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!
New poems by Diane Thiel, Simon Anton Niño Diego Baena, Ronda Piszk Broatch, Moriah Cohen, Aran Donovan, and more. Anagrams and polysemic drawings by Sally Van Doren. See a full contributors list at The 2River View website.
Deadline: Year-round
Location: Virtual
The Constellation, A Place for Writers provides innovative, online creative writing workshops that inspire, instruct, nurture, and challenge. Our acclaimed instructors offer classes in short fiction, novel, essay, memoir, poetry, children and young adult, literary translation, publishing, and hybrid forms. We host sessions for writers at all levels. The brainchild of award-winning and bestselling author Connie May Fowler, The Constellation is a global community of writers who support and elevate each other as they engage in the important work of honing their art and craft. In addition to workshops, The Constellation mentors weekly free prompts, write-ins, and more.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas.
I’ve been watching a lot of comedy movies and TV shows lately, enjoying the much needed escape from reality, so it makes sense that I’d gravitate toward Wesley Korpela’s “An Email to the Rose Creek School Board” in the Fall 2020 issue of Emerald City.
Korpela writes an email to the “Members of the Facilities Committee” from Genevieve Powers-Harrison’s point of view. Genevieve requests the elementary school’s name be changed to honor her still-living ex-husband Carl. Carl’s obsession with getting on the show America’s Funniest Home Videos drives the couple apart, but ultimately Genevieve believes he deserves the award as “a ‘win.'” After all, “he’s a nice enough man.”
I loved the voice Korpela gives to Genevieve and found the obsession with AFV to be a fun and fresh twist on the divorce story. There’s no ill-will between the two, just many failed attempts at five seconds of fame. A good, silly story is just what I needed.
Issue 103/104 of River Styx just hit our mailbox, bringing the winners of the 2020 River Styx Microfiction Contest with it. The winners were selected by the literary magazine’s editors. These stories must be 500 words or less.
First Place
“The Great Migration of Whales” by Michelle Kim Hall
Second Place
“Weighted Vest” by Rachel Furey
Third Place
“His Exposure” by Matthew Pitt
Honorable Mentions
“Wild Thing” by Haley Creighton
“Maybe This One” by Robert McBrearty
“On Liminality” by Marc Sheehan
Shooter Literary Magazine‘s Animal Love issue seeks to help benefit stray dogs. The theme for this issue was set before editor Melanie White’s own dog was diagnosed with cancer and passed away. This issue has transformed into a tribute to him and 10% of profits from issue sales will go to benefit Spanish Stray Dogs UK, a charity working to rehome abused and abandoned dogs of Spain.
From the editor:
I hope, as you read the stories and poetry in this issue, that you enjoy the transporting levity and engaging provocation of a lot of the pieces. These are, to say the least, difficult and isolating times for most of us, and we might like to read lighter fare than usual as a result. You will find plenty of heartening, diverting and insightful work in these pages. Please go to the Subscriptions page to order a copy.
Did you know that literary magazine Silk Road is offering its issues online beginning with Issue 17? You may not find 100% of the work featured in Issues 17 through 20, but starting with Issue 21 you can view all the content online.
Check out these archives and the Spring 2020 issue and don’t forget to order a print copy or subscribe to the journal to help support them.
Silk Road is a literary magazine run by undergraduate students at Pacific University. They are now a paying market, too! Writers receive $10/page up to $250 while artists receive $30 for each piece of art featured. They are currently open to submissions through May 1. There is a $2 fee to submit.
The 15th annual Mudfish Poetry Prize was judged by Erica Jong, author of The World Began With Yes (Red Hen Press, 2019).
The grand prize winner is Mark Schimmoeller from Frankfort, Kentucky with his poem “Benediction.”
First honorable mention is Cornelia Hoogland’s “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” and the second honorable mentions is James Trask’s “Springtime and Single Again.”
First place winner and the two honorable mentions will be featured in Mudfish 22 which will soon be available and don’t forget to stay tuned for news announcing the 16th annual Mudfish Poetry Prize deadline and guidelines.
Finalists:
Madeline Artenberg
Kew Gardens, New York
Adrian Blevins
Waterville, Maine
Paola Bruni
Aptos, California
Cornelia Hoogland
Hornby Island, Canada
Daniel Liebert
St. Louis, Missouri
Tim Louis Macaluso
Rochester, New York
Samuel Oguntoyinbo
Solon, Ohio
Mark Schimmoeller
Frankfort, Kentucky
Don Schofield
Thessaloniki, Greece
Deborah Schupack
Croton-on-Hudson, New York
James Trask
San Marcos, Texas
Laurie Zimmerman
Los Angeles, California
Guest Post by Vanessa Cervini Rios.
When Sayaka Murata writes, she blocks out the version of herself that lives in the real world, the one bound by conventionalities of a so-called functioning society. Instead, she conjures scenarios that might lead to ‘real truths’ she’s been searching for since childhood. That’s what her 10 books have been, experiments to unveil what senses dulled by normalcy can’t spot.
Konbini Ningen—Convenience Store Woman in English—became a sensation of sorts when it was published back in 2016 and addressed the revered subjects of marriage, social norms, and work dynamics in Japan head-on. In just over 160 pages, the author lays out the full picture of Keiko Furukura’s life as a single convenience store employee in her late 30’s. A self-proclaimed cog of society, her mere existence threatens the carefully assembled foundation of everything that is acceptable; and what’s more unnerving for anyone that knows her, that’s all she wants to be.
Diving into Murata’s transparent narrative is a trip. One worth taking for anyone willing to defy conventional thinking. And if that sounds odd to you, tell me, what does normal mean, anyway?
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata. Translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori. Grove Press, September 2019.
Reviewer bio: Vanessa Cervini Rios is an avid reader in four languages and enjoys writing about the link between cultural products and the social imaginary. More words by her: 12booksclub.substack.com.
Buy this book at our affiliate Bookshop.org.
Deadline: Rolling
50 Give or Take daily delivers micro-fiction of fifty words or less straight into your inbox. Please subscribe (it’s free!) to get an idea of what is published, before submitting your work. All accepted 50 Give or Take pieces will be published in a print collection at the end of every year, starting in 2021. All you have to do is submit your: 50-word story, one-line bio, website or social media URL, and a vertical photo of yourself to [email protected]. Good luck!
Paul Nemser Book Prize from Lily Poetry Review BooksDeadline: March 31, 2021
Submission Dates: January 1 – March 31, 2021. Eligibility: Open to any poet writing in English regardless of publication history. Must not have studied with Tom Daley (the judge) within past ten years. Awards a standard book contract and virtual or in-person launch. Member of CLMP. lilypoetryreview.submittable.com/submit
Guest Post by Chloe Yelena Miller.
Ocean Currents by Hannah Rousselot offers the reader the narrator’s strength as she directly faces emotional and physical pain and struggles with mental illness. Rousselot does what a good teacher should do, as she writes in the poem “Guidance,” “Or, I should say, I do not teach them- / I provide the tools they need to live within themselves.” Rousselot gives the reader the tools to face and learn from such hard emotions.
The collection opens with the poem “Vacation” which immediately introduces suicide. The poem begins, “What if you could kill yourself, / but like, only for a day?” When I read the opening line, I paused. Could I handle reading this, I wondered? The conversational tone and turn in the poem with, “but like,” offered me a path into the poem and the collection.
Ocean Currents is rooted in the body. The narrator describes hurting herself, but also actively grounding herself. She writes in “Immersed,” “When I rise out of the pond, water drips down / my skin and sinks into the ground. The Earth is soft // between my toes. Standing there, wet and grounded, I can feel the rotation of my planet.” When the narrator’s hurt and relief are boldly and physically described, the reader knows she can trust the poems.
This is a book that instructs: face your truth while tending your needs to survive. In “Sleepwalking”, Rousselot writes, “It {Life} needs a reminder to wake up.” Ocean Currents grounds and wakes up the reader to know herself and others.
In “Leather Gloves” Rousselot writes, “& how can you be adult with so much / child inside of you?” But she has the superpower described in the same poem, “In college, I tell my friend about my / ‘world’ hurts and she tells me / that I have a superpower.”
Ocean Currents by Hannah Rousselot. Finishing Line Press, June 2021
Reviewer bio: Chloe Yelena Miller is a writer and teacher living in Washington, D.C.
While you’re staying in this Friday, Driftwood Press offers entertainment. Join the publication for a free AWP Zoom reading at 7PM EST on March 5. Fiction and poetry fans will both find something to enjoy.
Get your comfiest Friday night pajamas ready to join the 3/5 reading via this link.
We Pay Contributors: Driftwood Press Submissions OpenDeadline: Year-round
John Updike once said, “Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity. Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.” At Driftwood Press, we are actively searching for artists who care about doing it right, or better. We are excited to receive your submissions and will diligently work to bring you the best in full poetry collections, novellas, graphic novels, short fiction, poetry, graphic narrative, photography, art, interviews, and contests. We also offer our submitters a premium option to receive an acceptance or rejection letter within one week of submission; many authors are offered editorships and interviews. To polish your fiction, note our editing services and seminars, too.
Guest Post by J. Guaner.
Leo Touchet is an American photographer who has traveled to over fifty countries to photograph for corporate publications and national and international magazines including Life, Time, National Geographic, New York Times, Der Stern, Panorama, and Popular Photography.
Touchet’s interest in photography sprouted as a high school photographer. In the early 1960s he lived in Greenwich Village and maintained his interest by studying the archived photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paul Strand, Eugene Smith, Edward Steichen, and Gordon Parks in the Museum of Modern Art. In Rochester, New York, Touchet met Beaumont Newhall, then director of the George Eastman House Museum and bought a used Leica M3 from him. His meeting with Joan Liftin, a photo editor at the United Nations, was a turning point in his career. Liftin convinced him to be a full-time photographer, and then he hopped on the plane to Saigon, Vietnam for his first foreign trip as a photographer. Continue reading “People among Us: Leo Touchet’s Collection of Photographs”
Deadline: March 31, 2021
We are open to any subject, style, or genre. All five winners will be published online in the June/July 2021 issue of Gemini. Both new and experienced writers have won our contests. All entries are read blind so everyone gets an equal chance. Maximum length: 6,000 words. First prize: $1,000. Second: $100. Three honorable mentions: $25 each. Entry fee: $8. All winning stories may be read online. Advice from Ray Bradbury: “I’ve had a sign over my typewriter for over 25 years now, which reads ‘DON’T THINK!’ You must never think at the typewriter—you must feel.” Enter at our website.
Contributors to the March 2021 issue of Poetry include Jacqueline Woodson, Luis Daniel Salgado, Cornelius Eady, Marilyn Nelson, Mariana Llanos, Nour Al Ghraowi, Mosab Abu Toha, Nikki Grimes, Renée Watson, Michael Simms, Margarita Engle, Linda Sue Park, Elizabeth Acevedo, Kimberly Blaeser, Chen Chen, Pat Mora, Kim Stafford, Ari Tison, and Heid E. Erdrich.
The March issue is now online featuring Clair Chilvers, Oz Hardwick, Elaine Lambert, Alex McConochie, Ronald Moran, Rebecca Myers, Angela Readman, Jay Sizemore, Sam Smith, Julia Stothard, Mark Totterdell.
Jewish Fiction .net is thrilled to share something joyful in these challenging times: our beautiful new issue (#26)! 23 marvelous stories originally written in Yiddish, Hebrew, and English, including one about Purim (“The Feast of Esther”), two about Passover (“What Elijah Brought” and “Plagued”), and a story that is intentionally set in between these two holidays (“Serah”). The first two of these four stories also take place during Covid. We hope all of these 23 wonderful works bring you insights, solace, and pleasure.
This issue features poetry by Kamilah Aisha Moon, Hadara Bar-Nadav, Daniel Schonning, and Amy Fleury; fiction by Jackie Thomas-Kennedy, Mi Jin Kim, and Jack Ortiz; and essays by Dawn D’Aries. Read more at the Crazyhorse website.
Welcome to the first edition of Allegro for 2021. Enjoy poems by Anthony Lawrence, Marc Woodward, Roger Bloor, Robin Helweg-Larsen, David Harmer, Glenn Hubbard, Jane Blanchard, Craig Coyle, Sophia Agyris, Robert Ford, Ian C Smith, Marius Grose, Phil Vernon, James Dowthwaite, Rebecca Gethin, John Rogers, Judy Clarence, Helen May Williams, Carolyn Oulton, Sean Chapman, Barbara Parchim, and more. See a full contributor list at the Allegro Poetry Magazine website.
Deadline: April 1, 2021
20th year. Top prize: $2,000. Total prizes: $3,500. Sponsored by Winning Writers, co-sponsored by Duotrope, and recommended by Reedsy. Winning entries published online. Submit one humor poem online, up to 250 lines long. Both published and unpublished work accepted. Final judge: Jendi Reiter. Enter for free at winningwriters.com/werglenp21.
Deadline: May 31, 2021
$2,000 in prizes. From March 1 to May 31, Flying South 2021, a publication of Winston Salem Writers, will be accepting entries for prizes in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry. Best in Category winners will be published and receive $500 each. One of the three winners will receive The WSW President’s Favorite award and win an additional $500. All entries will be considered for publication. For full details, please visit our website: www.wswriters.org/flying-south.
Deadline: March 31, 2021
The 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. All entries for the 15th Annual NIEA contest must be postmarked by March 31st, 2021. www.indieexcellence.com
The Winter 2021 issue of The Baltimore Review includes two contest winners among the rest of their contributors.
Contest Winner – 1,000 Words or Less – Fiction
“Intersection” by Basmah Sakrani
Contest Winner – 1,000 Words or Less – Creative Nonfiction
“The Reckoning” by Emily James
Take a little time out of your day to check out these winners.
The Saint Mary’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing degree program offers a campus environment that feels like a writing retreat within the San Francisco Bay Area. The two-year MFA program at Saint Mary’s offers concentrations in creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry, combining a studio writing workshop component with an analytical component. SMC MFA faculty are award-winning writers, poets, and committed teachers who offer decades of experience mentoring emerging writers.
Each year the MFA program invites Visiting Writers to work with MFA students. These groundbreaking writers add to the program’s inclusive community with their diversity of experience. Recent visitors include Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Marie Mutsuki Mockett, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Ada Limón, and Margaret Wilkerson Sexton. Learn more…
It’s that time again: a new Book Stand! Check out this month’s six featured titles, as well as other great new and forthcoming fiction, nonfiction, and poetry books.
Joe Taylor’s novel The Alleged Woman drops readers into Sumter County, Alabama where a woman’s car is found filled with ballots listing Joe Biden for President.
Set in the desert landscape of the México–U.S. border, Arsenal With Praise Song by Rodney Gómez yokes together lament and celebration, reproach and veneration across the borders of eras and nations.
Khalisa Rae’s poetry collection Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat is a heart-wrenching reconciliation and confrontation of the living, breathing ghosts that awaken Black women each day.
The poems in Steve Henn’s Guilty Prayer speak to the reader as Henn’s poetic voice “shifts tones, moods, and paces seamlessly between pages and between lines.”
In Mother Body, Diamond Forde’s poems explore the trauma and agency held within a body defined by its potential to mother.
Young Blood by Sifiso Mzobe is a red-hot crime novel and a coming-of-age story, and it reveals the devastating violence and raw beauty of life in South Africa’s townships.
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.
Submissions accepted year-round.
The Blue Mountain Review launched from Athens, Georgia in 2015 with the mantra, “We’re all south of somewhere.” As a journal of culture the BMR strives to represent life through its stories. Stories are vital to our survival. Songs save the soul. Our goal is to preserve and promote lives told well through prose, poetry, music, and the visual arts. Our editors read year-round with an eye out for work with homespun and international appeal. We’ve published work by and interviews with Jericho Brown, Kelli Russell Agodon, Robert Pinsky, Rising Appalachia, Nahko, Michel Stone, Genesis Greykid, Cassandra King, Melissa Studdard, and A.E. Stallings.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who played a leading role in West Coast literary history by championing Beat writer Allen Ginsberg, passed away in his home on Monday, February 22. He was 101 years old. Ferlinghetti and partner launched City Lights as the country’s first-ever all paperback bookstore in 1953. The bookstore was renowned for its bohemian atmosphere and collections of international poetry, fiction, progressive political journals and magazines. It later spawned a literary press which published Ginsberg’s controversial poem “Howl” which saw Ferlinghetti embroiled in a historic court case. Learn more…
Writers and artists follow the theme of “Not of This World” in the Spring 2021 issue of THEMA. Some of the authors’ takes will definitely surprise readers. Contributors include Kayleigh McKee, James Swafford, Lynda Fox, Emily Hanlon, Margo Peterson, James Armstrong, Jennifer Erickson, Linda Berry, John Grey, Tricia Lowther, and more.
In this issue of River Styx: poetry by Nin Andrews, Gabriella Balza, Talia Bloch, Bruce Bond, Lyn Li Che, Jeff Gundy, David Kirby, Jenna Le, Timothy Liu, Adrian Matejka, Miho Nonaka, Emily Ransdell, Erin Saxon, Troy Varvel, Kiani Yiu, and more; fiction by Winston Bribach, Michael Byers, Jack Driscoll, and Andrea L. Rogers; essays by Maura Lammers, Jennifer Murvin, and Kerry Neville.
A journal of personal stories exploring mortality, death, and dying related topics. This issue of Months to Years features work by Gaye Brown, Helen Bowie, Patti Santucci, Briana Gervat, Mari-Carmen Marin, Michael Biegner, Bethany Bruno, John Timothy Robinson, Mary Ann Noe, Patricia Miller, Mara Lefebvre, Lee Landau, Sherri Levine, Susan Robison, Jeremy Gadd, and more.
In the final issue of The Chattahoochee Review, find poetry by Darius Atefat-Peckham, John Brandon, Jesse Breite, Taylor Byas, Luis Alberto de Cuenca, Maria Castro Dominguez, Courtney Faye Taylor, Bethan Tyler, Joke van Leeuwen, L. A. Weeks, Ross White, and more.
The Winter 2021 issue of Baltimore Review features poetry and prose by John Van Kirk, Mary Ardery, Tara Lynn Masih, Shailen Mishra, Basmah Sakrani, LeRoy Sorenson, Susan Messer, Alden M. Hayashi, Gregory Byrd, Emily James, and more.
The Association of Writers and Writing Programs (aka AWP) will have their annual conference and book fair this year and it will be completely virtual. Hippocampus Magazine an Books will be participating. Besides being available during regular Book Fair hours, they are hosting two author meet and greets. The first is with Rebecca Fish Ewan on Friday, March 5 from 4-5:30 PM EST. The second is with Sam Chiarelli on Saturday, March 6 from 2-3:30 PM EST. You can even pick up some virtual AWP-exclusive downloads and enter to win swag at their virtual booth.
If you aren’t a subscriber to their newsletter yet, what are you waiting for? They hope to announce an official update soon about their annual creative nonfiction conference HippoCamp. Plus, you can keep on top of the latest issues of the journal as well as cool events they host, like their recent Doodles & Discussion with Rebecca Fish Ewan.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas.
The Winter 2020 issue of The Malahat Review opens with the winner of the 2020 Constance Rooke Prize for Creative Nonfiction: “On Playing Double Jeopardy!” by Christina Brobby. This piece works through the different money categories in a game of Jeopardy all on the theme of photographic terms. Like the show, Brobby is given the answer and she responds with the appropriate question as she connects the term to her life.
I enjoyed the set-up of this piece. It flows seamlessly, Brobby always taking care to weave the photographic terms into the moments of her life. She examines how she presents as her race, in her adoptive family, as a wife, a partner, a mother. When she gives the answer of “What is a filter?” she ends the section turning it back inward: “Be more or less vibrant, act more coolly, like when the man after your husband said you were too emotional and that’ s not what he was signing up for. You donned your neutral-density filter . . . ”
This piece is a great opener for the issue, and well-deserved of taking home the Constance Rooke Prize. It immediately caught my eye and drew me in with its unique format, something greatly appreciated in the these days of shortened attention spans.
Grab a copy of the January/February 2021 issue of Kenyon Review for the winners of the 2020 Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest.
Winner
“Fish Stories” by Janika Oza
Runners-Up
“Dungeness” by Steffi Sin
“Cactus Eater” by Stanley Delgado
Kenyon Review Fellow Misha Rai introduces the placing stories.
Love creative nonfiction in bite-sized form? Literary magazine Creative Nonfiction has you covered with Sunday Short Reads. This is flash nonfiction delivered weekly straight to your inbox. The pieces featured in this mailing are hand-selected from the archives of Creative Nonfiction, Brevity, Diagram, River Teeth, and Sweet Lit. They will also sometimes feature the occasional original works, too.
Check out past issues here, and consider subscribing today to satisfying your nonfiction cravings.
Interested in submitting your own nonfiction? They are open to submissions of nonfiction by older writers (age 60+) through February 22.
Write.as is a simple blogging platform made just for writers. You’ll get a clean space to write in, and your audience will get a calm place to read your work. Add Submit.as to seamlessly accept submissions for your magazine, blog, or writing contest. Stop by our virtual booth at AWP to learn more!
View the entire February eLitPak here. Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to get first access to future eLitPaks.
Discovering, bringing new poets from obscurity, is why Prospectus exists. We seek the work of emerging poets. Our magazine is published twice a year, in June and December. If you are unpublished or little-published, we invite you to submit your best poems for consideration. We also publish short prose pieces as well as fine-art images and reviews. Deadline: February 28, 2021.
They will be exhibiting during the virtual 2021 AWP Bookfair & Conference.
View the entire February eLitPak here. Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to get first access to future eLitPaks.
Gival Press has the following contests for authors and poets which carry a cash prize and for which a reading fee is required: Oscar Wilde Award (deadline June 27); Short Story Award (deadline August 8); Poetry Award (deadline December 15). Visit our website for full details.
Gival Press is participating in the virtual AWP 2021 Bookfair & Conference. Don’t forget to stop by their exhibitor booth.
View the entire February eLitPak here. Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to get first access to future eLitPaks.
Get this 3 volume set personalized, signed, and delivered for only $89.00. (Further discounts can be negotiated on larger orders.) For more information, contact the poet directly.
View the entire February eLitPak here. Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to get first access to future eLitPaks.
Point Park University’s low-residency MFA in Writing for the Screen & Stage is accepting applications now thru June 15, 2021. Discover your creative voice with a team of professional writers and a program that will prepare you for a multi-faceted writing career. We offer generous artistic scholarships based on your submitted artistic portfolio. Applying is free! Do it today!
View the entire February eLitPak here. Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to get first access to future eLitPaks.
Submit your book length manuscript to the Catamaran Poetry Prize for West Coast poets. This year’s judge is Pulitzer Prize finalist Dorianne Laux! The prize winner will receive $1,000 and book publication. Submission deadline is April 20th, 2021. This contest is only open to poets living in California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii.
View the entire February eLitPak here. Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to get first access to future eLitPaks.
Exclusive for NewPages fans: Get 15% off your first class at WritingWorkshops.com. Our classes are inclusive and intentionally small and taught by award-winning authors, agents, and editors. Use code NEWPAGES at checkout—but hurry, our upcoming classes are almost full! Discount expires 2/24/2021. Visit our website.
View the entire February eLitPak here. Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to get first access to future eLitPaks.
Deadline: March 15, 2021
Winning short story collection will be published by Livingston Press at the University of West Alabama, in simultaneous hardcover and trade paper editions, also in e-book and Kindle formats. Winner will receive $1000, plus our standard royalty contract, which includes 50 copies of the book. Author must not have had
a book of short fiction published at time of entry, though novels or poetry are okay.
View the entire February eLitPak here. Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to get first access to future eLitPaks.
In the heart of California, Fresno State’s Master of Fine Arts program is home to The Normal School magazine and the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. Our creative writing program offers advanced study in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Nineteen of our alumni published their debut books in the past five years. Are you next? Fall 2021 application deadline: March 1.
View the entire February eLitPak here. Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to get first access to future eLitPaks.
Registration Deadline: March 15, 2021
In this intensive all-remote workshop, you’ll spend 10 weeks working one-on-one with Carve’s publisher on up to 5 of your short stories or essays (4000 words max ea.) You’ll receive weekly edits and revise your stories or essays multiple times, culminating in submitting at least one polished story or essay to a tailored list of 10 lit mags or journals. www.carvezine.com.
View the entire February eLitPak here. Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to get first access to future eLitPaks.
The Elk River Writers Workshop takes place at Chico Hot Springs, Montana, bringing together some of the country’s most celebrated nature writers with students who are serious about fostering a connection with the environment in their writing. This year, we are thrilled to welcome faculty members Rick Bass, Linda Hogan, J. Drew Lanham, William Pitt Root, and Pamela Uschuk. elkriverwriters.org
View the entire February eLitPak here. Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to get first access to future eLitPaks.
Guest Post by Hamilton Davis.
The early 1970s were rough on Vermont’s criminal justice system. Central to that era was the long criminal career of Paul Lawrence, the bad cop who, while working as an undercover narcotics agent for state and local police, framed more than 100 young Vermonters on drug charges. Lawrence’s depredations managed to contaminate the whole justice system—state police and several prosecutors and judges—and his crimes and the resulting turmoil put Vermont on front pages across the land.
One public official deeply affected by the Lawrence mess was Kimberly Cheney, a Yale Law School graduate and a Republican, who had just been elected in 1972 as Vermont’s attorney general. Cheney, in his candid memoir A Lawyer’s Life to Live, tells much about his life in Montpelier, Vermont, as attorney general but also, earlier and later, as a small-town private attorney and county prosecutor. He describes all the moral quandaries, deal-making, the courtroom dramas, and the shenanigans that readers would expect from an observant lawyer-turned-author.
But what he also offers is a striking assessment of what became known as the “Paul Lawrence Affair.” Lawrence’s crimes were committed long ago, but Cheney’s book is an important reminder of how things can go wrong. The author is as tough on himself as he is on other players who were far more involved in that affair. That’s a quality that is rare and praiseworthy in the literature of public life.
A Lawyer’s Life to Live: A Memoir by Kim Cheney. Rootstock Publishing, February 2021.
Reviewer bio: Hamilton E. Davis has been a journalist and policy analyst for more than 50 years. He is the author Mocking Justice: America’s Biggest Drug Scandal (Crown Publishers, 1978).
Buy this book from our affiliate Bookshop.org.
Guest Post by Manasi Patil.
An extraordinarily ordinary play script is what draws Tim Hamlet, the twin brother of Prince Hamlet, the crown prince of Denmark, towards Elsinore to uncover the dark secrets that awaits him, whether he wants it or not.
When I started reading the first chapter of The Other Hamlet Brother, I was entirely drawn in the book. Luke Swanson’s words kept me on the edge throughout the journey of reading ‘The Other Hamlet Brother’. Well, I’ve always loved this genre, so I was more than happy to review the book, and I’m pleased to say that it did much more than simply ‘satisfy’ me. Continue reading “The Other Hamlet Brother”
