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 latest issue of Blue Mountain Review has plenty to offer readers! Literary interviews featuring Chen Chen, Jose Hernandez Diax, Diane Goettel, Chip Delany, and more; music interviews with Pat Metheny, Adam Gussow, and others; and visual arts interviews with Daniel McClendon and Natalia Anciso.
Deadline: September 1, 2021
Event Dates: Oct. 13-17, 2021
Event Location: Lodge at Whitehawk Ranch in the Lost Sierras near Clio, California.
A generative and restorative writing retreat at the Lodge at Whitehawk Ranch in California facilitated by Carolyn Dawn Flynn, the Story Catalyst, acclaimed novelist, memoirist, and TEDx speaker; and poet, essayist, and novelist Jona Kottler. Let the pristine forest of California’s Lost Sierras be your inspiration for this generative and restorative retreat for writers of fiction and creative nonfiction. This retreat will help you deepen and refine your work. Participants receive an extensive editorial letter and individual consultations with a mentor. The cuisine and the landscape will be sumptuous, and there will be time to write! carolynflynn.com/sierra-writing-retreat-2021/
At the end of every Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review issue is the “4×4” section. Here, four writers are asked the same four questions in a series of quickfire mini-interviews.
This year’s questions touch on corresponding with other writers, solitude and writing, finding a balance of beneficial and less beneficial reading, and how shock-resistant each poet’s writing process is. The writers interviewed are Noor Hindi, Hailey Leithauser, Cheswayo Mphanza, and Jon Kelly Yenser.
Work by these four poets can also be found in the 2020 issue.
Extended Deadline: June 30, 2021
Winner receives $1,500, publication, twenty-five copies, and promotional support. All full-length fiction manuscripts welcome, including novels; novellas; collections of stories, flash fiction, short-shorts; and linked collections. There is no maximum length. To submit, please access our convenient online submission manager. Final judge is Kristen Arnett, the NYT bestselling author of Mostly Dead Things (Tin House, 2019).
View the full June 2021 eLitPak Newsletter.
Registration Deadline: August 21, 2021
Online Writers Conference hosted by Woodhall Press. Mission: to discover and support emerging writers. Featuring keynote by Gina Barreca; Introduction to Short Forms with Tom Hazuka and Darien Gee; Live Editing with Allison Williams; Openings and Hooks with Alena Dillon; Poetry with Charles Rafferty; Prose Writing with Eugenia Kim; and Screen Stories with Shelley Evans.
View the full June 2021 eLitPak Newsletter.
Apple in the Dark is seeking works of fiction and creative nonfiction no longer than 1,500 words apiece. Work submitted by August 15 will be considered for our Fall 2021 issue. Submit through Duotrope. For more info, visit our website.
View the full June 2021 eLitPak Newsletter.
Join your fellow writers at the virtual 5th Annual Taos, New Mexico, Writers Conference on Zoom. Panel presentation on “Writing about Race, Class, Culture & Gender” plus over 20 workshops in all genres. Faculty include: Frank X Walker, CMarie Fuhrman, Levi Romero, Ari Honarvar, Stephanie Han, Jeremy Paden, Margaret Garcia and many more. Go to our website, call 575-758-0081, or email us.
View the full June 2021 eLitPak Newsletter.
Deadline June 30, 2021
Winning Writers will award a grand prize of $5,000 in its seventh annual North Street Book Prize competition, and $13,750 in all. Co-sponsored by BookBaby and Carolyn Howard-Johnson. Recommended by Reedsy and the Alliance of Independent Authors. $65 entry fee. Submit online or by mail. View full guidelines at our website.
View the full June 2021 eLitPak Newsletter.
Pursue graduate study during an intensive six-week summer session. Programs are available in: Children’s Book Writing & Illustrating; Children’s Literature (MA or MFA); Playwriting (MFA); Screenwriting & Film Studies (MA); Screenwriting (MFA). This summer courses will be offered virtually from June 21 – July 30. For more information, visit our website or call (540) 362-6575.
View the full June 2021 eLitPak Newsletter.
Guest Post by Natalie Hess.
What an incredible novel. Laini Taylor’s writing is so beautiful and dreamy and adventurous, which makes this book so much fun. All a reader needs to know about the plot going into it is that it follows a boy named Lazlo Strange who has an obsession for this city referred to as Weep, the real name of which has been lost. Someone from Weep comes to find people who can help the city out of trouble, and Lazlo finally gets to visit this city of his dreams and discover what it truly means to be a dreamer.
Readers make discoveries alongside Lazlo; see the beauty of Weep and what it could be, as well as the horrible things that have happened there; and learn about the past of all the characters. We truly get to know these characters and care for all of them, even the “bad guys,” creating such a roller coaster of emotion and wonder and longing for all of it to be real. Every single aspect of this book was mind blowing and I absolutely cannot wait to read the sequel!
Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor. Little, Brown and Company, March 2017.
Reviewer bio: I’m Natalie Hess and I’m simply a high school student who LOVES reading everything from scifi to romance to nonfiction and everything in between. I also love sharing my thoughts and I hope you enjoy!
Buy this book from our affiliate Bookshop.org.
Get 15% off your first class at WritingWorkshops.com. Our classes are inclusive and intentionally small; offered on a rolling basis throughout the year; and taught by award-winning authors, agents, and editors. Use code NEWPAGES at checkout—but hurry, our upcoming classes are almost full! Discount expires 7/1/2021. Visit our website.
View the full June 2021 eLitPak Newsletter.
Don’t forget to check out these great new titles due out this summer from James Braziel, Mark Budman, Daren Dean, William Gay, and Terence Gallagher. We will have open reading once more in mid-August. Fiction only.
View the full June 2021 eLitPak Newsletter.
Carve accepts submissions all year round, from anywhere in the world. We pay the writers we publish ($100 for fiction; $50 for nonfiction/poetry) and have generous word count limits: up to 10,000 for fiction/nonfiction and 2,000 for poetry. We publish all three genres in print, and fiction is also published online. Submit your best work today!
View the full June 2021 eLitPak Newsletter.
Early Placement Application Deadline: August 1 for November entry.
Spalding’s nationally distinguished low-residency MFA is the most affordable of the top-tier programs. Explore across genres, study one-on-one with outstanding faculty, gain editorial experience on Good River Review, and develop a lifelong writing community. Fiction; poetry; creative nonfiction; writing for children and young adults; writing for TV, screen, and stage; and professional writing. Certificate and Master of Arts in Writing also available. Scholarships, assistantships.
View the full June 2021 eLitPak Newsletter.
Happy Publication Month to Diode authors Shanta Lee Gander (GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA), Sally Rosen Kindred (WHERE THE WOLF), Conor Bracken (THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY IS ME), Teow Lim Goh (FARAWAY PLACES), Joey S. Kim (BODY FACTS), Natasha Sajé (SPECIAL DELIVERY), Amorak Huey & W. Todd Kaneko (SLASH / SLASH), Tyler Mills & Kendra DeColo (LOW BUDGET MOVIE)!
View the full June 2021 eLitPak Newsletter.
Bellevue Literary Review annually hosts the BLR Prizes for “writing related to themes of health, healing, illness, the mind, and the body.” The winner of each genre receives $1000, the honorable mention receives $250, and all are published in the spring issue. This year’s spring issue was recently released featuring the 2021 winners.
Winners
“Tattoos” by Galen Schram (Fiction)
“The Tapeworm” by Amy V. Blakemore (Nonfiction)
“Never the Less” by Saleem Hue Penny (Poetry)
Honorable Mentions
“Admonition” by Benjamin Kessler (Fiction)
“Viable” by Justine Feron (Nonfiction)
“Yellowthroat” by Eileen Elizabeth Waggoner (Poetry)
Submissions for this year’s prizes are currently open until July 15. Visit the journal’s website to learn more.
Able Muse is hosting a reading with the authors of The Powow River Poets Anthology II on Sunday, June 27 from 3-4PM EDT. The anthology was published by Able Muse Press in January 2021.
The Powow River Poets are a gathering of widely published, award-winning New England Poets, centered in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Their members are also from the Boston area and as far away as New York and Maine. 27 of these writers, including Rhina P. Espaillat, A.M. Juster, and Deborah Warren, are represented in the second edition of this anthology.
The reading is hosted by anthology editor Paulette Demers Turco and features Rhina P. Espaillat, Michael Cantor, M. Frost Delaney, Jean L. Kreiling, Alfred Nicol, and Anton Yakovlev. There will also be a Q&A session with the editor and authors.
The reading is free to attend via Zoom, but you do need to RSVP.
Literary magazine Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, edited by Duriel E. Harris, is now the host and curator of @Salon. Founded in 2011, @Salon is an interdisciplinary event welcoming artists and art enthusiasts to come together for conversation, poetry, spoken word, music, sound, performance, and visual and digital art. Obsidian‘s @Salon welcomes Black writers and artists and their allies to come together for conversation and exchange.
This year’s event QPlayaz|QPride @Salon 2021 will take place virtually viz Zoom on Tuesday, June 22 starting at 5:30PM PT/7:30PM CT/8:30PM ET.
Interdisciplinary artist and writer Ronaldo V. Wilson is the Play Leader and Playaz include Vidhu Aggarwal, Lucas de Lima, Dawn Lundy Martin, and Angela Peñaredondo. This event launches Obsidian‘s call for Genderqueer/Genrequeer Playground special issue curated by Wilson with an interactive poetry reading and mixed-genre queer conversation.
QPlaya-ground will feature rounds of verbal four square, double d-iz-utch, and tag between participants. RSVP here (did I mention it’s free?).
Extended Deadline: June 30, 2021
The 2021 Tiferet Writing Contest is extending the deadline to submit unpublished poems, stories, and essays to June 30. One prize winner and two honorable mentions will be awarded in each category. The prize winners receive $500 and publication in Tiferet. A $20 fee is required for each entry. You may enter up to six poems, stories of up to 3,000 words, and essays and interviews up to 3,000 words. Our judges for this contest are Christine Valters Paintner (poetry), Laraine Herring (nonfiction), and Murzban F. Schroff (fiction). Learn more at tiferetjournal.com/2021-writing-contest/.
Guest Post by Milena Marques-Zachariah.
India is a paradox. To harness the nuances that create its vast and varied canvas and give them life in print can be challenging. But not for a gifted writer like Murzban Shroff, who chose to get embedded in India’s remote villages to unearth India’s heart. It is against this background mostly that his haunting stories play out. Shroff tells his stories with a visceral understanding of human behavior, reeling you in page by page, to mirror the lived realities of people: in villages, in slums, in hill towns, in cities. For further heft, he draws on ancient Indian epics and texts to reveal the spiritual truths of India.
Shroff’s prose is skillfully layered, yielding stories that are gripping and thought-provoking, while exploring issues and social tensions rooted in caste and communal identities. Starting with the first story, the “Kitemaker’s Dilemma” and ending with “An Invisible Truth,” the collection uncoils with an agonizing sense of drama and inevitability. With insights as powerful as Shiva’s third eye, Shroff forages through the attitudes, quirks, and insecurities of his characters to create situations that are uncomfortably real. His women are strong and unafraid, empowered and empowering, as evident in stories like “A Rather Strange Marriage” and “Third Eye Rising.” My personal favorites: “Bhikoo Badshah’s Poison” for its exploration of caste and migrant identities, “Diwali Star” for its family politics, and “A Matter of Misfortune” for its gritty depiction of human greed. By inviting readers into unseen spaces of India, Third Eye Rising makes for a compelling read—from the first story to the last.
Third Eye Rising by Murzban F. Shroff. Spuyten Duyvil, January 2021.
Reviewer bio: Milena Marques-Zachariah is an accomplished advertising writer, columnist, and blogger, whose writings are hugely popular with the South Asian immigrant community in Canada. Her blog ‘Canadian Chronicles’ documents the challenges and successes of immigrants to Canada, while ‘Chasing the Perfect Curry’ is a food adventure blog, where she explores off-the-beaten-path places to enjoy authentic cuisines of the Konkan Coast. She is also the founder of Radio Mango, a Toronto-based broadcast service, and has interviewed eminent authors such as Pico Iyer and Anosh Irani.
Buy this book from our affiliate Bookshop.org.
Deadline: July 15, 2021
Xu Xi is this year’s Adrift Short Story Contest guest judge. The winning story receives $500, ten copies of the issue in which their story appears, and a featured interview. Runner-ups receive $200, five copies, and a featured interview. All stories read for the contest are considered for publication, which means your likelihood of publication and placing in the contest is much higher. For our 2019 contest, we selected three stories to publish. Traci Brimhall heads up the Adrift Chapbook Contest this year! This contest winner will be awarded $500, a royalties contract, twenty copies of their chapbook, and an interview to be published alongside their chapbook.
The summer 2021 issue of West Trade Review features fiction by Desmond Fuller and Gregory Borse; poetry by Gina Marie Bernard, Monica Mills, Gaven Wallace, Anna Zwade, Yasmina Martin, Ann Weil, John M. Davis, KG Newman, Mara Lee Grayson, Mark Seidl, Kakie Pate, Jessica Hudson, Marc Frazier and Lance Le Gyrs; creative nonfiction by Amy Bowers, and much more.
Radar Poetry 30 is here! Featuring poetry by Lisa Creech Bledsoe, Brendan Constantine, Jason B. Crawford, Ja’net Danielo, Ann DeVilbiss, Sheila Dong, David Donna, Margaret Draft, Amy Dryansky, William Fargason, Robert Krut, Romana Iorga, Amy Lerman, Carolyn Oliver, Justin Rigamonti, and more.
June’s Plume featured selection is “Jen Sperry Steinorth: On Creating and Claiming Space with Her Read” by Amanda Newell. Jane Zwart reviews Worldly Things by Michael Kleber-Diggs. In nonfiction: “The Solid Objects of Stagnant Empires” by Irina Mashinski.
Deadline: September 1, 2021
Interim is looking for women’s writing that explores the meaning and ethics of place in the broadest sense of the word, writing that seeks location as dwelling and indwelling simultaneously so as better to know what it means to belong somewhere. Speaking of the house, in The Poetics of Space Bachelard claims “all really inhabited space bears the essence of the notion of home.” Send poems, essays, flash fiction, and/or hybrid forms that play with notions of place for our fourth all women’s print anthology, forthcoming in December, 2021. Because we believe the truth is experimental, we’ll especially appreciate work with innovative approaches. $4 fee.
In this issue, find poetry by contest winners Saleem Hue Penny and Eileen Elizabeth Waggoner, as well as Stephanie Berger, Joanne Godley, Haolun Xu, Kwame Dawes, Chelsea Bunn, Kai Coggin, Pooja Mittal Biswas, and more; fiction contest winners Galen Schram and Benjamin Kessler as well as James Prier, Douglas Fenn Wilson, Jacob R. Weber, Emily Saso, Hadley Leggett, Moshe Zvi Marvit, and David Allan Cates. Read more at the Bellevue Literary Review website.
“It’s the best writing conference you’ve ever attended, in book form!”
Books by HippoCampus is excited to announce the publication of an anthology inspired by HippoCamp, an annual nonfiction conference, dedicated to writing creative nonfiction and what it means to be a writer who tells true stories.
Getting to the Truth: The Craft and Practice of Creative Nonfiction, edited by Rae Pagliarulo and Donna Talarico, is set to be released on August 11 and will be available for pre-orders on July 5. It features 20+ craft essays offering thoughtful insights from some of the highest rated HippoCamp speakers. It also features wise writers behind some of Hippocampus Magazine‘s most-read craft columns.
Speaking of HippoCamp, they have released the full schedule for this year’s conference set to to take place August 13-15 in Lancaster, PA. As of this writing, there are only 80 spots currently available.
The latest issue of The 2River View, Summer 2021, is out with poems by Ted Kooser, Matthew Freeman, Will Harmon, Sheree La Puma, Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Matthew Murrey, Benjamin Nash, Karen June Olson, Charles Rafferty, SM Stubbs, Diane Thiel, and Sally Van Doren.
Extended Deadline: June 30, 2021
Winner receives $1,500, publication, twenty-five copies, and promotional support. All full-length fiction manuscripts are welcome, including novels, novellas, collections of stories, flash fiction, short-shorts, and linked collections. Full-length fiction manuscripts tend to be at least 30,000 words. There is no maximum length. To submit, please access our convenient online submission manager. Final judge is Kristen Arnett, the NYT bestselling author of Mostly Dead Things (Tin House, 2019), one of The New York Times top books of 2019 and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction.
On Friday, it was announced that poet Natalie Diaz won the Pulitzer for her second book of poems Postcolonial Love Poem. Diaz spoke about her book with The Arizona Republic, saying, “I knew that I wanted my body, the places I’ve come from, the people I come from, to be of consequence to the world and to kind of bring our perspectives and conversations to bear in our larger national conversations.”
Writing on the Indigenous experience, she explains her poetic viewpoint, “I, of course, have an Indigenous lens, but yet I think that Indigenous lens is extremely important to non-Indigenous peoples. We’re all fighting for our water. We’re all fighting for this Earth, for one another against injustice.”
See what else she said about the winning collection here.
Back in October of 2020, we let you know that Spalding University’s School of Creative and Professional Writing was launching online literary magazine Good River Review in 2021. Well, the first issue has officially launched!
The first issue features prose by Rigoberto González, Pico Iyer, Brian Leung, Chris Offutt, and Julie Ann Stewart; lyric by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, Alan Chazaro, Molly Peacock, Charlotte Pence, J.D. Schraffenberger, Evie Shockley, Katerina Stoykova, and Claire Wahmanholm; and drama by Ifa Bayeza and Kia Corthron.
They also feature book reviews of Dinty W. Moore’s To Hell with It: Of Sin and Sex, Chicken Wings, and Dante’s Entirely Ridiculous, Needlessly Guilt-Inducing Inferno; Zadie Smith’s Intimations; and Julia Phillips’s Disappearing Earth. Under “The Practice of Writing” heading, they feature an excerpt of Felicia Rose Chavez’s Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom.
You will also find interviews with Keven Willmott, Lydia Millet, and Pico Iyer.
Between their biannual issues, they will regularly feature book reviews, interviews, and essays on the practice of writing, along with other important literary news. Swing by their listing on NewPages to learn more and don’t forget to read their inaugural issue!
Their submissions period is open and ongoing and they do accept work written for children and young adults, too! Since they love work that doesn’t fit neatly into genre categories, that is why they publish work under the headings of prose, drama, and lyric.
Want to check out some work by writers from specific regions? Three recent literary magazine issues have you covered.
The Common‘s 21st issue includes a feature on Arabic Stories from Morocco. In this section is translated writing and art from the Hindiyeh Museum of Art by Latifa Labsir, Fatima Zohra Rghioui, Mohamed Zafzaf, and more.
Volume 42 Number 1 of New England Review‘s translation feature is “From Granma to Boston and Havana and Back: Cuban Literature Today.” Here, find work by Víctor Fowler Calzada, Jorge Enrique Lage, Anna Lidia Vega Serova, and others.
And from within the United States, Rattle‘s Summer 2021 issue features twenty-two Appalachian poets. Among these are Ace Boggess, Mitzi Doton, Kari Gunter-Seymour, Raymond Hammond, Elaine Fowler Palencia, and more.
Cutleaf is an online journal published twice monthly. It’ a project of EastOver Press, an independent literary press specializing in collections of short stories, essays, and poetry. The first issue officially launched in February 2021 with “How Gretel Gets Her Groove Back” by Lauren K. Alleyne, “Sliders” by Wesley Browne, and “Eat Before You Go” by E.C. Salibian.
They feature fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and cross-genre work by both new and established writers. Issue 10 published in June 2021 features poetry by George Ella Lyon, fiction by Kevin Fitton, and nonfiction by Matt Muilenberg.
They will reopen to submissions in September 2021. Until then, browse their current issue and their back issues for an idea of what they are looking for.
Stop by their listing on NewPages to learn more.
Whether you can run a marathon doesn’t matter, since this marathon is about writing poetry! And while it’s all community and no competition, that doesn’t mean it’s “easy” to complete. To cross the finish line, participants must write one poem every hour for either 12 hours for one of the two half marathons or 24 hours for the full marathon. Prompts are provided but don’t need to be followed, and it is okay to ‘catch up’ if you can’t post on each hour, but there is no advance posting. Each participant posts their poems on a WordPress login within the group site and can read and respond to others’ poems.
This event is not for the flippant – “Oh yeah, maybe I will try it…” In order to register for the event, you must explain what you plan to do to ‘prepare’ yourself for the day. After several years of completing the half marathon, I have learned it works best to clear my schedule for the day, plan to only do work around the house, and check in at the top of every hour for the new prompt. Sometimes I can respond quickly, and other times, I need more think time, which means setting an alarm to remind myself to post before the hour is up. It is indeed a commitment, and can feel stressful and frustrating at times, but the sense of accomplishment is worth it – having a dozen or two new poems and interacting with about 500 other like-minded poetry lovers from around the globe!
Registration if free and open until June 19. The marathon takes place Saturday, June 26 starting at 9am in the morning. The half marathons run from 9am to 9pm or 9pm to 9am, and the full marathon runs from 9am Saturday until 9am Sunday.
In the table of contents of Arts & Letters latest issue, the heading “Unclassifiable” caught my eye, promising a walk off the beaten path. This section features the winner of the journal’s annual Unclassifiable Contest.
When I paged to this winning piece—”Voidopolis” by Kat Mustatea—I was greeted with a series of photos with accompanying text. This excerpt is from a project Mustatea began on an Instagram page, loosely retelling Dante’s Inferno. Throughout this 46-part series, Mustatea never uses words with the letter “E.” This combined with the format of the photo-sharing app gave me a burst of inspiration to try new things and to challenge myself while doing it.
There is just enough included in the issue to hook the reader along and lead them to check out the rest of the story on Mustatea’s Instagram. The project has ended, so there’s no wait for new readers to reach the conclusion. Step away from the usual, the classifiable, and check out this piece in the Spring 2021 issue of Arts & Letters.
Find the winners of EVENT‘s 2020 Non-Fiction Contest in their latest issue.
First Place
“Our Lives” by Alexis Pooley
Second Place
“Differences” by Madeline Sonik
Third Place
“Sea Monsters Revealed” by Adrienne Gruber
Judge Madhur Anand introduces the winners with an essay on judging nonfiction. Print and digital copies of this issue are available at EVENT‘s website.
Caesura Poetry Workshop aims to support, inspire, educate, and energize poets of all backgrounds through affordable Zoom workshops hosted by award-winning poet, editor, and writing coach John Sibley Williams. Workshops include poem analysis, active group discussion, writing prompts, poem critiques, and plenty of writing time. Come join our growing community! Upcoming classes include Mastering Traditional Forms: Haiku, Sonnet, Ghazal & Pantoum (four sessions in July & August), Marketing Your Small Press Book (August 21, 1-4pm PT), and others. 1-1 personalized workshops, coaching, and manuscript critiques to keep you writing and inspired also available. More information: www.johnsibleywilliams.com/upcoming-classes. To register, email [email protected].
Haunted Waters Press features online content including fiction, poetry, author interviews, and occasional news from the press itself in SPLASH!
They have recently published an interview with Emergency Room doctor and writer Rachel Mallalieu whose work has been featured in SPLASH! as well as in the 2020 issue of their literary magazine From the Depths, which is currently open to submissions along with their annual fiction anthology Tin Can Literary Review through August 31.
Just start writing. It doesn’t have to be perfect; in fact, it won’t be. But if it doesn’t find its way to paper, the poem will never exist. . . . First and foremost, you’re writing for you! Don’t be held back by other’s expectations.
Mallalieu talks about her introduction to poetry, writing schedule, how the pandemic has affected her as a writer, what she’d say to a young poet, and what she’d tell her younger self. At the end of the interview there’s even a fun “Lightning Round” of 10 bonus questions from what bores Mallalieu (TV!) to which fictional place she’d love to visit (Narnia!).
Check out the interview here and read her poems “The Taste of Grief” and “A History of Resurrection.” If you’re thirsty for more, pick up the 2020 issue.
Deadline: June 30, 2021
A prize of $1,500 and publication by Barrow Street Press is given annually for a poetry collection. A. Van Jordan will judge. Submit a manuscript of 50 to 80 pages with a $25 entry fee ($28 for electronic submissions) by June 30. Visit the website for complete guidelines: barrowstreet.org/press/submit/.
Guest Post by Tanushree Baidya.
Set in Havana, Cuba, The Playwright’s House is an expansive yet intimate novel about a young lawyer Serguey and his family when their father Felipe, a notable theater director, is detained by state security, disrupting the mirage of personal ambition and stability that Serguey has worked towards. The novel delves deep into the history and socio-political landscape of Cuba in the early aughts and highlights the fragility of individual rights under an authoritarian and oppressive regime. The seamless confluence and meditation of art, history, architecture, the power of social media activism, and the influence of the Catholic Church makes this political thriller an intriguing and illuminating read.
This is an impressive debut novel and second book by Cuban-American writer Dariel Suarez. It was nice to read a novel about a country often mischaracterized and exoticized in American culture. Along with Serguey, Suarez renders the multi-dimensionality of other characters, be it the hot-headed brother Victor, or the headstrong sisters Anabel (Serguey’s wife) and Alida, or the absent father Felipe, with incredible nuance and specificity. Leaving Cuba seems like an inevitable decision that Serguey will have to eventually make, for his choices are grim. But whether or not he does keeps you hooked until the very end.
The Playwright’s House by Dariel Suarez. Red Hen Press, June 2021.
Reviewer bio: Tanushree Baidya is a writer and an analyst. Her work has appeared in WBUR, Kweli, Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere. She grew up in India and now lives in Cambridge, MA.
Buy this book from our affiliate Bookshop.org.
Deadline: June 30, 2021
CHESTNUT REVIEW (“for stubborn artists”) invites submissions year round of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, art, and photography. We offer free submissions for poetry (3 poems), flash fiction (<1000 words), and art/photography (20 images); $5 submissions for fiction/nonfiction (<5k words), or 4-6 poems. Published artists receive $100 and a copy of the annual anthology of four issues (released each summer). Notification in <30 days or submission fee refunded. We appreciate stories in every genre we publish. All issues free online which illustrates what we have liked, but we are always ready to be surprised by the new! The reading period for the Fall issue ends June 30. Any pieces submitted after that will be considered for our Winter 2021 issue. chestnutreview.com
Guest Post by Natalie Hess.
All I can say is wow. The amount of whimsy and magic in this book blew my mind. It follows a girl named Celia and a boy named Marco who are forced to fight each other in a magical competition which they are bound to until someone wins. Here’s the catch: neither of them are told any rules or boundaries and this competition takes place in a circus which travels all around the world, and is only open at night. This circus is so magical and mysterious that it captures the attention of all who are introduced to it, making them want to revisit it as much as possible, including the reader.
The way Morgenstern describes every little detail brings this world to life so much, and I couldn’t help but wish it were real. Even the simplest things are described as so mysterious and fascinating that this book is impossible to put down. And the relationships between some of these characters are very eye-opening and make you question the morals and intentions of those around you, while others are just flat out wholesome and amazing. Everything about this book was beautiful, stunning, captivating, and I fell in love with it. Definitely a 5-star read, and every fantasy-lover should pick it up.
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. Anchor Books, 2021.
Reviewer bio: I’m Natalie Hess and I’m simply a high school student who LOVES reading everything from scifi to romance to nonfiction and everything in between. I also love sharing my thoughts and I hope you enjoy!
Buy this book from our affiliate Bookshop.org.
If you didn’t already know, Meat for Tea: The Valley Review is a print literary magazine founded in 2006. They publish quarterly issues of short fiction, flash and micro-fiction, poetry, essays, interviews, and visual arts of all kinds. They are committed to retaining a punk rock aesthetic while presenting readers with work of the highest quality.
Besides their quarterly issues, Meat for Tea offers an audio companion in their podcast which serves up live recordings of spoken word and music, conversations with authors and other artists, and more! They have just uploaded the 20th episode for their second season on June 5 which features editor Elizabeth Macduffie with Matt Latham.
Meat for Tea also hosts launch events for their quarterly issues. The past few events have all been virtual and free to access. To see these, visit their website.
They have the Le Cirque Salé taking place via Facebook on Saturday June 12 from 7-10 PM. This will be a virtual celebration of their “criadilla de toro” issue featuring an art exhibit from Shawn Farley and John Allen, the standup comedy of Ezra Prior, spoken word performances, videos by Piper Preston and Thomas Matthew Campbell, and more.
Guest Post by Mandi Greenwood.
Doug Stanfield’s poetry is an unfurling of wings and a fanning out in every heartfelt direction, reaching all of life’s heights and depths. There is humility and there is enormous bravery. Within the pages of Lifting Stones there is no finite limit to Stanfield’s poetic skill, nor to his quality.
He owns the journey that is Lifting Stones. He owns it with “bare courage and risk”—his words—and to read this book is to step from one stone to the next in the sometimes calm, oftentimes tumultuous river that he has forged between its covers.
Upon one stone I behold the relatively fresh wound of “Love in the Time of Corona.” Atop another stone I discover the fierce elation of “Borrowed Dust.” I skip to yet another smooth muse of stone and I find “As It Was.” I pause at times, to wipe away the tears, but always I progress to the next verse with intrigue and joy.
It’s difficult to do justice to the raw tenderness of Lifting Stones without falling into cliché. Suffice to say it is a singular collection of clarity, warmth, grief, humor, agony, mortality, recollection, despair, and rebirth. It is an expedition, not a journey’s end. It is a unique work of life via poetry, a kaleidoscopic gallery of this poet’s genuine experience laid bare.
Stanfield writes with a dignity. He writes with a frank self-respect that is, to borrow his exquisite words, “eternally becoming.”
Lifting Stones by Doug Stanfield. Rootstock Publishing, June 2021.
Reviewer bio: Mandi Greenwood is the author of Six Steps Down, Caught Inside, and The Silver Renoir.
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In this issue of Sou’wester, find fiction by Karin Aurino, Joe Baumann, Matthew Bruce, Bryana Fern, Rachel Furey, Justin Herrmann, Siew David Hii, Mehdi M. Kashani, Kate LaDew, Nathan Alling Long, Lope López de Miguel, Fejiro Okifo, R.S. Powers, Katie Jean Shinkle, Noel Sloboda, RaShell R. Smith-Spears, Samantah Steiner, Matthew Sullivan, and Tina Tocco; and nonfiction by Martha Phelan Hayes, Louise Krug, and Cynthia Singerman.
Change Seven is a volunteer-run online literary journal founded in 2015. They publish four issues a year featuring fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and artwork. Their book section features interviews with writers (by writers) as well as reviews.
They host two reading periods a year and are currently open to submissions through June 30. They do charge a $3 fee.
The Spring 2021 issue features fiction by Liz Başok, Eesha Dave, Naira De Gracia, Ann Liska, Eric Maroney, Olive Mullet, Ken Post, Shira Richman, Ellen Sollinger-Waker, and Sara Staggs; poetry by Melissa Helton, Ace Boggess, Megan Bracher, Heather Frese, Ryan Harber, Mary Imo-Stike, and Jane Sasser; with nonfiction by Susan Bonetto, Charles Clark, James Cochran, Susan Narayan, and Paul Rousseau.
Stop by their listing on NewPages to learn more & don’t forget to read through this issue and go through the archive of past issues, too, to see what you’ve been missing.
Sleet Magazine‘s Slim Summer Edition is now live! The editors reveal gut-wrenching new poetry by Jim Moore and Michael Kleber-Diggs. Sleet features life and death CNF from Margaret Bell and Dr. Alexander Gong, as well as sparkling fiction by Euan Currie, Scott Gardner and Erin Winseman. This edition is not to be missed!
The Summer 2021 issue of Rattle features a tribute to Appalachian Poets. The 22 poets in this special section write about family, history, and modern life. The tribute section was so good, we had to stretch the issue to 124 pages to fit it all in. In the open section, the poems are as strong as ever, featuring reader favorites Francesca Bell and Ted Kooser, along with several excellent poets new to Rattle’s pages, writing about everything from sexual desire to cancer, big foot to peeing in the pool, including a long poem from Clemonce Heard on the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre.
2020 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize Winners, a conversation with Camille T. Dungy, Kate McIntyre on the progeny of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, arts features about punk’s influence on contemporary art and the Great British Teddy Girls. Read more at The Missouri Review website.
Founded in 1999, Arts & Letters is a nationally circulating journal featuring young, fresh voices as well as established poets and writers. It was founded at Georgia College where it operates out of the MFA program in creative writing. They publish biannually in Spring and Fall with full-color covers designed by Peter Selgin.
They are currently open to submissions for their Unclassifiables contest and Drama Prize. Regular submissions will reopen on August 1. They seek poetry, fiction, flash fiction, and creative nonfiction. They do charge a $3 non-refundable fee. Arts & Letters pays upon acceptance at a rate of $10 per page. Writers also receive a contributor copy and one year subscription.
The Unclassifiables contest is open through July 31 and is for work that blurs, bends, blends, erases, or obliterates genre and other labels. Pieces need to be 5,000 words or less. This year’s judge is Michael Martone. $10 fee. Winner receives $500 and publication.
The Drama Prize is open through June 30 to one-act plays of 30-60 pages that have not yet been produced. $10 fee. Winner receives $500 and travel support to attend the production.
