Home » NewPages Blog » Page 41

NewPages Blog

At the NewPages Blog readers and writers can catch up with their favorite literary and alternative magazines, independent and university presses, creative writing programs, and writing and literary events. Find new books, new issue announcements, contest winners, and so much more!

Magazine Stand :: Poetry Magazine – June 2022

Poetry Magazine June 2022 issue cover image

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.

New Book :: We Were Angry

We Were Angry a novella and stories by Jennifer S. Davis book cover image

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.

Runestone Journal – Volume 8

Runestone Journal online literary magazine volume 8 2022 cover image

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.

Event :: Able Muse June 2022 International-Themed Author Reading

Able Muse June 2022 International Themed Author Reading press release image

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.

Magazine Stand :: The Lake – June 2022

The Lake online magazine of poetry and reviewz logo image

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.

New Book :: Voices from the Other Side of Death

Voices from the Other Side of Death poetry by Ariel Dorfman book cover image

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.

Where to Submit Round-up: June 10, 2022

person writing on a notebook beside macbook

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.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Round-up: June 10, 2022”

Magazine Stand :: The MacGuffin – Spring 2022

The MacGuffin literary magazine Spring 2022 cover image

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.

Magazine Stand :: AGNI – 95

Agni print literary magazine issue 95 cover image

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.

Call :: Creative Nonfiction Becoming a Nurse

I Wasn't Strong Like This When I Started Out: True Stories of Becoming a Nurse book cover image

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.

Magazine Stand :: Speckled Trout – Spring 2022

Speckled Trout Review online poetry magazine Spring 2022 issue cover image

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!

New Book :: Shame

Shame autofiction by Grant Maierhofer book cover image

Shame
Autofiction by Grant Maierhofer
University of Alabama Press/FC2, September 2022

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.

New Book :: I Got Mine

I Got Mine memoir by John Nichols book cover image

I Got Mine: Confessions of a Midlist Writer
Memoir by John Nichols
University of New Mexico Press, June 2022

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.

New Book :: tender gravity

tender gravity poetry by Marybeth Holleman book cover image

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.

Contest :: 1 Week Left to Enter 2022 New American Fiction Prize

2022 New American Fiction Prize

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.

New Book :: But Still, Music

But Still Music poetry by Anne Pitkin book cover image

But Still, Music
Poetry by Anne Pitkin
Pleasure Boat Studio, September 2022

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. . . “

New Book :: Gold Hill Family Audio

Gold Hill Family Audio poetry by Corrie Lynn White book cover image

Gold Hill Family Audio
Poetry by Corrie Lynn White
Southeast Missouri State University Press, October 2022

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.

New Book :: Glorious Fiends

Glorious Fiends fiction by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam book cover image

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.

New Book :: Sheltered in Place

Sheltered in Place poetry by CJ Giroux book cover image

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.

Magazine Stand :: Willawaw Journal – Spring 2022

Williwaw Journal online poetry magazine Spring 2022 cover image

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.

New Book :: Living in a Red State Blues

Living in a Red State Blues poetry by M. Scott Douglass book cover image

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.

Brilliant Flash Fiction 2022 Writing Contest Results

Brilliant Flash Fiction logo

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.”

Read the stories and view the complete Shortlist at Brilliant Flash Fiction‘s website.

Where to Submit Round-up: June 3, 2022

person writing on a notebook beside macbook

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!

Continue reading “Where to Submit Round-up: June 3, 2022”

New Book :: An Earnest Blackness

An Earnest Blackness essays by Eugen Bacon book cover image

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.

New Book :: Love Poems in the Apocalypse

Love Poems in the Apocalypse poetry by Dani Jeremiah Gabriel book cover image

Love Poems in the Apocalypse
Poetry by Dani Jeremiah Gabriel
Main Street Rag Publishing, May 2022

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.

Book Review :: Let’s Not Do That Again by Grant Ginder

Let's Not Do That Again a novel by Grant Grinder book cover image

Guest Post by Cindy Dale

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.

Continue reading “Book Review :: Let’s Not Do That Again by Grant Ginder”

New Book :: Call Me Fool

Call Me Fool poetry by William Trowbridge book cover image

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.

Magazine Stand :: One – April 2022

One online poetry magazine April 2022 cover image

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]

Contest :: Two Months Remain to Enter 2022 Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize

line art red wheelbarrow on white background

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.

Magazine Stand :: Scribble – 4.5

Scribble online literary magazine May 2022 cover image

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.

New Book :: Ascension

Ascension fiction by Steve Tomasula book cover image

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.

Book Review :: Scary Monsters by Michelle de Kretser

Scary Monsters: A Novel in Two Parts by Michelle de Krester book cover image

Guest Post by Kevin Brown

Michelle de Kretser’s novel tells two stories, one narrated by Lyle, the other by Lili; which one you read first depends on which side of the book you begin with. Neither story has an intricate plot: Lili’s follows her year as a teacher at a high school in France, while Lyle’s tells about his experience in an Australia in the not-too-distant future. While the two narratives seemingly have nothing to do with one another, they are held together by the question of who or what the scary monsters are. Both main characters are not native Australians, having relocated from what sounds like a Southeast Asian country, Lili when she was younger and Lyle as an adult. These monsters could simply be those who look down on them for their racial and ethnic difference. De Krester explores that idea, but she has broader concerns. Lili struggles with the daily fears of being a woman in a patriarchal society; though nothing violent happens to her, she knows it could. Lyle’s skin is slowly changing to white, a representation of the sacrifices he’s made to assimilate, possibly becoming a monster himself. Ultimately, the systems of power that go unnoticed are the monsters underneath the proverbial beds of the main characters and perhaps the readers, as well.

Scary Monsters: A Novel in Two Parts by Michelle de Kretser. Catapult, April 2022.

Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite or kevinbrownwrites.weebly.com/.

Magazine Stand :: Watershed Review – Spring 2022

Watershed Review online literary magazine Spring 2022 issue cover image

Watershed Review is a biannual online publication from the Literary Editing and Publishing (LEAP) certificate program at California State University, Chico, providing professional training for writers, artists, and editors. The result is a beautiful, easily accessible, online journal, the most recent edition of which features Fiction by Nathan Greene, Anastasia Jill, Kameron Ray Morton, Mikayla Randolph, Daniel Webre; Nonfiction by Jordan Charlton, Leah Francesca Christianson, Alaina Scarano, Renee Soasey, Angela Youngblood; Poetry by Abdulmueed Balogun, Jennifer Bullis, Lauren Hyunseo Cho, Dennis Cummings, Javan Howard, Courtney Ludwick, Daniel Edward Moore, L.I. Henley & Laura Maher, Annie Przypyszny, Evy Shen, Ashley Somwaru, Jeddie Sophronius, Nancy White; and Art by Russ Allison Loar, Mario Loprete, Christina Rosche.

Books Received June 2022

NewPages receives many wonderful titles each month to share with our readers. You can read more about some of these titles by clicking on the “New Books” tag under “Popular Topics.” If you are a publisher or author looking to be listed here or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us!

Poetry
BABE, Dorothy Chan, Diode Editions
Best of the Sucks, ed. Mark Spitzer, MadHat Press
Beyond the Time of Words, Marjorie Agosín, Sixteen Rivers Press
Breaking Down Familiar, Donald Levering, Main Street Rag Publishing
A Brilliant Loss, Eloise Klein Healy, Red Hen Press
Call Me Fool, William Trowbridge, Red Hen Press
Cance Voodoo, Melissa C. Johnson, Diode Editions
Cannon Fodder, Jay Sizemore, Crow Hollow Books
Coining a Wishing Tower, Ayesha Raees, Platypus Press
The Convert’s Heart is Good to Eat, Melody S. Gee, Driftwood Press

Continue reading “Books Received June 2022”

Magazine Stand :: Cimarron Review – 214 & 215

Cimarron Review Winter Spring 2021 literary magazine cover image

The Winter/Spring 2021 release of Cimarron Review is a double issue (214 & 215) and features Poetry by Mischelle Anthony, Wale Ayinla, Aliki Barnstone, Margo Berdeshevsky, Ralph Burns, Justin Carter, Lisa Compo, Steven Cramer, Mary Crow, Jim Daniels, Jordan Durham, Rebecca Griswold, Susan Gubernat, Mark Halliday, Lisa M. Hase-Jackson, Jaimee Hills, Kjerstin Anne Kauffman, Jenna Le, Harriet Levin, Richard Lyons, Naomi Mulvihill, Shannon Nakai, Amanda Newell, Joanna Novak, Kristel Rietesel-Low, Judith Skillman, Darius Stewart, Sarah R. Stockton, Cheyenne Taylor, Lauren Tess, Lee Colin Thomas, Natalie Tombasco, Julia Wendell, Margot Wizansky, Theodora Ziolkowski; Fiction by Kawika Guillermo, Mike Broida, Janis Hubschman, Barry Kitterman, David Mizner, Kirstin Scott; Nonfiction by Bill Marsh, Eric Pankey, Hannah Baker Saltmarsh, and Jackie Stowers, with cover art by Marissa Klee-Peregon.

Event :: 2022 Poetry Marathon

No running shoes required for this marathon, but you will definitely need stamina and perseverance! This annual Poetry Marathon invites writers to join in a half- or full-day of poetry writing, responding to prompts posted on the hour starting a 9:00am on June 25 and running (no pun intended) through 9:00am on June 26. If you’re not up for the full 24-hour marathon, there are two 12-hour half-marathons (my speed). The first is for day folk and goes from 9:00am-9:00pm on June 25, and the second is for night owls, from 9:00pm on June 25 to 9:00am on June 26. The platform is WordPress, which allows each participant their own space to post as well as to give and receive feedback. Participants who successfully complete their event will receive a certificate of achievement and are eligible to submit works for inclusion in the annual anthology. Over the past several years, the marathon has had over 500 participants each year, though not all finished. That’s the challenge! Registration is open June 1-19, 2022. Hope to see some of you there!

Contest :: Final Month to Enter 2022 North Street Book Prize

North Street Book Prize logo 2022

There is only one month left to enter self-published books to the 8th annual North Street Book Prize from Winning Writers. Self-published books in seven categories can win up to $8,000 plus additional benefits. They are also offering free gifts from their co-sponsors to everyone who enters. Submit your own self-published title by June 30, 2022. See their ad in the NewPages Classifieds for full details.

Magazine Stand :: Glass Mountain – Spring 2022

Glass Mountain online literary magazine Spring 2022 issue cover image

Congratulations to Glass Mountain Editor Natalie Dean who graduated this spring from the magazine’s home base, University of Houston. She reminds us in her editor’s note that “art is always worth the trouble. Making time, even when you truly have none, to create and to engage with art is worthwhile. Always.” Likewise, it is worthwhile to appreciate what others have created, using it to fortify and inspire us all through our own busy lives. The Sping 2022 issue of Glass Mountain online is at the ready, with art by Rebecca May, Gabriela Carrion, Sydney Cristofori, Samantha Capps, Guliz Mutlu, Bill Wolak, Mellany Medina; poetry by Victoria Woolf Bailey, Laurinda Lind, Zoe Elisabeth, DS Maolalai, Zoe Korte, Sarah Mills, Nicole Knorr, Alex Blum, Clara McShane; prose by Julie Beals, Stephan Lang, Lena Levey, Annalisa Morganelli, Ashley Sgro, Abbi Tobin; and Writing Competition Winners: “night drive” by Vanna Do, and “Rumors of Resurrection” by Katy Borobia.

New Book :: Reverse Engineer

Reverse Engineer poetry by Kate Colby book cover image

Reverse Engineer
Poetry by Kate Colby
Ornithopter Press, October 2022

In Kate Colby’s ninth collection of poems, Reverse Engineer, she continues her excavation of the unknown, “the key to which breaks / the lock by breaking in it.” Operating at the junctures of perception and sensation, philosophy and grief, Reverse Engineer explores the deep recesses of human experience where conventional language doesn’t quite reach. Katy Colby has received awards and fellowships from the Poetry Society of America, Rhode Island State Council for the Arts, The Dodd Research Center at University of Connecticut, and Harvard’s Woodberry Poetry Room.

Event :: 2022 August Poetry Postcard Festival

The Giving Tree USPS Forever Stamp image

Early Bird Registration for the 2022 August Poetry Postcard Festival ends June 4, and registration for the event ends completely on July 4, so do not delay!

Celebrating 15 years, this event invites writers to sign up to be placed in a group. Once each group reaches 32 registrants, each receives a list of names and addresses. The goal is to write a poem a day on a postcard to the next person on the list after your own name and mail it to them. In return, you will receive a poem from each participant in your group. Writers are encouraged to start in advance of August 1 to allow time for the postcards to arrive, but it’s common to have some days go by with no card arriving and others with several cards waiting in the mailbox.

Continue reading “Event :: 2022 August Poetry Postcard Festival”

Call :: Black Memoirs Matter

Black Memoirs Matter Anthology book cover image

Committed to sharing stories that need to be told, Memoir Magazine is accepting memoir and creative nonfiction by writers of African descent – all writers of the African Diaspora, regardless of country of origin or residence – for their upcoming anthology Black Memoirs Matter. “Our goal,” the editors say, “is to chronicle the global Black Experience through memoir. At the same time, we are looking for universal truths that transcend race, like mental health, self-love, parenting, etc.” Submissions should be 500-4k words, written in the first person, with simultaneous and previously published works welcome. “We seriously encourage emerging and unpublished writers to apply.” Acceptance pays $50 honorarium and a print version of the anthology. There is a $25 fee with all entries also considered for standard nonfiction publication in Memoir Magazine. Deadline: August 31, 2022.

Book News :: Sync Free Audiobooks for Teens

This Book Betrays My Brother by Kagiso Lesego Molope audiobook cover image

Every summer, SYNC gives participants two thematically paired audiobooks each week for sixteen weeks from May through August. Participants sign up for free and download the Sora student reading app. Anyone can actually sign up for the program, not just teens, but the titles are all geared toward teen readers 13+. The cool thing is that the books are “borrowed” and stay in the Sora app until you return them, with a loan time of 35,999 days. So, basically, the books are to keep unless someone purposefully returns them. The titles available each week are ONLY available to borrow for that week, so if you miss a week, then you miss out on those books. Right now, Week 6 is coming up, so there is still plenty of good audiobooking to be had. Visit SYNC via AudioFile and get started today – and spread the word to your teen readers and YA fans.

New Book :: Breaking Down Familiar

Breaking Down the Familiar poetry by Donald Levering book cover image

Breaking Down Familiar
Poetry by Donald Levering
Main Street Rag Publishing, May 2022

Donald Leverings’s 16th book of poetry, Breaking Down the Familiar, grapples with a host of harrowing assaults to the narrator and his family: illness and accidents, addiction and madness, estrangement and divorce. Yet as mind and body falter, as faith is undermined and relationships sunder, as aging parents can neither be changed or saved and former athletes tally their infirmities, previously obscured strength emerge – as a ruined golfer in one poem says, “Your character is revealed / in the handicap you claim.” Finally, the poems re-enact the family’s reconstitution, the way in the eponymous poem, shattered bottle pieces are refashioned into artisan’s sea glass crafts. A former NEA Fellow, Donald Levering won the Tor House Robinson Jeffers Award, selected by Eavan Boland; the Carve Poetry Prize, judged by Carmen Giménez Smith; and the Literal Latté Poetry Award. Levering’s work has also been featured on Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac podcast.

Book Review :: In Love by Amy Bloom

In Love: A Memory of Love and Loss memoir by Amy Bloom book cover image

Guest Post by Kevin Brown

Amy Bloom’s memoir relates her husband’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis and their struggle to find a way for him to die as he chooses rather than suffer through years of mental decline. Bloom weaves chapters from the past — as she realizes what’s happening to her husband and the revelation of his diagnosis — with those of Brian’s final days in Switzerland, as well as chapters on the challenges those who want to end their life face. Bloom writes movingly about her love for Brian, consistently reminding the reader through scenes she describes, in addition to her reflections, that her helping him die comes out of that love. As soon as he is diagnosed, Brian asks Bloom to help him, as she has always been the planner in their relationship, and he has begun to lose the ability to do that type of work. This book is a testament to their marriage and their love as much as it is an exploration of why someone would want to end their life and why the person who loves them most would want to help. It is, as the subtitle states, a memoir of love and loss, and the reader feels both equally.

In Love: A Memory of Love and Loss by Amy Bloom. Random House, 2022.

Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite or kevinbrownwrites.weebly.com/.

New Book :: Rx

Rx poetry by Josh Sapan book cover image

Rx
Poetry by Josh Sapan
Red Hen Press, November 2022

In this debut poetry collection, Rx, Josh Sapan guides us through a lifetime of love and loss as he navigates death — of loved ones, of crickets, of houseplants — in an American landscape teeming with wonder and the promise of rebirth — in the stars, the wind, the minnows in the bay. In Rx, the prescription is literal (“blue-fog medicine breath”) and figurative (“Love so big, / it comes in a gigantic red box.”). Sapan offers a glimpse into the sometimes painfully delicate and beautiful parts of life.

Magazine Stand :: Blink-Ink – #48

Blink Ink literary magazine issue 48 cover image

Blink-Ink is an adorable little lit mag, but don’t let its 4×5 zine-style format or 50-words or less per submission fool you – this is a powerhouse fiction publication – as previously reviewed on NewPages. Thematic by issue, the theme for #48 is “Rumors” and includes works by Beret Olsen, Nancy Stohlman, Jon Fain, Judith Shapiro, Lou Storey, Jennifer Mills Kerr, Mark Budman, Karen Lillis, Crystal Bonano, Daryl Scroggins, Mike Yunxuan Li, Liz Mayers, Catfish McDaris, Renuka Raghavan, Karen Lillis, Lindsey-Loon Ricker, Patricia Woods, Bryan Jansing, Gay Degani, Micahel Fagan, and Saif Sidari with photography by Alix Rhone Fancher. Visit their website for submission guidelines and upcoming themes.

Book Review :: The Book of I.P. (Idle Poems)

The Book of IP (Idle Poems) by Chris Courtney Martin book cover image

Guest Post by Nicholas Michael Ravnikar

This eclectic book from Chris Courtney Martin foregrounds commodified intersections of American culture in light of spiritual awakening. Reclaiming Hollywoodspeak IP to refer to poems written during “idle” time, Martin questions the very idea of value creation. Deploying the true American musical habits of blues (viz “Black Betty” and “Hellhound”) and jazz, these syncopations and melodies transmute the cannibalized, dollar-driven kitsch rituals and artifacts of Americana into talismans for meaning-making. Independent Black cinema is never far from mind, as Melvin Van Peebles and Rudy Ray Moore, for instance, were both threats to and sources for the status quo. Readers dance from piece to piece as rhymes and measures suggest expectations to upend. Consider the first (and last) stanza of “Intuition”:

Who are you?
I been knew.
Who am I?
I, too, fly.

Here’s verse to echo Dickinson, Brooks, and Blake. And Martin’s spiritual grasp can perhaps match theirs, with topics that span Kundalini awakening, paganism, tarot, and hoodoo. There’s depth, too, in Martin’s excavation of how our society manufactures us in the mainstream, particularly in the concluding essay. Therein, these “Idle Poems” suggest the “Intellectual Property” beneath the mirror of any reader’s encounter with art. This is fun, prophetic stuff.

The Book of IP (Idle Poems) by Chris Courtney Martin. Alien Buddha Press, June 2022.

Reviewer bio: Blurring the lines between understanding and overthinking since 1982, Nicholas Michael Ravnikar is a neurodivergent dad/spouse/poet who writes kids books for grownups. He hasn’t made anything from NFTs yet. After working as a college prof, bathtub repairman, substance abuse prevention agency success coach, copyeditor and marketing specialist, he’s been disabled and unemployable following a nervous breakdown. In his spare time, he lifts weights, meditates and plays pickleball. Join him on social media and read more at bio.fm/nicholasmichaelravnikar

New Book :: Elixir

Elixir poetry by Lewis Warsh book cover image

Elixir
Poetry by Lewis Warsh
Ugly Duckling Presse, April 2022

Animated by a poignant blend of humor, pathos, joie de vivre, and nostalgia, Elixir is an extended meditation on everyday life and the passage of time. Fragments of narrative, overheard dialogue, song lyrics, and slant memoir surface and recede throughout. Examining the inseparable entanglement of the quotidian and the profound with wit and candor, these poems are personal, direct, and elusive at the same time. Lewis Warsh (1944–2020) was a key poet of the second generation New York School and — as a teacher, poet, mentor, and publisher of Angel Hair and United Artists Books — a significant figure in New York poetry communities for over 50 years. He authored over thirty volumes of poetry, fiction, and autobiography.

New Book :: Best of the Sucks

Best of the Sucks poetry collection edited by Mark Spitz book cover image

Best of the Sucks: High-Octane Poetix from the Legendary Toad Suck Review
Edited by Mark Spitz
MadHat Press, March 2022

For fans of the legendary Toad Suck Review, and for anyone who missed that boat but would have an appreciation for innovative literature that’s quirky, edgy, and International Avant-Garde, this revival publication is your ticket to get on board. This publication will reestablish Toad Suck Editions as MadHat takes it into the future, so consider this your time to catch up with the class! Digging back to its Exquisite Corpse roots, the transitional period to the inception of Toad Suck, and pummeling chronologically through the issues, works in this collection feature Michael Anania, Antler, Robert Archambeau, Debangana Banerjee, Amiri Baraka, Nicolas Bataille, Elva Maxine Beach, Marck Beggs, Jericho Brown, William Burroughs, Vincent Cellucci, Ha Kiet Chau, Jack Collom, Gillian Conoley, Heather Cox, JJ Cromer, Tim Dardis, Diane di Prima, The Dirty Poet, Allen Ginsberg, Lea Graham, Brenda Mann Hammack, Matthew Henriksen, Jack Hirschman, Tyrone Jaeger, Stacy Kidd, klipschutz, Scotty Lewis, Lyn Lifshin, Gerald Locklin, Sandy Longhorn, James McWilliams, Henri Michaux, Mlle. Akakia-Viala, Craig Paulenich, Gabriel and Marcel Piqueray, Jacques Prévert, Arthur Rimbaud, Ed Sanders, Davis Schneiderman, Norman Shapiro, Chris Shipman, Tim Snediker, Gary Snyder, Mark Spitzer, Daryl Spurlock, Frank Stanford, Mike Topp, Joey Trimble, Anne Waldman, Ken Waldman, Laurie Welch, Lew Welch, and CD Wright.

Magazine Stand :: Collateral – Spring 2022

Collateral literary magazine spring 2022 cover image

Collateral Issue 6.2 Spring 2022 features poetry by Jonathan Endurance, Justin Evans, Clare Goulet, Shakiba Hashemi, Lee Peterson, Diana Pinckney, Adrian Potter, Tatiana Retivov, Renée M. Schell, Ingrid L. Taylor, Christina Vega, Pramila Venkateswaran, fiction by Susan McKenna, Burt Rashbaum, Kristen Leigh Schwarz, nonfiction by Genara Necos, and an interview with and portfolio of work by artist and activist Saiyare Refaei. Collateral is an online literary journal run by people who are directly and indirectly impacted by violent conflict and military service with the mission to publish literary and visual art concerned with the impact of violent conflict and military service beyond the combat zone. Collateral also offers free, face-to-face creative writing workshops, readings, panel discussions, and book signings in their communities. In addition, they “strive to directly address the impact of war by facilitating writing opportunities for refugees and military-civilian communities.” Collateral reads submissions year-round with March 1 and September 1 deadlines for issue publication.