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!
Deadline: March 31, 2022
The 16th Annual National Indie Excellence® Awards (NIEA) are open to all English language printed books available for sale, including small presses, mid-size independent publishers, university presses, and self-published authors. NIEA is proud to be a champion of self-publishing and small independent presses going the extra mile to produce books of excellence in every aspect. Visit website
Deadline: March 10, 2022
Each issue of About Place Journal, the arts publication of the Black Earth Institute, focuses on a specific theme. Until March 10, we’ll be accepting submissions for our Spring 2022 issue Navigations: A Place for Peace. Our mission: to have art address the causes of spirit, earth, and society; to protect the earth; and to build a more just and interconnected world. We publish prose, poetry, visual art, photography, video, and music which fit the current theme. Visit website.
Deadline: April 1, 2022
21st year. Submit one humor poem to Winning Writers’ 2022 contest to win $2,000 and online publication. Accepts published and unpublished work. Co-sponsored by Duotrope. Recommended by Reedsy. Judged by Jendi Reiter and Lauren Singer. Winners announced on August 15. There is no entry fee. View website.
Livingston Press, located within The University of West Alabama, seeks to promote literature, serve the community, and provide hands-on experience to University students. Coming soon: new titles from George H. Wolfe, Laura Secord, Judy Juanita (Tartt Award co-winner), Schuyler Dickson (Tartt Award co-winner), and Patricia Taylor. View website.
With February half over, how are your submissions goals going? Don’t let them wane. Check out the submission opportunities featured on NewPages this past week. Plus, stay tuned for the February eLitPak fliers being posted to the blog today! Don’t forget newsletter subscribers get early access to ads and eLitPaks, so subscribe today!
Continue reading “Weekly Round-up of Calls & Contests :: February 18, 2022”
Deadline: March 18, 2022
Qua Literary and Fine Arts Magazine is a student-run publication of the University of Michigan-Flint. Founded over 50 years ago, we are currently in the process of returning to a biannual publishing schedule. We invite submissions of Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, Poetry, Visual Arts, Photography, et cetera, from anyone currently living in the state of Michigan. No submission fees. For the all-digital Winter issue, all submissions must be made by March 18th, 2022 here: go.umflint.edu/quamagazinesubmission.
Deadline: April 15, 2022
Chicken Soup for the Soul is looking for true personal, heartwarming and powerfully moving stories about extraordinary events and happenings that will make our readers say “Wow!” This book is for everyone who loves to hear about miracles, amazing coincidences, and mysterious and unexplainable things that have happened for no apparent reason. We do not intend for this book to be specifically religious—it is for everyone. If we publish your piece, you will be paid $200 plus 10 free copies of the book. Writing guidelines and more info at www.chickensoup.com/story-submissions/possible-book-topics
Poet Lore Volume 16 is guest edited by Tarfia Faizullah and features her Folio: Surrealism and Strangeness. “In what I am calling a ‘surreal’ or ‘strange’ poem, it’s not that the moon might be the eye of God, or could be, for example—it is that it is.”
Find more info at the Poet Lore website.
Harvard Review No. 58 includes new fiction from Laura van den Berg and Mark Chiusano, plus new poetry from Andrea Cohen, Kelli Russell Agodon, Kwame Dawes, and more.
Find more info at the Harvard Review website.
Pulp Literature No. 32 features new work from David Perlmutter, Leslie Wibberley, Zandra Renwick, Mel Anastasiou, Kelsey Hutton, Sarina Bosco, and more.
Find more info at the Pulp Literature website.
TGIF! Take a weekend to relax and recharge so you can jump right back into your submission goals with a fury. Take a gander at the submission opportunities featured on NewPages this past week. Don’t forget if you subscribe to our weekly newsletter, you’ll get a first look before they are even posted to the site. Plus, you’ll get our monthly eLitPak. Our next eLitPak will be hitting inboxes next Wednesday, so subscribe today!
Continue reading “Weekly Round-up of Calls & Contests :: February 11, 2022”
Southern Indiana Review’s Fall 2021 issue features artwork by Ann R. Fischer. Poetry from Dan Albergotti, Michael Bazzett, Carina Finn, Idris Goodwin, and more. Fiction from Tyler Barton, Tom Franklin, Tessa Yang, and more. Also, Nonfiction from Philip Metres, Kathryn Nuernberger, and more.
Find more info on this issue at the Southern Indiana Review website.
With “Puppy Bin” cover artwork by Emma Gerigscott, the new issue of Poetry Northwest includes poetry by Eric Wang, Michael Waters, and Nita Jade, and many more; essays by Erika Meitner and Nkosi Nkululeko; and features by Rajiv Mohabir, Karla Maravilla, Jane Wong, and Jaidyanna Podsobinski. You can find the new issue on the Poetry Northwest website.
The Main Street Rag Winter 2022 issue features editor M. Scott Douglas’s interview with Craig Johnson, author and creator of Longmire. New poetry from Margaret Benbow, Paul Colby, Pablo Patiño, and Rachel Mauro. New fiction from Burt Beckman, Valerie Gilbraeth, George Looney, Shoshauna Shy, and more. Includes a new batch of book reviews.
Find and buy the Winter 2002 issue at The Main Street Rag website.
Poetry magazine’s February 2022 issue includes new work from Suzi F. Garcia, Muna Abdulahi, Ada Limon, Keith Donnell Jr., Jeremy Michael Clark and more. “Grief in Three Bodies: A Conversation” is Khaty Xiong’s “intimate discussion that formed in the early months of COVID-19 lockdown, when I talked with poets and writers Victoria Chang and Prageeta Sharma about our personal experiences living with profound grief.“
Read more about the current issue at the Poetry website.
EVENT celebrates 50 years of publication with a Notes on Writing anthology, featuring more than 70 personal essays with insights into the joys and struggles of the writer’s life and process, written by notable Canadian writers, including Jane Urquhart, David Bergen, André Alexis, Madeleine Thien, Eden Robinson, Jen Sookfong Lee, Zoe Whittall, Joy Kogawa, Souvankham Thammavongsa, Joshua Whitehead, and many others.
Find more info and order your copy at the EVENT website.
Deadline: Rolling
If a reader signs up to 50 Give or Take, they will receive micro fiction of fifty words or less delivered daily straight into their inbox. Despite popular opinion, the name 50 Give or Take doesn’t refer to the number of words in the story. It is a metaphor for what we, as readers and writers, give and take emotionally from the written word. Do you write flash fiction? Then submit! We publish all accepted stories in a print collection every November 6. All you have to do is submit your story, one-line bio, and vertical photo of yourself. Info here: vineleavespress.com/50-give-or-take.html.
Gargoyle 74 features nonfiction by Linda Blaskey, Ruth Boggs, Dylan Emmons, Darlene Fife, Jesse Lee Kercheval, CD Nickols, Randon Billings Noble, Darius Stewart, and M. Kaat Toy; poetry by Fran Abrams, John Kinsella, Elisabeth Murawski, Todd Swift, Paul Jaskunas, Rosemary Winslow, Beth Baruch Joselow, RC deWinter, Lyudmyla Diadchenko, to name a few; and fiction by Kelli Allen, Jeff Bagato, Christina Kapp, Jordan Redd, Esther Iverem, Che Parker, Meg Pokrass, Tom Whalen, Kathy Wiilson, and more.
View the full list of contributors and grab a copy of Gargoyle 74 here.
Able Muse is pleased to announce a special reading taking place February 19, 2022 from 3 to 4:30 PM EDT. It will feature poets and translators Lee Harlin Bahan, Jan D. Hodge, and John Ridland with Len Krisak acting as host.
The reading will take place via Zoom and it’s open to the general public and free to register. Find full details and the registration information here.
Happy February. Blizzards and freezing temperatures are great reasons to stay inside with a hot drink and work on writing and editing. Let’s keep your submissions goals for 2022 going strong! Time to look back at the submission opportunities featured on NewPages this past week. Don’t forget newsletter subscribers get a first look first. Subscribe today!
Continue reading “Weekly Round-up of Calls & Contests :: February 4, 2022”
Guest Post by Kevin Brown.
Cyclopedia Exotica, the latest graphic novel by Aminder Dhaliwal, begins as a series of encyclopedia entries explaining how cyclops (or cyclopes, spelled both ways throughout the work) and Two-Eyes have interacted over time. Dhaliwal imagines a world where cyclops not only exist, but their history has combined with those of the Two-Eyes, referencing mythological works, but planting this relationship directly in the contemporary world.
Continue reading “The Everyday Life of Cyclops”
Guest Post by Laura Bridge.
“High Flight” by John Gillespie Magee (1941) is a special poem that I discovered at just the right moment. It was March 2020. In the UK, schools were preparing to close due to Covid-19. I was supposed to be teaching my class of eleven-year-olds about the Second World War, but the children were anxious and restless; I did not want to add to their worries. In a frantic panic to find something uplifting but still on topic, I came across Magee’s sonnet. It was the perfect combination of energy and hope.
Continue reading “Flying High with John Gillespie Magee”
Guest Post by Alexandra Grabbe.
Olga Dies Dreaming is a tour de force. Xochitl (pronounced So-Cheel) Gonzalez has ticked off all the boxes—Literary, Commercial, Family Saga, LBGTQ, BIPOC. The tight prose moves as efficiently as Spielberg’s West Side Story dancers.
Continue reading “Don’t Miss This Debut Novel”
Guest Post by David Ruekberg.
In Paddock images circulate like wavelets confronting an embankment, reshaping constructions we thought of as solid. There are two girls, or two sides of one girl. An omniscient but distant chorus. A mother, both dead and alive: a ghost but not a zombie.
Continue reading “Buschi’s Paddock”
Deadline: April 10 (April 24 Extended)
Open to un-agented writers worldwide, the FIRST PAGES PRIZE invites you to enter your First Five Pages (1,250 words) of a longer work of fiction or creative nonfiction. Five winners receive cash awards, a tailored edit and an agent consultation. Our 2022 prize judge is author Justin Torres. Entry fee is $20 ($35 Extended). Visit our website for more information: www.firstpagesprize.com.
Syncopation Literary Journal amalgamates the realms of literature and music. Volume 1, Issue 1 is now available to read on the website for FREE! The first issue contains book excerpts, poetry, creative nonfiction, short stories and flash fiction penned by writers and musicians from around the world. Titles of pieces in issue include: “The First Time I Heard Leonard Cohen”, “Memphis, Tennessee”, and “I’ve Got the Blues.”
Visit the Syncopation Literary Journal website for more information.
What’s in this issue? Writing by Kim Marie Lewis, Amber Wong, Rachel Paris Wimer, Rachele Salvini, Candice May, Liz Charlotte Grant, and Steve Wing. Art by Summer Ventis and Ak Hardeman.
More information at Under the Gum Tree website.
Issue 7 is one of our more spiritual issues. Work by Tim Moder, Preeth Ganapathy, Bryan Joel Mariano, Christine Oberas Aurelio, Izzy Martens, Kali Norris, Claire Champommier, Natalie Foo Mei-Yi, Chrystal Ho, Brittany Nohra, Vanessa Hewson, Justin Groppuso-Cook, Zarina Muhammad & Zachary Chan, DH Jenkins, Andrew Vogel, Shilpa Dikshit Thapliyal, Art Ó Súilleabháin, and more.
More info at the Tiger Moth Review website.
In the latest issue: nonfiction by Philip Arnold and Sarah Gorham; fiction by Jerome Blanco, Michael Colbert, Evan Grillon, Eliamani Ismail, and Pardeep Toor; and poetry by Rebecca Cross, Chiyuma Elliott, Grego Emilio, Claire Hero, Sarah Nance, Carolina Harper New, Steven Pan, Jenny Qi, Roger Sedarat, Benjamin Voigt, and D.S. Waldman.
More info at the Southern Humanities Review website.
The latest issue of The Ocotillo Review is a spiritual experience to release you from the doldrums of social isolation. 43 poets and writers, previews of upcoming releases, winning entries from the “J. Darling” and “CB Himes” contests. Something for everyone in 170 pages of moving literary art for your enjoyment.
More info at The Ocotillo Review website.
Featuring: Sandra Dal Poggetto, Rick Newby, Frances Stilwell, Scott Hartman, Zachary Ostraff, Suzanne Strazza, Emily Withnall, Brooke Williams, L. Barthule, Hillary Behrman, Camille Meder, Leath Tonino, Zoe Boyer, Lorri Frisbee, Talley Kayser, & John Yohe. More info on this issue at the High Desert Journal website.
Short stories by Bobby Mathews, Kevin Joseph Reigle, Sidney Wollmuth, and L.M. Wright; flash fiction by Cameron Bocanegra, flash nonfiction by Siavash Saadlou; poetry by Dale Cottingham, Candice Kelsey, Eric v.d. Luft, Gary Reddin, and Nancy White, and one prose poem by Stephanie Michele.
More info at The Dillydoun Review website.
The Winter issue is out! With fresh and exciting prose, poetry, and visual art by Jules Chung, Emily Anderson Ula, Elizabeth Lee, Richard Vyse, Dabin Jeong, darius simpson, Anuja Ghimire, Leah Fairbank, Christy O’Callaghan, Robert S. Hillery, Emily Wick, Joy Guo, Luke Wortley, Ernest O. Ògúnyẹmí, Maxine Stoker, Yanita Georgieva, Susanne Swanson Bernard, Tommy Dean, Kolbe Riney, Hikari Miya, Chiwenite Onyekwelu, Cressida Blake Roe, Diana Donovan, Melissa Lomax, Joshua Beggs, Huan He, Mackenzie McGee, and Joshua Effiong.
More info at the Chestnut Review website.
Deadline: March 14, 2022
(+5-day grace period)
$2,500 honorarium and publication in the Fall/Winter issue of Colorado Review: Submit an unpublished story between 2,500 and 12,500 words by March 14, 2022 (we will observe a 5-day grace period). $15 reading fee (add $2 to submit online). Final judge is Ramona Ausubel; friends and students (current or former) of the judge are not eligible to compete, nor are Colorado State University employees, students, or alumni. Complete guidelines at nelliganprize.colostate.edu or Nelligan Prize, Colorado Review, 9105 Campus Delivery, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523-9105.
The Winter 2022 issue of Baltimore Review features creative nonfiction by Lucinda Cummings, Patricia Dwyer, Dan Hodgson, and contest winner Daniel Rousseau; fiction by Ross McCleary, Evan Brooke, Nicholas Otte, Mariah Rigg, and contest winner Robin Tung; and poetry by Francine Witte, Sara Henning, Rose Auslander, Stephanie McCarley Dugger, Lisa Suhair Majaj, and contest winner Aekta Khubchandani.
Head on over to Baltimore Review‘s website to read the Winter 2022 issue.
In this issue of The Adroit Journal, find poetry by Chen Chen, Eugenia Leigh, David Ehmcke, Sarah Fatimah Mohammed, Melissa Cundieff, Rose Alcalá, Monica Gomery, Gustav Parker Hibbett, Arielle Kaplan, Patrick Donnelly, Mark Kyungsoo Bias, Rick Barot, and more; prose by Kim Fu, Erin Sherry, Alyssa Asquith, Marcus Ong Kah Ho, Daniel Riddle Rodriguez, and Ann-Marie Blanchard; and art by Kathy Morris, Jack Jacques, Claire Hahn, Scarlett Cai, and others.
Plus five interviews that you can learn more about at The Adroit Journal website.
Congratulations to the winner of Frontier Poetry‘s 2021 Award for New Poets. This year’s judges were Rosebud Ben-One, Andrés Cerpa, and Mai Der Vang.
Winner
“a sonnet: a slaughter field” by Chibuihe Obi Achimba
Second Place
“Herma” by Samuel Piccone
Third Place
“Ashes Arts and Crafts” by Emily Hyland
You can read the poems at Frontier Poetry‘s website.
Creative Nonfiction has announced its lineup of Spring 2022 online writing classes. Don’t forget that subscribers to their journal receive a 10% discount for their online classes and webinars!
They are offering a nice mix of beginner, intermediate, and advanced courses.
Continue reading “Creative Nonfiction Spring 2022 Online Classes Announced”How is this our final round-up in January? And how is it February starting next Tuesday? From deep freezes to nor’easters there’s never been a better time to stay inside, wrapped in your blanket and wearing your comfy sweats with a hot drink and just concentrating on your writing and submitting goals, is there? Check out the submission opportunities featured on NewPages this past week. And don’t forget you can get a first peek before items are live by subscribing to our weekly newsletter!
Continue reading “Weekly Round-up of Calls & Contests :: January 28, 2022”
Glass Mountain has a new 5-in-5 interview up at their website. This interview series features five questions answered in five minutes by established writers.
Big Poppa E was interviewed this week, and the questions asked were:
Stop by Glass Mountain‘s website to see Big Poppa E’s answers.
Deadline: Rolling
Storm Cellar seeks new and amazing writing and art for its spring issue! We are a journal of safety and danger, in many senses, in print and e-book formats since 2011. Send secrets, codes, adventures, mad experiments, and wild things. Black, Indigenous, POC, LGBTQIA+, disabled, neurodivergent, fat, border-straddling, poor, and other marginalized authors encouraged, bonus points for a Midwest connection. Now paying; limited no-fee submissions available each month. Full guidelines and F.A.Q. at stormcellar.org/submit.
Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora has announced its first #ObsidianVoices Spring 2022 events.
They are kicking off the new year on January 28 at 6PM CT with Whirlwind, a reading and conversation celebrating the Furious Flower Poetry Prize published in Obsidian 46.2. The event will be moderated by Lauren K. Alleyne and will feature Diamonde Forde and Kweku Abimbola.
Next, circle February 11 in your calendar. At 6PM CT they will be hosting a reading and conversation celebrating Obsidian 47.1. This event will be moderated by Sheree Renée Thomas and Nandi Comer and will feature Trace DePass, Aris Kian, MARS Marshall, Olufunke Ogundimu, & Ronda Racha Penrice.
These events are free and open to the public, but you do have to RSVP to receive the Zoom link.
Don’t forget to follow their website for more events and to RSVP.
Guest Post by Alexandra Grabbe.
Many of the stories in Cara Blue Adams’s debut short story collection appeared in prestigious literary magazines. Readers follow a protagonist named Kate through her early twenties. She attends a New Year’s Eve party with postgrads in Cambridge, MA, socializes with a pushy former roommate, moves west to pursue a job opportunity, muses over the decision to discontinue a relationship with a married man, spends three days at the beach with her mom and sister. Nothing very monumental or out of the ordinary and yet the prose captivates, earning Adams both the John Simmons Award for Short Fiction and an Editor’s Choice pick from the New York Times.
Kate Bishop becomes Everywoman. She experiences heartbreak and joy and the everyday ennui that many readers will recognize from the same period of their lives. The collection begins with a gem in which Adams personifies loss, introducing a recurring theme. Read these stories slowly and savor them like fine wine.
You Never Get it Back by Cara Blue Adams. University of Iowa Press, 2021.
Reviewer bio: Alexandra Grabbe has worked as an innkeeper, a lyricist, and a relocation consultant in Paris. For her most recent essays and stories, visit Alexandragrabbe.com.
The first Book Stand of 2022 is here! Stop by and learn about this month’s featured titles below.
In Ante body, Marwa Helal explores how the psychological impacts of migration and complex traumas manifest as autoimmune disease as she critiques the ongoing unjust conditions that brought on the global pandemic.
Mr. Potato Head vs. Freud by Clint McCown, has been called “as entertaining as it is instructive. And boy, is it instructive.”
In Shahriar Mandanipour’s Seasons of Purgatory, the fantastical and the visceral merge in tales of tender desire and collective violence, the boredom and brutality of war, and the clash of modern urban life and rural traditions.
In her latest collection of English-language poems—Traveling With the Ghosts—trilingual poet Stella Vinitchi Radulescu continues to explore the capabilities and limits of language itself as the nexus where thought and physicality meet.
Your Nostalgia is Killing Me by John Weir collects eleven linked stories and questions how a gay white guy from New Jersey lived through fifty years of the twin crises of global AIDS and toxic masculinity in America.
You can learn more about each of these New & Noteworthy books at our website. Click here to see how to place your book in our New & Noteworthy section.
Creative Nonfiction has announced its journal for long-form nonfiction, True Story, is officially making its comeback this year. In fact, they are currently seeking submissions of essays between 5,000 and 10,000 words through April 30, 2022.
Each issue will feature one exceptional work of creative nonfiction and will be distributed in print and digitally. Writers whose essays are selected for publication will receive $750 and 10 free copies of “their” issue.
There is a $3 reading fee which is waived for current True Story and/or Creative Nonfiction subscribers.
Browse through past issues of True Story for an idea of what they are looking for.
Guest Post by Emma Foster.
Literary journal The Birdseed knows where the best of flash comes from: the sky and sea, the beginning and end of things. In its third issue of volume one, The Birdseed’s flash pieces appear from those mysterious depths in succinct one hundred and fifty words or less each time.
The issue’s five themes, Space, Sea, Myth, Magic, and Death, all examine the unknown, the enigmatic corners of ourselves. Whether ominous with dark exploration like Katie Holloway’s “Reaching for Nana,” or composed of poignant emotion like Lou Faber’s “On the Shelf,” each flash piece leaves the reader with a little something afterwards. The emotional resonance of each either packs a punch or leaves reader’s hearts full, creating beauty and calm among the issue’s heavy, potentially heartbreaking themes.
As someone who loves and writes flash and microfiction, being dropped into a descriptive setting or a complex mind for a few moments never fails to surprise and challenge. The Birdseed’s journey into the places we dare to tread turns up satisfying results.
The Birdseed, December 2021.
Emma Foster’s fiction and poetry has appeared in The Aurora Journal, The Drabble, Sledgehammer Lit, and others. Links: https://fosteryourwriting.com/
The January 2022 issue features work by Kay Ulanday Barrett, Saleem Hue Penny, Petra Kuppers, C. E. Janecek, Kareem Tayyar, Christine Imperial, Josh Tvrdy, Nathalie Koble & Cole Swensen, Lukas Bacho, and Clarisse Baleja Saïdi.
Nancy Buffum’s “Girl at Piano” on the cover of vol. 37.3 is a prelude to the trio of musical poetry in the exposition to this issue, composed by poets Frank Jamison, Tobey Hiller, and Vince Gotera. As with any other sonata, the recapitulation comes later—András Schiff through Murray Silverstein’s eyes; guitarists, off-stage (Berlioz anyone?) in Gabriella Graceffo’s “Relics”; extended vocal technique in Eric Rasmussen’s “The Irresistible Gobble”—but not before Lucy Zhang’s multi-part “Trigger” and Lynn Domina’s multi-peninsula “Yooper Love” develop the form a bit. Finally, we reach the coda, this time a scherzo: “The Slapathon,” from J.A. Bernstein.
Read more at The MacGuffin website.
The BIPOC Solidarities Special Issue is meant as an opening, extending the invitation to BIPOC writers to transform the content and spirit of The Fiddlehead far beyond a single issue; this issue is a commitment to transformation and accountability. Visit The FIddlehead website to see some of the contributors you can expect to find in this issue.
In this issue of Cutleaf, Yasmina Din Madden shows us the ABCs of relational ups and downs in “Zero Sum Game.” Tiffany Melanson reflects on color theory in and out of prison in four poems beginning with “Visitation: Tomoka Correctional Institution.” And Mary Zheng navigates the necessary pain of empathy in the emergency room in “Jane.”
Learn about this issue’s images at the Cutleaf website.
