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!
Creative Nonfiction magazine is accepting submissions for their Sunday Short Reads email—previously unpublished work up to 1,000 words, with a deadline of August 1. Managing Editor Hattie Fletcher offers this editorial tip: “We’re open to stories on any subject, any style, but one of the questions we ask ourselves before accepting a story is, ‘Would we feel good about emailing this out to 8,500+ readers first thing on a Sunday morning?'” There is a $3 submission fee, waived for subscribers; pays $50 on publication, and all submissions are also considered for publication in CNF magazine.
How have you healed lately? According to Ijeoma Oluo, writing reminds her that she is “a person worthy of healing.” To discover, dialogue, and define how we might bring writing and other creative mediums, such as poetry and art, from the public back into public health for our collective healing and transformation, come join us at the LIGHT Festival on Friday, June 17, 2022, from 8AM-6PM CDT. View flyer or visit website to learn more.
The stories in My Haunted Home by Victoria Hood delve in startling ways into the lives of the obsessed, the grieving, and the truly haunted. Winner of FC2’s Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize, Hood conjures a shifting range of narrators through an unstable range of worlds where mothers might be dead, girls compulsively shove peanuts inside their ears, agoraphobia traps people inside their houses, and cats won’t eat your soup. In “The Teeth, the Way I Smile,” a daughter who looks like her dead mother manifests grief both in her house and her body. In “Smelly Smelly,” a woman slowly comes to realize her boyfriend has been dead for weeks. In “You, Your Fault,” Hood explores the unfolding love of two women who love every part of each other—including the parts that fixate on arson and murder. In this debut story collection, Hood probes the worlds of what can be haunted, unpacking the ways in which hauntings can be manifested in physical forms, mentally harvested and lived through, and even a change in what is haunting.
Hailing from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, The Mercurian publishes translations of plays and performance pieces from any language into English, theoretical pieces about theatrical translation, rants, manifestos, and position papers pertaining to translation for the theatre, as well as production histories of theatrical translations. The most recent issue includes “1948” by Mara Parkhomovsky, translated from Hebrew by Atar Hadari; “atlas” by Thomas Köck, translated by Marc Silberman; “CyranA” adapted from Edmond Rostand, by Doug Zschiegner; and “The Girl Who Was Cyrano” by Guillermo Baldo, translated by LuisDa Molina Rueda. This issues as well as back issues can be fully accessed online.
If I was on a desert island and could only have ONE literary journal, I would choose the Rattle Young Poets Anthology. This publication always gets my jaw to drop with the first poem and the rest just compound my being impressed, humbled, and motivated to read works by writers all under the age of fifteen. “As always,” the editors write, “this is not a book of poems for children, but the other way around—these are poems written by children for us all, revealing the startling insights that are possible when looking at the world through fresh eyes.” The anthology comes bundled with the companion issue of Rattle for subscribers but can also be ordered separately online. Submissions for the next anthology are open until November 15 annually. The 2022 edition includes poems from Melody Maxfield Cortez (10), Alenka Doyle (15), Lyla Foster (6), Daphne Frank (13), Sloane Flaherty Getz (15), Holly Haeck (15), Lucille Healy (4), Elizabeth Kerr (9), Sophia Liu (15), Anna Meister (15), Vitek Mencl (8), Evie Pugh (6), Reagan Rafferty (13), Kashvi Ramani (15), Skyler Rockmael (14), Syazwani Saifudin (14), Lily Blue Simmons (15), Mazzy Sleep (9), Alisha N. Wright (15), Avery Yoder-Wells (15), and Cynthia Zhang (14). Cover photo by M-A Murphy.
Don’t forget that July 15 is the deadline to submit fiction and poetry to Nimrod‘s Francine Ringold Awards for New Writers. This contest is open internationally to writers with no more than two publication credits in their chosen genre. The winners in each genre receive $500 and publication. See their ad in the NewPages Classifieds to learn more.
Wings & Other Things Fiction by Chauna Craig Press 53, September 2022
Wings & Other Things by Chauna Craig is a book of migrations. Its characters flutter and flap, take off and land, then take off again as they seek the places they belong. These are characters caught in transition: a widow searching for a past self on an “Impossible Blue” coast, lovers explaining to the police and themselves why they’re hiding in a Nebraska cornfield. a teacher struggling to be understood on a flight from Chengdu, a stranded artist riding with a stranger on a highway haunted y the ghost of a woman who never made it home. Each story is a transformation as Craig turns railroad tracks into an “infinite number line” and a lightning bolt into a “tentacle of the unseen.” A plastic fork becomes a parable of fragility, and a “scrap moon” is an image of what is lost and what yet remains.
The Freadom Festival: Portland’s First Annual Black Book Festival takes place this Saturday, June 18, 2022 from 12:00 – 6:00pm at Peninsula Park in Portland, Oregon.
The organizers write: “A core tenet of The Freadom Festival is our belief that reading and books should be inclusive and accessible. Which is why we are hosting this free event in a local Portland park, open to all to come and learn the importance of Juneteenth, fellowship with a community of fellow book lovers, support Black businesses, receive reading resources, and celebrate literacy and liberation!”
The Freadom Festival includes a community book swap, a book drive for PDX Books to Prisoners, Multnomah County Library card sign-ups, children’s reading hour, author talks with local black authors Kim Johnson and Kesha Ajose Fisher with Q&A and book signings, zine book-making craft station, literary information booths, raffles, giveaways and more!
Mistake House Magazine is an annual online literary journal of fiction, poetry, and photography by currently enrolled graduate and undergraduate students. It is designed and edited by undergraduate students at Principia College. Each issue also includes the “Soap Bubble Set,” which features two professionals – a practicing visual artist and a writer whose work is highlighted alongside the magazine’s selection of student poetry, fiction, and photography. Mistake House seeks literary fiction and poetry that “provides a sense of insight, compassionate justice, a space of rest, and a sense of coming home, including poetry and fiction expressive of documentary poetics.” The current issue includes Fiction by R. Jade Sperr, Jia-An Lee, Max Hunt; Poetry by Sophia Alise, Madison Folsom, Nicole Knorr, Faith Earl, Tijana Zderic, Caitlin Huntly, Kirsten Meehan, Kristen Grace, R. Jade Sperr, Sarah Iqbal, Olivia Skinner, Jeniya Dabish, Jessie Taylor, Elisabeth Graham, Logan Funderburg, Danielle Horn, Emma Maxfield, Andi Moritz, Nate Zipp, Brianna Drahms, Kelly C. Flanagan, Kiersten Wright, Atlas Chambers, Timothy Batchelder, Katie Mihalek, and Kyrstyn Cieply; and Photography by Joselyn Flores, Isabella Guerrero, Camille Abadie, Jack Connors, Sakar Shrestha, Christopher Ajuoga, and Grace Pécheck. The Soap Bubble Set pairs visual artist Samira Yamin and poet Benjamin Garcia for an in-depth look at their work and processes.
I previously commented on Jane Friedman as one of the best resources for writers looking to publish—most especially for book publishing. Her book The Business of Being a Writer should be the most required textbook for MFA programs across the country. A recent blog post on her site explored the question, “Is Hybrid Publishing Ethical?” Following her blog and/or signing up for her newsletters will continue to provide authors with helpful advice like this.
Another great resource is Writer Beware, a literary watchdog group that “shines a bright light into the dark corners of the shadow-world of literary scams, schemes, and pitfalls.” Co-founder and published author Victoria Strauss and other guest writers provide in-depth posts that are truly educational for writers, not the click-bait “# of Things Writers Need to Watch Out For” that fills the internet. A recent article that offers a good example is “Publishing Contracts 101: Beware Internal Contradictions,” in which Strauss provides contract language from a variety of “publishers” that reveal either their sloppiness or downright intentional evil – publishers whom Writer Beware never shies away from publicly naming. Using Writer Beware as continuing education as well as a resource to background-check your literary partners could go a long way in helping writers avoid the dark side of publishing.
The Illusion of Simple by Charles Forrest Jones begins in a dry Kansas riverbed where a troop of young girls finds a human hand. This discovery leads Billy Spire, the tough and broken sheriff of Ewing County, to investigate and confront the depths of his community and of himself: the racism, the dying economy, the lies and truths of friendship, grievances of the past and present, and even his own injured marriage. But like any town where people still breathe, there is also love and hope and the possibility of redemption. To flyover folks, Ewing County appears nothing more than a handful of empty streets amid crop circles and the meandering, depleted Arkansas River. But the truth of this place—the interwoven lives and stories—is anything but simple. Charles Forrest Jones is former director of the Kansas University Public Management Center and believes that “public policy is rooted in the human condition, there is a place for the articulate, compelling, even beautiful.”
PANKwas originally founded in 2006 by M. Bartley Seigel and Roxane Gay as a venue “fostering access to innovative poetry and prose, publishing the brightest and most promising writers for the most adventurous readers.” Fulfilling that charge, PANK publishes quarterly online and annually in print. The editors are interested in “sharp, honest, beautiful writing. Strangeness is a small god.” Check out the most recent online issues for a sampling of small gods, with contributions from Clea Bierman, Ricardo Wilson, Kyle Carrero Lopez, Stephanie Choi, Josey Rose Duncan, Ry Book Suraski, Kyle Carrero Lopez, Nicole Mccarthy, Kate Crosby, Lisa Ahn, Julia Barclay-Morton, and Valerie San Filippo.
Refugee Poetry by Pamela Uschuck Red Hen Press, Spring 2022
Refugee deals with political refugees, refugees from racism, from domestic violence, from environmental destruction and cancer—and their stories of cruelty and courage, hardship, and hope to overcome the most daunting of circumstances. This collection confronts and explores xenophobia, sexism, gun violence, domestic violence, corporate greed, environmental destruction and political tyranny. An ovarian cancer survivor, Pamela also writes about her own courageous confrontation with death.
“With tenderness, expansive compassion, and profound gifts of radiant description, Pamela Uschuk considers so many ways people may be estranged and lost in this precious, difficult world. With brave ferocity, her poems in Refugee navigate new vision and reconnection, so desperately longed for right now and always.”
Broadsided Press started Broadsided Responds to show support and solidarity in response to global crises. Dear Queer: Letters in Solidarity with LGBTIQ+ Youth seeks to “stand with the LGBTIQ+ community and all those who call them/us family.” Writers are invited to share “short works that reach out toward any – past or present, self or other – who has needed support, solace, or a sense of being seen and known . . . writing from voices who might wish to speak to their own younger selves (and, by extension, the younger selves of today).” Poems of 30 lines or less or flash prose under 300 words with the title “Letter to my __________” that provide hope, solace, pathways, and a sense of solidarity are welcome through July 4, 2022. There is a $3 VOLUNTARY entry fee, but please see the incredible work this all-volunteer organization has done over the years and support financially if you can.
Is Your Favorite Bookstore Listed? As you are hitting up your favorite local indie bookstores this summer or if you are traveling and looking to visit some new indie shops, check out the NewPages Guide to Bookstores in the U.S. and Canada. We list the best independent bookstores (selling both new and used books) by location with website, social media, contact information, and a brief description of each. If you know a bookstore or come across one in your travels that we don’t have listed on our site, please let us know! Bookstores can sign up here: Indie Bookstore Listing; or patrons can let us know about a shop here: Contact Us. These listings are FREE for bookstores because WE LOVE INDIE BOOKSTORES and want to help promote them to our readers. [Pictured: Midland Street Books in Bay City, Michigan.]
Benefit Street by Adria Bernardi is set in an unnamed provincial capital of an unnamed country and tells of a wide circle of friends—teachers, lawyers, missionaries, doctors, artisans—in a time of gathering and dispersal. It tells the story of mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, colleagues, and neighbors, as war to the East threatens and constitutional rights are daily eroded by an increasingly authoritarian regime. The ideals of youth, freedom, and coexistence are severely tested with the shocking revelation that the charismatic leader of their group has sexually abused the women under his care. The limits of reconciliation are tested as Şiva makes an arduous journey into the mountains to meet an estranged mother with a genius for weaving complex rugs.
Rathalla Review, the literary magazine of Rosemont College MFA in Creative Writing and Graduate Publishing programs, publishes two online and one print annual each year with the mission to give emerging and established writers and artists an outlet for their creative vision. Submissions open August 14 for their Fall 2022 issue, so take a look now to get a sense of their aesthetic. The Spring 2022 online volume features Art by Roger Camp, Phyllis Green, Weining Wang; Fiction by Robert McGuill, Daniel Goulden, Greg Probst; Flash Fiction by Salvatore Difalco, David A. Summers, Carolyn Oliver; and Poetry by Malisa Garlieb, Jennifer Judge, and Jessica Whipple.
Eli Cranor’s debut novel, Don’t Know Tough, published by Soho Crime, an imprint of Soho Press, is not your typical football novel. Rather, it depicts a brutal slice of life in rural Arkansas, where high school football is king and is all that matters. The protagonist, Billy Lowe, is the archetypal angry young man. An ignorant high school senior and star of the football team, Billy’s anger is compounded by his mother’s abusive boyfriend, who lives with them in their trailer in rural Arkansas. After being beaten by the boyfriend and hitting him back, Billy takes his anger out on a teammate during practice, injuring him. Then, his Mom’s abusive boyfriend is found murdered, and Billy becomes a suspect. From that point, the novel hurtles at breakneck speed to its surprising conclusion. I could not stop reading Don’t Cry Tough. Cranor’s writing is riveting, and his characterizations are perfect. Despite my initial impression of Billy as simple and stupid, as the book goes on, the author skillfully transforms him into a complex human being I actually cared for. As for the setting in rural Arkansas, I could picture the trailers, the woods, and the poverty-stricken homes where some of the characters live. The football scenes were quite well done, and rightly so as the author did play professional football. Despite the twists and turns, all the plot lines were brilliantly resolved. This is Eli Cranor’s first novel, and I already can’t wait for his follow-up.
Don’t Know Tough by Eli Cranor. Soho Crime, March 2022.
Reviewer bio: Ira Smith is a retired physician for whom reading has been a lifelong passion. Favorite genres are science fiction, noir, and history.
The Driftwood Press editors just released this news: “We’re so excited to announce that Driftwood Press is transforming from a bi-annual literary magazine to an annual anthology. This change has been in the works for a long time, and we can’t wait to bring our readers over 200 pages in full color on a yearly basis, with our first anthology due out March 7, 2023!” The editors promise status quo on great content, just more of it, including stories, poetry, comics, interviews, and more. Subscription options will also reflect this change, and there is still one more biannual issue due out on July 1, which can be preordered here.
The June 2022 issue of Poetry Magazine is guest-edited by Esther Belin, who offers a “Dear Reader,” introduction that is as beautiful and compelling to read as any poem she has selected for this month’s collection. Uniquely offering two different writing prompts in her note, she closes by commenting on writing from “a mountain desert region in the American Southwest”: “Once again, reader, I think of you as I write from a hardback chair at my dining table placed near a south-facing window. This window is comforting to me, as is this table and chair. I have labored from this place, I have experienced joy from this place, and now I experience grief from it. The familiarity and safety of this space help me to propel toward the essential and recalibrate my center. That is my offering to you. May you align with a poem (or many) in this volume that propels you back to your center.” Guiding the readers in their alignment with poems in this issue are Esther Belin, Jill Zheng, Ae Hee Lee, Fatemeh Shams, Armen Davoudian, Max Schleicher, Cindy Juyoung Ok, Rajiv Mohabir, Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, Monica Sok, Tarik Dobbs, Sarina Romero, Romeo Oriogun, Madeleine Wattenberg, Qiang Meng, Heather Nagami, Orlando White, Courtney Faye Taylor, Shook, and Chad Bennett, Shelby Handler. All of Poetry Magazine‘s content is free to read online.
We Were Angry: A Novella & Stories Fiction by Jennifer S. Davis Press 53, August 2022
We Were Angry by Jennifer S. Davis, introduces readers to a group of friends in small-town Alabama whose lives are haunted by tragedies that reverberate across generations. In Davis’s world, Alabaman is more than a fictional setting. It’s a scene for interrogating power, pain, and what it means to live in – and to leave – the American South. In a linked collection of stories shot through with dark humor, Davis offers glimpses of a land of contradictions: dollar stores and golf courses, dive bars and country clubs, and long-forgotten communities flooded to make way for mansions where missing women are rumored to be buried. Transversing these red dirt roads are mothers and mourners, rebels and addicts, lovers, liars, prisoners, politicians, theme park enthusiasts, and collectors of rejected housepets. Winner of the 2021 Press 53 Award for Short Fiction.
In the Editor’s Note to Runestone Journal Volume 8 (2022), Halee Kirkwood writes, “We take our title this year, ‘The Shape of Your Daydreams,’ from Annie Przypyszny’s poem ‘Feeding The Birds.’ We felt that this line captured the mood of this year’s Runestone. Readers will find that many of the pieces within have an ephemeral nature with an obsession with the intangibility of the divine, while at the same time finding pieces that play with structure and form, pieces that give a daydream shape.” The works that inspired this issue include Poetry by Geoffrey Ayers, Greer McAllister, Jack Mitchell, J. Nehemiah, Annie Przypyszny, Madeline Ragsdale; Creative Nonfiction by Saitharn Im-Iam, Grace Ramos, Camille Whisenant; Fiction by Ellery Beck, Kile Zomar Lowery, Beatrice Ogeh, Hailey Thielen; and an Author Interview with Kawai Strong-Washburn by Cal MacFarland. Current and past issues are free to read online. Submissions are open through October 1 to any current undergraduate at a two- or four-year institution or ages 18-22.
Able Muse Sunday, June 19, 2022 Author Reading is “International Themed” with Michael Cantor, author of Life in the Second Circle – Poems (Able Muse Press, 2012); William Conelly, author of Uncontested Grounds – Poems (Able Muse Press, 2015); and Deirdre O’Connor: Winner, Able Muse Book Award 2019 with The Cupped Field: Poems (Able Muse Press, 2019). Hosted by: James Pollock: Finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award in Poetry, runner-up for the Posner Poetry Book Award, and winner of an Outstanding Achievement Award in Poetry from the Wisconsin Library Association with Sailing to Babylon: Poems (Able Muse Press, 2012). Free admission. Registration required – sign up now! Also, see a complete list of previous readings available on YouTube as well as upcoming readings here.
The June 2022 issue of The Lake poetry and reviews is now online and features Edward Alport, Sara Backer, Phil Dunkerley, Pat Edwards, David Henson, Judith O’Connell Hoyer, Ronald Moran, Sarah Dickenson Snyder, J. R. Solonche, and Jeffrey Thompson with reviews of Amina Alyal and Oz Hardwick’s The Still and Fleeting Fire, and Daniel Skyle’s On the other side of the beach, light. The new feature called “One Poem Review” continues this month, in which one poem from a new book/pamphlet is featured along with a cover JPG and a link to the publisher’s website: “as a way to help poets’ works reach a wider audience.” Authors featured in this month’s “One Poem Review” are Dominic James, Sarah James, and Gordon Meade.
Voices from the Other Side of Death Poetry by Ariel Dorfman Arte Público Press, June 2022
Voices from the Other Side of Death by Ariel Dorfman offers readers a series of poems written from the perspective of deceased historical figures to contemporary politicians and soldiers, warning about the need for reckoning and atonement. In one, Pablo Picasso speaks to Colin Powell, asking why his famous painting depicting the horror of war, Guernica, was covered when the secretary of state spoke about the invasion of Iraq at the United Nations. Others explore connections to loved ones, including “the love of my life, Angélica, the woman who helped me survive exile and tribulations and peopled my world with hope.” Dorfman writes about the passionate love the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan felt for his wife, which led to the construction of the Taj Mahal, and imagines conversations between William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes, who died within hours of each other. These poems share the most human of emotions and expose Dorfman’s vulnerability as he embarks on the last leg of his journey.
If you’re looking for venues to submit your creative writing and art to, you’ve arrived at the right place. Our weekly Where to Submit Round-up features calls for submissions and writing contests from literary magazines, indie presses, literary events, and more. There’s a lot with mid-June deadlines (aka next week!), so don’t let these opportunities pass you by.
Don’t forget that NewPages newsletter subscribers get early access to calls for submissions and writing contests before they go live on our site, so subscribe today! Oh, and you’ll also get our monthly eLitPak along with the occasional promotional email from our sponsors. Speaking of the eLitPak, it will be hitting inboxes on June 15! Stay tuned.
The MacGuffin Spring 2022 (Vol. 38, No. 1) comes with a double-shot of Poet Hunts past and present. Beginning with Guest Judge Indigo Moor’s selections from Poet Hunt 26: Grand Prize Winner Patrick Wilcox and Honorable Mentions Camille Carter and Karen Hones. Following is a five-poem feature of 2022’s Poet Hunt 27 Guest Judge Lynne Thompson. All of these writers were recently featured in a YouTube reading. In addition, this volume features Poetry by David Brehmer, Sarah C. Brockhaus, Anthony DiMatteo, Kevin Grauke, Eloise Klein Healy, Mary Beth Hines, Ken Holland, Margaret B. Ingraham, Marci Rae Johnson, Susan L. Leary, Alison Luterman, James Macmillen, Marjorie Maddox, Chrissy Martin, James McKee, James McKee, Karl Meade, Kathleen Meadows, Teresa Milbrodt, Derek Mong, Hanna Pachman, J. Scott Price, J. Stephen Rhodes, M.A. Schaffner, Deborah Bachels Schmidt, Carla Schwartz, John Zedolik; Nonfiction by Angela Bean, Jessie Carson, Bruce Cohen, David James, Judith Saunders; Fiction by Michael Garcia Bertrand, Felicia Cameron, Tom Eubanks, Bill Kitcher, Randy F. Nelson, Emanuele Pettener, John Picard, Daniel Webre; along with the postcard views Cuba as portrayed through Bruce Katz’s evocative watercolors.
The newest issue of AGNI (95) opens with Editor’s Note, “Interiors,” by Sven Birkerts, in which he reflects upon a recent period of confinement and offers readers this thought, “Our particular period – where we are right now – feels too vast and unresolved to be called a phase. It is changing everyone, creating a new zeitgeist, and insuring that the fantasy of a return to former ways is just that. When it recedes from us, the scars will be visible.” I have personally always been a fan of scars, knowing they have stories to tell, and always hoping for a good one. In keeping with good stories to tell, this issue of AGNI is full to the brim, with Fiction by Linda Mannheim, David Moloney, Iheoma Nwachukwu, Lindsay Starck, Mariana Villas-Boas; Essays by Nin Andrews, Charley Burlock, Carrie Cogan, J. Martin Daughtry, Sarah Gorham, Kelle Groom, Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, Andrew Zubiri; Hybrid Form by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa translated from the Japanese Ryan Choi, Khairani Barokka; Poetry by Ernest O. Ògúnyẹmí, Jacques J. Rancourt, Vasiliki Albedo, Emma Aylor, Emma Aylor, Jan Beatty, Don Bogen, Bruce Bond and Dan Beachy-Quick, Fleda Brown, Victoria Chang, Charlie Clark, Leslie Contreras Schwartz, Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, Mariela Dreyfus translated from the Spanish Carmen Giménez and zachary payne, Liza Flum, Kimiko Hahn, K. A. Hays, Nâzim Hikmet adapted Steve Kronen, Saba Keramati, Hailey Leithauser, Alejandro Lemus-Gomez, Chloe Martinez, Jenny Molberg, Yuliya Musakovska translated from the Ukrainian Olena Jennings and the author, Lynette Ng, D. Nurkse, Jacqueline Osherow, Catherine Pierce, Robert Pinsky, Ellen Rogers, Bruce Snider, Becky Thompson, Issam Zineh; and an Art Feature by Andrea Chung with commentary Shuchi Saraswat.
Creative Nonfiction magazine seeks submissions for a special expanded anniversary edition of I Wasn’t Strong Like This When I Started Out: True Stories of Becoming a Nurse. They are looking for pandemic-era stories dramatically and vividly written by and about nurses which examine the complex and essential role nurses of all kinds have played in providing care and guidance for patients and families, as well as the ways in which the pandemic has affected both individuals and the healthcare system. Previously unpublished, narrative form, with scenes, description, vivid characters, and a distinctive voice, 1000-4000 words. This is a paying market. All submissions will be considered for the book and might also be considered for other CNF projects. There is no submission fee for this category. Deadline: Monday, June 27, 2022.
In their introduction to the Spring 2022 Speckled Trout (4.1) online poetry magazine, Kevin J. McDaniel, Founder, and Nancy Dillingham, Associate Poetry Editor, share that the issue includes “poets from wide-ranging backgrounds and locales share their unique takes on life’s trials, its foibles, and the diverse paths that connect us all in this human experiment,” with works from Anjail Ahmad, Ann Chinnis, Christine Cock, Joe Cottonwood, Chris Ellery, David Ford, Robert Gibb, Babo Kamel, Erren Kelly, Bruce McRae, Marda Messick, Jesse Millner, W. Barrett Munn, Charles Rammelkamp, John Reed, and Jan Schmidt. The Fall 2022 (4.2) publication will be a print issue with “freedom: as the guiding theme.” Specific submission guidelines will be announced on September 1, 2022, so check them out now to see if you might have a good fit for submission!
Shame by Grant Maierhofer is a daring exploration of the potential and limits of memory and self. Here we meet the author at various points within his life then, now, and in the future, as he investigates the sense of shame that haunts the course of his days. The real and unreal, fact and fiction, blur together in a Kaufmanesque sequence of overlapping narratives about who we really are, how we cope with regret, and the repetitions of our behavior. Through lists, fragments, recollections, and rants, the story of a son’s vexing grief for his father emerges. A sober addict trying to figure out how to navigate pleasure, diversion, and escape. A father trying to figure out marriage, children, maturity, and responsibility. A confused observer in a world constantly torn apart by media, politics, and aggression. A meditation on the nature of art, and art’s place in contemporary life.
I Got Mine: Confessions of a Midlist Writer is the memoir of John Nichols as seen through the lens of his writing. Everything that went into making him a writer and eventually found an outlet in his work—his education, family, wives, children, friends, enemies, politics, and place—is told from the point of view of his daily practice of writing. Beginning with his first novel, The Sterile Cuckoo, published in 1965 when he was just twenty-four, Nichols shares his highs and lows: his ambivalent relationship with money; his growing disenchantment with the hypocrisy of capitalism; and his love-hate relationship with Hollywood—including the years-long struggle of working with director Robert Redford on the film version of The Milagro Beanfield War, which was filmed around Truchas and featured many of Nichols’ northern New Mexico neighbors. I Got Mine captures Nichols’ lifelong engagement with progressive political causes, his passionate interest in and identification with ordinary people, and his deep connection to the land.
tender gravity Poetry by Marybeth Hollman Red Hen Press, August 2022
tender gravity is Marybeth Holleman’s collection of poetry that charts her quest for relationships to the more-than-human world, navigating her childhood in North Carolina to her life in Alaska, with deep time in remote land and seascapes. Always the focus is on what can be found by attention to the world beyond her own human skin, what can be found there as she negotiates loss — the loss of beloved places, wild beings, her younger brother. “do not think,” she says to her mother, “that i love a bear more than my brother. / think instead that i cannot distinguish / the variations in / the beat of a heart.” Inevitably, solace is found in the wild world: “step back toward that joy-sap rising, step back / into the only world that is.” In a narrative arc of seeking, falling, and finding, Holleman’s exquisitely attentive immersion offers clear reverberations of Mary Oliver, of Linda Hogan, of Walt Whitman. These poems of grief and celebration pulse in and out, reaching to the familiar moon and out to orphan stars of distant galaxies, then pull close to a small brown seabird and an on-the-knees view of a tiny bog plant.
That’s right! There’s only one week left to enter your full-length manuscripts to the 2022 New American Fiction Prize from New American Press. Manuscripts can be novels, novellas, collections of stories, etc. Weike Wang, author of Joan Is Okay (Random House 2022) is the final judge. Enter your manuscripts by June 15, 2022! See their ad in the NewPages Classifieds to learn more.
Anne Pitkin’s third book, But Still, Music spans her childhood as a privileged white child in the Jim Crow South to the period of her grown daughter’s death. The poems in this collection visit the disquieting contradictions of a southern childhood marked by honeysuckle and lightning bugs and the racist culture that was the air Pitkin breathed. A number of poems address the loss of her daughter. Still, in the end, as she says in the final poem. ‘‘Tide”: “There you’ve been, loves of my life. / There you’ve changed me, one by one. . . “
Winner of the 2021 Cowles Poetry Prize, Gold Hill Family Audio is Corrie Lynn White’s debut poetry collection. Her poetry has appeared in Oxford American, New Ohio Review, Best New Poets, Mid American Review, and Mississippi Review, among other publications. Originally from Gold Hill, North Carolina, she holds a BA from UNC Chapel Hill and an MFA from UNC Greensboro. She currently lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she works as a journalist and was named the 2021 Tennessee Arts Commission Fellow in Poetry.
Glorious Fiends Fiction by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam Underland Press, September 2022
When infamous hot mess vampire Roxanne resurrects her deceased best friends, she’s confronted by a dream-dwelling Guardian of the Underworld, who demands that she replace them in his afterlife with three equally nefarious creatures — or he’ll drag her there instead. Reunited with Medusa and Mx. Hyde, Roxanne and her macabre girl gang must become monster hunters themselves and fight for the future of their friendship. Gory, sexy, silly, touching — Glorious Fiends asks who the real monsters are and if the bonds that we think are solely human are really ours alone. This Hammer-inspired odyssey is a nostalgic trip through ‘80s horror tropes — with modern sensibilities.
Sheltered in Place Poetry by CJ Giroux Finishing Line Press, August 2022
Infused with images of the natural world, Sheltered in Place features a braid of three poetic sequences. The first focuses on a grown child’s relationship with an aging parent living in a memory ward; the second focuses on a parent marking the growth of a child from her birth through her teen years; the third sequence, which gives the collection its title, examines life in the early days of the pandemic when shutdowns were imposed. CJ Giroux is a professor of English at Saginaw Valley State University, has helped direct the school’s writing center, and serves on the editorial board of Dunes Review. His dissertation, which he completed at Wayne State University, focused on representations of trauma in 20th- and 21st-century American plays.
Willawaw Journal hosts two month-long submission periods in August and February, with a mentor poem from one of the Northwest Poets Laureate as a prompt for both poetry and art submissions. The Spring 2022 issue mentor poem was “Sweat,” from Montana Poet Laureate Sandra Alcosser. Featured in this free online journal are works by Hugh Anderson, Louise Cary Barden, Corbett Buchly, Jeff Burt, Natalie Callum, Ken Chamlee, Dale Champlin, Daun Daemon, Kris Demien, Jannie M. Dresser, Ann Farley, Sarah Ferris, C. Desirée Finley, Suzy Harris, Lorraine Jeffery, Stephen Jones, Tricia Knoll, Laurie Kolp, Gary Lark, David Dodd Lee, Amy Lerman, Scott Lowery, Katharyn Howd Machan, Jayne Marek, Catherine McGuire, Robin Michel, Cameron Morse, John Thomas Muro, Kevin Nance, Lisa Ni Bhraonain, Robert Nisbet, Toti O’Brien, Vivienne Popperl, Laura Ann Reed, Frank Rossini, Maria Rouphail, Beate Sigriddaughter, Pepper Trail, Heather Truett, and Paul Willis, with artwork throughout by Jessica Billey.
Living in a Red State Blues Poetry by M. Scott Douglass Paycock Press, April 2022
Living in a Red State Blues by M. Scott Douglass is a collection years in the making, having been hatched prior to the pandemic and developed throughout the subsequent years of shutdowns and election cycles. Afraid that publishers may have become “exhausted” with the topics covered in these works, Douglass had all but given up on it ever seeing the light of day in print. That was until a few publishers began requesting some of the works to include in their anthologies and literary journals. Thus, life was breathed back into the endeavor and is now available for readers, with such titled works as “Erasing a Color (from literature),” “Cone of Uncertainty,” “Diluting Red,” “Forgiving Red,” “Neoconservatives,” “Punishing Red,” “The Color of Fraud,” “Assessing the VRBO,” and “A Tinderbox of Unsuble Discourse.” M. Scott Douglass is Publisher and Managing Editor of Main Street Rag Publishing Company and general all-around badass.
Online literary magazine Brilliant Flash Fiction announced the winners of their Welcome 2022 Writing Contest judged by Pamela Painter on June 1. This year’s contest saw over 1,000 international entries that kept the editors busy for months.
First place was awarded to L. Michelle Souleret’s “Marsh Omen Augury” in which the narrator is called upon to figure out what thirty-three egrets appearing in an area means.
Helen Chamber’s “Granny Holds Me to Account” won second place as the judge enjoyed the humor and the surprises while A.K. Cotham’s “Driving by Moonlight” won third place for its opening dramatic ride “running full tilt into the future with another wild, and oddly life-affirming, ride.”
Happy June! Happy summer is nearly fully here, although the weather in Michigan still can’t make up its mind. How are your submissions goals going? If you need help, then our weekly Where to Submit Round-up is here to save the day (we hope). And while I know many of us are tired of all things virtual, do stop by and check out NewPages Editor Denise Hill’s thoughts on a recent virtual workshop she took and how writers can benefit from them.
Don’t forget that our newsletter subscribers get early access to calls for submissions and writing contests before they go live on our site, so subscribe today!
An Earnest Blackness Nonfiction by Eugen Bacon Anti-Oedipus Press, August 2022
An Earnest Blackness is Eugen Bacon’s debut collection of personal essays offering critical perspectives on blackness, Afrofuturism, colonialism, historicity, and (mis)recognition as she explores the untapped possibilities of speculative fiction. Using a variety of analytic, narrative, and anecdotal techniques, Bacon shares her experiences as an African Australian woman, mother, and writer who occupies a liminal space that is “betwixt” worlds and genres. She also considers work by “other” writers—ranging from Roland Barthes and Jorge Luis Borges to Suyi Davies Okungbowa, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, and Sheree Renée Thomas—in an effort to chart a path towards greater social and cultural truth. Literary, adventurous, and insightful, An Earnest Blackness excavates the world(s) that not only construct contemporary authorship but the fluid nature of identity itself.
Love Poems in the Apocalypse is the newest collection of poems from Dani Jeremiah Gabriel, author of Low Rent Prophet (Nomadic Press) and several other titles. Gabriel says their “response to the pandemic was to write these unbelievably gritty and hopeful love poems, and the book is made up largely of that writing.” With such titled works as “election thursday poem,” “wish list,” “everyday insurrection,” “the antidote for everything,” and “poem for my white transgender twelve year old son thinking of twelve year old Tamir Rice shot by police while playing,” Gabriel asserts the range of what can constitute a love poem. The former Poet Laureate of El Cerrito, California, Gabriel earned an MFA from Mills College and resides in the San Francisco Bay Area.
In Let’s Not Do That Again, Grant Ginder, himself a former political speech writer, has concocted an entertaining, immensely satisfying romp of a novel that definitively proves that just when you think things can’t get worse, you are very, very wrong. They most certainly can.
Tolstoy famously wrote, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The same can be said of dysfunctional families, and it applies in spades when that family is in politics. Introducing the Harrisons. Mom, a NY congresswoman who inherited her seat from her long-dead husband, is now running for US Senate. Add her two semi-adult children to the mix—Nick, a gay, adjunct at NYU who’s working on a musical based on the works of Joan Didion on the side—and Greta, who, though a Yale grad, is currently living in a hovel in Brooklyn and working part-time at the Apple store. Greta manages to hook-up with the wrong guy, Xavier, on an online gaming site. Xavier lures her to Paris. He, of course, turns out to be a neo-Nazi anarchist, and sparks (as well as champagne bottles) soon fly—literally and figuratively. The dysfunctional son is soon dispatched to Paris to rescue the dysfunctional daughter and, hopefully, save the floundering election in the process.
Call Me Fool Poetry by William Trowbridge Red Hen Press, September 2022
Call Me Fool by William Trowbridge is based on an archetype that runs from the beginnings of storytelling up to modern films (silent and sound), fiction, poetry, and stand-up comedy. He is combination schlemiel and shlimazel, alternately the spiller and the spilled-on. He is often the scapegoat, as St. Chrysostom put it, “he who gets slapped.” After blundering into hell with Lucifer and company, Trowbridge’s Fool is reincarnated in various historical times, with occasional unplanned visits back to the heavenly realm, operated as a mega-corporation by its Enron-style CEO.
One is an online poetry journal with a unique approach – writers may submit only one poem per issue (via email), and as soon as the editors have selected 21 poems for publication, the next issue will be released. They also include a fun feature called “Second Look” in which writers are asked to take a ‘second look’ at a poem they admire and provide a commentary about that work. The newest issue (26) of One features “A Second Look by Deborah Bogen” in which she re-considers “September 1963” by Jean Valentine. Also in this latest issue are works by Greg Garner, Claire Hermann, Stephen Gibson, Mike James, Alexis Rhone Fancher, Tony Medina, David Giannini, Shei Sanchez, Ben Groner III, David O’Connell, Maryfrances Wagner, DeWitt Henry, Taylor J. Johnson, Zara Raab, Molly Kirschner, Edison Dupree, Steven Winn, Katherine Hoerth, Katherine Riegel, Mike White, and David Kirby. Check them out today and see if you might have one for One! [Cover art: Gateway Arch by Alexis Rockman]
July 31 is the deadline to submit up to 3 original, unpublished poems to the 2022 Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize. First place receives $1,000, letterpress broadside from Felicia Rice of Moving Parts Press, and publication in Red Wheelbarrow Literary Magazine. Enter today! Learn more by stopping by the NewPages Classifieds.
Scribble is an online venue for flash and short fiction (2,000 words or less) publishing 3-5 stories every two months. The May 2022 issue features works by Sidney Stevens, Olivia Germann, Josh Price, and Philip Sherrod, with an introduction from Editor-in-Chief Jae Worthy Johnson. Scribble is free to read online as well as its full archive of issues. Submissions are no-fee and open year-round.
Ascension Fiction by Steve Tomasula University of Alabama Press/FC2, August 2022
Ascension by Steve Tomasula is a novel about the end of nature, or rather, the end of three “natures”: the time just before Darwin changed the natural world; the 1980s, just as the digital and genetic revolutions begin to replace “nature” with “environment”; and today, a time when we have the ability to manipulate nature at both the scale of the planet and at the genome. The narrative follows three different biologists on the brink of each of these cultural extinctions to explore how nature occupies our imaginations and how our imaginations bring the natural world, and our place in it, into existence.
