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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 :: Change Seven – Spring 2022

Change Seven online literary magazine cover image

Publishing four issues per year from pieces collected during two open submission periods, the newest issue of Change Seven features fiction by Rebecca Andem, Joseph Ducato, Megan Lucas, Michelle Spencer, and Josh White; poetry by Randy Blythe, James Cochran, Robert Detman, Peter Grieco, Mark Hammershick, William Heath, and Virginia Laurie; non-fiction by Stuart Baker Hawk, Lillian Brion, Saila Kariat, Anna Oberg, and Joshua Thusat; and art by Kailee Bal, Lawrence Bridges, Greg Clary, Rachel Coyne, Mark Rosalbo, Max St-Jacques, and Karah Tull. The next open reading period starts June 1.

“It takes me six months to do a story. I think it out and write it sentence by sentence—no first draft. I can’t write five words but that I can change seven.”
~ Dorothy Parker, The Paris Review, 1956

New Book :: They Don’t Want Her There

They Don't Want Her There by Carolyn Chalmers book cover image

They Don’t Want Her There: Fighting Sexual and Racial Harassment in the American University
Nonfiction by Carolyn Chalmers
University of Iowa Press, April 2022

Decades before the #MeToo movement, Chinese American professor Jean Jew M.D. brought a lawsuit against the University of Iowa, alleging a sexually hostile work environment within the university’s College of Medicine. As Jew gained accolades and advanced through the ranks at Iowa, she was met with increasingly vicious attacks on her character by her white male colleagues. After years of demoralizing sexual, racial, and ethnic discrimination, finding herself without any higher-up departmental support, and noting her professional progression beginning to suffer by the hands of hate, Jean Jew decided to fight back. Carolyn Chalmers was her lawyer. This book tells the inside story of pioneering litigation unfolding during the eight years of a university investigation, a watershed federal trial, and a state court jury trial.

Magazine Stand :: Qu Literary Magazine – Volume 15

Qu literary magazine cover image

Published by the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte with an editorial staff comprised of current students Qu Literary Magazine publishes fiction, poetry, essays, and script excerpts. Payment upon publication is $100 per prose piece and $50 per poem. The Winter 2022 contributors include Nathan Alling Long, G.G. Silverman, Naomi Anne Goldner, Mariah Lanzer, Susan Comninos, Alex Dodt, Susan Comninos, Michelle McMillan-Holifield, Brent Ameneyro, Jose Hernandez Diaz, Kate Horowitz, John Leonard, Seif-Eldeine, Lisa Summe, Neal Adelman, Jake Alexander, and Kristin Dombek. Each new issue is free to read online and also available to purchase in print.

New Book :: A Song by the Aegean Sea

A Song by the Aegean Sea poetry by Mohamed Metwalli book cover image


A Song by the Aegean Sea
Poetry by Mohamed Metwalli
Translated by Gretchen McCullough
Egret Chapbooks, 2022

From the Introduction: “Mohamed Metwalli was recognized as a poet in the Arab world at a young age in 1992, when he won the prestigious Yousef el-Khal prize by Riad El-Rayyes Books in Lebanon for his poetry collection, Once Upon a Time. He was only twenty-two. The Yousef El-Khal prize was a highly coveted award for the best first collection for poets in the Arabic-speaking world. Once, with a mischievous grin on his face, he told me how he rolled up at the ceremony in Beirut, clad in jeans and sneakers to pick up the prize – it was his first trip out of Egypt. A little over fifty now, he has published four collections of poetry. . . This book celebrates the underbelly of the city: the gypsies selling flowers, the roving musicians, the mussel-sellers, and the protesters. The elements of the city’s coastline are merged with the characters in an impressionistic, yet surreal canvas from a stranger’s point of view. The Traveler, i.e., the poet, or the singer of the Aegean song yearns to become part of the scene. Through this yearning, the poetry becomes lyrical.” – Gretchen McCullough

Magazine Stand :: Anomaly – 34

Anomaly online literary magazine cover image

Providing an international “platform for works of art that challenge conventions of form and format, of voice and genre,” the newest issue of Anomaly continues to deliver on that challenge. April 2022 issue contributors include Matthew Klane and James Belflower, L. Nichols, Jesse Lee Kercheval, J.I. Kleinberg, Wylde Parsley, Tim Tim Cheng, Stephanie Kaylor, Sihle Ntuli, Roy Wang, Ros Seamark, Prince Bush, Olúwatamílọ́re Ọ̀shọ́, Nicole Callihan, Maija Haavisto, Lisa Creech Bledsoe, Upasana, Stephanie King, Scott Pomfret, Suzanne Martin, Leslie Lindsay, Cassandra Lawton, and many more. Submissions for their next issue open June 1, 2022, and while there is a small fee to cover operational costs, this fee is waived for all Black and Indigenous writers “to support those most targeted by state violence.”

New & Noted Lit Mags – April 2022

NewPages receives many wonderful literary magazine titles each month to share with our readers. You can read more about some of these titles by clicking on the “New Mag Issues” tag under “Popular Topics.”

4×2, April 2022
Adanna, Issue 11
American Writers Series, Fall 2021
Apple Valley Review, Spring 2022
Arc Poetry Magazine, 97
Bellevue Literary Review, Issue 42
Bennington Review, Issue 10
bioStories, April 2022
Blue Collar Review, Winter 21-22
Brilliant Flash Fiction, March 2022
Carve, Spring 2022
Cleaver, Issue 37
Club Plum, 13.2

Continue reading “New & Noted Lit Mags – April 2022”

New Book :: Copy

Copy by Dolores Dorantes translated by Robin Myers

Copy
Poetry by Dolores Dorantes
Translated by Robin Myers
Wave Books, April 2022

“Without the copying process,” the poet Dolores Dorantes has said, “there would be no life, no reality.” Through deconstructed dictionary entries and powerfully syncopated, recursive texts, Copy is a prose poem sequence that insinuates an experience of violent removal: a person’s disappearance from a country, from normal life, and forcible reintegration into a new social and existential configuration. This displaced, dispossessed voice explores what it means to be extracted, subtracted, abstracted out of being—and returned into it. Meditative, urgent, and alive, Copy asserts itself as an invocation, both intensely personal and insistently communal, of the right to refuge, and it enacts a powerful homage to the human capacity for creation and metamorphosis. In this way, this book points to the wound of being extricated, serving as both a suture and a salve.

Join the West Trade Review Team

Literary nonprofit journal West Trade Review is seeking to fill two editorial positions: Associated Fiction Editor and Reviews Editor. Please do note that all staff are volunteers.

Our mission is to perpetuate the work of artists both well known and yet-to-be-known, simultaneously enriching our world through the written word and visual arts. We strive to reflect diversity in style, content and perspective throughout prose, poetry, photography and other artwork.

Our focus is to simply present to you the best art possible by both emerging and established creative minds.

If you resonate their mission, please consider applying. Work for all positions is completed remotely. Training provided if needed (in some cases).

Find full information on the positions here.

Magazine Stand :: American Writers Review – Turmoil and Recovery

American Writers Review literary magazine cover image

American Writers Review is a multi-genre literary journal published by San Fedele Press welcoming writers, artists, and photographers of all backgrounds, styles, and experience levels who want to explore their art. Their 2021 issue was the first they had themed and was grounded in the turmoil of the past two years and the hope for an eventual recovery. Submissions of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, photography, and other art for their 2022 themed issue “The End or The Beginning” are being accepted until May 31, 2022, and Wayne Benson will be their poetry editor, joining the team of D Ferrara, Pat Florio, and Dale Louise.

Continue reading “Magazine Stand :: American Writers Review – Turmoil and Recovery”

Magazine Stand :: Craft – April 2022

CRAFT online literary magazine cover image

Reading submissions and posting works on a rolling basis, CRAFT publishes fiction, creative nonfiction, and various craft articles. CRAFT does not charge fees for writers or readers and is a paying market with “no capacity limits.” They also offer editorial feedback on short and flash fiction and offer a “fast response” category as well. Recent contributors to the site include Pete Stevens, Amina Gautier, Tara Isabel Sambrano, Rosaleen Lynch, Oktavia Brownlow, Zoe Ballering, Jane Marcellus, Bryan Okwesili, “Never Rush a Rabbit: Prey Animals & Choices in Fiction” craft essay by Lee Upton, and “Conversations Between Friends” with Gale Massey and Louise Marburg. CRAFT also provides a page of Resources on Racism in Publishing.

Contest :: Flying South 2022 Writing Contest 1 Month Reminder!

Flying South 2022 Writing Contest banner

Deadline: May 31, 2022
$2,000 in prizes. Enter by May 31! Flying South 2022, a publication of Winston Salem Writers, is accepting entries for prizes in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry. Best in Category winners will be published and receive $500 each. One of the three winners will receive The WSW President’s Favorite award and win an additional $500. All entries will be considered for publication. For full details, please visit our website: www.wswriters.org/flying-south.

New Book :: And Those Ashen Heaps That Cantilevered Vase of Moonlight

And Those Ashen Heaps That Cantilevered Vase of Moonlight book cover image

And Those Ashen Heaps That Cantilevered Vase of Moonlight
Poetry by Lynn Xu
Wave Books, April 2022

Part protest against reality, part metaphysical reckoning, part internationale for the world-historical surrealist insurgency, and part arte povera for the wretched of the earth, this book-length poem by Lynn Xu holds fast to our fragile utopias. Under the auspice of birth and the contingency of this beginning, time opens: Ecstatic, melancholy, and defiant, the voices of the poem flicker between life and death, gorgeous and gruesome, visionary and intimate. Born in Shanghai, China, Lynn Xu is the author of the full-length collection Debts & Lessons (Omnidawn, 2013) and the chapbooks June (Corollary Press, 2006) and Tournesol (Compline, 2021). She has performed cross-disciplinary works at the Guggenheim Museum, The Renaissance Society, Rising Tide Projects, and 300 S. Kelly Street. She teaches at Columbia University, coedits Canarium Books, and lives with her family in New York City and Marfa, Texas.

Magazine Stand :: 4×2 – April 2022

Four by Two online poetry journal logo

Every two months, Barrow Street Press editors choose four new and emerging poets who have not yet published a chapbook or full-length book of poems and then features one of their poems on the 4×2 website. Current poets include Laura Dixon, Sean Burke, KT Herr, and Kristen Holt-Browning. Past spotlight poets include Susan Kay Anderson, Miranda Beeson, Bryce Berkowitz, Pune Dracker, Pete Follansbee, Henry Goldkamp, Caroline M. Mar, Emily McKay, Pablo Medina, Nicole Melanson, James Funinami Moore, Darren Morris, Heather Newman, Doug Ramspeck, Belinda Rule, Thomas Schwank, Mahtem Shiferraw, Andy Sia, Jordana Solomon, Arthur Solway, Sophia Starmack, Hillery Stone, W.R. Weinstein, and Rachel Willems.

2022 Chesapeake Writers’ Conference

Chesapeake Writers Conference 2022 event poster

Enjoy a week of craft talks, lectures, panel discussions, and readings (not to mention daily workshops in fiction, poetry, songwriting, or creative nonfiction) at the 2022 Chesapeake Writers’ Conference. This year’s conference takes place June 19-25. Registration is rolling. They do have college credit and scholarships available for participants.

Work closely with award-winning faculty Jerry Gabriel, Patricia Henley, Matt Burgess, Matthew Henry Hall, Elizabeth Arnold, Crystal Oliver (Brandt), Angela Pelster, Nadeem Zaman, and Heather Green and practice a wide range of genres and styles. Presenters include Sara Goodman and Kayla Lightner with Tre Johnson as guest author.

Sign up today!

Contest :: 2022 North Street Book Prize for Self-Published Books

North Street Book Prize logo 2022

Deadline: June 30, 2022
Now in its eighth year, the North Street Book Prize is sponsored by Winning Writers. Self-published books in seven categories can win up to $8,000 plus additional benefits. Submit online or by mail. Winning Writers is a partner member of the Alliance of Independent Authors, and this contest is recommended by Reedsy. Entry fee: $70 per book. Free gifts from our co-sponsors for everyone who enters. winningwriters.com/northnp22

Magazine Stand :: The Courtship of Winds – Winter 2022

The Courtship of the Winds online literary magazine cover image

There’s still a little winter left before we turn the corner, plenty of time to catch up on the newest issue of The Courtship of the Winds online literary and art journal. New to the staff with this installment are drama editors Bill and Judy Plott. This issue is packed with poetry by Margaret B. Ingraham, Lowell Jaeger, Ken Poyner, Joseph Hardy, Hannah Jane Weber, Gordon Kippola, J. Tarwood, Sam Ambler, Gail Nielsen, DS Maolalai, Eleanore Lee, Charles Elin, Esme DeVault, Don Thompson, Jay Carson, J. R. Forman, Frederick Pollack, Alise Versella, Stephen Mead, Doug Van Hooser, and Murray Silverstein; essays by Robert F. Harris, Madhurika Sankar, Fabrizia Faustinella, David Sapp; fiction by Christie Cochrell, Benjamin Harnett, Tom Eubanks, Anne Michaud, Alex Clermont, Rin Kelly, William Hayward, David Obuchowski, Catherine Parilla, P. C. Allan, Geoffrey Heptonstall; Drama by David Brendan Hopes and Judy Klass; and artworks in concrete [including cover image] by Mario Loprete.

Contest :: Submit to the 2022 Blue Lynx Prize for Poetry

The Blue Lynx Prize for Poetry 2022 Flyer screenshot
click image to open PDF

Deadline: June 15, 2022
Lynx House Press seeks submissions of full-length poetry manuscripts for the annual Blue Lynx Prize for Poetry. The winner will receive $2,000 and publication. Entries must be at least 48 pages in length. The fee for submitting is $28. Previous judges include James Tate, Yusef Komunyakaa, Dorianne Laux, Dara Wier, Melissa Kwasny, and Robert Wrigley.

New Book :: Harsh Realm: My 1990s

Harsh Realm: My 1990s poetry by Daniel Nester book cover image

Harsh Realm: My 1990s
Poetry by Daniel Nester
Indolent Books, May 2022

This collection of poems centers on the decade of fax machines and grunge through the lens of a speaker coming to terms with young adulthood and trying to make their way as a writer in New York City. In other words, the 90s are having a moment. In his foreword to the collection, Matthew Lippman writes, “this book is a conduit to that time and space vortex of love. Nester, with these poems, folds that piece of paper in half, sticks that pencil through, and fires up the rocket ship and there we are, immediately, in that wormhole, cavorting with cultural icons the likes of Vince Neil, Gary Coleman, U2, Mazzy Star, Sugar Ray, Live, David Lee Roth, De La Soul, Smashing Pumpkins, Sleater-Kinney, Dr. Octagon, even KISS. Even the title is a reflection on the era, coming from the infamous Megan Jasper interview in which she made up “grunge speak,” with “harsh realm” being fake grunge-speak for “bummer.”

Magazine Stand :: Adanna – Issue 11

Adanna literary journal cover image

Adanna is a literary journal dedicated to women that welcomes contributions that “reflect and speak to women’s issues or topics, celebrate womanhood, and shout out in passion” The 2021 annual is now available and features poetry by Emmaline Bristow, Carol Casey, Angie Dribben, Lisa English, Ariel Fintushel, Virginia Bach Folger, Deborah Gerrish, June Gould, Maryanne Hannan, Elaine Koplow, Michelle Lerner, Heather Lee Rogers, Kelly R. Samuels, Dipanwita Sen, VA Smith, Thea Swanson, Janet Tracy-Landman, and Kelley Jean White; fiction by Elayne Clift, Diane Lederman, Kelsey McWilliams, Nneamaka Onochie, Terry Sanville, Tanya E. E. E. Schmid, and Ted Shaffrey; essays by Susan Frattini, Nancy Gerber, and Lola Wang, with cover art by Linda Murphy Marshall. Submissions for the 2022 annual print edition are open until May 31, 2022.

Magazine Stand :: wildness – No. 29

wildness online literary magazine logo

Founded by Michelle Tudor and Peter Barnfather in 2015 as an imprint of Platypus Press, wildness is a biannual online literary journal publishing poetry, fiction, and non-fiction works in most styles, forms, or genres. The April 2022 issue includes poetry by Qudsia Akhtar, Lory Bedikian, Aaron Coleman, Patricia Gao, Laboni Islam, Mia Kang, Kimberly Kralowec, Caroline M. Mar, Shalini Rana, Darius Simpson, RaJon Staunton, Ọbáfẹ́mi Thanni, Caitlin Wilson, Shelley Wong, Serrina Zou, and non-fiction by Sharon Lin. All content is freely accessible for online reading, and writers are encouraged to read back issues before submitting.

New Book :: Women and Print Culture

Women and Print Culture book cover image

Women and Print Culture
Essays edited by Donna M. Kabalen Vanek and María Teresa Mijares Cervantes
Arte Público Press, November 2021

This collection of ten essays, based on the examination of publications from the US-Mexico region between 1850-1950, explores the role of women in print culture. Leading to a better understanding of women in the history of Mexican border life, the essays are organized in three thematic groupings: “Exploring the Archives: Women and Written Culture in Northeastern Mexico during the Late Nineteenth Century,” “The Cultural History of Women and Print Culture” and “A Transcultural View of Women and their Role as Activists in Northern Mexico and Texas.”

Magazine Stand :: The Georgia Review – Spring 2022

The Georgia Review literary magazine cover image

Celebrating 75 years of continuous publishing, The Georgia Review 75.1 issue is titled “SoPoCo” for Southern Post-Colonial and focuses on diasporic writing from or about the U.S. South. Editor Gerald Maa writes in the introduction of this 300+ pages, “This is a big volume, but it’s a crowded world. And we wanted to err on the side of maximalism rather than on giving anyone short shrift, given the groundbreaking nature of this volume.” The authors and artists included in this issue demonstrate that “the vibrancy of current Southern culture is made possible by critical contributions of the immigrant communities therein and exploring the ways that diasporic communities in this region differ from their more recognized sibling communities in the coastal urban centers.”

Continue reading “Magazine Stand :: The Georgia Review – Spring 2022”

New Book :: The Fact of Memory

The Fact of Memory essays by Aaron Angello book cover image

The Fact of Memory: 114 Ruminations and Fabrications
Essays by Aaron Angello
Rose Metal Press, April 2022

In this genre-defying collection of short prose pieces, Aaron Angello explores the subtleties of recollection, imagination, and the connections, both momentary and long-lasting, between oneself and others. Each piece riffs on a word from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29; over the course of 114 days, Angello woke early, meditated upon a single word from the sonnet, and wrote. The results are sometimes funny, sometimes profound, and sometimes heartbreaking, accumulating into a map of a mind at work, a Gen X coming-of-age of sorts, seamlessly invoking the likes of The Golden Girls, Spinoza, Rick Springfield, and Rimbaud.

Magazine Stand :: Heron Tree – April 2022

Heron Tree online poetry journal logo

The editors of Heron Tree began posting poems for Volume 9 in February 2022. Poems are posted weekly on the site and then are collected into a free, downloadable PDF, which means all back issues are also available for free download. These are simple, well-designed publications that mimic features of a print book, making them great for personal or classroom use. Volume 9 includes works by Deborah-Zenha Adams, Karen George, Carol H. Jewell, Basiliké Pappa, K Roberts, Kelly R. Samuels, M. E. Silverman, and Jonathan Yungkans with more on the way! Subscribe – also free – to receive notification of newly published poems.

Magazine Stand :: MoonPark Review – Spring 2022

MoonPark Review A Quarterly Online Journal of Short Prose cover image

The editors of MoonPark Review: A Quarterly Journal of Short Prose open this nineteenth online issue by commenting, “we were struck by the threads of longing that weave through every story. Longing for those lost, those taken, for a larger meaning, to be special, or understood, to be recognized, simply remembered, or the longing for someone to be other than who they have always been. Perhaps it is this particular moment in time, or perhaps it is a universal truth — that we all long for something, sometime, or someone.” Contributors to this issue include Abbie Barker, Vince Montague, James Mattise, Jonathan Weisberg, Lucinda Trew, Dan Hodgson, Christie Wilson, Sarp Sozdinler, Jill Witty, Kenneth M. Kapp, Rachel Lastra, Kevin Brennan, and Kip Knott. All content is free to read online, so head on over!

New Book :: Migrations: Poem, 1976-2020

Migrations Poem 1976-2020 by Gloria Gervitz book cover image

Migrations: Poem, 1976-2020
By Gloria Gervitz
Translated by Mark Schafer
New York Review Books, November 2021

The story of Gervitz’s poem is an epic in itself. Migraciones began as “Shajarit,” a fifteen-page poem, which Gervitz began writing in 1976 and published three years later. So began the poem that would grow over the next forty-one years as a tree incorporates its rings, or a river is fed by its tributaries. Gloria Gervitz’s book is an epic journey in free verse through the individual and collective memories of Jewish women emigrants from Eastern Europe, a conversation that ranges across two thousand years of poetry, a bridge that spans the oracles of ancient Greece and the markets of modern Mexico, a prayer that blends the Jewish and Catholic liturgies, a Mexican woman’s reclamation through poetry of her own voice and erotic power.

Magazine Stand :: Chinese Literature Today – 10.2

Chinese Literature Today literary journal cover image

Xue Yiwei is the featured author in the newest issue of Chinese Literature Today, published by the University of Oklahoma, which includes an interview by Lin Gang translated by Stephen Nashef and half a dozen works in translation. Also included in this issue is the special section, “Chinese Women Migrant Worker’s Literature,” with works such as “Caring for the Small: Gendered Resistance and Solidarity
through Chinese Domestic Workers’ Writings” by Hui Faye Xiao, “Gender, Class, and Capital: Female Migrant Workers’ Writing in Postsocialist China and Zheng Xiaoqiong’s Poetry” by Haomin Gong, “‘In the Roar of the Machines’: Zheng Xiaoqiong’s Poetry of Witness and Resistance” by Eleanor Goodman and more. “Women Migrant Worker’s Poems: A Collection translated by Tammy Lai-Ming Ho” is also featured in this tremendous volume.

New Book :: Palm-Lined with Potience

Palm Lined with Potience poetry by Besie Allen book cover image

Palm-Lined with Potience
Poetry by Basie Allen
Ugly Duckling Presse, March 2022

Palm-Lined with Potience is New York City poet and visual artist Basie Allen’s debut collection of poems. Basie’s work is by turns political and lyrical, charting both physical and emotional landscapes, making maps of paintings and paintings of maps. While rooted in Pro-Black theory, art, and precise description, Basie makes space in the ekphrastic for the eerie and abstract. The poems in this collection search for nodes of truth in a tumultuous sea of fractured facts.

New Book :: A Peculiar People

A Peculiar People poetry by Steven Willis book cover image

A Peculiar People
Poetry by Steven Willis
Button Poetry, May 2022

In A Peculiar People, poet Steven Willis creates an entire microcosm crafted within a cast of characters, showcasing their struggles, identities, and underlying emotions. Willis champions the art of storytelling: weaving pop-culture and screenwriting elements to allow the reader to view this social commentary with a fresh lens. This collection examines the author’s life experience; the pain of being Black and facing systemic racism.

Magazine Stand :: Cherry Tree – Number 7

Cherry Tree annual print literary journal cover image

The seventh issue of Cherry Tree annual print journal produced by the Literary House Press features work by Anum Asi, Sandra Beasley, Jan Beatty, Katie Berta, Caleb Braun, Susan Briante, Elijah Burrell, Marci Cancio-Bello Calabretta, Marianne Chan, Jennifer Chang, Victoria Chang, Christopher Citro, Nicole Cooley, Paul H Curtis, Jeff Ewing, Blas Falconer, Andra Emilia Fenton, Tanya Grae, Saúl Hernández, James Hoch, Todd Kaneko, Urvi Kumbhat, Kabel Mishka Ligot, Anthony Thomas Lombardi, Andrea Marcusa, Tom McAllister, Shane McCrae, Rahul Mehta, Philip Metres, John A. Nieves, Sarah Rose Nordgren, Carolyn Oliver, Matthew Olzmann, Donald Quist, Deon Robinson, Adam Scheffler, Charlotte Seley, Paige Sullivan, David Trinidad, Michael Walsh, Jieyan Wang, Adam Webster, John Sibley Williams, and M Jaime Zuckerman, with cover art by Gerardo Villarreal.

Magazine Stand :: Molecule – Issue 6

Molecule online literary and art magazine cover image

“A Tiny Lit Mag” – Molecule online journal publishes artwork and written works of 50 words or less, and their latest issue is proof that less can indeed be much more. The journal is packed with enough to satisfy readers until the next biannual issue comes out. Even though the entries are brief and can be quickly read, I found myself savoring in re-reading and the moments after reading when I just wanted to look away from the screen and allow the well-crafted work to resonate. This installment includes interviews with Cynthia Bargar and David Kirby, drama by Will Cordeiro, Ben Stanford, and Tony Targan, and art, prose, and poetry from many others, including Adebisi Amoriis, Shell Birdis, Karina Borowicz, MJ Bujold, Jeff Burt, Robin Cantwell, Dallas Crow, Steve DeMont, Doriane Feinstein, Mae Fraser, Jeff Gately, Emilia Getzingeris, Ellery Haney, Niki Hatzidis, Larissa Monique Hauck, Doug Holderis, Santosh Kalwar, Hilary King, Joe McGurn, Ariya Mamun, Ivan de Monbrison, Chad Parenteauhas, Palline Plum Remi Recchia, Fabio Sassi, Joel Savishinsky, Scott T. Starbuck, Bill Teitelbaum, Peter Urkowitz, and Allison Whittenberg.

New Book :: Receta

Receta by Mario José Pagán Morales book cover image

Receta
Poetry by Mario José Pagán Morales
great weather for MEDIA, April 2022

In this debut poetry collection, Mario José Pagán Morales explores the journeying of mind, spirit, and body to and from Puerto Rico and New York City. Boricua and part of a proud tradition of Nuyorican poets before and around him, Pagán balances a generous heart with striking and visceral imagery. The line breaks and movement between English and Spanglish are reflective of the poems’ settings: the constant journeying of mind, spirit, and body to and from Guayanilla and Ponce, Puerto Rico, Philadelphia, and New York City. The Bronx. History amplifies the colonizer, but Morales invokes voices from the sites of struggle. Here, even the abandoned buildings and trash heaps speak of lives that matter(ed).

Where to Submit Round-up: April 21, 2022

April is officially over next week. So that means time to start looking ahead towards May and deadlines. Don’t forget to check out our full list of Writing Contests with May Deadlines.

Plus keep your submission goals going strong by checking out the opportunities featured in the NewPages Classifieds. Remember, newsletter subscribers get first glance at new calls for submissions and writing contests before they go live on the site, so subscribe today.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Round-up: April 21, 2022”

Book Review :: You’re Not Listening by Kate Murphy

You're Not Listening by Kate Murphy book cover image

Guest Post by Kevin Brown

New York Times journalist Kate Murphy explores the many facets of listening: the physical, mental, and, most importantly, emotional. As her title implies, she points out the ways people have stopped listening to one another and the effects of that lack in our lives. She uses neuroscience to talk about how we sync with one another when we truly listen, as well as what we can learn from improvisational comedy about how to fully engage in a conversation. Murphy explores the loneliness that has crept into our lives due to a lack of feeling heard. That deficit can come from the assumptions one makes, the technology that distracts us, or the difference in how quickly our mind thinks of what to say and how slowly it processes what we hear. Thankfully, she also explores ways we don’t listen to ourselves, choosing the negative voices that override what we most need to hear, as well as times when we should stop listening to others who wish us nothing good. As we move into more face-to-face contact after the past two years, Murphy reminds us we should all work to be better listeners, so all of our lives will be richer.

You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters by Kate Murphy. Celadon Books, 2020.

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. You can find out more about him and his work on Twitter @kevinbrownwrite or  http://kevinbrownwrites.weebly.com/.

Magazine Stand :: bioStories – April 2022

As we come out of this pandemic – or learn to live with the endemic – we lament that we may have ‘forgotten’ how to live more communally with others. bioStories is a wonderful way to keep ourselves in tune to the lives of others and how we interact both locally and globally. Publishing nonfiction prose only, bioStories offers submission guidelines that help writers focus their craft on what the editors are looking for, and express the understanding that “real life is messy,” yet acknowledge: “human nature is idiosyncratic and frequently contradictory, and, quite often, when you look close enough, it is downright graceful.” The publication features a weekly essay on its homepage and prints two issues each year. Recent online contributions include Neil Cawley “Speech and Debate in the Time of Covid,“ Al Czarnowsky “Buck,“ Nancy Deyo “Naked Facebook Friday,“ William Keiser “A Postcard from the End,“ Jae Nolan “Better Left Unsaid,“ Kristen Ott Hogan “Give that Dog a Bone,“ Gretchen Roselli “Aunt Aggie, Bobby Kennedy, and My Parents’ Summer Theater,“ Nancy Smith Harris “Ida Ziegler,“ Aminah Wells “The Ballet Barre.“ and Andrew Yim “Grammy’s Secret.“

New Book :: This Long Winter

This Long Winter poetry by Joyce Sutphen book cover image

This Long Winter
Poetry by Joyce Sutphen
Carnegie Mellon University Press, February 2022

This Long Winter contains meditations on life in the rural world: reflections on hard work, aging, and the ravages of time — erasures that Sutphen attempts to ameliorate with her careful attention to language. These poems move us from delight in precise description to wisdom and solace in the things of this world. These modern metaphysical poems are rooted in a love that calls to the things of this world (to steal a line from Richard Wilbur). Noticing its details, the snowflakes, clementines, the lilies, the cardinal’s call, is the key for this momentary stay against time that comes at us in a rush. The many mirror images in these poems of the poet in a window looking out but simultaneously reflecting back point to the complexity and hard, loving work of really living in the world.

New Book :: Somewhere, a Woman Lowers the Hem of Her Skirt

Somewhere, a Woman Lowers the Hem of Her Skirt by Laurie Rachkus Uttich book cover image

Somewhere, a Woman Lowers the Hem of Her Skirt
Poetry by Laurie Rachkus Uttich
Riot in Your Throat Press, May 2022

This collection of poems takes the reader on a journey through life as a woman breaking free from the constraints of a quiet, midwestern life, to fighting battles for equality, to raising boys in a harsh society, to teaching students and making connections in an unjust world. Uttich teaches at the University of Central Florida and also leads creative writing workshops at a men’s maximum-security correctional facility, bringing her collective experience to offer readers poems about hope and happiness and heartache and finding your way home.

Magazine Stand :: Wordrunner eChapbooks – April 2022

Wordrunner literary magazine cover image

The prose and poetry in the 12th anthology and 45th issue of Wordrunner eChapbooks is themed “Up Ending” and offers both heartache and hope, wonderfully nuanced characters, and mostly upbeat endings. Read online or download as a PDF with fiction by Nancy Bourne, Frank Diamond, D.B. Gardner, Joyce Goldenstern, Natascha Graham, Mary Lewis, and Fabriana Martinez; nonfiction by Rachel Cann, Sarah Mullen, and Mary Cuffe Perez; and poetry by Iris Dunkle, Mark Heathcote, and Christopher Rubio-Goldsmith. Wordrunner notes that “ALL AUTHORS ARE PAID and have been since this series was launched in 2010.”

Magazine Stand :: Flash Frog – April 2022

Flash Frog online literary magazine logo

Featuring stories under 1000 words, Flash Frog says they like their stories like they like their dart frogs: “small, brightly colored, and deadly to the touch.” Publishing a new story every Monday, recent contributors include Maria Poulatha, Courtney Clute, Sage Tyrtle, and Dri Chiu Tattersfield, with artwork by MarieJulie Lafrance and Rob Kaniuk. Submissions are on a rolling basis, with July being reserved for “ghost story submissions only.”

Book Review :: The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton

The Final Revival of Opal and Nev by Dawnie Walton book cover image

Guest Post by Kevin Brown

Dawnie Walton’s debut novel is a book by the main character Sunny Curtis, the first African-American female editor of a mythical, music magazine. Sunny seeks to discover the details surrounding the death of her father, who was killed at the final concert of Opal and Nev, a fictional duo from the early 1970s. Everybody knows what happened to him, but nobody knows exactly how and why he died in a riot near the end of that performance. Making matters more complicated, Opal was having an affair with Sunny’s father. The book is a series of interviews with those surrounding the event, plus Sunny’s editor’s notes.

Walton uses this setup to raise questions about privilege surrounding race and gender. While Nev, a White British man, goes on to have a successful career after the event, Opal, a Black woman, never has a chance to do so. Others define Opal in ways that limit her, even while she tries to challenge a variety of establishments. Nev plays music that makes people comfortable, so he succeeds. Opal’s struggles are mirrored in Sunny’s work and the events that surround one final revival show for Opal and Nev, revealing that not much has changed in fifty years.

The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton. 37 Ink, March 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. You can find out more about him and his work on Twitter @kevinbrownwrite or http://kevinbrownwrites.weebly.com/.

New Book :: Henry Hamlet’s Heart

Henry Hamlet's Heart by Rhiannon Wilde book cover image

Henry Hamlet’s Heart
YA Fiction by Rhiannon Wilde
Charlesbridge, October 2022

Henry Hamlet doesn’t know what he wants after school ends. It’s his last semester of high school, and all he’s sure of is his uncanny ability to make situations awkward. Luckily, he can always hide behind his enigmatic best friend, Len. They’ve been friends since forever, but Len is mysterious and Henry is clumsy, and Len is a heartthrob and Henry is a neurotic mess. Somehow it’s always worked. That is, until Henry falls in love. Hard. How do you date your best friend? Rhiannon Wilde’s first novel invites readers to explore this passionate story of growing up, letting go, and learning how to love.

Magazine Stand :: Bennington Review – Issue Ten

Bennington Review literary magazine cover image

Housed at Bennington College, Bennington Review is a diverse treasure trove of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and film writing shared with readers in print twice a year with many contributions available to read online. While editing the Winter 21-22 issue, Michael Dumanis, with Katrina Turner, references Robert Duncan’s “Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow,” and writes, “we kept considering the simultaneous fragility and power of the open field, the purity of nature and the purity of the imagination, environment and memory. As a consequence, much of the poetry and prose in our new issue offers meadows of nature and nature of thought, literal meadows and figurative ones for us to wander into, clearings with flowers and refuges from noise, everlasting omens of what is.”

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Magazine Stand :: Prime Number Magazine – Issue 223

Prime Number Magazine logo

The April-June 2022 issue of Prime Number Magazine features winners of their free, monthly 53-Word Story Contest selected since the last issue. In each issue, PNM asks guest editors to select their favorite poems or stories from those submitted during our open submission period. Submissions are free and only accepted the first two months of each quarter. In this issue, guest editor Adrian Rice selected poetry from Rick Campbell, Stephen Gibson, Mercedes Lawry, and Emily Townsend. Guest editor Dennis McFadden selected short fiction by Jonh Fulton, Mary Taugher, and Treena Thibodeau. The publication also showcases four authors from their publisher, Press 53. This issue includes works by Ray Morrison, Sean Sexton, Jacinta V. White, and Rhonda Browning White.

Cleaver Workshops Spring-Summer 22

Cleaver Workshops logo

Cleaver literary magazine may be based out of Philadelphia, but in keeping with their “international” status, their online workshops are open to all with internet access using both Zoom and Canvas platforms in synchronous and asynchronous modalities. Upcoming workshops include:

THE WRITE TIME for practice and inspiration
Taught by Cleaver Editor Andrea Caswell

MICRO MENTORING: Flash Fiction Masterclass
Taught by Cleaver Senior Flash Editor Kathryn Kulpa

WRITING THE BODY
Taught by Marnie Goodfriend

UNSHAPING THE ESSAY: Experimental Forms in Creative Nonfiction
Taught by Cleaver Editor Sydney Tammarine

TELL ME WHAT YOU EAT, And I Will Tell You What You Are
Writing About Food and Ourselves taught by Kristen Martin

Visit the Cleaver Workshops page for more information.

New Book :: Ready, Set, Oh

Ready Set Oh by Diane Josefowicz book cover image

Ready, Set, Oh
Fiction by Diane Josefowicz
Flexible Press, May 2022

Diane Josefowicz’s debut novel, Ready, Set, Oh, is set against the upheavals of the Sixties and chronicles the struggles of a man who has just lost his draft deferment, a young pregnant woman with fragile mental health, and a UFO-chasing astronomer, each hostages in their own way to their families and to history. A portion of the proceeds from Ready, Set, Oh goes to the National Network to End Domestic Violence, a social change organization dedicated to creating a social, political, and economic environment in which violence against women no longer exists.

Contest :: 2022 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest

Screenshot of CARVE's flyer for the 2022 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest
click image to open PDF

Deadline: May 16, 2022
Carve Magazine’s 2022 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest is open through May 16. Accepting submissions from all over the world. Max 10,000 words. Prizes: $2,000, $500, $250, + 2 Editor’s Choice $125 each. All 5 winners will be published in the Fall 2022 issue and reviewed by lit agencies. Entry fee $17 online. Guest judge Dariel Suarez. Guidelines and instructions: www.carvezine.com/raymond-carver-contest/.

Book Review :: Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel book cover image

Guest Post by Kevin Brown

Emily St. John Mandel takes the reader through locations that range from the woods of British Columbia to colonies on the moon and through times that move from 1912 to 2401. Her story follows several characters: Edwin, the youngest child in a British family who will inherit almost nothing and who is exiled to Canada after he questions England’s role in India; Gaspery Roberts, a hotel detective who takes on a case with implications he could never imagine; and Olive Llewellyn, a novelist on a book tour for her work about a pandemic in a world where such tragedies happen more and more frequently. Mandel draws on her experience for the last character, as readers and critics have seen her Station Eleven as prescient in its portrayal of a much worse pandemic than our current one. She draws on questions and comments from her book tours for some of the more humorous parts of the novel. Overall, however, she’s interested in larger questions of time and reality, even exploring whether or not the characters’ world — and, thus, our own — is nothing more than a simulation. If so, though, she seems to say that doesn’t make it any less meaningful.

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel. Alfred A. Knopf, 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. You can find out more about him and his work on Twitter at @kevinbrownwrite or at http://kevinbrownwrites.weebly.com/.

New Book :: Anthropocene Lullaby

Anthropocene Lullaby poetry by K. A. Hays book cover image

Anthropocene Lullaby
Poetry by K. A. Hays
Carnegie Mellon University Press, February 2022

The poems of Anthropocene Lullaby move from the micro to the macro, from dragonflies to galaxies, from the intersecting forces of climate change, capitalism, and digital technologies to intersecting anxieties of selfhood and motherhood. These lyric and prose poems track change: underway and inevitable, personal and impersonal, generative and apocalyptic. The title poem sets in motion some of the collection’s concerns:

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