boryga is satirizing the cult of victimhood, the approach that argues that one should use their stories to evoke pity as a means of accomplishing some goal. However, the ideas that Javi learns in college about systemic racism and other forms of oppression are true, as readers can see in Javi and Gio’s lives.
Javi’s problem isn’t that he doesn’t struggle with real suffering; it’s that he seeks the approval of others, especially via social media, so much that he’s willing to do whatever it takes to obtain that approval. He doesn’t care about the problems he details in his writing; he only cares about himself. His audience is also partly responsible, as the more his stories follow the expected arc of racial and class progress and success, as long as they fit the narrative his audience already believes, the more successful he becomes. Boryga reminds his audience that stories are more complicated than they seem and where the problem lies isn’t as obvious as one might think.
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
Before The King of Terrors was the title of Jim Johnstone’s 2023 poetry book, it was the title of a 1910 Sunday sermon preached by Henry Scott Holland, a 1977 horror novel written by Robert Bloch, and a 2022 horror film directed by Ryan Callaway. Like those before him, Johnstone’s poetry book regards death and its associates, madness and fear.
The poet’s approach is a meditative lyric, “a dream, into a song.” “Fear” is an anaphora, “leading by example” and “running free” throughout the poems. The particular fears have to do with what is “unseen”: “the virus” and “the tumour,” COVID-19 and meningioma. In “parallel / time,” global and personal health crises haunt Johnstone’s poems. In response, the poet seems to be prompted to accept Chronos, assisted by Derrida (“becoming / the always-already absent present”), and to confess to the “ghosts of former lovers.”
In the poem “The Darkroom,” among my favorites for its candor and heart, the poet finds “noun and verb” between apology and prayer to admit:
But I’ve said terrible things about those whose only mistake was that they weren’t me, didn’t show up in the mirror where I stared and stared trying to make sure I was more and better, where my face would blur then realign as if hope could change the way my actions were perceived.
The intimate and “direct nature of [the poet’s] address” in this poem and throughout the book takes the reader into his confidence and illuminates the “interstitial space,” “hovering between two ways”—between “instinct” and “change,” “fragment” and “renunciation,” “a liar” and “a lyre.” In The King of Terrors, Jim Johnstone offers readers poems for the uncertain time we “inhabit” “between / age and agency.”
Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize, forthcoming fall 2024, and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe, forthcoming summer 2024 from the Vallum Chapbook Series, and Mind of Spring (Vallum, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. To learn more about Jami’s writing, editing, and teaching practices visit her author website.
“Addicted to Love” is the theme of Blink Ink #56, “The gold standard for microfiction” featuring stories of approximately 50 words. Not platonic, familial, or devotional, this is the rascal love where your heart sweats and you lose your mind. The world well lost for lust. Dreaming days followed by sleepless nights. A special someone, or just playing with the idea, the feeling.
In Permission to Relax, Sheila E. Murphy vibrates as “Speaker. Language. Mirror.” Murphy’s poems are equally at home at “bake sales” as they are at a “Chaplin festival.” These two locales suggest the compositionally quirky, philosophically comic, and politically potent characteristics of Murphy’s cultural critique that “upends the platitudes.” The poet points out life’s absurdities, relationship tensions, and communication difficulties: “North of probability and vortices, a warm mind / rescues love from common sense.” “Fracture” “repeat[s] … sadness” in the background and foregrounds temporal anxiety: “In a minute, / it will be / tomorrow.”
Murphy’s “span of attention” ranges formally from prose to verse and the poet is equally adept at invented as received forms. The collection includes a “Hay(na)ku Sequence,” “Eight Ghazals,” and “Winter Pantoum.” Some poems act like “a letter with a question mark [slid] under [a] door.” Other poems are a “secret way of holding thought.” Whether “replete with souvenirs” or “homemade” baked goods, the poems of Permission to Relax make an “everworld … tingling.”
Reader, Reader, Sheila E. Murphy is a poet “whose pockets are filled / with permission slips” and “sprezzatura”!
Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize, forthcoming fall 2024, and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe, forthcoming summer 2024 from the Vallum Chapbook Series, and Mind of Spring (Vallum, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. To learn more about Jami’s writing, editing, and teaching practices visit her author website.
Southern Humanities Review issue 57.2 features radioactive animals in “Wild Wild Wolves” and “Radiation Bestiary”; a photo-less photo essay of the George Floyd protests in “June 1, 2020: A Photo Essay”; shiny sharp new lives in “Alternative Lives with Teeth”; and a sense of peace, finally, in “Love Song in Someone Else’s Loblolly Stand” and “I Put Life on Hold.”
This issue also features poetry by Carson Colenbaugh, Patricia Davis, Elizabeth C. Garcia, Elisa A. Garza, Hua Qing, Liang Yujing, Heather Jessen, Thomas Kneeland, James Davis May, Matthew Nienow, Susan Rich, Angela Sorby, Lindsay Stewart, Laura Van Prooyen, and Ellen June Wright. Nonfiction contributors include Debra Dean and Maggie Nye. Fiction by Taylor De La Peña, Emily Greenberg, Svetlana Satchkova, and Gabriel Welsch. The cover, Holiday on the Hudson, 1912, is from George Luks (American, 1866-1933); The Cleveland Museum of Art; Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection. Some content can be read online, and individual copies, as well as subscriptions, are available on the Southern Humanities Reviewwebsite.
The Summer 2024 issue of Cool Beans Lit is themed “Deep Dive.” It showcases the work of both new and established authors and artists delving far into their past perspectives and comparing them to new views on what the future may hold in this realm or the next. The pieces in this issue are impactful and will long resonate with readers by triggering a wide range of emotions from deep pain and despair to humor in childhood reflections to honest takes on love and anguish.
Featured authors include Ace Boggess, Sara Eddy, James Roderick Burns, Kenneth Cupp and Jason Clemmons. Stunning photography and visual art by featured artists, like Katie Hughbanks, David A. Goodrum, Robb Kunz, Edward Lee, Amalia Costaldi and Victoria Mullen, is sure to awe and inspire readers. This issue rounds out the first full annual volume for Cool Beans Lit with more unique issues and themes to come.
The July 2024 issue of The Lake is now online featuring fresh new poetry by N. S. Boone, Chris Bullard, Mike Dillon, Philip Dunkerley, Bridgette James, Ted Jean, Bridget Khursheed, Annie Kissack, Faith Paulsen, Amanda L. Rioux. The Lake also features reviews of new poetry collections, with July spotlighting Karen An-hwei Lee’s The Beautiful Immunity, Stephen Cramer’s City Full of Fireworks & Blues, and Mark Vernon Thomas’s Dancing with Shadows and Stones. Unique to The Lake is “One Poem Review,” in which an author of a recently published book of poems shares a sample work with readers. Deirdre Hines is the featured poet for July.
In James Lindsay’s Only Insistence a new father to a son is in the throes of “involuntary / reflection” on his relationship with his parents: “What is authority / but anxiety.” The authority within Lindsay’s poems is a “witness” both “apprehensive” and “evasive.” He can tell readers his “mother died, but “can’t speak / as to why.” And, he confesses he doesn’t “know how to talk / about [his] biological father.” That’s personal, “the way life is personal” “and made up / of a terrifying sharpness.”
Sometimes it is easier “to describe the lake: … / the things that float on it / and the things that drown in it that make it what it is.” What is it? It is “the tiny histories that seed memory.”
Memory is both repetition and insistence, “wringing image to solid personal fact.” Here, “as he expresses himself // brutally but beautifully / in how honestly / he carries on,” Lindsay ensures “the Reader and writer / Have [the] kind of relationship” in which “language worked / / Because it was promised.”
Only Insistence by James Lindsay. Goose Lane Editions, September 2023.
Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize, forthcoming fall 2024, and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe, forthcoming summer 2024 from the Vallum Chapbook Series, and Mind of Spring (Vallum, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. To learn more about Jami’s writing, editing, and teaching practices visit her author website.
The Shore Issue 22 sparks with sizzling poetry shimmering just in time for summer. Find new hot poetry by: John Gallaher, Ben Cooper, Susan Muth, Julia Kooi Talen, Kate Welsh, Brett Griffiths, Sarah Burke, Peter Herring, Ahana Chakraborty, Colleen Salisbury, CC Russell, Mary Morris, Sarah Fawn Montgomery, Olivia Jacobson, Zeke Shomler, Alyssa Jewell, Liz Robbins, Emilee Kinney, Meghan Sterling, Lauren Mallett, Mark Majcher, Kelly Erin Gray, Naomi Madlock, Rachael Lyon, Elya Braden, Julia Lisella, Christopher Faunce, Amy Thatcher, Jeremy Rock, Meredith MacLeod Davidson, Ana Prundaru, Nathan Erwin, Jacob Schepers, Kathryn Merwin, Calista Malone, Carson Colenbaugh, Bryan D Price, Amanda Russell, Jo Snow, Rachel White, Rebekah M Rykiel and JB Kalf. This issue also features unforgettable art by Madeline Hernstrom-Hill.
Readers don’t have to have read the first book of Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing is Monsters to understand what happens in book two, as she has enough exposition to bring the reader up to speed. However, reading the first installment (or re-reading it, if it’s been a while) will certainly enable the reader to avoid having to wonder about Karen’s relationship with her brother and her deceased neighbor, Anka, who appears through audiotapes she recorded.
Ferris presents the book as Karen’s sketches on notebook paper, and Karen portrays herself as a werewolf, mainly because she feels like a monster due to her romantic interest in other girls. She draws the world like a horror comic from the 1950s, as she sees the world as a treacherous place. Her brother Deeze seems to be an enforcer for a local mob boss, of sorts, and he may have even worse secrets in his past. Anka tried to rescue girls from the Holocaust, a real horror that Karen sketches based on the tapes.
Karen’s lack of knowledge forces the reader to draw conclusions from the limited information she has, embedding the reader in this world of terror. The artwork is amazing and immensely detailed and colored, which explains why it has taken seven years to get the second volume. While Karen lives in a monstrous world, it’s one that readers will want to live in, hoping that Karen can realize the humanity she exudes.
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
Lisa Ko’s second novel follows three Asian-American women—Giselle, Ellen, and Jackie—who meet as teenagers, then remain close for the rest of their lives, though they see each other infrequently. Giselle becomes a performance artist, Ellen transforms a house she and others squatted into a type of communal living space, and Jackie revolutionizes the tech industry, careers and passions that seem far removed from one another.
However, they are all creators of some sort, even artists, though the world seems bent on preventing them from becoming so. They encounter sexism and misogyny, racism, and capitalist expectations, working together and separately to overcome (or simply thwart) those barriers and demands, to find success in their own ways. Ko moves the novel from the 1980s of their teenage years all the way to a future beyond their deaths to explore the ways in which they impact their world and how they become the women they need to be to survive and thrive in that world.
Underneath their different pursuits, they are all trying to answer the same questions that all artists are trying to answer, the questions Giselle knows an interviewer is really asking her: “HOW DO YOU LIVE (HOW DARE YOU LIVE) WHAT DO YOU DO (WHAT SHOULD WE DO) HOW DO WE LIVE HOW DO WE DIE WHAT DO WE NEED TO HEAR.”
Ko’s novel provides three different answers to those questions, but, more importantly, it asks the readers to find the answers in their lives.
Memory Piece by Lisa Ko. Riverhead Books, March 2024.
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
34 Submission Opportunities including calls for submissions, writing contests, and book prizes.
We hope you had a wonderful Fourth. Hopefully you have a few extra days to rest and relax before diving back into work. Read a good book, get some writing done, and maybe some submitting. NewPages has your back with our weekly roundup of submission opportunities.
Paid newsletter subscribers can get early access to the majority of submission opportunities and upcoming events before they go live on our site, so do consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription today. You also receive our monthly eLitPak Newsletter which features even more opportunities and other literary goodness.
In word association, if I say “bus,” I’m sure “Greyhound” would be among the top responses, and it would be spot-on for introducing this new, history-oriented journal of text and audiovisual poetry and prose. Publishing biannually online with a regularly updated “Featured” column, The Greyhound Journal was originally created to open more spaces for literary dialogue revolving around history and to increase the accessibility of history through narrative. “Our founding mission,” the editors assert, “is to promote the exploration of history through creative work and literature.”
With eight bonus pages, the July 2024 issue of World Literature Today presents International Horror Fiction in Translation, guest-edited by Rachel Cordasco. The cover feature gathers stories by Junko Mase (Japan), C. E. Feiling (Argentina), Mahmoud Fikry (Egypt), and John Ajvide Lindqvist (Sweden), plus a reading list by Jess Nevins and online interview with Megan McDowell. Additional highlights include a conversation with 2024 Dublin Literary Award winner Mircea Cărtărescu; an essay on storytelling, sacrifice, and acts of love by Anna Badkhen; Gloria Blizzard’s “History of Canada” booklist; and Kim Stafford’s “Proclamation for Peace” poem in eight languages. The book review section rounds up the best new books from around the world, and additional interviews, poetry, and essays offer indispensable summer reading.
New England Review issue 45.2 includes the special feature “Where On Earth Did You Come From?’ — Seven South Korean Poets & Their Translators,” guest edited by Soje. Readers will also enjoy stirring prose by Lauren Acampora, Ben Miller, Iheoma Nwachukwu, and Cynthia R. Wallace; piercing poetry by David Joez Villaverde, Fay Dillof, Emily Pittinos, and Ayokunle Falomo; cover art by Fi Jae Lee, and so much more!
Sheila-Na-Gig Volume 8.4, Summer 2024 offers readers breadth and depth in well-crafted free verse poetry (and some forms!) with a spotlight on Editor’s Choice Award winner Shannon K. Winston. The volume includes lots of Sheila-Na-Gig’s frequent contributors in addition to a host of newcomers, including, Stefan Balan, Roderick Bates, Thomas Bolo, Sarah Browning, Rachel Aviva Burns, Zelda Cahill-Patten, Jim Daniels, DeWitt Henry, Linda Laderman, Isabel Cristina Legarda, Grace Massey, Richard Matta, Eric Nelson, JC Reilly, Claire Scott, Richard Allen Taylor, Gail Thomas, William Welch, and Kenton K. Yee.
Michael Harriot makes the point of Black AF History about as clear as he can in the title. The subtitle—The Un-Whitewashed Story of America—removes any remaining doubt. Some of the history will be familiar to most readers, though the angle Harriot takes won’t be. For example, when he refers to at least one elected official as a serial killer, what he means is that they were an active member in the KKK. He wants readers to see what they think they already know for the reality that it actually is: leaders in the KKK killed numerous Black people, so they’re serial killers. He also presents history that isn’t taught in any high school (or most college) classes, and he does an excellent job of focusing on Black women who aren’t named Rosa or Harriet.
Given that Harriot isn’t an historian by training, his presentation (though not his research) is far from scholarly. At times, his Uncle Rob will supposedly interrupt a chapter and provide a slightly more colorful presentation; there are footnotes that are more side-eyes than clarifications; and there are at least two interviews with Racist Baby, a character that first showed up on Reddit.
He does structure the book like a typical history textbook, though, complete with supplemental materials and end-of-chapter quizzes, though those structural devices are more of a wink-and-nudge than anything else. Overall, Harriot doesn’t want his readers just to be informed; he wants them to be angry AF.
Black AF History by Michael Harriot. Dey Street Books, September 2023.
Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite
Nimrod International Journal Spring/Summer 2024 issue is themed “Refuge.” What is refuge? How do we pursue or find it? The concept is rather abstract and wildly different for many people, and the authors within represent that very conundrum. Readers can explore fiction by Emily Giangiulio, Divya Maniar, Zen Ren, Catalina Infante Beovic, G.W. Currier, Mackenzie Majewski, Sarah Gerkensmeyer, and Conor Flannery, and poetry by Kelly Rowe, Bex Hainsworth, Rana Tahir, Lauren Tess, Nancy Eimers, Jody Winer, Hannah Baker Saltmarsh, Hannah Dierdorff, Kyo Lee, Sandra Crouch, Elizabeth Galoozis, M.K. Foster, Halee Kirkwood, Amara Tiebout, Geoffrey Babbitt, Eben Bein, Chelsea Dingman, Tiffany Mi, Zen Ren, Connie Braun, Eleanor Goodman, Maria Provenzano, Phillip Watts Brown, Mary Francesca Fontana, Jake Phillips, Caits Meissner, Angela Kirby, and many more.
Hailing from Eastern Washington University, Willow Springs 2024 Spring print journal features Surrealist Prize Winner Meg Kelleher, whose poem is available to read online along with an audio recording. Readers can enjoy more poetry by Mark Anderson, B. J. Buckley, Todd Davis, Richard Gallagher, Mark Halliday, John Hodgen, Carol Potter, Georgia San Li, Liana Roux, John Schneider, John Spaulding, and Josh Tvdry; fiction by Matthew Baker, Andrew Furman; nonfiction by Jenny Catlin, Courtney Kersten; and an interview with Nance Van Winckel.
37 Submission Opportunities including calls for submissions, writing contests, and book prizes.
June is officially over with Sunday and July kicks off on Monday. Don’t miss out on all the submission opportunities with June 30 or July 1 deadlines! NewPages has you covered with our weekly Where to Submit Roundup, so you don’t miss a thing. Also, with a new month gearing up, don’t forget to check out our monthly calendar of writing contests!
Paid newsletter subscribers can get early access to the majority of submission opportunities and upcoming events before they go live on our site, so do consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription today. You also receive our monthly eLitPak Newsletter which features even more opportunities and other literary goodness.
Looking for a bookstore stocked with dozens of the most recent titles of contemporary lit mags to browse? Look no further! Check out the New & Noted Literary & Alternative Magazine titles received here at NewPages.com!
Each month, we offer readers a round-up of new issues with content information for our featured publications. The newest in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, comics, artwork, photography, media, contest winners, and so much more!
In One, Haley Lasché’s debut poetry collection, the poet “claims a bite of language” and invites readers to consider the primacy and implications of “one,” the number and word. Welcome to “imperative’s den”!
Regardless of the part of speech—noun, pronoun, or adjective—the word “one” and its various definitions offer “syntax” and “possibility”; throughout the collection “one” references and “names itself / an unbroken.” But, we are not all in one piece. The meaning of words and their semantic relations lead to inquiry: What are the implications of being “at one with” or “for one”? And, where do harmony and example lead?
One response might be found in the chosen poetic form of the monostich. The one-line stanzas constitute a single moment, observation, or experience within a human body moving within the natural world where it is often nighttime, often cold; human senses awake just as those of the nocturnal possum and owl as the moon comes to light.
Lasché’s synesthetic poetry “is a story told from one eye to the next” from within the “earthen current” where many nights become one night and one within the night becomes one with the night. Where a “spark of voice” joins a “prism of sound,” Haley Lasché’s One is a “song ravenous for light”!
One by Haley Lasché. Beauty School Editions, October 2023.
Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize, forthcoming fall 2024, and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe, forthcoming summer 2024 from the Vallum Chapbook Series, and Mind of Spring (Vallum, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. To learn more about Jami’s writing, editing, and teaching practices visit her author website.
In the Spring 2024 (226) issue of The Malahat Review, readers can enjoy Open Season Awards winning works by Jocy Chan (poetry), Aldyn Chwelow (creative nonfiction), and Dominique Bernier-Cormier (fiction) as well as poetry by Nicole Boyce, Weyman Chan, Laurie D. Graham, Iqra Khan, S. A. Leger, Shane Neilson, Teresa Ott, Meredith Quartermain, Meghan Reyda-Molnar, Tazi Rodrigues, Anya Smith, and Misha Solomon, fiction by Corinna Chong, Dylan Clark, and Bill Gaston, and creative nonfiction by Daniel Allen Cox, as well as several book reviews. Cover art, Head Space, by Ibrahim Abusitta.
Summer + Reading = Happy Place. To help you achieve that goal, check out the July 2024 New Books Received. Each month we post the new and forthcoming titles NewPages has received from small, independent, university, and alternative presses as well as author-published titles.
If you are a follower of our blog or a subscriber to our weekly newsletter, you can see several of the titles we received featured. For publishers or authors looking to be featured on our blog and social media, please visit our FAQ page.
Many MFA candidates choose a program based on proximity. But it’s risky to make convenience the deciding factor in your education. Here are seven top elements to look for in a low-residency MFA program:
A program that will stretch you as a writer. How many credit hours comprise the degree? how many packets? how many pages per packet? These numbers help reveal what a program will ask of you—and give you in return. Spalding MFA alum Whitney Collins said, “The sheer volume of work we were asked to generate was remarkable, and, yes, a bit intimidating, but you will AMAZE yourself by being able to do it. I graduated with a newfound confidence surrounding my generative abilities.” Since graduating in 2018, Whitney has won a Pushcart Prize and published two short-story collections with Sarabande Books.
A student-centered program. How flexible is the program? Can you spend a core semester studying a second genre? Are there scheduling options to fit your life? Can you take a leave of absence without penalty? At Spalding, the answers are very, yes, yes, and yes.
A great track record and a promising future. For your MFA degree to retain its value over the years, it should come from a proven, thriving, continuously innovating program with a bright future. The Spalding program is one of the oldest and best-regarded low-residency MFAs and enjoys generous support from its university.
Active faculty. You’ll grow most by working with faculty members who are publishing, producing, and plugged into the industry now. Spalding’s faculty includes best-selling poet and memoirist Maggie Smith; Salon.com chief content officer Erin Keane; best-selling novelist and Kentucky Poet Laureate Silas House; children’s lit phenoms Leah Henderson, Lamar Giles, and Lesléa Newman; TV writer and producer Bruce Marshall Romans (Hell on Wheels, Messiah, Spider-Man Noir); Gabriel Jason Dean, whose play Rift or White Lies runs off-Broadway this fall; and many others actively creating while providing dedicated, relevant instruction to students.
Alumni successes. An established program should have recent alumni successes. Spalding congratulates MFA alums Ashley Cook on her 2024 Daytime Emmy for writing, Nathan Gower on the Washington Post write-up of his new novel, Andie Redwine and Larry Brenner on the book deal that grew out of their Once Upon a Disney podcast, Jennine “Doc” Krueger and Ann Eskridge on their inclusion in Theatre NOW New York’s musical theatre lab, Holly Gleason for being named LA Press Club’s Entertainment Journalist of the Year, Parneshia Jones for serving as director of Northwestern University Press, and Crystal Wilkinson for being profiled seemingly everywhere, including The New York Times, for Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts.
Ongoing support from faculty and administration. Writing is a lifetime undertaking, and you want your MFA program’s support for the long haul. Alum Lauren Budrow wrote, “Out of my four degrees, it’s my MFA from Spalding that I feel the most connected to, where I could actually reach out to fellow alums as resources, and feel comfortable enough to reach back to faculty for advice or assistance. Those friendships and connections exist because the core bond with the program is so solid.”
Nwabineli’s second novel, Allow Me to Introduce Myself, follows Aṅụrị Chinasa, a twenty-five year-old woman born in Nigeria and raised in England. Her mother died in childbirth, so her stepmother, Ophelia, became the primary caregiver, as her father struggled with grief. Aṅụrị spends much of the novel involved in a lawsuit with Ophelia, as Ophelia was one of the earliest momfluencers, making millions through advertising and sponsorship, with all of the content focused on Aṅụrị. The effects of that childhood have prevented Aṅụrị from moving on, as she turned to alcohol as one of her main means of rebellion against Ophelia and her expectations.
Further complicating the situation is that Ophelia is now carrying out the same parenting approach with Noelle, Aṅụrị’s half-sister, with similar effects. Aṅụrị not only wants Ophelia to remove all of the content concerning her childhood; she wants Ophelia to stop posting about Noelle. In fact, Aṅụrị wants to take Noelle out of the house and raise her on her own.
Aṅụrị has several people helping her work to move past the scars of her childhood: her two best friends—Simi and Loki—her therapist Ammah, her lawyer Gloria, and a possible boyfriend, Christian. However, the years of damage make it difficult for Aṅụrị to trust anybody.
Nwabineli’s novel is an excellent exploration of the effects of the internet’s lack of privacy on children, calling into question parents (and children) who willingly give up their lives to total strangers for financial gain. This timely exploration should have every reader asking whether what they view online has effects they might not have considered.
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
The Summer 2024 issue of The Kenyon Review includes a folio centered on the theme of Extinction, with poetry by Jessica Abughattas, Saddiq Dzukogi, Martín Espada, and Farah Kader, fiction by Lee Conell, Vida James, and Jimin Kang, and nonfiction by Taneum Bambrick and noam keim. The tenth-anniversary edition of “Nature’s Nature,” guest edited by David Baker, also appears in this issue. “Nature’s Nature” has been an annual feature, and the past nine years brought together 158 contributors, mostly poets but also prose writers and visual artists. This year’s edition spotlights established poets Philip Metres, Evie Shockley, and Mary Szybist introducing emerging poets including Ariana Benson, Jasmine Reid, and Paige Webb. Complimenting these two folios both on the cover and in a special color feature is landscape photography by Camille Seaman.
Boulevard Winter 2024 – a double issue – spotlights 2022 Fiction Contest winner Trent Lewin, and 2022 Nonfiction Contest winner Gabriel Rogers. It also features a Boulevard Craft Interview with Gus Moreno, a novel excerpt from Joyce Carol Oates, new fiction from Roy Parvin, Nick Otte, Mathew Goldberg, and Joshua Allen Griffith, new poetry from Nandini Dhar, Ellara Chumashkaeva, Tai Wei Guo, James Allen Hall, Otter Jung-Allen, Bryan D. Price, Michael Romary, Ellen Doré Watson, Caroline White, and translations of Saadi Youssef by Khaled Mattawa, as well as essays by John Dalton, Michael Bishop, Demetrius Buckley, Madeline Jones and Susan Sugai. Cover art is Current Mood, oil on canvas by Song Watkins Park.
The June 2024 issue of About Place explores the concept of “west.” West has always been more than mere direction, a setting sun, evening. The term invokes a fraught mythology of wilderness and conquest, of destiny and riches, of jackrabbit homesteads and romantic distances, of cowboys and bears. These symbols have long dominated our histories of these lands, centering whiteness and masculinity in rugged, difficult terrain. But the West has always been strange, full of contradictions, queer. “Strange Wests” conceives of the West beyond its conventional, colonialized framework. What happens when the dam breaks, when waters flow along their pre-colonial course and stewardship is returned to the original caretakers of the land?
[Cover artwork Dreams Collage by Irina Tall Novikova.]
The poems in Rennie Ament’s Mechanical Bull toggle between extremes, where it is “[l]earned anything has a punishing / angle. Tensions range between husbandry/slaughter, “wonder”/horror, humility/“hubris,” superluminal/“supraliminal,” human body/poetic form, “association”/“dissociation,” and a “new book”/old story of a girl on the roadside and a murderer under the trees. “Pick / your version,” reader, but understand you and the poet may be in “business together” but she has “all the capital.”
Ament’s “[p]oems are a bed of nails” and you prick “awake on their numerous tips.” The hypothesis: pleasure and pain are an “eerie glistening” on a continuum. Her poems, in turn, edulcorate and confront everyday “savagery / fallen short of its potential.” The potential for danger looms everywhere, “murder coming in” through fists or rape. “Who will do something. Like ring a bell. A good old-fashioned bell.”
Rennie Ament does something with Mechanical Bull; her poems ring bells.
Mechanical Bull by Rennie Ament. Cleveland State University Poetry Center, October 2023.
Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize, forthcoming fall 2024, and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe, forthcoming summer 2024 from the Vallum Chapbook Series, and Mind of Spring (Vallum, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. To learn more about Jami’s writing, editing, and teaching practices visit her author website.
Bear Review online journal May 2024 issue (10.2) welcome a side variety of poetry, reading submissions year-round to publish in two issues: spring and fall. Their only criteria for submissions, “your writing is alive on the page, has urgency and has something at stake.” Making the cut for their newest issue are contributors Wael Almahdi, Lynne Potts, Kerry Kurdziel, Tess Liegeois, BJ Soloy, Greg Jensen, Erin Hoover, C. Wade Bentley, Heidi Seaborn, H.R. Webster, Louise Mathias, Sascha Cohen, Sarah Giragosian, Eben E. B. Bein, Michael Robins , Jose Hernandez Diaz , Sophia McCurdy, Fay Dillof, Natalie Louise Tombasco, Rodrigo Toscano, Alyssa Sinclair, Chris Bullard, Julie Rouse , Grant Chemidlin, Carolyn Hembree, and Anthony Borruso with artwork by Babe Siegl. Also featured are the winner, Bevin O’Connor, and finalists, Stephanie Niu and Brian Woerner, of the 2023 Michelle Boisseau Prize as well as interviews with Bevin O’Connor and Carolyn Hembree.
