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38 Submission Opportunities including calls for submissions, writing contests, and book prizes.
Hopefully you have been surviving in this super-hot week. A great time to stay indoors or haunt your local library for writing, submitting, or editing. NewPages has you covered with our weekly roundup of submission opportunities to help in your submission goals. With June ending soon and July starting up, don’t miss out on the opportunities below.
Paid newsletter subscribers can get early access to the majority of submission opportunities and upcoming events before they go live on our site, so do consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription today. You also receive our monthly eLitPak Newsletter which features even more opportunities and other literary goodness.
The forty-seven essays in Feminism, Violence and Nonviolence – all published between the 1970s and the 1990s – provide readers with a penetrating glimpse into the linkages between war, militarism, interpersonal violence, and women’s oppression. It’s a valuable collection, but because it is disconnected from the contemporary realities of 21st-century politics and social movements, its usefulness is likely limited to scholars, researchers, and academics.
Nonetheless, the essays remind readers of the extent of psychological and physical violence, noting that conflict exists far beyond the battlefield and can be seen in our home and work lives, as well as in interactions with a host of government agencies that belittle and condescend. What’s more, several of the essays offer an expansive view of violence and touch on pollution, racism, and economic inequity as potent forms of attack.
While many Second Wave feminists agitated for female parity in the armed forces and in law enforcement, the anti-violence segment of the movement is often sidelined. This book changes that. And while debates that raged during the 1970s and 80s – whether self-defense was a betrayal of nonviolent precepts or was a legitimate response to rape – seem dated, Feminism, Violence and Nonviolence reminds us that 20th-century pacifist-feminists were bold, creative, and radical.
Reviewer bio: Eleanor J. Bader is a Brooklyn, NY-based journalist who writes about books and domestic social issues for Truthout, Rain Taxi, The Progressive, Ms. Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Indypendent.
Publishing the best in fiction since 1985, Beloit Fiction Journal Spring 2024 welcomes readers to enjoy works by Madeleine Gallo, Banzelman Guret, Andrew J. Hodges, Vikram Kapur, Mark Doyle, Melissa Beneche, Gary Fincke, Lauren Marie Miller, Hannah Barnhart, Alyssa Quinn, Ellen Burns, Clare Needham, Jess Weixler-Landis, Krista Diamond, and Alyssa Pelish. The cover artist for this issue is Romain Mayambi.
Stephen C. Pollock’s poetry collection Exits explores the beauty and frailty of life, the cycles of nature, and the potential for renewal. It also responds to contemporary anxieties surrounding death and the universal search for meaning.
Musical and multilayered, Exits features a potpourri of styles, ranging from traditional forms to free verse to hybrid works. Many of the images are drawn from nature. In addition, each poem is paired with a piece of artwork intended to resonate with the writing and enhance the reader’s experience.
Exits has been honored with the Gold Medal for poetry in the 2023 Readers’ Favorite International Book Awards and the Silver Medal for poetry in the 2024 Feathered Quill Book Awards. Echoing these accolades, Midwest Book Review declares: “Exits is a book that has profoundly impacted the literary world.”
“Pollock’s poetry is brilliant” —Kristiana Reed, editor-in-chief, Free Verse Revolution
“Exits exemplifies the musicality of language” —Foreword-Clarion Reviews
“Full of wit, insight and provocative imagery, Exits is a masterful collection” —IndieReader, 5.0 stars
Rendered Paradise by Susanne Dyckman & Elizabeth Robinson Apogee Press, April 2024
In Rendered Paradise, poets Susanne Dyckman and Elizabeth Robinson invite the reader into the worlds of three major women artists: Vivian Maier, Agnes Martin and Kiki Smith. Dyckman and Robinson bring a radical collaborative approach to this gathering: through their shared vision, contemplation, and creation, each artist’s works are encountered as unique presences coming alive in fresh and unexpected ways. “We have seen so many instance of men writing about men,” says Editor Edward Smallfield, “and have had many fewer opportunities to read women writing about women. The writing changes as the poets move from one artists to another, so that the focus of the language is the work of art, not the preferred vocabulary of the poets.” This remarkable book isn’t “about” the artworks it engages with, but is its own work of art, new and wondrous.
The 2024 annual issue of Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry features Dana Gioia’s libretto, Fiat Lux, dedicating Christ Cathedral of the Catholic Diocese of Orange County, California; Martha Collins’s elegy “After Words” in memory of Lee Sharkey as well as a posthumously published new poem by Sharkey, “For the Ghosts”; new translations of two Afghan women poets of the diaspora by Bänoo Zan; 2 interviews with Sarah Law and Malcolm Guite; 23 book reviews of individual collections of poems; 3 essays on the life’s works of Antonio Machado, Vassar Miller, and Micheal O’Siadhail; and over 80 pages of new poems and translations in a wide variety of styles.
Application Deadline: June 30, 2024 Apply to receive feedback on the first 50 pages of your novel or query letter from a literary agent. Limited spots available. Deadline to apply is June 30, 2024! View flyer for more details and a link to our website.
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Caesura Poetry Workshop aims to support, inspire, and energize poets through a wide variety of affordable Zoom workshops hosted by award-winning poet, editor, and teacher John Sibley Williams. Most workshops include poem analysis, active group discussion, and writing prompts. Some are even self-paced! We also offer critiques of poems and manuscripts, as well as ongoing mentoring. Visit us at our website and view our flyer for more information.
Want early access to our eLitPak flyers? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter! You can also support NewPages with a paid subscription and get early access to the majority submission opportunities, upcoming events, and more before they are posted to our site.
43 Submission Opportunities including calls for submissions, writing contests, and book prizes.
And just like that, June will be half over with tomorrow. That means there’s a lot of deadlines coming up, so don’t miss out! NewPages has you covered with our weekly roundup of submission opportunities.
Paid newsletter subscribers can get early access to the majority of submission opportunities and upcoming events before they go live on our site, so do consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription today. You also receive our monthly eLitPak Newsletter which features even more opportunities and other literary goodness.
Deadline: July 15, 2024 The Tenth Gate Prize honors mid-career poets writing in English. Entry is open to authors of at least two previously published full-length poetry collections. A prize of $1000 and publication of the collection is awarded annually. See our flyer for more information and a link to submit.
Want early access to our eLitPak flyers? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter! You can also support NewPages with a paid subscription and get early access to the majority submission opportunities, upcoming events, and more before they are posted to our site.
Winning Writers will award a grand prize of $10,000 in its tenth annual North Street competition, and $20,400 in all. The top nine winners will enjoy additional benefits from co-sponsors BookBaby, Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Book Award Pro, Self-Publishing Made Simple, and Laura Duffy Design. New this year: Everyone who enters online will receive a brief commentary from one of the judges. Submit books published in any year and on any self-publishing or hybrid-publishing platform. $79 entry fee. Enter online or by mail by July 1. Learn more at our website and share our flyer.
The 2River View Summer 2024 issue is online and open access for readers to enjoy new poems by Sally Van Doren, Kami Enzie, Susanna Lang, Melanie H. Manuel, Christine Marshall, Robert McDonald, Derek N. Otsuji, Pablo Piñero Stillmann, Diane Thiel, and Ellen June Wright as well as artwork from Christie Taylor’s Driftwood Series. The 2River View offers “Make the Mag” and “Chap the Book” features which allow readers to download a press-ready file of any issue of 2RV or any chapbook to make print publications.
At the age of seven, Jennifer Coleman is severely burned in a house fire that kills her sister. Despite the barriers of her scarred face and her tragic childhood, she reaches the pinnacle of achievement as a classical concert pianist, but at a deep psychological cost.
During Jennifer’s meteoric rise as a virtuoso pianist, her disfigurement takes on mythic proportions. She is internationally loved and admired, but unable to love herself. At a pivotal point in her career, she meets an extraordinarily creative, suicidal musician named Felix, who challenges Jennifer’s beliefs and falls deeply in love with her. Will Jennifer be able to learn from Felix’s example before she self-destructs?
Cadenza is symphonic. It succeeds not only as an absorbing, psychologically nuanced novel, but also as a tragic fable of ambition and virtuosity. Its extraordinary heroine offers profound truths about purpose, memory, trauma, and the transcendent powers of art and love.
— Lauren Acampora, author of The Hundred Waters
“An engrossing epic of artistic triumphs and personal disasters, unflinching in its depiction of scars both physical and emotional, Cadenza reads like a piano concerto playing in a house on fire.”
The Baltimore ReviewSpring 2024 issue features poems, short stories, and creative nonfiction by Kaique Antonio, Bobby Bangert, Amy Boyes, Sara R. Burnett, Stephen Cicirelli, Michael Don, Katherine Gekker, Linden Hibbert, Max Kruger-Dull, Susan Leslie Moore, Elisabeth Murawski, Rukman Ragas, Melody Sun, Norie Suzuki, and Ryan White.
Many contributors also provide notes about their work, as well as audio recordings. All issues of The Baltimore Review back to Winter 2012 can be read online at no cost, and content from the online issues is also published in annual print compilations. Founded in 1996, The Baltimore Review showcases writers from Baltimore, across the U.S., and beyond.
When Phoenix, Arizona Poet Laureate Rosemarie Dombrowski was asked by the Office of Veteran and Military Academic Engagement (OVMAE) at Arizona State University to produce a military-themed issue of another literary journal that she was running, she was ready for a new challenge. “I asked if I could create a new journal instead,” Dombrowski explains, “one that exclusively featured the stories of veterans – either written by veterans or their family members.”
This formed into the annual publication of ISSUED: stories of service which features poetry, flash prose (under 1500 words), and profiles (interviews), both online and in print.
“I’m also the granddaughter, daughter, and half-sister of veterans,” Dombrowski shares, “and I’ve had close relationships with several veterans over the course of my life, but I’ve never inquired about their service or done much research on it, so this felt like a project that would encourage other family members to reflect, research, and resurrect that familial history.
“We also know that veterans are oftentimes medically and socially marginalized (and historically and culturally conditioned to not speak about their service-related trauma), so I wanted to make a creative, encouraging, inclusive platform for them.”
Killer Insight by Karoline Anderson Flare Books, September 2024
When a local woman’s body is found in a shallow grave on one of Seattle’s pristine hiking trails, Detective Kaitlyn Kruse and her partner Joe Riley are under pressure to find her killer as swiftly as possible. But more than one body is recovered at the site, and – alarmingly – they all look a bit like Kaitlyn.
Fortunately, Kaitlyn has a secret weapon. She dreams of her past lives, and their memories are always eager to help her solve the crime at hand. But Kaitlyn’s dreams are getting more desperate every night, like one of her past selves is trying to tell her something, and a shady black sedan is tracking her every move. It may be too late to stop the inevitable – but Kaitlyn is determined to get justice for the dead before she becomes one of them.
In this rousing crime debut with a touch of the supernatural, the first in her Detective Kaitlyn Kruse series, Karoline Anderson proves she’s got a knack for the thrill.
Killer Insight is Karoline Anderson’s debut novel as well as the inaugural publication from Flare Books, an imprint of Jessica Powers’ Catalyst Press founded in 2017.
The June 2024 issue of The Lake online journal of poetry and poetics is now online featuring new works by Stephen Boyce, Theresa Heine, Angi Holden, Sarah James, Hannah Linden, Olivia Oster, Abigail Ottley, Cliff Saunders, Finola Scott, J. R. Solonche, Sue Spiers, and Kerry Trautman. Readers can also enjoy book reviews of AE Hines’ Adam in the Garden and J. R. Solonche’s God. The Lake’s One Poem Review features on poem from a new collection of published poems; this month spotlights poet Linda McCauley Freeman.
8000 Mile Roll: A Motorcycle Memoir by M. Scott Douglass Paycock Press, April 2024
In 2021, in the fading days of the pandemic, M. Scott Douglass took a motorcycle ride across America. The ride itself took 24 days and covered 8001 miles through 24 states with extended stops in the Grand Canyon area and his native state of Pennsylvania. This book is a journal of that adventure, the places where he went, and the people he met along the way. North Carolina Poet Laureate Joseph Bathanti says, “It’s impossible to read and not conjure Steppenwolf’s ‘Born to Be Wild,’ the revving, reverberating anthem to the iconic film Easy Rider.” And check out Charlotte Readers Podcast Episode 385 which features Douglass in conversation with Landis Wade.
42 Submission Opportunities including calls for submissions, writing contests, and book prizes.
Happy first week of June! We got some lovely weather in before the rains came and decided to flatten the corn in the garden down. If you have some rainy weather, we have plenty of submission opportunities to brighten your day. If you are able to go out and enjoy the beautiful weather in your neck of the woods, take your laptop or tablet and you can work on the submission opportunities below as well.
Paid newsletter subscribers can get early access to the majority of submission opportunities and upcoming events before they go live on our site, so do consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription today. You also receive our monthly eLitPak Newsletter which features even more opportunities and other literary goodness.
Volume 38, Issue 2 of Zone 3 is now available for free and easy access online and features nonfiction by Rose McLarney and Robert Eric Shoemaker; poetry by Carolyn Oliver, Melanie Manuel, Zea Pippi Lotte van der Elsken, Hailey Gross, Bohan Gao, Carrie Shipers, Ellen June Wright, Abigail Cloud, Melanie Manuel, Christopher Citro, Abriana Jetté, Nora Gupta, Chuck Carlise; and fiction by Desmond Everest Fuller, Francesca Leader, Jyotsna Sreenivasan, and Kyle Impin. Artist, curator and educator based out of Nashville, Tennessee, Paul Collins is the featured artist.
Likening creative expression to a common artist’s tool, Spray Paint Magazine was launched with the mission to give artists a voice through publishing prose, poetry, scripts, and visual art pieces in two to three issues a year. Currently, back issues can be read online for free with future issues available for digital download.
Managing Editor Angel-Clare Linton says she started Spray Paint Magazine while pursuing an undergraduate degree in creative writing. “While I was studying,” she explains, “I started working on my school’s magazine as a poetry editor, which was my first experience behind the scenes in the literary world. It was then I realized how much I enjoyed working on a literary magazine and that I wanted to work for my own publishing company. I have always wanted to be a full-time writer, so it wasn’t far-fetched that I wanted my own publishing company and literary magazine. That said, while I was starting my spring semester, I launched Spray Paint Magazine.”
The 2024 Rattle Young Poets Anthology curates another year of delightful and insightful poetry that happens to be written by young people. As always, this is not a book of poems for children, but the other way around—these are poems written by children for us all, revealing the startling insights that are possible when looking at the world through fresh eyes.
This 36-page chapbook is mailed to all Rattle subscribers along with the Summer 2024 issue of Rattle poetry magazine. Eighteen poets age 15 or younger contributed to the 2024 volume, offering their perspectives on life in an impressive variety of poetic forms, including an abecedarian, a ghazal, a contrapuntal poem, and a haiku series.
Cover art: “Rainbow Cake” by Amy DiGi (2022, Oil on panel)
Garcia-Gonzalez’s work forays into numerous aspects of our existence to probe into the constraints of the human experience. What is reality? What incites the disparity between one individual’s observation of reality and another’s? As the author dives deeper into his immense understanding of what is, he provides a series of intriguing, thought-provoking insights that cut right to the core of one’s belief system, yet he does so with grace and knowledge that impels readers to at least consider what is being proposed.
The Arts & Letters 25th Anniversary Issue (#47) was published as a special double issue in January, featuring the journal’s annual prizewinners in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and ‘unclassifiable’ genre. The issue includes “Willowbrook,” Kristin W. Davis’s multi-voiced essay on grief and loss in the shadow of the now-defunct State School on Staten Island, and Sophia Khan’s “Cells,” a striking flash piece focused on the body’s mysteries. Plus new poems from Todd Davis, former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins, and Georgia Poet Laureate Chelsea Rathburn; and new prose from Laura Cruser and Gila Green.
For a quarter-century, from its graduate student- and creative writing faculty-staffed quarters at Georgia College in Milledgeville, Arts & Letters has sought to print, in handsome, holdable issues, a diversity of work that is timely and that offers nothing less than the writer’s soul on the page. For further information, visit https://artsandletters.gcsu.edu
The 2024 Poetry Marathon is now open for applications! No running shoes required for this marathon, but you will definitely need stamina and perseverance!
This annual event invites writers to join in a half or full day of poetry writing, responding to prompts posted on the hour starting a 9:00am EST on Saturday, June 15, and running (pun intended) through 9:00am EST Sunday, June 16.
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 15, and the second is for night owls, from 9:00pm on June 15 to 9:00am on June 16.
The platform software is new this year, and organizers promise it is designed to be more community-centric, allowing for more seamless engagement in posting, providing feedback, and staying connected.
Participants who successfully complete their event will receive a certificate of achievement and have up to a chapbook’s worth of poems! Over its history, the marathon has had as many as 500+ participants each year, though not all finished. That’s the challenge!
Registration is open through 9:00 PM EST on June 10. Hope to see some of you there!
Tune into your reading with the May 2024 New & Noted Literary & Alternative Magazine titles received here at NewPages.com! Each month we offer readers a round-up of new issues with content information for our featured publications. The newest in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, comics, artwork, photography, media, contest winners, and so much more!
42 Submission Opportunities including calls for submissions, writing contests, and book prizes.
How is May over with already? It just does not seem possible that the year is about to be half over with. We hope your submission goals have been going well. Afraid of a summer lull? NewPages has your back with the final weekly roundup of submission opportunities for the final week of May. There are lots of deadlines for May 31 and June 1, so don’t miss out!
Paid newsletter subscribers can get early access to the majority of submission opportunities and upcoming events before they go live on our site, so do consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription today. You also receive our monthly eLitPak Newsletter which features even more opportunities and other literary goodness.
Check out these great titles received in the month of May 2024, just in time to transition us into summer reading. Each month we post the new and forthcoming titles NewPages has received from small, independent, university, and alternative presses as well as author-published titles. You can view the full list here.
If you are a follower of our blog or a subscriber to our weekly newsletter, you can see several of the titles we received featured. For publishers or authors looking to be featured on our blog and social media, please visit our FAQ page.
Mary Ann Redmond’s Boopable! is a beautifully illustrated and fanciful book for toddlers and pre-schoolers that is meant to introduce kids to the joyous bonds that can develop between animals and humans. By zeroing in on the irrepressible urge to snuggle and boop the nose of a cherished furry family member or four-legged friend – or even a creature seen only in the zoo, in stories or poems, or on TV – Boopable! makes clear that even when love is wordless, it is deeply felt.
“Would you be shocked if you booped a fox?” it asks. “Would you laugh if you booped a giraffe?…Would you be smitten if you booped a kitten?… Would you swoon if you booped a raccoon?”
Forget logic or the practical implications of such encounters; neither is on display here. Instead, Boopable! utilizes humorous rhymes to evoke affection for nine distinct members of the animal kingdom. And while most of the critters are unlikely to be within booping range of the book’s audience, this does not matter. Thanks to Kathy Moore Wilson’s exceptionally soulful watercolors, the book is a sweet tribute to love, whimsy, and imagination. It is sure to win cheers from both kids and adults.
Boopable! by Mary Ann Redmond with illustrations by Kathy Moore Wilson. Author Published, January 2024.
Reviewer bio: Eleanor J. Bader is a Brooklyn, NY-based journalist who writes about books and domestic social issues for Truthout, Rain Taxi, The Progressive, Ms. Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Indypendent.
If you thought you weren’t interested in horror, it’s time you read Bloodletter. Founded by filmmaker and writer Ariel McCleese, the mission of Bloodletter is “to reimagine the horror genre in feminist terms.” McCleese explains, “The delineation ‘feminist horror’ invites themes which marginalized groups are often compelled (or demanded) to repress—including rage, violence, psychological fear, and generational trauma. Our publication empowers women, trans, and non-binary writers to reframe their own historical victimization through the singular power of language and redefine the horror genre collectively.”
Even the name offers readers a new view of the genre, as McCleese shares, “I was trying to find a word that connected horror and literature. I wanted the name to be evocative, to stir something in people. When I finally came to Bloodletter, it felt like the perfect meeting point of the horrific and the literary. I also loved the connection to the history of bloodletting, the idea of bleeding to let go of something. It feels connected to writing and artmaking; these forms of expression allow us to release and transform horror into healing.”
Cemetery Citizens: Reclaiming the Past and Working for Justice in American Burial Grounds by Adam Rosenblatt Stanford University Press, April 2024
Across the United States, groups of grassroots volunteers gather in overgrown, systemically neglected cemeteries. As they rake, clean headstones, and research silenced histories, they offer care to individuals who were denied basic rights and forms of belonging in life and in death. Cemetery Citizens is the first book-length study of this emerging form of social justice work. It focuses on how racial disparities shape the fates of the dead, and asks what kinds of repair are still possible. Drawing on interviews, activist anthropology, poems, and drawings, Adam Rosenblatt takes readers to gravesite reclamation efforts in three prominent American cities.
Cemetery Citizens dives into the ethical quandaries and practical complexities of cemetery reclamation, showing how volunteers build community across social boundaries, craft new ideas about citizenship and ancestry, and expose injustices that would otherwise be suppressed. Ultimately, Rosenblatt argues that an ethic of reclamation must honor the presence of the dead—treating them as fellow cemetery citizens who share our histories, landscapes, and need for care.
Adam Rosenblatt is Associate Professor of the Practice in International Comparative Studies and Cultural Anthropology at Duke University. He is the author of Digging for the Disappeared: Forensic Science after Atrocity (2015).
Mudfish 24 is “an amazing, surprising issue” with the winners of the 17th Mudfish Poetry Prize judged by Deborah Landau: Tim Nolan, Doug Smith, and Francis Klein. Also featuring poetry, fiction, and art by Stephanie Emily Dickinson, Paul Wuensche, Alexander Iskin, Dell Lemmon, Amy Carr, Paul Schaeffer, debut writer Joyce (Chunyu) Wang, and many others. Visit the Mudfish website to read Tim Nolan’s award-winning “Memoir” and pre-order a copy of this newest issue.
Lit Mag Covers: Picks of the Week recognizes cover art and designs for literary magazines, whether in print or online. These are chosen solely at the discretion of the Editor. Enjoy!
The Spring 2024 issue of Pleiades (44.1) features “On Disability,” a special folio edited by Kennedy Horton and Olivia Ellisor, beginning with the cover art by Lacey Lynn Tink: “Organic transitions of her body, coming to terms with disabling chronic illnesses, and other lived experiences are cataloged and processed through the images that she makes.”
The newest issue of Rattle poetry magazine offers a perfect tribute to summer with Edward Fielding’s cover art, “Blueberry Baskets” (2014).
It’s clear from Adelle Waldman’s second novel, Help Wanted, that she has worked in retail before, specifically in the warehouse section. Her story follows a small group of workers who arrive before the big-box store, Town Square, opens, so they can unload the truck, break down the boxes, and stock the shelves. While the plot focuses on the question of who will become the new general manager and, thus, which of the main cast of characters would take over as the manager of Movement—the business-speak title for the warehouse team—the real heart of the novel are the characters and their struggles.
They struggled in school, whether because they were uninterested, had undiagnosed learning disabilities, or encountered financial or family hardships, leading their lives to end up in the warehouse. Some of them are divorced and juggle childcare obligations; some are single and trying to figure out how to create a life; all of them have dreams, even if that’s nothing more than to move up one rung in the Town Square corporate ladder.
The backdrop for the novel heightens their concerns even more, as Potterstown, where the store is located, has never recovered from the 2008 financial crash and companies’ decisions to move to other countries, where labor costs are cheaper. And, of course, there’s the competition with the online retailer, whom the characters never name.
The team does find moments of joy and companionship, especially when they are all working toward a common goal that they, not management, define, but the book is not ultimately hopeful. Instead, Waldman creates real characters with real struggles that will persist for most, if not all, of their lives. She bears witness to the realities of those who work in the warehouse of the world, where most of us never think to look.
Help Wanted by Adelle Waldman. W.W. Norton, March 2024.
Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite
Xochitl Gonzalez’s second novel, Anita de Monte Laughs Last, tells two parallel stories about women in the art world. The titular Anita de Monte is a Latina artist on the rise in the middle of the 1980s, but she’s married to Jack Martin, a well-established, minimalist artist known as much for his affairs as his art. Raquel Toro is a college student at Brown University in the late 1990s, just beginning work on her undergraduate thesis, which will focus on Jack Martin. Her experience as a Latina in a white-dominated university and department has led to her alienation, both from those around her and from her culture and background.
Anita disappears from art history after her death until Raquel, with guidance from Belinda—the director of the Rhode Island School of Design’s gallery, as well as another woman of color—rediscovers Anita’s work, as well as more details about her death. Raquel’s life had already begun to mirror Anita’s, as she begins dating Nick, a graduating senior with a promising art career before him, though it’s driven more by connections than talent. Though Nick is not a mirror for Jack, he is an echo, a reminder of the men who have tried to control female artists and the narrative of art history.
Raquel’s discovery of Anita de Monte not only resurrects Anita’s reputation, but also helps Raquel begin to discover who she is and who she can be. Through her two main characters, Gonzalez crafts realistic portrayals of the challenges women have and continue to face, along with the importance of role models as one means of pushing through those struggles.
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
39 Submission Opportunities including calls for submissions, writing contests, and book prizes.
Memorial Day weekend is upon us. We at NewPages hope that you have a fun and safe holiday weekend. If you do not have any traveling and gathering plans, but are utilizing time off for writing, editing, and submitting, NewPages is here for you with our weekly roundup of submission opportunities. Since next week does end May, don’t forget to check out all the May 31 and June 1 deadlines before it is too late.
Paid newsletter subscribers can get early access to the majority of submission opportunities and upcoming events before they go live on our site, so do consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription today. You also receive our monthly eLitPak Newsletter which features even more opportunities and other literary goodness.
Willow Books has announced the release of Black Fire This Time, Volume 2 (2024) edited by Derrick Harriell with Assistant Editor Kofi Antwi with an introduction by Mona Lisa Saloy. The second in a series celebrating the history and legacy of the Black Arts movement, Volume 2 continues to showcase the works of multiple generations, from the founders of the movement to contemporary writers in the tradition. Hailed as the “New Golden Age of Black Writing,” the Black Fire This Time series is an unprecedented collection of the best in writing by black writers. Featured writers in the series include Sonia Sanchez, Ishmael Reed, Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucille Clifton, 2023 American Book Award winner Everett Hoagland and 75 new poets, dramatists and fiction writers from across the country. Black Fire This Time Volume 2 will be distributed by the University of Mississippi Press.
Mark Cox pulls no punches in these poems about family, relationships, loss, regret, growing older and our human condition, generally. Sometimes wry, sometimes tender, always thought provoking, Knowing is the seventh volume of poetry from a lauded veteran poet who has been publishing prominently for almost 40 years.
Previous Praise for Mark Cox:
On Readiness
Thrilling prose poems from a cherished writer . . . . Cox gives lie to the common notion that prose poetry is too formless to count as real verse . . . . [He] is as careful with diction, rhythm, and even rhyme as one might be if they were writing strict alexandrines-and yet, his poems are as fluid and readable as Jack Kerouac’s novels.
Kirkus Reviews
On Sorrow Bread
Tony Hoagland has said Mark Cox is “a veteran of the deep water; there’s no one like him,” and Thomas Lux identified him as “one of the finest poets of his generation.” No one speaks more effectively of the vital and enduring syntaxes of common, even communal, life.
Newly launched biannual online Magazine1 operates out of Bookstore1 in Sarasota, Florida (hence the name) and publishes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, visual art, and hybrid works. “We’re really open to anything if you have something you don’t think fits nicely into the above categories,” says Editor-in-Chief Ben Kerns. Connections are what matter to Kerns, who hopes readers of Magazine1 are able to connect with something they didn’t think they’d connect with at first glance. “I hope that when we feature stranger pieces or pieces that make the reader reach a little further, that someone out there who encounters them for the first time can find their world widened a little bit by them.”
Hole in the Head re:View continues to celebrate their 5th year with a blooming May issue that announces Dana Levin as judge of the 2nd annual Charles Simic Prize for Poetry and Richard Foerster as guest editor of their August 2024 issue. Readers stopping by will also find art, photography, and poetry contributions that include Walt Whitman, a film by Lior Locher, small animals, a polyphony of oak and owl, a weird scream, a wobbly loose tooth, moth tea time, lost skirts and shoes, Aroostook County, lungs, a basketball court, pancakes, Frankenstein’s bride, earth science, salsa dancing, flipping fish, a rooster, handmaids everywhere, the downside of choosing a Frank Sinatra song to play at a funeral, Leningrad 1983, other favorite covers, Michael Hettich interviews Eric Nelson…and so much more!
The newest issue of AGNI (99) focuses on the places that remain. Contributors struggle with displacement and “home,” belonging and having to establish, resisting and being able to simply be. Partly devoted to a major new portfolio of writing from the Central American and Mexican diasporas, AGNI 99 unites around bewilderment and the force of clarity—discovering how we landed here and acknowledging where we stand. Geography extends beyond the folio, in poems by Mosab Abu Toha and Mercè Rodoreda (trans. Rebecca Simpson); fiction by Steven Archer and Urvi Kumbhat; essays by Lia Purpura and Marion Winik; and more. Diego Isaias Hernández Méndez, Guatemala’s “accident painter,” sets the vivacity and tumble right in front of us, on the cover.
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, James McBride’s latest novel, centers around a small community in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, in the early and middle twentieth century. The neighborhood of Chicken Hill is changing, first from a largely Jewish area to a primarily African American one, but then even that dichotomy breaks down with a significant influx of Eastern European Jews who don’t always see the world the same way the older immigrant community does.
Moshe bridges the original divide, as he owns a theatre that once hosted vaudeville acts, but then transitioned to Black bands as demand grew. His primary employee is Nate, a Black man, who helps Moshe work across the racial divide. However, the main impetus for Moshe’s doing so is his wife, Chona, who runs the titular grocery store. She encourages (forces, really) Moshe to leave the grocery store in the neighborhood even as its demographics change, and she becomes the face of welcome to anyone who walks in.
She even makes Moshe hide Dodo, Nate and Addie’s deaf nephew, when the state comes to take him away, a decision that will lead to much of the conflict in the novel. However, Chona stands for the heaven and earth of the store, as she attempts to live out the love of God, the will of God, on earth, as it is in heaven, a message of inclusivity needed now as much as ever.
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
Deadlines: May 31, 2024; June 2, 2024 Submit your fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction to Black Fox Literary Magazine’s Montage of Misfortunes Fox Tales Prize! Deadline: June 2, 2024! We are also accepting free submissions for our summer 2024 print issue. Free subs close on May 31, 2024! View our flyer for more information and links to our submission guidelines.
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Deadline: July 1, 2024 It is our responsibility to give marginalized groups the opportunity to establish literary legacies that feel rich and vast. Why? To sustain hope for the world to become a more loving, tolerable, and open space. It always begins with art. That is why we invite you to enter the 2025 International Voices in Creative Nonfiction Competition. Visit our website and view our flyer for more information.
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Deadline: July 31, 2024 We are pleased to announce that Dana Levin will judge the second annual Charles Simic Prize for Poetry. Dana is the author of five books of poetry and teaches for the Bennington Writing Seminars, the MFA program at Bennington College, and serves as Distinguished Writer in Residence at Maryville University in St. Louis. Dana recently published a recollection of Charlie as friend, teacher, and mentor in The Yale Review. View our website and our flyer for more information.
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Join Writing Coach & Author Lynne Golodner for five glorious days October 20-24, 2024, in the Redwood forests of northern California for a writers retreat that will change your life! Includes daily craft lessons, guided hikes and yoga in an intimate setting plus daily breakfast, two lunches and a celebratory final night dinner. NewPages readers are eligible for EARLY BIRD PRICING. View flyer to learn more and apply here. ONLY TWO SPOTS LEFT!
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Now in its 7th year, the Catamaran Poetry Prize is open to previously unpublished poetry manuscripts across a range of styles, themes, and forms. The prize is only open to West Coast poets living in California, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, and Hawaii. See our website and flyer for full details.
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We are now accepting poetry manuscripts of 48-80 pages for our May-June Reading Period at The Word Works! Four to six books are selected for publication in the next two years. Single-author collections, collaborations, prose poetry, hybrid works, etc. are welcome. View our flyer for more information and a link to our submissions manager.
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Deadline: May 25, 2024 Livingston Press is accepting submissions of unpublished manuscripts for its annual Changing Light Prize for a Novel-in-Verse. There is no entry fee. Winner receives $500, publication, twenty copies, and a standard royalty contract. View our flyer and visit our website for guidelines.
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Winning Writers will award a grand prize of $10,000 in its tenth annual North Street competition, and $20,400 in all. The top nine winners will enjoy additional benefits from co-sponsors BookBaby, Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Book Award Pro, Self-Publishing Made Simple, and Laura Duffy Design. New this year: Everyone who enters online will receive a brief commentary from one of the judges. Submit books published in any year and on any self-publishing or hybrid-publishing platform. $79 entry fee. Enter online or by mail by July 1. Learn more at our website and share our flyer.
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