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!
The Georgia Review’s Winter 2021 issue with new writing from Morgan Talty, Victoria Chang, Cheryl Clarke, Ira Sukrungruang, Garrett Hongo, Edward Hirsch, and many more, as well a story by Maya Alexandrovna Kucherskaya translated from the Russian, two iconic speeches from the early years of the OutWrite literary conference, and the winner of this year’s Loraine Williams Poetry Prize.
More info at The Georgia Review website.
Extended Deadline: January 31, 2022
Submit soon to our In-House Short Fiction & Single Poem Contests! On the short fiction side, we’re proud to announce that we’ve upped the award to $500 for the winning story and $150 for all runners-up! Winners and runners-up also receive publication, an interview, and an illustration that will appear alongside their story. All stories submitted are considered for publication by not one—but two editors, and response times are faster than usual. On the poetry side, all works are also considered for publication, with the runners-up awarded an interview, publication, and $50 per poem. The winner of the In-House Poetry Contest will receive $400, publication, a featured interview, and a commissioned illustration to appear alongside their work.
Congratulations to Ben Lof, winner of The Malahat Review‘s 2021 Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction. Lof won with his piece “Naked States.”
The story begins:
In January, Frank said to April, No more alcohol. This was not a New Year’s resolution. The vermouth pancakes tasted only of vermouth.
April said, Who the heck is named “Frank” anymore? I mean, what is this, the 1960s?
Frank said, That’s the booze talking, that kind of meanness. You used to be witty.
Oh? said April. I’m still witty, pal. Got buckets and buckets of wit.
So they dropped alcohol.
Lof was also interviewed for this issue, and you can check out the interview on The Malahat Review‘s website.
Congratulations to the winners of the 2021 William Van Dyke Short Story Prize in Issue 60 of Ruminate.
First Place
“The Florist” by Alex Cothren
Second Place
“A Guide to Removal” by Amber Blaeser-Wardzala
Honorable Mention
“Katingo Carried 15,980 Tons and a Gentleman” by George Choundas
Finalists include Nina Gaby, Elizabeth Paley, Lauren Loftis, Skye Anicca, Catherine Miller, Alberto Daniels, and Suphil Lee Park.
Read comments on the winners from Judge Kelli Jo Ford inside the issue as an introduction to the pieces.
NewPages maintains two guides where young readers and writers can find print and online literary magazines to read, places to publish their own works, and legitimate contests: Publications for Young Writers and Writing Contests for Young Writers. Both of these are ad-free resources regularly updated with carefully vetted content.
Girls Right the World is one of those listed, their mission is to provide an “an international literary journal advocating for young, female-identified writers and artists. This journal values and promotes diversity of culture and expression.” The publication is edited by students at Miss Hall’s School in Massachusetts. Currently, Girls Right the World has extended their deadline for submissions.
Female-identified writers and artists, ages 14–21, are invited to submit poetry, prose, and visual art of any style or theme for consideration for the sixth annual issue by January 31, 2022. For full submission information, visit their site here.
January will be half over with in a day. Didn’t the new year just start? How are your submission goals coming in 2022? Let NewPages help out with the round-up of the submission opportunities featured this week. Don’t forget you can get a first peek if you’re a newsletter subscriber. Subscribe today and besides getting our weekly newsletter next Monday, you’ll also receive our monthly eLitPak Newsletter coming out next Wednesday.
Continue reading “Weekly Round-up of Calls & Contests :: January 14, 2022”
Deadline: Rolling
Atmosphere Press currently seeks book manuscripts from diverse voices. There’s no submission fee, and if your manuscript is selected, we’ll be the publisher you’ve always wanted: attentive, organized, on schedule, and professional. We use a model in which the author funds the publication of the book, but retains 100% rights, royalties, and artistic autonomy. This year Atmosphere authors have received featured reviews with Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist, and have even appeared on a giant billboard in Times Square. Submit your book manuscript at atmospherepress.com.
Guest Post by Cindy Dale.
Air France 006, Paris to New York. The seatbelt sign comes on. The captain calmly announces, prepare for a little turbulence. More than a little it turns out. If you’ve ever been on a flight where you questioned if the plane would successfully land, you know the feeling. I don’t profess to have completely unraveled (or made sense of) all the threads of this book, but I enjoyed the ride. Part sci-fi, part political thriller, part philosophical treatise, The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier was a huge bestseller in France and won the Prix Goncourt.
It took a bit for the puzzle pieces to fall in place for me, but once the catalyst for these disparate stories was revealed the novel picked up speed. Apparently, the same flight with the same crew and the same passengers landed twice—four months apart. Ultimately, we follow the fates of eleven passengers (and their clones)—from a contract killer to a film editor to the author of a novel called, you guessed it, The Anomaly. There are references to everything from Martin Guerre to Elton John to Nietzsche. Quotes from War and Peace, Romeo and Juliet, and Ecclesiastes. Sandwiched in there is the American government’s ham-fisted response to the mysterious second landing.
I confess to getting a little lost in some of the mathematical and astrophysics tangents, but the reader is drawn into the personal stories of the passengers (and their clones). What would you say if confronted with an exact doppelgänger of you, right down to the same memories, the same secrets, the same neurosis? Definitely existential, but also humorous and with quite a few quotable lines. You may not be able to board a flight and go on an exotic adventure these days because of Covid, but you can take off on a wild ride from the comfort of home with The Anomaly.
The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier. Other Press, November 2021.
Reviewer bio: Cindy Dale has published over twenty short stories in literary journals and anthologies. She lives on a barrier beach off the coast of Long Island.
NewPages maintains two guides where young readers and writers can find print and online literary magazines to read, places to publish their own works, and legitimate contests: Publications for Young Writers and Writing Contests for Young Writers. Both of these are ad-free resources regularly updated with carefully vetted content.
The Lions Club International Peace Essay Contest is one of those listed, and the 2020-2021 winning essay “Peace Through Service” by 13-year-old Australian Joshua Wood is a beautiful example of the kinds of writing these contests can inspire. He can be seen/heard reading his essay on the site here, and his essay is available to read online or download to print.
If you know young readers and writers in your life, or if you yourself enjoy writing for young readers, check out these guides today!
[Image: National Youth Foundation poster for the “I Matter Poetry Contest.”]
Guest Post by Julia Wilson.
Elizabeth McCracken is one of my favorite authors, primarily for her graceful blending of mundane realities with imaginative and unusual details, thus painting seemingly humdrum lives sparkling with the unexpected.
Bowlaway is no exception. Ostensibly a story about generations of an extended family living in a small town, McCracken’s odd characters are mixes of humorous, pathetic, lonely, yearning, creative, frail, damaged, liberated, secretive, selfish, and loving. They are mysterious and perplexing, not necessarily likeable but compelling. The book starts with a woman, Bertha Truitt, being found unconscious in a cemetery, without explanation. Thus begins the family saga of the Truitts, who own a bowling alley in the northeastern town of Salford.
But the real story in Bowlaway is the complexities of relationships, primarily marriages. In McCracken’s smooth sentences and use of an omniscient narrator, the reader is witness to weaknesses, loyalty, secrets, misunderstandings, and resignation. The partners in these relationships don’t have much eagerness in looking forward to the future yet have found a reality they can tolerate, containing both joy and heartache. There is tenderness between a woman and her mother-in-law, compassion of a wife in the face of her husband’s alcoholism, a recluse’s love for a mourning mother, and the relief of the few who escape the dreary life in Salford.
McCracken is at her best painting the facets of her characters so they come alive to the reader. They are flawed, self-interested, confused, and searching—as are we all.
Bowlaway by Elizabeth McCracken. Ecco, November 2019.
Reviewer bio: Julia Wilson is an MA in Writing student at Johns Hopkins University
Deadline: April 15, 2022
No prompt or theme. No Entry Fee. Word limit: 500 words, excluding title. Submit entries via email. Prizes: $200 first prize, $100 second prize, $50 third prize. Shortlisted stories receive $20 and publication. Judge: Pamela Painter. Contest Rules: One entry per author. Send your entry pasted into the body of an email and also as a Word attachment with the story title in the subject line. Double-spaced, 12 pt. Times New Roman. No name on entries. Submit an author bio in a separate attachment. Results announced June 30, 2022. View full guidelines here.
The last issue of Snapdragon: A Journal of Art & Healing of the year, featuring the last two stages of the grief cycle. Filled with poetry, creative nonfiction and photography by featured photographer Guilherme Bergamin.
Find more info at the Snapdragon website.
The writers and artists whose work makes up Ruminate Issue 60 probe the imagery and metaphor of being at sea. Included are Devon Miller-Duggan’s poem, “Perhaps a Prayer for Surviving the Night” and Peggy Shumaker’s “Gifts We Cannot Keep.” George Choundas’s engrossing story, “Katingo Carried 15,980 Tons and Gentleman,” transports us to the world of those who live and work on cargo ships. And O-Jeremiah Agbaakin’s poem, “landscape with broken ekphrasis,” muses on the image of the last ship that brought enslaved people to the United States. This issue features the winning story from our 2021 William Van Dyke Short Story Prize.
More info at the Ruminate website.
This month’s featured selection: “On Long Poems, Lyric Sequences, and ‘Cop’”; An interview with Connie Voisine by Amanda Newell. Mark Wagenaar reviews Carmine Starnino’s Dirty Words. In nonfiction: “Reading the Qur’an with Rumi” by Amer Latif. This month’s poetry contributors include Ira Sadoff, John Hodgen, Katja Gorečan, Pablo Piñero Stillmann, Bhisham Bherwani, Kelli Russell Agodon, Brendan Constantine, and more. Find this issue at the Plume website.
In this issue: a shrinking house, winter ticks, COVID, Burning Man, Alexander Pope, crisis, spies, a plane crash, wars, Sandy Koufax, and more. Poetry by Stella Wong, Gilad Jaffe, Camille Guthrie, Maxine Scates, Steffi Drewes, and more; and nonfiction by Carol Guess & Rochelle Hurt, Ellis Scott, Greg Wrenn, Amy V. Blakemore, and Andrea Truppin. Find fiction contributors at The Iowa Review website.
In our first issue of 2022, Ben Kaufman searches for the ghost in the machine as he questions the way language and meaning changes through time in “Unknown Caller.” Pauletta Hansel views various effects of trying to live as the marrow in someone else’s bones in three poems beginning with “So Maybe It’s True.” And George Singleton shares the story of a boy named Renfro who wants only to earn his driver’s license and to reconcile his odd parents in “Here’s a Little Song.”
Learn about this issue’s images at the Cutleaf website.
Extended Deadline: February 14, 2022
Submissions are now open for the 2022 New American Poetry Prize. Extended deadline: February 14, 2022. The winning author will receive a publication contract including $1,500, 25 copies, and promotional support. All forms and styles of poetry are welcome. Final judge this year is Eduardo C. Corral, author of Slow Lightning (2012), winner of the Yale Younger Poets Prize, and Guillotine (2020). Please use Submittable to send your work.
I love Dorothy Chan’s poetry, so I’m always excited to see her name in a lit mag’s table of contents. Two of her poems are included in the Fall/Winter 2021 issue of Colorado Review: “You Might Change Your Mind About Kids” and “Triple Sonnet for Batman Villains and Whatever This Is.”
In “You Might Change Your Mind About Kids,” the speaker is told this titular sentence by a man she has a romantic relationship with. The poem is the mental dissection of his opinion on this topic, an inner rebellion broiling beneath the surface. Who is this man to claim her body, her future, her future child? How is she seen as “the place to reserve / for a baby, the hotel for a womb?” She feels palpable derision toward his assumptions and I love that clarity of the speaker knowing exactly what she wants and does not want. She’s not going to change for this man or any other man and she finishes the poem with, “If I ever love someone, I’ll be baby forever.”
“Triple Sonnet for Batman Villains and Whatever This Is” is such a fun poem that still holds a hefty dose of seriousness in its final stanza. This poem has one thing I always enjoy about Chan’s poetry which is the absolute pleasure of experiencing different foods. These two pieces are just as delectable as “sashimi and Snow / Beauty sake and mango mochi for dessert.”
From Dr. Sarah J. Donovan: This winter-spring, the OSU Writing Project is offering an online professional development and would like to invite you, even if you are not in Oklahoma, to register for this online experience.
For pre-service, inservice, & veteran teachers who love reading and learning through literature. For educators who want to support students and families by making classroom libraries and curriculum more inclusive-affirming of students’ intersecting identities. This monthly book group (January-June, 2022) is a place to ignite thoughtful conversation about young adult literature informed by Dr. Yolanda Sealy-Ruiz’s (2020) Six Components to Racial Literacy Development.
Your registration fee of $35 is a commitment to attend the conversations and for your PD certificate of 6 hours. You will buy from a store or reserve from your library the selected books. We will meet once a month via Zoom for an hour to discuss the texts, which will include extensions into ideas for sharing literature with students and studying of author’s craft. Respectful, invitational dialogue is expected of all participants.
We are going to read with a lens of what Dr. Yolanda Sealy-Ruiz named racial literacy development, which includes historical awareness of the forces that shape the society we live in along with critical humility or how we can “remain open to understanding the limits of our own worldviews & ideologies” and toward critical love or “a profound ethical commitment to caring.” We want to center love as transformative, recognizing harm but noticing the ways we heal and feel joy through young adult literature. Thus, our focus is on authors’ craft and celebrating beautifully crafted passages in the texts that represent intersecting identities.
Here is the book list. Notice, there are several verse novels listed in April, so you can choose any or all. Again, it will be up to you to acquire these books in the medium you prefer. We hope you will consider your local library and/or a local Black-owned bookstore. All meetings are Sundays, 6:00-7:00pm CT.
Continue reading “Let’s Read Together!”Happy New Year! Here’s hoping that 2022 is filled with great news on the writing and craft advancement front for you all. To help you start out the new year and keep your submissions goals strong, here are submission opportunities featured on NewPages this past week.
Don’t forget that newsletter subscribers get a first peek before everyone else. Subscribe today! Besides our weekly newsletter, subscribers also receive our monthly eLitPak. Our next eLitPak is slated for January 19, so stay tuned!
Continue reading “Weekly Round-up of Calls & Contests :: January 7, 2022”
Guest Post by Alec W. Hastings.
Bill Mares and Don Hooper put out a darned good book about Vermont humor. It’s called I Could Hardly Keep from Laughing. Even though I’ve grown up in Vermont—well, almost—I’ve always wondered what that is. Vermont humor, I mean. How would I know it if I met it walking down the street? I read eagerly and kept my eyes open for the answer.
The authors collected Vermont jokes and anecdotes by the truckload. I delighted in Hooper’s cartoon art, the bug-eyed but endearing folk of our Vermont hills. I could hardly keep from smiling at the humor of familiar Vermonters like Silent Cal, Francis Colburn, George Woodard, Al Boright, Fred Tuttle, and Rusty DeWees. Some of the Vermont humorists I met in these pages were new to me, and it tickled me to get acquainted with Robert C. Davis, David K. Smith, or Josie Leavitt.
Did Mares and Hooper entertain me and add to my understanding of Vermont humor? St. Peter on a pogo stick! You bet they did! Did they define Vermont humor like Webster? They’ve lived in Vermont long enough to know better. They did give a few hints to help us put classic Vermont humor up a tree. What did they say in chapter one? “Dry, wry, understated.” And when they unloaded their truck, the humor that tumbled out fizzed with playful wit, but I agree with Danziger. He says in the foreword it’s easier to tell what Vermont humor is than what it is not. In my mind’s eye there is always a hint of mischief in the eye of the Vermont humorist looking back at me. It bespeaks an urge to tease but never to be unkind.
For me, the best Vermont humorists have always put themselves in the same boat with their audience. Theirs is not so much the idea that “the joke is on you,” as it is that “the joke is on all of us.” But what do I know? As the fella said in chapter three, “Not a damn thing.” Vermont humor remains something of a mystery to me. Maybe that’s good. A butterfly pinned to a board is nowhere near as pretty as one fluttering by on the breeze.
I Could Hardly Keep from Laughing by Don Hooper & Bill Mares. Rootstock Publishing, December 2021.
Reviewer bio: Alec W. Hastings is the author of Cap Pistols, Cardboard Sleds & Seven Rusty Nails: A Vermont Boyhood in Happy Valley. He grew up in the hill country of Vermont when Jersey cows still grazed the pastures and men in denim boiled sap in wood-fired evaporators.
Buy this book from our affiliate Bookshop.org.
Guest Post by Elda Pappadà.
I discovered P.K. Page about two years ago, and since then this talented, prolific writer has become one of my favorite poets. I was determined to read all her poetry books when I came across: Coal and Roses: Twenty-One Glosas. Glosa (Glose) is a Spanish form of poetry where the author quotes a quatrain from an existing poet and writes four ten-line stanzas with the four lines acting as a refrain in the final line of each stanza. Therefore, the first line from the quatrain would be the final line in the first stanza, and etc. The last word at the end of the sixth and ninth lines must also rhyme with the last word in the borrowed tenth line.
Coal & Roses was a captivating find. P. K. Page manages to keep the flow continuous and writes with such ease, originality, and skill. It is very interesting to see the final product. A Glosa can keep the same tone as the original quatrain or can take a whole new path and narrative. I tried my own hand at writing a Glosa and found it to be rather liberating with unlimited possibilities. The final product was unlike most poetry I have ever written.
Coal and Roses: Twenty-One Glosas by P. K. Page. The Porcupine’s Quill, 2009.
Reviewer bio: Elda Pappadà has self-published her first poetry book, Freedom – about love, loss, and understanding. Freedom is about finding meaning in the highs and lows of everyday life, to learn and even re-learn what we need to move forward. It’s about defining life and giving weight to everything we do.
Guest Post by Lailey Robbins.
Good Enough, written by Jen Petro-Roy, is a piece of fiction that sits comfortably between middle reader and young adult. It is quite a realistic piece of fiction with a profoundly honest and vulnerable look into the life of Riley, who is hospitalized for her struggles with anorexia nervosa. Through the story, we see her heal, stumble, and navigate through a realistically and maturely portrayed journey of recovery.
This work is nothing short of phenomenal. With its accessible language and mature-yet-realistic handling of the sensitive topics that it delves into, it is a must have. Petro-Roy, being a survivor of an eating disorder herself, offers sensitive and helpful insight into the life of recovery and the many struggles that come with it. This, alongside her brilliant character development and the portrayal of relationships within the work, home in on her wonderful style. Not only does the audience watch Riley change, grow, and heal, they are also able to watch her juggle both the friendships that she has made within the facility while simultaneously trying to keep her pre-hospitalization friendships alive.
However, the downfall of this novel lies within its conclusion. The ending is unsatisfying, for lack of better words, as there is no definite answer for what comes next. As the novel draws nearer to Riley’s release from the facility, the book ends, leaving the reader with a sense of confusion as the character that they had been expecting to see make a full recovery is still struggling. Though it is realistic to not know what comes next, especially when in recovery, the ending of this novel seems to disregard its stakes entirely, leaving the reader completely lost.
However, if you are one for open endings, this novel has many redeeming qualities that allow it to be a wonderful read.
Good Enough by Jen Petro-Roy. Feiwel & Friends, February 2019.
Reviewer bio: Lailey Robbins is a creative writing student from Salem College, North Carolina. Currently, she is working on a short story and a novel, with hopes to be published in the future.
Deadline: Rolling
Don’t forget 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 ebook 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 and submit via Submittable.
Winter is upon us and so is the new issue of The Writing Disorder. Find “Aesthetic Transmissions,” an interview with Robert Hass by George Guida; fiction by Robert Boucheron, Inez Hollander, Justin Reamer, Jeff Underwood, and more; poetry by Holly Day, Ash Ellison, Jonah Meyer, Bruce Parker, Frederick Pollack, and Kate Porter; nonfiction by Joan Frank, Donna Talarico, and Emilio Williams; and art by Nick Bryant.
Muscogee writer Cynthia Leitich Smith headlines the January 2022 issue with a reflective essay on “Decolonizing Neverland” in YA lit. Also inside, Fowzia Karimi finds a “small flame” of hope in Afghanistan, while other essays survey Vanuatu women writers, China’s minority fiction, and the new Van Gogh exhibition at the Dalí Museum. Additional highlights include interviews with African writers Masiyaleti Mbewe and Henrietta Rose-Innes, fiction from Iran and Japan, and poetry from Colombia, Ivory Coast, and Siberia. As always, more than twenty book reviews.
More info at World Literature Today website.
We are pleased to announce publication of Wordrunner eChapbooks‘ 44th issue, our Winter 2021 fiction echapbook: Arrest, Stories by Lazarus Trubman. A riveting and grimly comic collection, Arrest is the account of a Moldavian-Jewish dissident’s interrogation by the KGB, subsequent imprisonment in a labor camp, and a difficult emigration from the former Soviet Union with his family. The author’s life is the source for this fiction, narrated by a character named Trubman, a survivor scarred by his experience who finds a new home in the USA.
More info at the Wordrunner website.
$1200 Prize Each! Fiction & Poetry Prize Deadlines Extended through 1/24/22!
Extended Deadline: January 24, 2022
Extended deadlines for the Acacia Fiction Prize and Saguaro Poetry Prize! Each winner receives $1,200 and publication + 20 copies. Fiction Judge is Gabino Iglesias. Poetry Judge is Wendy Barnes. Send us your polished manuscripts. See our website for full details.
This winter’s new issue of The Shore marks our third full year of publication! In it is glistening poetry by Shannon K. Winston, Marlo Starr, Lynne Ellis, Kyle Vaughn, Eunice Lee, Lauren K. Carlson, Fatima Jafar, Taiwo Hassan, Stefanie Kirby, Charles Hensler, Simon Perchik, Stephen Ruffus, Kathryn Knight Sonntag, Amy Williams, Meghan Kemp-Gee, Matthew Murrey, David Dodd Lee, Lorrie Ness, Julia Schorr, Jake Bailey, Katie Kemple, C.C. Russell, Adam Deutsch, Nick Visconti, Andrea Krause, Sam Moe, Patrick Wright, Brittney Corrigan, and more. Find a full list of contributors at The Shore website.
Happy New Year from everyone at Press 53 and Prime Number Magazine! In our new issue you’ll find the judges for the 2022 Prime Number Magazine Awards for Poetry and Short Fiction; winners of our monthly 53-word Short Story Contest for October, November, and December; our 2021 nominees for the Pushcart Prize, poetry selected by LaWanda Walters; fiction selected by Michael Beadle; four authors highlighted in the Press 53 Spotlight; and the guest editors for Issue 227. More information at the Prime Number website.
The Fall/Winter 2022 issue of Concho River Review (36.2) opens with an Editor’s Note letting readers know they have online access to the full proceedings of the 25th Angelo State University Writers Conference in Honor of Elmer Kelton through the Angelo State University digital archives. This includes a transcript of the interview with Naomi Shihab Nye, the featured writer. Also in this issue is a tribute by Drew Geyer to writer and “Master Craftsman” Clay Reynolds, who passed away April 2022; he was a constant supporter and regular contributor to the publication since its first issue in 1987. Contributors to this issue are David Denny, Marlene Olin, David Pratt, Clay Reynolds, Jim Sanderson, C. D. Albin, Jeffrey Alfier, Tobi Alfier, Roy Bentley, Jonathan Bracker, Matthew Brennan, Camille Carter, Robert Cooperman, Johanna DeMay, Paul Dickey, E. P. Fisher, Stephen Gibson, Garret Keizer, Gunilla T. Kester, Gordon Kippola, Ulf Kirchdorfer, Nicholas Kriefall, Richard Krohn, Russell Rowland, Michael Salcman, John Schneider, George Searles, Matthew J. Spireng, Eric Fisher Stone, Elizabeth Sylvia, David Vancil, Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue, Francine Witte, Gladys Haunton, Melissa Musick, D. E. Steward, and Christopher Thornton.
To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers.
The January issue is out now featuring Gale Acuff, Marianne Brems, Frand De Canio, George Freek, Judith O’Connell Hoyer, Todd Mercer, Maren O. Mitchell, Ronald Moran, Pesach Rotem, Gant Tarbard, Rodney Wood. Review of Laura Kolbe’s Little Pharma.
More info at The Lake website.
Driftwood Press‘s latest short stories “Wing Breaker” by Rachel Phillippo and “Spanish Soap Operas Killed My Mother” by Dailihana Alfonseca take you from brutal arctic traditions to the cultural traumas of migrants in America. This issue also collects some of the most insightful and harrowing poetry being written today; these poems delve into illness, motherhood, religious pressure, and much more. Wrapping up the issue are visual arts and comics by Io Weurich, Kelsey M. Evans, SAMO Collective, Jim Still-Pepper, Andrew White, Kimball Anderson, & Casey Jo Stohrer. Now at the Driftwood Press website.
Our Wintry Mix. Creative nonfiction by Bree Smith, Dhaea Kang, Christine Muller, Benedicte Grima, and Virginia Petrucci; flash by Eliot Li, Gabriella Souza, Cassie Burkhardt, and others; fiction by Amy Savage, Kim Magowan, and Maggie Hill; and poetry by Peter Grandbois, Kelley White, Brenda Taulbee, and more. Learn about this issue’s visual work at the Cleaver Magazine website.
This issue of Big Muddy includes work by Brian Baumgart, August B. Clark, Charlotte Covey, Mark Fabiano, Doris Ferleger, Spencer Fleury, Jennifer Gravely, Ian T. Hall, D.E. Kern, Bronson Lemer, Paul Luikart, Leah Mccormack, Matt Mcgowan, Luke Rolfes, Rosalia Scalia, Christine Stewart-Nuñez, Katie Strine, Rachel Tramonte, Carol Tyx, Christian Vazquez, Daniel Webre, Adam D. Weeks, Holden Tyler Wright, and Kirby Michael Wright.
Find more info at the Big Muddy website.
Iron City Magazine celebrates the launch of Issue 6! This will be a virtual event featuring readings, art, and a live Q&A.
Join friends, contributors, and editors of Iron City Magazine: Creative Expressions By and For the Incarcerated as they present work from the latest issue.
Iron City Magazine highlights voices of often silenced writers and artists.
Iron City Magazine is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. This publication is made possible by the generous grant awards from the Ibis Foundation of Arizona and AZ Humanities.
Enjoy this virtual launch on Iron City Magazine’s YouTube channel.
Glass Mountain hosts their annual Boldface Writers’ Conference. Attendees are invited to enter the Robertson Prize after revising their work. Winners of this free contest (one per genre) receive $100 and publication in Glass Mountain. This year’s winners are included in Volume 27.
Winners
“Four Yelp Reviews (After J. Bradley)” by Robin Burns
“The Masseuse” by John Cai
“An Obituary for the Ginko Berry Tree in Drexel” by Coutney DuChen
Learn more about the Boldface Conference here.
Deadline: January 14, 2022
$2,500 honorarium and book publication: Submit book-length collection of poems to the Colorado Prize for Poetry by January 14, 2022 (we will observe a 5-day grace period). $25 reading fee (add $3 to submit online) includes subscription to Colorado Review. Final judge is Gillian Conoley; 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 coloradoprize.colostate.edu or Colorado Prize for Poetry, Center for Literary Publishing, 9105 Campus Delivery, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523-9105.
Did you know Chestnut Review offers a chance to win free feedback on select Fridays?
Follow the lit mag on Twitter, tweet #freefeedbackfriday on the first Friday of each month, and you’ll be entered to win a free critique on your submission. The next free Friday will take place on January 7, so get your writing ready.
There’s a lot of December 31 and January 15 deadlines below! Don’t miss out on these submission opportunities.
Don’t forget our weekly newsletter has been moved to Substack. If you haven’t seen it in your inbox for a few weeks, please add [email protected] to your safe senders list! Also, newsletter subscribers currently get first access to the latest submission opportunities, upcoming literary events, program news, and a whole lot more, so do subscribe.
Continue reading “Weekly Round-up of Calls & Contests :: December 31, 2021”
Deadline: March 14, 2022
$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.
If you like themed lit mag issues, we’ve got some recommendations!
Each issue of THEMA focuses on one themed prompt. The Autumn 2021 issue’s theme is “Which Virginia?” Twenty contributors try their hand at exploring this Virginian theme.
While not quite a theme, Hanging Loose does feature a selection of high school aged writers in each issue. Issue 111 includes work by eleven different high school writers who close out the issue.
Bennington Review‘s Summer 2021 issue focuses on a theme that’s probably on most of our minds right now: The Health of the Sick. Michael Dumanis’s note from the editor explains, “Many of the pieces in this issue of Bennington Review display a keen awareness of the vulnerability of the human body, physically, emotionally, and psychologically.” The theme “borrows its title from Argentine writer Julio Cortázar’s underappreciated 1966 short story . . . “
Issue 22 of The Common includes a portfolio of writing from the Arabian Gulf introduced by Deepak Unnikrishnan. This includes fiction by Tariq Al Haydar, Farah Ali, and others; essays by Mona Kareem, Keija Parssinen, and Priyanka Sacheti; and poetry by Hala Alyan, Rewa Zeinati, Zeina Hashem Beck, and more.
AGNI Number 94 brings readers a portfolio of work in translation. You can expect to find work by Azzurra D’Agostino translated by Johanna Bishop, Yi Won translated by E. J. Koh & Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello, Ananda Devi translated by Kazim Ali, and much more.
Finally, The Missouri Review asks the question “How did I get here?” in the Fall 2021 issue, the theme inspired by “Once in a Lifetime” by the Talking Heads.
Visit each literary magazine to show some support and learn more about these issues.
Deadline: January 31, 2022
Ethos Literacy—a nonprofit literacy program—is still accepting entries to its 3rd Annual Short Short Story Contest. 100-word limit on one of these topics: chewing gum, horror movies, skyscrapers, or tubas. Cash prizes: Best in Contest: $250; Best Youth Prize (14 years or younger): $100; 4 Best of Category: $100; People’s Choice $100. Publication in a digital magazine + webcast of winners reading their stories. Submission fee: $10. Proceeds support literacy programs for teens and adults. Learn more at their website.
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 ebook 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 authorsLi encouraged, bonus points for a Midwest connection. Now paying; limited no-fee submissions available each month. Full guidelines, F.A.Q., and link to submit here: stormcellar.org/submit.
Next month, Cleaver begins their Winter 2022 Workshops. The magazine’s senior editors are bringing writers EKPHRASTIC POETRY: The Art of Words on Art with Poetry editor Claire Oleson, UNSHAPING THE ESSAY: Experimental Forms in Creative Nonfiction with Creative Nonfiction editor Sydney Tammarine, and WRITE, REVISE, PUBLISH! Flash and Microfiction Practice with Flash editor Kathryn Kulpa.
These all take place online. Workshops are capped at twelve registrants.
Learn more about the upcoming workshops here and register through Submittable.
Happy holidays! Hopefully you have some time to kick back and relax before jumping into keeping your submissions goals strong. NewPages will be on our annual winter break next week but have no fear as we still have goodies coming your way; stay tuned to our blog and social media accounts. Plus, if you haven’t already, subscribe to our weekly newsletter (now on Substack). Subscribers currently get a first look at opportunities before they are on our site.
If you are subscribed but haven’t seen our newsletter in a few weeks, please don’t forget to add [email protected] to your safe senders list. You can view our archive of recent newsletters via the Substack link above.
Continue reading “Weekly Round-up of Calls & Contests :: December 24, 2021”
Event Dates: January 10-15, 2022
Event Location: Virtual
18th Annual Virtual Palm Beach Poetry Festival, January 10-15, 2022. Focus on your work with America’s most engaging and award-winning poets. Workshops with Kim Addonizio, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Chard deNiord, Mark Doty, Yona Harvey, John Murillo, Matthew Olzmann, and Diane Seuss. One-On-One Conferences with Lorna Blake, Sally Bliumis Dunn, Nickole Brown, Jessica Jacobs, and Angela Narciso Torres. A special Craft Talk by Kwame Dawes, Special Guest Poet, Yusef Komunyakaa. Poet-at-Large, Aimee Nezhukumatathil. To find out more, visit www.palmbeachpoetryfestival.org. Individual event tickets as well as full conference packages still available.
Deadline: January 15, 2022
Background: The contest is in honor of Emma Howell who was born in Portland, Oregon, and died in 2001, at the age of twenty. She left behind a single volume of poetry: Slim Night of Recognition. This prize is an effort to promote the publication of young poets, to honor Emma’s memory, as well as honor the time and effort her father, Christopher Howell, former Director of Willow Springs Books, has put into our press. Prize: $2,000 + manuscript publication. Eligibility: Poets 35 years old and younger who have not yet published a book-length poetry manuscript. Submit: bit.ly/3aE00R3.
The last Book Stand of 2021 is here! Stop by and learn about this month’s featured titles below.
In Animal Disorders, Deborah Thompson relates her own complicity in some of the disordered approaches to nonhuman animals, including such practices as pet-keeping, animal hoarding, animal sacrifice (both religious and scientific), magical thinking, and grieving.
Art Essays, edited by Alexandra Kingston-Reese, is a passionate collection of the best essays on the visual arts written by award-winning writers such as Zadie Smith, Chris Kraus, Teju Cole, Orhan Pamuk, and Jhumpa Lahiri.
In Chris Linforth’s The Distortions we glimpse a pageant of characters struggling to understand their lives after the dissolution of Yugoslavia.
Through stories, secrets and memories experienced, read, heard, reimagined and remixed, Ra Malika Imhotep’s gossypiin reckons with a peculiar yet commonplace inheritance of violation, survival, and self-possession.
Temple University Press has recently released Invisible People by Alex Tizon in paperback. This book collects the best of Tizon’s rich, empathetic accounts.
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.
Books by Hippocampus has announced you can still pre-order their next two anthologies Ink and Main whose production and release has sadly been delayed.
Ink a part of The Way Things Were series which celebrates print media—magazines and newspapers—from the pre-digital age. You’ll find essays taking you from the newsroom to production. Each piece sharing a common thread of how people and publications built community, impacted change, celebrated local milestones, or mourned national tragedies. Contributors include Nancy Brewka-Clark, Richard Fellinger, Andrea Frantz, Timothy Kenny, Magin LaSov Gregg, Richard LeBlond, Nina B. Lichtenstein, Kate Meadows, Anthony J. Mohr, Judy S. Richardson, Marsh Rose, Roxanna Ross, and Laura Stanfill.
Main is also part of The Way Things Were series with a focus of celebrating small town America. It features twelve stories about the stories, services, and specialty shops that once ruled Main Street America. Contributors share how these family businesses defined and redefined themselves and how these endeavors evolved over time. Enjoy work by Lindsay Gelay-Akins, Joan Taylor Cehn, Christopher Cocca, Kimberly Ence, Nina Gaby, Linda Hansell, Melissa Hart, Kristine Kopperud, Dyann Nashton, Kelly Garriott Waite, Suzanne Samuels, and Melissa Scholes Young.
You can also purchase these anthologies in cost-saving a bundle! Get your copies here.
