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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!

Where to Submit Round-up: May 27, 2022

person writing on a notebook beside macbook

Welcome to the final Where to Submit Round-up for May 2022! June will be upon us next week and our year will be half over with. I hope you are doing your best and keeping your submissions goals going strong. Check out the calls for submissions and writing contests featured on NewPages for a jumping off point.

Don’t forget that our newsletter subscribers get early access to calls and contests before they go live on our site, so subscribe today!

Continue reading “Where to Submit Round-up: May 27, 2022”

Workshop Review :: Writer Mind Marketing Mind

Allison K Williams head shot

I recently attended “Writer Mind Marketing Mind” virtual workshop with Allison K Williams [pictured] hosted by Jane Friedman. And – no – this is not a paid ad. In fact, I paid to attend and am only choosing to run this review because the session was so good along with some absolutely ridiculous elements I can’t help but share.

The 70-or-so-minute workshop was the epitome of the cliche ‘hit the ground running.’ From start to finish, Williams kept an incredible pace of information flowing smoothly from her experience and expertise as social media editor for Brevity and as an editor and writing coach for writers, having helped guide authors to deals with Penguin Random House, Knopf, Mantle, Spencer Hill, St. Martin’s and independent presses among many other publishing experiences. Jane Friedman was also present, helping to manage the session and contributing at different points. If you have not yet read Friedman’s book, The Business of Being a Writer, that’s your first order. She is totally no-nonsense about the reality of writing and publishing, both encouraging and providing much-needed slaps upside the head for anyone who thinks the “business” of publishing is not the responsibility of the writer. It is. Period. This philosophy was echoed throughout “Writer Mind Marketing Mind” – hence the title – but in addition to expressing what writers need to equip themselves with to enter into the business aspects, Williams was also no-holds-barred on what doesn’t work and the misperceptions writers have about those. Much to the satisfaction, I might add, of many in attendance who seemed relieved to let go of those false notions.

As I indicated, there were several ridiculous components to this workshop. The first is that it only cost $25. I’m a bit of a virtual workshop pro by now, and I can say for certain that this is an outrageously low fee for what I got from the session. In addition to all the information that was shared live, participants get access to a recording of the event for a month, we get the full PowerPoint presentation slides, the complete speakers’ transcript, the Zoom chat transcript, a workbook filled with resources that Williams references throughout the workshop, and a separate document with every question that was asked with the answer if it was given during the session as well as answers that were added after the session. And I don’t mean we get some limited access to all of this for a month and then it’s gone. We got access to download and keep ALL of these materials. Additionally, Williams is working on a kind of marketing tracking document that she calls the Marketing Launch Sheet which basically maps out an itinerary for marketing a writing project. This is one step away from being its own app, and it will utterly revolutionize writers’ marketing work. While I say that all of this is ridiculous, it is actually in keeping with Friedman’s philosophy to keep education for writers realistically accessible, and Williams shares in this with her supportive mentoring approach. The concept of community is alive and well here.

The content of the workshop itself opened with misperceptions of marketing that hold writers back, which is where Williams clearly released a number of participants from these impediments as they exclaimed, “Thank goodness!!!” and “Ok, now I love you.” and “I love this webinar already” – and this was just within the first ten minutes. Williams also covered the concept of setting a mission, defining your personal and public self, understanding how writing and selling are both time-consuming activities, which markets are best for your work, what is PR vs. marketing and which are worth your time and/or your money, social media, and various ways to reach readers.

I am personally not looking to market my own writing, but, of course, I have an interest in the business of writing and being a part of the community this creates. For any writer looking to be published, Jane Friedman and anyone connected with her work are going to be your best teachers. Visit Friedman’s website and sign up for everything free that she offers and check out the upcoming workshops. Keep a lookout for where Williams will be presenting next, including another workshop with Friedman, “Why Is My Book Getting Rejected” and writing retreats and intensives with more info at her website www.rebirthyourbook.com. She will also be teaching a novel structure class for James River Writers in October, and a class on “Beautiful Beginnings, Brilliant Endings for Creative Nonfiction” in August, with information on those events not yet posted online. Williams is also the author of three writer’s guides: Seven Drafts: Self-Edit Like a Pro From Blank Page to Book; Seven Bridges: Platform for Authors Who’d Rather Be Writing (forthcoming); and Get Published in Literary Magazines.

New Book :: News of the Air

News of the Air fiction by Jill Stukenberg book cover image

News of the Air
Fiction by Jill Stukenberg
Black Lawrence Press, September 2022

News of the Air by Jill Stukenberg was selected as the winner of the annual Black Lawrence Press Big Moose Prize (Dec 1 – Jan 31). In this novel, Allie Krane is heavily pregnant when she and her husband flee urban life after a rash of eco-terrorism breaks out in their city. They reinvent themselves as the proprietors of a northwoods fishing resort, where they live in relative peace for nearly two decades. That is, until two strange children arrive by canoe. Like the small ecological disasters lapping yearly at their shore, the problems of the modern world may finally have found Allie, her husband, and their troubled cypher of a teenage daughter. This eco-novel of a family, told from three points of view, explores how we remake our lives once we open our hearts to all the news we’ve chosen to ignore.

Magazine Stand :: Allium – Spring 2022

Allium Spring 2022 literary magazine cover image

The Spring 2022 issue of Allium, an online journal of poetry and prose from Columbia College Chicago’s Department of English and Creative Writing, features fiction by Babak Movahed, Joshua Beggs, Tinia Montford, Wren Sager, nonfiction, Bethany Jarmul, Poetry, Kitty Donnelly, Kent Leatham, Jen Ashburn, Lee Johnson, Erin Rodoni, and the craft essay, “My Rocky Relationship with An Old Friend,” by Clementina Ojie. Rebecca Fish Ewan, author of Doodling for Writers, is the featured artist. Ewan will be teaching “Visual Hybrid Form” in a five-week online class through Literary Kitchen.

New Book :: The Mothers

The Mothers poetry by Dorianne Laux and Leila Chatti book cover image

The Mothers: Poems in Conversation & A Conversation
Poetry by Dorianne Laux and Lelia Chatti
Slapering Hol Press, April 2022

The Mothers by Dorianne Laux and Lelia Chatti comes to readers from one of the oldest chapbook presses in the United States, Slapering Hol Press. This “Conversation Series” published poetry by a well-known woman poet who chooses an emerging woman poet to appear in the same collection with a conversation between them included at the end. Dorianne Laux’s sixth collection, Only As the Day is Long: New and Selected Poems was named a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Leila Chatti was born in 1990 in Oakland, California. A Tunisian-American dual citizen, she has lived in the United States, Tunisia, and Southern France. She is the author of the debut full-length collection Deluge (Copper Canyon Press, 2020) and currently serves as the Consulting Poetry Editor at the Raleigh Review as well as teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she is the Mendota Lecturer in Poetry. Slapering Hol books are collectible creations of beauty. The book design, typecasting, and cover letterpress printing are by Ed Rayher of Swamp Press in Northfield, Massachusetts, with cover art by Hyde Meissner, and run in a limited, hand-numbered edition.

New Book :: A Brilliant Loss

A Brilliant Loss poetry by Eloise Klein Healy book cover image

A Brilliant Loss
Poetry by Eloise Klein Healy
Red Hen Press, October 2022

Eloise Klein Healy’s A Brilliant Loss is a poetic journey into the loss of language and the reclaiming of it. Healy had Wernicke’s aphasia in 2013 when she was the first poet laureate of the City of Los Angeles, and the virus hit her the night of her reading with Caroline Kennedy at the Central Library. Also called fluent aphasia, Wernicke’s aphasia affects language and the use of words. Healy’s collection shows that her brain has access to its deepest unconscious, and that place is poetry. Her deepest language is poetry. It’s as if a dancer was denied the ability to walk or run, and could only dance. Healy writes of losing her words and finding big love.

Magazine Stand :: The Briar Cliff Review 2022

The Briar Cliff Review literary magazine 2022

I have always considered The Briar Cliff Review to be one of the most beautifully constructed print literary journals produced, which causes me a heavy heart to include with this post the fact that Briar Cliff University will be jettisoning many of its general education programs, and with it, this decades-long literary tradition. Our condolences to the staff of Briar Cliff Review for this monumental loss to our community. They will fulfill their commitment with their final publication in 2023, so let us celebrate these final contributors to each remaining issue. Featured in this collection are winners of their 26th annual contest: Anna Round, Nancy Fowler, Patridge Boswell, William V. Roebuck, and Christine Stewart-Nuñez. As always, the remainder of the magazine features a plethora of poems, fiction, nonfiction, art, and book reviews in a handsome full-cover, large format. Cover image: Saga of the Secondaries by Dan Howard.

Event :: The Writer’s Hotel 2022 Virtual Summer Fiction Workshop

It’s back! The Writer’s Hotel (TWH) is hosting another virtual summer fiction workshop August 6 through August 28. The program centers on four weekend writing workshops and lectures, plus two full manuscript readings by TWH Editors, one-on-one agent pitching sessions, and attendee readings.

The Writer's Hotel logo

The deadline to apply is July 1, 2022 or until filled. This event is capped at 28 students. There is a $30 application fee.

Instead of an intense immersion programming, this year’s virtual event is operating on a new approach that allows them to take time and get to know one another and the TWH Directors. They will take time and give each writer even more attention than ever before.

During the Summer Workshop, writers will practice pitching manuscripts to TWH Editors Scott Wolven and Shanna McNair to hone their skills for a virtual Agent Pitching Session.

View the full schedule here. Apply today so you don’t miss out on the opportunity to hone your fiction even further.

Magazine Stand :: Kenyon Review – May/June 2022

Kenyon Review literary magazine May June 2022 cover image

The May/June 2022 issue of Kenyon Review features the annual “Nature’s Nature” poetry portfolio selected by former KR poetry editor David Baker, with work by Elizabeth Arnold, Marilyn Chin, Grant Clauser, Linda Gregerson, Brenda Hillman, Strummer Hoffston, Tricia Knoll, Jesse Nathan, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Maya C. Popa, Paisley Rekdal, Evie Shockley, D. S. Waldman, Rosanna Warren, Corrie Williamson. Also in this issue is drama by Sherod Santos, fiction by Renée Branum, Nolan Capps, David Crouse, Calvin Gimpelevich, Arinze Ifeakandu, Uche Okonkwo, nonfiction by Melissa Seley, and “We Sang Every Morning After Breakfast: A Cento In Memory Of Nancy Zafris” with contribution from over fifty poets, crafted by Cristina Correa. Cover image: Razi Mohammad (16) by Ambreen Butt.

New Book :: Dillydoun Prize Anthology Volume 1

Dillydoun Prize Anthology Volume 1 book cover image

Dillydoun Prize Anthology Volume 1
Edited by Amy Burns
Dillydoun Review, May 2022

In celebration of the 2021 Dillydoun International Fiction Prize, all the Winners and Honorable Mentions have been published online as well as in print. The first print anthology is now available to purchase. The Dillydoun Prize Anthology Volume 1 includes works from Alejandro de Gutierre, Kerri Schlottman, Chris Whyland, Nora Studholme, Cynthia Singerman, Alexandra Gowling, Rudy Ruiz, Anna Millard, Byron Spooner, Ronald Meek, Les Zig, Ellen Sollinger Walker, and Emma Gilberthorpe. Hosting two competitions this year, the 2022 Dillydoun Flash Fiction Prize closes July 31, 2022, and the 2022 Dillydoun Short Story Prize closes October 2, 2022. Visit The Dillydoun Review website for complete details.

New Book :: Tree Lines

Tree Lines 21st Century American Poems an anthology edited by Jennifer Barber, Jessica Greenbaum, and Fred Marchant book cover image

Tree Lines: 21st Century American Poems
Edited by Jennifer Barber, Jessica Greenbaum, and Fred Marchant
Grayson Books, April 2022

This important new collection of works by 130 poets reflects contemporary American poets’ heightened awareness of place, close observation of nature, concern for climate, and our psychological, spiritual, and physical need for trees. A portion of the book’s proceeds will be donated to the National Park Service Foundation. The anthology treasure includes poems by Ellen Bass, Jaswinder Bolina, Victoria Chang, Anthony Cody, Toi Derricotte, Camille T. Dungy, Ross Gay, Rachel Hadas, Joy Harjo, Robert Hass, Edward Hirsch, Jane Hirshfield, Major Jackson, Fady Joudah, Yusef Komunyakaa, Ted Kooser, Ada Limón, Esther Lin, Philip, Metres, D. Nurske, Naomi Shihab Nye, Sharon Olds, Linda Pastan, Kay Ryan, Evie Shockley, Vijay Seshadri, Tracy K. Smith, Arthur Sze, Natasha Trethewey, Rosanna Warren, Afaa M. Weaver, and Javier Zamora, among many other great poets of our time.

New Book :: What Flies Want

What Flies Want poetry by Emily Perez book cover image

What Flies Want
Poetry by Emily Pérez
University of Iowa Press, May 2022

In What Flies Want, disaster looms in domesticity: a family grapples with its members’ mental health, a marriage falters, and a child experiments with self-harm. With its backdrop of school lockdown drills, #MeToo, and increasing political polarization, the collection asks how these private and public tensions are interconnected. The speaker, who grew up in a bicultural family on the U.S./Mexico border, learns she must play a role in a culture that prizes whiteness, patriarchy, and chauvinism. As an adult, she oscillates between performed confidence and obedience. As a wife, she bristles against the expectations of emotional labor. As a mother, she attempts to direct her white male children away from the toxic power they are positioned to inherit, only to find how deeply she is also implicated in these systems. Tangled in a family history of depression, a society fixated on guns, a rocky relationship, and her own desire to ignore and deny the problems she must face, this is a speaker who is by turns defiant, defeated, self-implicating, and hopeful. Winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize. Emily Pérez is author of House of Sugar, House of Stone, and coedited The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood.

New Book :: Live Caught

Live Caught a novel by R. Cathey Daniels book cover image

Live Caught
Fiction by R. Cathey Daniels
Black Lawrence Press, April 2022

Live Caught by R. Cathey Daniels is the story of Lenny, who finds himself out of options. He’s lost his arm to his abusive older brothers and lost his bearing within his family. Desperate to escape and determined not to lose hope, Lenny steals a skiff and attempts to ride the Carolina rivers from his family’s farm deep in the western North Carolina mountains all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. When a storm sinks his boat, he is suddenly in the hands of a profanity-slinging priest, whose illegal drug operation provides food and wages for the local parish. Snared within a power struggle between a crooked cop and the priest, Lenny must once again rely on the thinnest shred of hope in his attempt to escape.

Magazine Stand :: Creative Nonfiction – Spring 2022

Creative Nonfiction literary magazine cover image

The newest issue of Creative Nonfiction opens with the essay “50 Years of Making Nonfiction Creative” by CNF Founding Editor Lee Gutkind, in which he reflects on the contributions of Thomas Wolfe to the birth of the genre, labeled “The New Journalism.” The issue also includes “CNF’s first examples of ‘pandemic literature’ – essays written since early 2020, stories that incorporate our many individual and collective experience from the past two years.” While many found it a difficult time to record their lives, the editors acknowledge, “Maybe it’s that when everyone’s suffering – though of course we’re not all suffering equally – it seems like there’s almost nothing to say. Our grief feels unexceptional. But there is a lot to say, and isn’t that why we write?” And here to be read are works by Laura Pritchett, Amye Archer, Caroline Hagood, Meg Senuta, Francis Doherty, A. J. Bermudez, Anne Mcgrath, Clare Magneson, Joe Primo, and Amber Taliancich, as well as a selection of “Tiny Truths: 77 Micro-essays of fleeting joys, wistful memories, and passing sadnesses from the past two years” culled from the ongoing #tinytruths posted on Twitter. Cover art by Victoria Villasana.

Magazine Stand :: Posit – Issue 30

Posit Journal issue 30 online literary magazine cover image

Posit Journal online is celebrating its 30th issue of publishing innovative, aesthetic, accomplished poetry, prose, visual art, and film. As the editors write in the introduction, “Although (to paraphrase David Byrne) we’re not quite sure how we got here, we’re thrilled that we have, thanks to the vivid and continuing engagement of our growing family of contributors and readers.” They invite readers to engage with “poetry and prose by Isaac Akanmu, Tyrone Williams, and Pearl Button that confronts the historical and contemporary poison of racism and colonial appropriation, alongside work by Julie Choffel, Erika Eckart, Vi Khi Nao & Jessica Alexander, Jo O’Lone Hahn, Sam Wein, and Nancy White exploring gender repression and violence – as well as its persistent, sometimes even exuberant defiance “swinging ourselves to wonderment” (Sam Wein, Season of Fanny Packs). The innovative poetics of Kristi Maxwell, Benjamin Landry, and Dennis James Sweeney speak to the state of the planet and even the dubious nature of the future itself, while the visual art of Andrea Burgay, Taraneh Mosadegh and Ana Rendich grapples in a different idiom with the existential challenge of living as moral and emotional beings in a threatened and threatening world.”

New Book :: Plagios / Plagiarisms, Vol. 2

Plagios / Plagiarisms, Vol. 2 poetry by Ulalume González de León book cover image

Plagios / Plagiarisms, Vol. 2
Poetry by Ulalume González de León
Sixteen Rivers Press, April 2022

Plagios / Plagiarisms is the second of three bilingual volumes which present several short collections of poems Ulalume González de Leόn produced from 1970 to 1975. Through her experimentation with unconventional syntax and borrowed texts, the poet skillfully blends anatomical, scientific, and philosophical vocabulary with richly erotic imagery to question our assumptions about identity and intimacy. Ulalume González de León was born in 1928 in Montevideo, Uruguay, the daughter of two poets, Roberto Ibañez and Sara de Ibañez. She studied literature and philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris and at the University of Mexico. While living in Mexico in 1948, Ulalume became a naturalized Mexican citizen. She married painter and architect Teodoro González de León, and

Continue reading “New Book :: Plagios / Plagiarisms, Vol. 2”

New & Noted Lit and Alt Mags – May 2022

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

About Place, May 2022
The American Poetry Review, May/June 2022
The Baltimore Review, Spring 2022
Black Warrior Review, Fall/Winter 2021
The Briar Cliff Review, Volume 34
Camas, Summer 2022
The Cape Rock, 50
Coastal Shelf, #6 Winter 2022
THE COMMON, 23
Communities, Issue #195
Concho River Review, Spring/Summer 2022
Consequence, Issue 14.1
Court Green, Spring 2022
Creative Nonfiction, Spring 2022
Cutleaf, Issue 2.9

Continue reading “New & Noted Lit and Alt Mags – May 2022”

New Book :: Mother Kingdom

Mother Kingdom poetry by Andrea Deeken book cover image

Mother Kingdom
Poetry by Andrea Deeken
Slapering Hol Press, April 2022

Mother Kingdom by Andrea Deeken is the winning collection of the 2021 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Contest. This annual contest is open to promising new poets whose work has not yet appeared in book or chapbook form. Andrea Deeken was born in rural Missouri and has lived in the Pacific Northwest for most of her adult life. She holds a BA from Drake University and an MS in Writing and Publishing from Portland State University. Slapering Hol books are collectible creations of beauty. The book design, typecasting, and cover letterpress printing are by Ed Rayher of Swamp Press in Northfield, Massachusetts, with cover art by Hyde Meissner, and run in a limited, hand-numbered edition.

2022 Memoir Book Prize Winners

Memoir Prize for Books

Memoir Magazine has announced the 2022 Winners of the Memoir Book Prize:

First Place
The View From Breast Pocket Mountain by Karen Hill Anton

Second Place
Animal Bodies: On Death, Desire, and Other Difficulties by Suzanne Roberts

Third Place
Finding the Right Words: A Story of Literature, Grief, and the Brain by Cindy Weinstein and Bruce L. Miller

They also eliminated the ‘honorable mention’ category this year and instead created 23 specific categories with which to recognize entrants. Four of those selected are currently unpublished manuscripts, providing authors with an avenue for (hopefully) finding a publishing home for their works.

Visit the Memoir Magazine website for the full list of honorees and their books.

May 2022 eLitPak :: 2022 Marguerite McGlinn Fiction Contest, First Place: $2,500!

screenshot of Philadelphia Stories 2022 Marguerite McGlinn Fiction Contest flyer for the NewPages eLitPak
click image to open PDF

Our contest this year will be judged by author and critic, Camille Acker. We’re looking for previously unpublished fiction of up to 8,000 words. The deadline is June 15, 2022. First place is $2,500 with an invitation to an awards dinner. Second place $750. Third place $500. The winning stories will be published in the Fall print issue of Philadelphia Stories, with all entrants receiving a complimentary copy. All authors currently residing in the United States are eligible. $15 fee. We can’t wait to read your stories! Visit website.

View the full May 2022 eLitPak newsletter.

Magazine Stand :: Aji Magazine – Spring 2022

Aji Magazine Spring 2022 online literary journal cover image

In the Editor’s Welcome to the Spring 2022 issue of Aji Magazine online, Erin O’Neill Armendarez writes, “Among the pages of this issue, you will find writers and artists rushing headlong into what frightens us, diving deep into the mud and the grime to rise again triumphant, if only for a moment. We are honored to be featuring Keith Hamilton Cobb and Mark Hurtubise in this issue, both of whom had the courage to address injustice openly. Likewise, we are honored to be offering readers and viewers an impressive slate of photography, art, poetry, essay, and fiction, exploring the human condition, imagining beyond ourselves into the Other, the unknown.”

Also featured in this issue are works by John Allen , Alan Bern, Oisin Breen, Gaylord Brewer, Patrick Cahill, Melca Castellanos de ArKell, Nancy Christopherson, Geraldine Connolly, Lucia Coppola, William Crawford, Leslie Dianne, David Dixon, Kelly DuMar, Michael Estabrook, Sara Fall , Phyllis Green, Dan Grote, Nels Hanson, Mark Yale Harris, Paul Hostovsky, Edward Lee, Galen Leonhardy, Aenea Little , Christopher Locke, Elaine Vilar Madruga, Joe Milosch, Ivan de Monbrison, Francis Opila, Karly Page, Simon Perchik, Zack Rogow, David Anthony Sam, Sonya Schneider, Claire Scott, Maragarita Serafimova, Edward Supranowicz, Wally Swist, Zhihua Wang, Sean J. White, and David Williams.

Submissions for the fall 2022 issue are open until filled, with no submissions being accepted after November 1.

May 2022 eLitPak :: 2022 Willow Writers Retreat

screenshot of Willow Writers Retreat May 2022 eLitPak flyer

Reclaim your writing spark! Sumptuous breakfasts, yoga, wineries. Discussions led by Susan Isaak Lolis, a published and award-winning writer. Topics include: Writing Strong Characters; Creating a Sense of Place; Believable Dialogue. Before May 31: $350.00; Before June 15: $400.00; After June 15: $450.00. Accommodations separate, contact the Inn at Hermanhoff for reduced rate: (573) 486-5199. Visit website.

View the full May 2022 eLitPak newsletter.

New Book :: Cancer Voodoo

Cancer Voodoo poetry by Melissa C. Johnson book cover image

Cancer Voodoo
Poetry by Melissa C. Johnson
Diode Editions, March 2022

Cancer Voodoo grew out of the experience of Johnson’s mother’s illness and death from lung cancer and her own attempts to come to terms with that loss. “I was trying to write about the experience of watching a parent die, an experience that most people will have, but also about the particulars of my mother’s life and death and her family history. There’s a kind of madness of grief — the way that it unhinges and unmoors — that I’m trying to capture. I’m also trying to get at how illness and death re-arrange and collapse time — how they create a milestone that all other events gather around.” Melissa C. Johnson serves as Associate Vice President and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education at The Pennsylvania State University. She earned a BA in English and Fine Arts from the College of Charleston, an MFA in poetry, and a Ph.D. in twentieth-century British Literature and Women’s Studies from the University of South Carolina.

May 2022 eLitPak :: Divot Reading Work for Summer Issues

screenshot of Divot's flyer for the NewPages May 2022 eLitPak

Divot reads on a rolling basis and is currently reading poetry for our summer issues! Please send us your best work. We would love to read up to 6 poems. Also, check out our Divot Poetry Chapbook Contest ending June 15, 2022. See our submission and contest guidelines. We can’t wait to hear from you! Visit website.

View the full May 2022 eLitPak newsletter.

May 2022 eLitPak :: 2022 Housatonic Book Awards

Screenshot of the 2022 Housatonic Book Awards flyer

The MFA in Creative and Professional Writing at Western Connecticut State University is still accepting all books published in 2021 for the 2022 Housatonic Book Awards. Open to fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young adult/middle grade. Winners receive $1,500 and an invitation to our summer or winter residency. See our website for past winners and submission details.

View the full May 2022 eLitPak newsletter.

May 2022 eLitPak :: Muddy Backroads: Stories from off the Beaten Path

Muddy Backroads: Stories from off the Beaten Path May 2022 eLitPak flyer
click image to open PDF

Our editors asked for stories that moved away from the norms of daily life to explore the side roads that take us away from the known. What do the characters do when they step away from what’s seen as normal or usual? What happens when they find themselves in unexpected situations or locations? Visit website.

View the full May 2022 eLitPak newsletter.

May 2022 eLitPak :: Two Great Titles from Livingston Press

screenshot of Livingston Press' flyer for the May 2022 eLitPak newsletter
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Get your copies of George H. Wolfe’s novel Aftershock, set at the architecture school at the University of Alabama, and Patricia Taylor’s Zero to Ten: Nursing on the Floor which incorporates over forty years of nursing experience as she moves from joy to frustration to devastation. View flyer for more information. Visit website.

View the full May 2022 eLitPak newsletter.

May 2022 eLitPak :: Submit to the 2023 Off the Grid Poetry Prize

Grid Books 2023 Off the Grid Poetry Prize Flyer

The Off the Grid Poetry Prize recognizes the work of older poets, highlighting important contemporary voices in American poetry. Each year a winner is awarded $1,000 and publication. Contest runs from May 1 – August 31, 2022. Garrett Hongo will judge. Find full guidelines here.

View the full May 2022 eLitPak newsletter.

May 2022 eLitPak :: Flying South 2022 Annual Competition Deadline May 31

Screenshot of Flying South's March 2022 eLitPak Flyer
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$2,000 in prizes. Until May 31, Flying South 2022 will be accepting entries for prizes in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry. Best in Category winners will be published and receive $500 each. The WSW President’s award winner will win an additional $500. All entries will be considered for publication. For full details, please visit our website.

View the full May 2022 eLitPak newsletter.

May 2022 eLitPak :: 6th Annual Taos Writers Conference

screenshot of Taos Writers Conference March 2022 eLitPak Flyer
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Join us in the beautiful Taos, New Mexico, for an award-winning writers conference over the weekend of 7/29-7/31/22 for over twenty workshops in every genre and keynote speaker/author: Ana Castillo. Confirmed faculty include Leeanna Torres, Don Cellini, EJ Levy, T.J. English, Juan Morales, Connie Josefs, Amy Beeder, and many more. For further information visit website, call 575-758-0081, or email.

View the full May 2022 eLitPak newsletter.

New Lit on the Block :: Red Tree Review

Red Tree Review online poetry journal logo

“Poems that surprise, harrow, and awe. Poems that understand a reader’s expectations and then challenge or subvert them somehow. Poems that need to exist, that matter, that show us something important at stake. Poems that wake us up, that leave us different people than we were before we encountered them. Not all of the poems do all of these things, but they will all do at least one of these things. Expect poetry that feels fresh and immediate, never predictable.” This is what Founder and Editor Robert Campbell says readers can find when they visit the newly launched Red Tree Review online poetry journal.

His own education and publishing resume established, and having served behind the scenes of other literary journals, Campbell says, “What matters more to me is

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May 2022 eLitPak :: North Street Book Prize for Self-published Books

Screenshot of Winning Writers 2022 North Street Book Prize flyer for the NewPages May 2022 eLitPak
click image to open full-size flyer

Winning Writers will award a grand prize of $8,000 in its eighth annual North Street competition, and $16,750 in all. The top eight winners will enjoy additional benefits from our co-sponsors BookBaby and Carolyn Howard-Johnson. Gifts for everyone who enters. Submit books published in any year and on any self-publishing platform. $70 entry fee. Enter online or by mail by June 30. Learn more at our website.

View the full May 2022 eLitPak newsletter.

New Book :: Antipodes

Antipodes stories by Holly Goddard Jones book cover image

Antipodes: Stories
Fiction by Holly Goddard Jones
University of Iowa Press, May 2022

In this collection of eleven stories, a harried and depressed mother of three young children serves on a committee that watches over the bottomless sinkhole that has appeared in her Kentucky town. During COVID lockdown, a thirty-four-year-old gamer moves back home with his parents and is revisited by his long-forgotten childhood imaginary friend. A politician running for a state congressional seat and a young mother, who share the same set of fears about the future, cross paths but don’t fully understand one another. A woman attends a party at the home of a fellow church parishioner and discovers she is on the receiving end of a sales pitch for a doomsday prepper. These stories and more contemplate our current reality with both frankness and hard-earned hopefulness, realism and fabulism, tackling parenthood, environment, and the absurd-but-unavoidable daily toil of worrying about mundane matters when we’ve entered “an era of unknowability, of persistent strangeness.” Holly Goddard Jones is associate professor in the MFA program in creative writing at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. She is author of Girl Trouble, The Next Time You See Me, and The Salt Line.

May 2022 eLitPak :: Bellevue Literary Review Prizes

screenshot of Bellevue Literary Review Prizes flyer for the May 2022 eLitPak
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The annual BLR Prizes award outstanding writing related to themes of health, healing, illness, the mind, and the body. Winners are published in the spring issue of BLR. For each genre, first prize is $1000 and honorable mention is $250. Submit your best poetry, fiction, and nonfiction through July 1. Visit website.

View the full May 2022 eLitPak newsletter.

Magazine Stand :: Months to Years – Spring 2022

Months to Years Spring 2022 online literary magazine cover image

It is the mission of Months to Years to “cultivate a beautifully designed online space to share compelling and original nonfiction, poetry, art, and photography that explores mortality and terminal illness.” As Editor Renata K. Louwers writes in this issue’s introduction, “We think things are going along a certain way with certain predictable events. And they are. Until suddenly, they’re not. What can we do besides surrender to the moment, maybe use the Calm app, and hope for the best? Some of us pray, some of us meditate or exercise, and some of us write. Others take photos or create visual art. Art – via the written word or visually – has served as a crucial coping mechanism for humans through the centuries.” We are no different than our ancestors.

Continue reading “Magazine Stand :: Months to Years – Spring 2022”

New Book :: Rotura

Rotura poetry by José Angel Araguz book cover image

Rotura
Poetry by José Angel Araguz
Black Lawrence Press, March 2022

Selected out of the Black Lawrence Press open reading period, the shifting speakers and landscapes of Rotura allow the poet to explore the themes of the Latinx experience and life itself; truth, family, longing are searched through language both direct and lyrical. It’s a long journey, but Araguz’s poems travel borders and boundaries creating an essential collection. José Angel Araguz’s most recent collection is An Empty Pot’s Darkness (Airlie Press). He blogs at The Friday Influence. José is an Assistant Professor at Suffolk University where he serves as Editor-in-Chief of Salamander and is also a faculty member of the Solstice Low-Residency MFA Program.

Where to Submit Round-up: May 20, 2022

Happy Friday! Mother nature is still not able to make up her mind if it’s supposed to be winter, spring, or summer. If you’re sick of the weather whiplash, it’s a great excuse to stay inside a bit longer and keep your submitting and writing goals strong.

Take a gander at the NewPages weekly round-up of where to submit your writing to. Don’t forget newsletter subscribers get first access to writing contests and calls for submissions every Monday morning, so subscribe today!

Continue reading “Where to Submit Round-up: May 20, 2022”

New Book :: Inside Outrage

Inside Outrage poetry by Gary Glauber book cover image

Inside Outrage
Poetry by Gary Glauber
Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, September 2022

Inside Outrage by Gary Glauber captures wild wisdom and abject love, the amity and misguided memories keeping us whole in this precarious viral existence. These points of refuge and resilience both unmask and protect us, using frustrations to confront rooted fears. In the end, we must own identities, forgive mistakes, and grow older through the salvation of words. In daring to learn the steps and missteps of this odd dance called life, we maneuver through to find where our ‘inside outrage’ happily resides.

Magazine Stand :: The Dillydoun Review – Issue 16

The Dillydoun Review Issue 16 online literary magazine cover image

The newest issue of The Dillydoun Review online monthly literary journal features short stories by Haley Glickman, Phoebe Baker Hyde, Byron Spooner; flash fiction by Michael Edwards, Kyle Glover, Kevin Joseph Reigle; poetry by Dale Cottingham, Darren C. Demaree, Jeffrey Dreiblatt, Philip Jason, Jess Levens, Anthony Salandy; prose poetry by John Chambers, Kate Sullivan; nonfiction by Patricia Feinman, Linda Springhorn Gunther; and flash nonfiction by Kyle Ingrid Johnson, Victoria Lewis, Ashley McCurry, Yelizaveta P. Renfro, Sue William Silverman.

The editors also announced that The Dillydoun Review is now a paying market, offering $20 per acceptance to be paid on publication day via PayPal, Venmo, or Zelle, and they “will continue to work on ways to increase the pay rate as soon as possible.”

Magazine Stand :: Superstition Review – Issue 29

Superstition Review online literary magazine Issue 29 cover image

The Spring 2022 issue of Superstition Review is available for readers to access online, with fiction by Abbie Barker, Bradley Sides, Nadine Rodriguez, Ryan Habermeyer, Sahalie Angell Martin, and William J. Cobb; nonfiction by Cindy Lee, Haolun Xu, Laurie Blauner, Marcia Aldrich, and Wendy Gan; poetry by Taylor Byas, Sophia Liu, R.J. Lambert, Nathaniel Rosenthalis, Michael Chang, Meghan McClure, Joshua Gottlieb-Miller, Ja’net Danielo, Hannah Smith, Dorsía Smith Silva, Dorothy Chan, Donte Collins, Donna Vorreyer, Christen Noel Kauffman, Carolyn Oliver, Brett Hanley, and Brandel France de Bravo; interviews with Darrel Alejandro Holnes, Gillian Sze, Kathryn Davis, Melissa Chadburn, Paul Tran, and Yanyi; and art by Delta N.A., Elaine Parks, Emily Rankin, Jenny Day, Michelle McElory, and Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad.

New Book :: She Has Dreamt Again of Water

She Has Dreamt Again of Water poetry by Stephanie Niu book cover image

She Has Dreamt Again of Water
Poetry by Stephanie Niu
Diode Editions, March 2022

In her debut chapbook She Has Dreamt Again of Water, Stephanie Niu imagines the deep sea as sanctuary. Her poems seek solace from generational guilt and a fractured family by diving into dreamscapes where gills grow as easily as wings. Here, the world shimmers with small, stunning miracles: a fish that looks like light, a river delta seen from the moon, a single coyote in the road. In the search for sanctuary, “There is no split, a real self and a dream self / to divide neatly. There are just dreams.” Even upon waking, “she does not weep. She has dreamt again / of water, that place where the river / meets the sea, where long-legged birds / tiptoe through the cordgrass, dipping / their heads to feed.” In these poems, the surreal and unseen suggest the shapes of shared longing. Stephanie Niu is a poet from Marietta, GA. She earned her degrees in symbolic systems and computer science from Stanford University. She is the recipient of a Fulbright Award for work on decolonizing historical narratives of overseas Chinese laborers through digital techniques. She lives in New York City.

Contest :: 5th Annual Marystina Santiestevan First Book Prize

Conduit Books & Ephemera has announced their 5th annual Marystina Santiestevan First Book Prize is accepting entries through July 7, 2022. This prize is open to poets writing in English who have not yet published a full-length collection and is dedicated to championing poets who dance to their own tune not to be different, but to be true. Stop by the NewPages Classifieds to learn more.

Magazine Stand :: The Baltimore Review – Spring 2022

The Baltimore Review online literary magazine spring 2022 issue cover image

Spring has sprung a new issue of The Baltimore Review with online fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry by Melissa Faustine Chang, Emily Chase, M. Cynthia Cheung, Justin Hunt, David Kim, Kent Kosack, Andrew Kozma, Lara Longo, Cole Meyer, Devon Miller-Duggan, Yehoshua November, Anzhelina Polonskaya, Nicole Rollender, and Zoe Yohn. The Baltimore Review‘s current submission period ends May 31, as does their Summer 2022 Micro Lit Contest for works under 400 words. For more information, check out their submission guidelines.

New Book :: Beyond the Time of Words

Beyond the Time of Words / Más allá del tiempo de las palabras poetry by Marjorie Agosín book cover image

Beyond the Time of Words/Más allá del tiempo de las palabras
Poetry by Marjorie Agosín
Sixteen Rivers Press, April 2022

Marjorie Agosín’s bilingual book of poetry, Beyond the Time of Words/Más allá del tiempo de las palabras, was composed during the time of isolation wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, and in it, she embraces that darkness with profound compassion and humanity. Born in Chile, Agosín came to the United States as a political exile, and her prolific career has been inspired by both political activism and the pursuit of social justice. While bearing witness to our collective grief, these poems also offer reminders of bravery and ultimately hope: They are meant, the poet says, “to cleanse and mend the world.” Marjorie Agosín is a Chilean American poet who writes in Spanish, her native language. She is also a human rights activist and the Andrew Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Wellesley College. Her work has been inspired by the causes of social justice and human rights. In addition to her numerous collections of poetry, Agosín has written young-adult novels, memoirs, and anthologies promoting international women writers.

New Book :: Challenging Pregnancy

Challenging Pregnancy: A Journey Through the Politics and Science of Healthcare in America
Nonfiction by Genevieve Grabman book cover image

Challenging Pregnancy: A Journey Through the Politics and Science of Healthcare in America
Nonfiction by Genevieve Grabman
University of Iowa Press, March 2022

In Challenging Pregnancy, Genevieve Grabman recounts being pregnant with identical twins whose circulatory systems were connected in a rare condition called twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome. Doctors couldn’t “unfuse” the fetuses because one twin also had several other confounding problems: selective intrauterine growth restriction, a two-vessel umbilical cord, a marginal cord insertion, and, possibly, a parasitic triplet. Ultimately, national anti-abortion politics — not medicine or her own choices — determined the outcome of Grabman’s pregnancy. At every juncture, anti-abortion politics limited the care available to her, the doctors and hospitals willing to treat her, the tools doctors could use, and the words her doctors could say. Although she asked for aggressive treatment to save at least one baby, hospital ethics boards blocked all able doctors from helping her. Challenging Pregnancy is about Grabman’s harrowing pregnancy and the science and politics of maternal healthcare in the United States, where every person must self-advocate for the desired outcome of their own pregnancy.

New Book :: Jordemoder

Jordemoder Poems of a Midwife by Ingrid Andersson book cover image

Jordemoder: Poems of a Midwife
Poetry by Ingrid Andersson
Holy Cow! Press, April 2022

Jordemoder is an age-old Swedish word for midwife. It means earth/land/world mother and reflects Ingrid Andersson’s poetry and practice as a midwife, as well as her background as an immigrant farmer’s daughter. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with degrees in Scandinavian Studies, German literature and anthropology, she worked in countries where access to equitable health care, education, safe and humane environments and food felt more prioritized than in America. Returning to America, she began working as a health care activist and promoting midwifery models of care. As a licensed board-certified nurse midwife, she has caught more than 1000 babies at home. This is Ingrid Andersson’s debut collection of poetry.

Magazine Stand :: Spoon River Poetry Review – 46.2

Spoon River Poetry Review Winter 2021 literary magazine cover image

The Winter 2021 Issue of Spoon River Poetry Review (46.2) is filled with so much wonderful content, including the SRPR Illinois Poet Feature with poetry by Daniel Borzutzky, and an interview of the poet by Carlos Soto-Román; Editors’ Prize winning poem “diary of a dead eel boy” by Dean Gessie, selected by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, as well as runners-up poems by Shannon Pulusan and donia salem harhoor, honorable mention poems by Matthew Brailas, Patricia Gao, and Ani Tuzman, Allie Hoback, and Gabriel Jesiolowski; New poetry by Isaac Willis, Emma DePanise, Nathan Manley, Frank Jameson, Kristin Fogdall, Ann E. Michael, Frank Jamison, Antonia Pozzit translated by Amy Newman, and more; the SRPR Review Essay “Seriousness, Humorously” by Andrew Dorkin, who reviews books by Joan Retallack (BOSCH’D), Morgan Parker (Magical Negro), and Fred Moten (all that beauty); and poignantly beautiful cover art by Jessi Reid-Swiech.