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NewPages Blog

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!

This is Love

Guest Post by Courtney B. Jenkins

As I read Samantha Kolber’s poetry debut, I thought of all the mothers I know and hold dear—close friends, my sister, my own mother; I want to give them this book, share with them this gift of understanding.

I paused as I read to absorb moments of “Whoa,” as Kolber’s words reveal what it meant to her to become Mother. I re-read to assimilate every nuance before passing on to the next vignette. Each feeling evoked felt important. Kolber’s words are powerful draws into her world and, somehow, although I am not a mother—a birth-mother, anyhow—I know these feelings. I suddenly understand the patience I see in the mothers around me—browbeaten and screamed at by tiny versions of themselves—who are somehow able to smile in response and reply with patience and logic to the demands of their offspring. And, I realize, through this breadth of written, recorded emotion: this is love. My eyes teared with the fullness of it. And although I have no literal means of comparison in my own life, I understand. Continue reading “This is Love”

Call :: Don’t forget Driftwood Press Pays Contributors

Driftwood Press 7.2 coverJohn 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, they actively search for artists who care about doing it right, or better. They 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. They also offer their 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 they have editing services and seminars, too. Read Issue 7.2 featuring Jessica Holbert, Seth Brady Tucker, Janiru Liyanage, Katherine Fallon, Yi-Hui Huang, and more, for a taste of what they like. Submissions accepted year-round.

Contest :: RHINO Founders’ Prize Deadline is October 15

Ed Roberson headshotDeadline: October 15, 2020
RHINO is open September 1 to October 15 for submissions for its annual Founders’ Prize Poetry Contest. Guest judge will be Ed Roberson, author of numerous poetry collections and recipient of prizes including the Jackson Poetry Prize and the Stephen Henderson Critics Award for Achievement in Literature. Roberson is currently Artist-in-Residence at Northwestern University. Entry fee is $15 for up to 5 poems; first prize $500, two runners-up prizes $100 each. All submissions considered for publication in RHINO’s 2021 issue, and for $500 Editors’ Prize. For 40+ years, RHINO’s award-winning annual print journal has featured stunning, eclectic work. Complete guidelines: rhinopoetry.org.

Call :: Rathalla Review Fall 2020 Issue

Deadline: October 16, 2020
Rathalla Review is accepting submissions for our Fall Issue until October 16th. We’re looking for fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and artwork. We are especially interested in flash-length pieces that represent a diversity in voices and experiences. Our Fall issue is published online in December; however, all work is also considered for our yearly print anthology, published Spring 2021.

Call :: Girls Right the World Seeks Work from Female-Identifying Writers for Issue 5

Girls Right the World is a literary journal inviting young, female-identified writers and artists, ages 14 to 21, to submit work for consideration for the fifth annual issue. They believe girls’ voices transform the world for the better. They accept poetry, prose, and visual art of any style or theme. They ask to be the first to publish your work in North America; after publication, the rights return to you. Send your best work, in English or English translation, to [email protected] by December 31, 2020. Please include a note mentioning your age, where you’re from, and a bit about your submission.

A Rewarding Challenge

Guest Post by Judith Pratt

Susanna Clarke’s new novel is much shorter than her wonderful Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, but even more challenging to read. It’s completely worth the trouble. Some novels I give away, but some are keepers. This is a keeper.

The man writing the story lives in a huge House of Halls, Vestibules, and Staircases. The House provides him with everything he needs—fish from the Tides that sweep the House, seaweed for food and fuel, and the Kindness of the many Statues that fill the House.

He writes daily journals in these capital letters, and creates directories of the entries. He feels blessed by the beauty of the House. The man knows only one human, whom he calls The Other. The Other has named him Piranesi, but the man knows that is not his name.

Once you have these basics, things begin to seem strange. Piranesi lives like an early tribal person, but analyzes things like a scholar. How would this Piranesi know that some statues are minotaurs? Why does he know what a crisp packet is? The book wasn’t making sense. For a chapter or two, I found that intriguing, but frustrating.

Don’t give up. The answers are more fantastical than the questions. And the answers create more questions. Would you rather be along in a world of mysterious beauty, or live an ordinary life with family and friends? How can we learn to see the beauty and magic in the world? What does it mean to be lost?

In retrospect, I’m glad that I knew nothing about this novel when I began to read it. I suggest you ignore the reviews—some of which are beautifully written—and go on the adventure as alone as Piranesi.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. Bloomsbury Publishing, September 2020.

Reviewer bio: Judith Pratt has acted, directed, and taught theatre. Her plays have been produced internationally. Her novel, Siljeea Magic, was published in 2019. She lives in Ithaca, NY with a husband and three cockatiels.

Buy this book at our affiliate Bookshop.org.

A Wonderful Read

Guest Post by Brooke Carpenter

I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard or cried so much as in the book Wonder by R. J. Palacio. That’s saying something; I am one of the editors of the poetry section of the online journal Route 7 Review, which features the creativity of worldwide authors and artists. And Wonder is a stunning work of art. It is beautifully woven with introspect and paradigm-shifting opportunities. Palacio masterfully creates a soothing undertone of love and acceptance in a cruel world, while at the same time maintaining a lighthearted, hilarious overtone that digs at the very human essence. Palacio carefully crafts the perfect tones and perspectives for each character she delves into, creating a quick-paced, engaging read.

Wonder discusses the topics of kindness, forgiveness, and acceptance as it plunges headfirst into the world of August, a 5th grader going to public school for the first time. With 27 surgeries to his name and a severe facial deformity, August is highly aware that he attracts unwanted attention. Needless to say, he is terrified to become a public display as he starts school. The book not only follows August through the school year, through the ups and downs and fears and successes, but Palacio also cleverly weaves in the voices of the surrounding characters, adding a deeper level of interest to the novel.

As August’s story unfolds, it is impossible not to love the marvelous characters pushing and pulling against each other. Palacio’s beautiful writing delves into the far reaches of the soul to expose the hidden pieces. There is probably nothing more accurate to say than that Wonder is simply wonderful.

Wonder by R. J. Palacio. Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2012.

Reviewer bio: I am a Senior at Dixie State University and am an editor for the poetry section of DSU’s online journal, Route 7 Review. Submissions are open now until November 6.

Buy this book from our affiliate Bookshop.org.

Valley Voices – Fall 2020

The Fall 2020 issue of Valley Voices features poetry by Paul Mariani, Gary Fincke, Janet McCann, Luci Shaw, Marge Piercy, Ted Kooser, D. S. Martin, Walter Bargen, Virginia Sullivan, Ed Madden, Le Hinton, Joseph Pearce, Jean-Mark Sens, John J. Han, and more; memoirs by Billy Middleton, Frederick W. Bassett, and Carol Coffee Reposa; and articles & interviews by Bruce Boyd Raeburn, Adam Gussow, Joseph Millichap, Janet Greenlees, Dominic Reisig, John J. Han, Gab D. Smith and Thomas H. Sayre, and David Tisdale.

The Shore Poetry – Fall 2020

The autumn issue of The Shore features gorgeous and dynamic poetry by Melissa Crowe, Lisa Ampleman, Susan Rich, Taylor Byas, Joely Byron Fitch, Emma Aylor, Jill Mceldowney, Samuel Adeyemi, Taylor Fedorchak, Susan Moon, Owne McLeod, Oluwadare Popoola, Isaac George Lauristen, Duncan Mwangi, Adam Day, Natalie Young, Dan Wiencek, Andy Keys, Vincent Poturica, Katherine Fallon, and more. The issue also features digital art by Joe Lugara.

Call :: Attention Women! OyeDrum Magazine Submission Call!

Deadline: October 9, 2020
We are seeking visual art, performance art, short films, spoken-audio pieces, creative fiction and nonfiction, poetry, hybrid work, photo essays, graphic novels, and more by women of ALL ages and ALL walks of life. OyeDrum is committed to presenting diverse and inclusive work. Our current theme is sex! Women’s ability to talk about sex and our own sexual desires are still largely influenced by our patriarchal-based society. We want to emphasize that we are accepting all types of work connected to the subject, and want to know how the writer/artist individually interprets sex. See our website for submission guidelines.

Leaping Clear – Fall 2020

Leaping Clear - logo

Take the time to enjoy and be nourished by the art and writing in this new issue of Leaping Clear. There is humor, poignancy, power, ecstasy, calm, and beauty to be found in essays by Elizabeth Fletcher, Liz Woz, Ranjani Rao, and more; fiction by Taffeta Chime; and poetry by Alan Cohen, Carla Sarett, Fran Markover, J. P. White, Linda Parsons, Sandra Fees, Wayne Lee, and more.

Call :: Waymark Literary Magazine

Waymark Literary Magazine logoDeadline: November 20, 2020
Waymark Literary Magazine is an online and physical literary magazine dedicated to publishing the works of an individual’s waymark; their footpath in life. Anyone can submit as long as they have a story to tell. We are looking for nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and art submissions to be published in our biannual publication.

Shape Your Fiction with Jerome Stern

Guest Post by James Gering

Here is a born creative writing teacher generously imparting dollops of warmth, humor, and wisdom in three sections that combine to resemble no other book in this crowded genre.

“The Shapes of Fiction” is the first section, where Stern vividly demonstrates his ideas in original and artful little storylines often featuring engaging dialogues. The first three shapes “show (you) how to handle thoughts, dialogue and action—techniques you’ll use over and over.” In “Iceberg,” a writer focuses on what characters choose to express or choose to keep in mind:

 

Brian thought, Oh God, here it comes. My Principal. The Pig That Walks Like a Man. “Hello, sir. What a fine day.”

Eiswold nodded. “What’s that on your tie, boy? Your lunch?”

“Oh, goodness,” Brian said, “I hadn’t noticed. Thank you, sir.”

A dynamic interplay between thought and speech unfolds, and it should be noted that fulsome conveyance of thought is where fiction triumphs over film.

Other shapes include “Bear at the Door,” “Onion,” “Visitation,” “Aha!,” and “Explosion,” the last of which advises you to blow the rest of the advice to smithereens and exclusively celebrate your own brilliance. The point: these are Stern’s insights (culled from decades of teaching at tertiary level), not cumbersome rules.

In the second section, “A Cautionary Interlude,” Stern points out common pitfalls on narrative journeys. Find out how to avoid “Population Explosions,” “The Banging-Shutter Story,” “The Hobos-in-Space Story,” and more.

The final section, is a comprehensive alphabetical rendering of writing terms, some universally known, others, like ‘intrigant,’ less so. The terms are deftly cross-referenced, making it a pleasure to follow related strands.

Befriend Jerome Stern! His wisdom and generosity will enrich your writing.

Making Shapely Fiction by Jerome Stern. W.W. Norton & Company, November 1991.

Reviewer bio: James Gering is a poet and short story writer from the Blue Mountains in Australia. He welcomes visitors at jamesgering.com.

Buy this book at our affiliate Bookshop.org.

Overlooked Beauty

Magazine Review by Katy Haas

Now more than ever it’s important to find the beauty in whatever is around us. As writers, as artists, and as humans struggling through a traumatic period of time, it’s necessary to find bright spots. The Fall 2020 issue of Still Point Arts Quarterly puts this into practice, the theme of the issue being “The Secret Life of Objects.”

Throughout the pages, writers and artists look at what’s around them and capture their beauty. Adrienne Stevenson writes an ode to a “Kitchen Timer,” an appliance one doesn’t have to think much about until it’s gone. Kathleen Miller draws pared-down sketches of telephones, boats, pitchers, eliminating the details to follow Georgia O’Keeffe’s sentiment of “get[ting] at the real meaning of things.” Most of MJ Edwards’s compelling photography focuses on treasures of trash found on the beach, as they wonder about the “untold stories” the objects carry with them.

Art can be found in the everyday items around us, the objects easily overlooked. Don’t forget to look around you and find the beauty and inspiration they can hold.

Service Workers’ Words

Magazine Review by Katy Haas

Since March, we’ve been relying heavily on service workers, those operating the essentials while the rest of the country slows or stops. The second half of the Fall 2020 issue of Rattle features work by poets who have served long periods of time as service workers.

In this section, readers can find Marylisa DeDomenicis’s “Excuse Me” and Jackleen Holton’s “The Hunter,” both of which discuss working in a restaurant. DeDomenicis writes of the prevalent racism in the kitchen where the speaker works, and Holton focuses on the sexism and harassment the women face at the restaurant where her speaker works. In both of these, the other workers advocate for each other when the higher-ups either do nothing or contribute to the problem. The speaker in DeDomenicis’s piece sticks up for the bullied Mexican bus boy, and the waitresses in Holton’s piece work the buddy system together so they’re never alone, lessening the severity of their harassment.

Laurie Uttich’s “To My Student with the Dime-Sized Bruises on the Back of Her Arms Who’s Still on Her Cellphone” stuck out to me most starkly. In this poem, the speaker notices her student’s bruises and implores that she put down her phone, her abusive boyfriend on the other end, so she can trade it for a pen and “Take a piece of the dark and put it on a page.” Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf stand by as supporting characters, offering comfort and a room of one’s own. Uttich’s use of language as the poem addresses the student is clever and flows quickly, familiar images flashing through the lines.

While we continue to rely on service workers to keep the world running, make sure to take time to hear their voices and their stories in their own words.

PoArtMo Anthology: 2020 Artists

We could all use a little positivity and Auroras & Blossoms agrees. This is why the literary magazine has established PoArtMo which stands for “Positive Art Month and Positive Art Moves.”

In the month of June, the PoArtMo creators urged writers and artists to “celebrate positive art for 30 days.” A collection of this positivity is to be memorialized in the PoArtMo Anthology. The anthology will feature drawings, paintings, photography, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and six-word stories by the writers and artists who participated in the challenge. The magazine has announced the featured artists readers can expect to see in the anthology.

Congrats to the selected writers, and thank you for spreading your positive outlook!

Call :: We Want the Best Stories in All Genres for The Blue Mountain Review

The Blue Mountain Review flierThe 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. Check out the August 2020 Issue featuring the Roots of Michael Flhor, Growing Pains of an Adolescent American with DL Yancy II, James Ricks of the Quill Theater, Ilya Kaminsky’s road to poetry, and more.

Call :: The CHILLFILTR Review Open to Submissions of Essays, Poems, & Shorts Year-round

The CHILLFILTR Review strives to bring the best new art to a worldwide audience by leveraging best-in-class technology to create a seamless and immersive web experience. We welcome submissions from all walks of life, and all perspectives. We are committed to inclusivity and kindly welcome work from marginalized voices. All featured works will receive an honorarium of $20 per 1000 words and will be published online at The CHILLFILTR Review as well as on our Apple News Channel. Readers can vote for their favorites, and year-end “Best Of” winners will receive an additional $100 cash prize. Recent works include short stories by Charlotte A Wynn and Steven R. Southard’ an essay by Lisa del Rosso, and poetry by Ava Lansley.

Call :: Humana Obscura Spring/Summer 2021 Issue Open to Submissions

Submissions for the Spring/Summer 2021 issue of Humana Obscura are open! We are an independent online and print literary magazine publishing nature-themed work from around the world. For complete submission guidelines and more info on what we’re looking for, visit www.humanaobscura.com.

Smith’s Final Season

Guest Post by James Penha

Summer is the fourth and final novel in Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet. I loved Autumn, Winter, and Spring. Summer is my favorite. It has what one expects from Smith: wonderfully idiosyncratic characters, interlocking story lines, humor, social and political themes. But the special shock of Summer is its timeliness—not just Summer; Summer 2020! Its present tense is our pandemic present. Ali Smith had planned for this novel from the time (2016) she published Autumn if not long before. How did Smith manage to integrate COVID-19 and lockdown so seamlessly into a novel already envisioned? I call it a miracle . . . and a great book.

Summer by Ali Smith. Pantheon, August 2020.

A native New Yorker, James Penha has lived for the past quarter-century in Indonesia. He edits The New Verse News, an online journal of current-events poetry.

Event :: 2021 Virtual Palm Beach Poetry Festival

2021 Palm Beach Virtual Poetry Festival banner17th Annual Palm Beach Poetry Festival in Delray Beach, Florida, January 18-23, 2021. Focus on your work with America’s most engaging and award-winning poets. Workshops with David Baker, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Traci Brimhall, Vievee Francis, Kevin Prufer, Martha Rhodes, and Tim Seibles. Six days of workshops, readings, craft talks, panel discussion, social events, and so much more. One-on-one conference Faculty: Lorna Blake, Sally Bliumis-Dunn, Nickole Brown, Jessica Jacobs, and Angela Narciso-Torres. Special Guest: Gregory Orr and the Parkington Sisters. Poet At Large: Brian Turner. To find out more, visit www.palmbeachpoetryfestival.org. Apply to attend a workshop! The application deadline has been extended to December 1 from November 10.

Get in the Halloween Mood

Guest Post by Claudia Gollini

The Shunned House falls into the supernatural and folk genres. It is a horror fiction novelette by American author H. P. Lovecraft, written in October 1924 and first published in the October 1937 issue of Weird Tales.

Lovecraft links, at the story’s beginning, the tale to his idol Edgar Allan Poe. The unnamed narrator finds it ironic that during Edgar Allan Poe’s Providence sojourn, the master of the macabre many times passed a certain house on Benefit Street without recognizing the site of real horrors.

The Shunned House is a house on Benefit Street where a large number of people passed away. With the amount of fungus present in the house, it was declared to simply have “unhealthy” conditions. At worst, the house was deemed “unlucky.” No one suspected anything supernatural was going on.

However, the narrator’s uncle, physician and antiquarian Elihu Whipple, has a shivery fascination for the house. The house was built in 1763 by William Harris. Shortly after the Harrises moved in, his wife Rhoby delivered a stillborn son. For the next 150 years, no child would be born alive in the house. Once the narrator learns of his uncle’s suspicions, they decide to investigate the house.

The story’s narrator suspects that the family is connected to Jacques Roulet of Caude, who was condemned to death for lycanthropy in 1598 before being confined to an asylum.

Jacques Roulet was a real person, whom Lovecraft had read about in John Fiske’s Myths and Myth-Makers. “The family of Roulet had possessed an abnormal affinity for outer circles of entity—dark spheres which for normal folk hold only repulsion and terror.”

The Shunned House of the title is based on an actual house in Providence, Rhode Island, still standing at 135 Benefit Street and the novelette carries the perfect Halloween mood.

The Shunned House by H.P. Lovecraft.

Reviewer bio: Claudia Gollini is a makeup artist, fashion/beauty blogger and journalist, editor and writer, and body painter of events and TV shows.

Call :: Sou’wester Seeks Prose for Spring 2021 Issue

Sou'wester Spring 2020 coverDeadline: November 15, 2020
Sou’wester is now reading fiction and creative nonfiction for our annual print issue, forthcoming in spring 2021. We are committed to investing in and encouraging the words/stories/voices of all writers, prioritizing those belonging to marginalized communities. We want to read stories from writers belonging to the black diaspora, indigenous communities, Asian communities, Latin(x) communities, neurodivergent communities, those with disabilities, and LGBTQIA+. We seek fiction that allows us to transcend the everyday, haunts our dreams, and feels fresh. We’re looking for work that will move, stun, and awe our readers. Submission is free through Submittable.

Call :: Sand Hills Literary Magazine Open for First Online Feature

Sand Hills Literary Magazine posterDeadline: November 20, 2020
Sand Hills, in print since 1973, is opening up submissions for our very first online exclusive! We are accepting flash fiction and essays up to 1000 words, poetry up to 32 lines, photography, and, for the first time ever, short animation and comics. We are open for submissions until November 20th. sandhillslitmag.com/submit/. We look forward to hearing from you.

Contest :: 2022 Miller Williams Poetry Prize Deadline is September 30

Deadline: Rolling
Every year, the University of Arkansas Press accepts submissions for the Miller Williams Poetry Series and from the books selected awards the $5,000 Miller Williams Poetry Prize in the following summer. For almost a quarter century the press has made this series the cornerstone of its work as a publisher of some of the country’s best poetry. The series is edited by Patricia Smith. The deadline for the 2022 Prize is September 30, 2020. For more information visit uapress.com. Michael McGriff was named 2021 Miller Williams Poetry Prize Winner.

NewPages Book Stand – September 2020

It’s that time of month again: a new Book Stand is now up on the website. With the September update, you can find five featured titles, as well as a selection of new and forthcoming books to check out.

In the forthcoming I’ll Fly Away, Rudy Francisco’s poems savor the day-to-day, treating it as worship, turning it into an opportunity to plant new seeds of growth.

The essays in Sky Songs: Meditations on Loving a Broken World by Jennifer Sinor offer a lyric exploration of language, love, and the promise inherent in the stories we tell: to remember.

Some Girls Walk into the Country They Are From is Sawako Nakayasu’s first poetry collection in seven years. The book radicalizes notions of “translation” as both process and product.

Hafizah Geter’s debut collection, Un-American, moves readers through the fraught internal and external landscapes—linguistic, cultural, racial, familial—of those whose lives are shaped and transformed by immigration.

Joseph Harris’s interconnected narrative You’re in the Wrong Place presents characters reaching for transcendence from a place they cannot escape in a landscape suddenly devoid of work, faith, and love.

You can learn more about each of these New & Noteworthy books at our website and find them at our our affiliate Bookshop.org. You can see how to place your book in our New & Noteworthy section here: https://npofficespace.com/classified-advertising/new-title-issue-ad-reservation/.

Call :: Garfield Lake Review 2021 Submission Period Open!

Deadline: October 12, 2020
The Garfield Lake Review prides itself on accepting a wide selection of fiction, poetry, and visual arts from the Olivet College community and beyond. No fee, payment in copies. This year’s Garf is looking for submissions that follow the theme of duality. Send us your unexpected endings, your highs and lows. Send us anything juxtaposed between light and darkness. Living is a thrill—show us how it is for you. Visit us at www.garfieldlakereview.com/submit.

Contest :: Interim’s 2020 Test Site Poetry Prize

Interim 2020 Test Site Poetry Prize bannerDeadline: December 15, 2020
Submit your manuscript to Interim’s 3rd annual Test Site Poetry Contest! As our series title suggests, we’re looking for manuscripts that engage the perilous conditions of life in the 21st century, as they pertain to issues of social justice and the earth. The winning book will demonstrate an ethos that considers the human condition in inclusive love and sympathy, while offering the same in consideration of the earth. Because we believe the truth is always experimental, we’ll especially appreciate books with innovative approaches. The winning book will be chosen by the series editor and advisory board, which includes poets Sherwin Bitsui, Donald Revell, Sasha Steensen and Ronaldo Wilson. The winner will receive $1,000 and their book will be published by University of Nevada Press in 2021.

Call :: Palooka Seeks Short Works for Magazine Publication & Chapbook-length Manuscripts

Palooka is an international literary magazine. For a decade we’ve featured up-and-coming, established, and brand-new writers, artists, and photographers from all around the world. We’re open to diverse forms and styles and are always seeking unique chapbooks, fiction, poetry, nonfiction, artwork, photography, graphic narratives, and comic strips. Give us your best shot! Submissions open year-round. palookamag.com

New Kooser Gem

Guest Post by Guinotte Wise

I see where the bookmark is in the closed pages of Ted Kooser’s Red Stilts and realize I’ve been reading faster than I meant to; it’s a new Kooser book and I like to savor the first read. It’s like a dish of something especially good and you want it to last longer than it does. Each poem is a pleasure. Even the epigraph at the start is Kooserian, though it’s a Tolstoy quote from “Father Sergius”: “After he’d walked away, she stood in the yard in starlight, listening to dogs bark, each more faintly as he passed the farms along the road.”

I can see it, hear it, feel it. That’s a summation of Ted Kooser’s poetry. The cover of this newest gem from Copper Canyon Press is a rather entrancing painting of an alley by Don Williams, an oil titled Nebraska City Alley and it, too, echoes Kooser charm and clarity.

Once finished with this, I’ll never be finished; I’ll return to it often. I have a shelf of Ted Kooser poetry and whichever book I pull from it, it takes me quietly away from whatever dissonance the outside world is shoveling at me, and into a gently masterful poem that seems so simple, so connected to everyday things we miss in our confusion.

Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Kooser, for this kid you had in 1939. And thank the world for carving his genius. Simply awesome.

Red Stilts by Ted Kooser. Copper Canyon Press, 2020.

Reviewer bio: 5-time Pushcart nominee and author of seven books, Guinotte Wise’s poetry and prose have appeared in numerous journals. Some work is at http://www.wisesculpture.com.

Buy this book from our affiliate Bookshop.org.

Call :: The American Journal of Poetry Volume 10, Winter/Spring 2021

Deadline: Rolling
Now reading for Volume Ten, our Winter/Spring 2021 issue to be publishing in January 2021. Please visit us to read our previous volumes filled with poems from poets the world over, from the first-published to the most acclaimed in literature. A unique voice is highly prized. Be bold, uncensored, take risks. Our hallmark is “STRONG Rx MEDICINE.” We are the home of the long poem! No restrictions as to subject matter, style, or length. Published biannually online. Submissions accepted through our online submission manager, Submittable; a submission fee is charged. theamericanjournalofpoetry.com

Avian Inspiration

Guest Post by Amber Thompson

I discovered Graeme Gibson’s The Bedside Book of Birds while watching Margaret Atwood: A Word After a Word After a Word is Power. The day after I watched the documentary, my husband and I rescued a pair of near-fledgling doves. This, coupled with the fact that I found Atwood and Gibson’s relationship moving and relatable, convinced me I had to get this work for my husband, a lover of both books and birds.

Online it was selling for much more than the original list price, but at a bookstore a week and a half later, I watched my husband pick up a more reasonably priced copy. I told him a little about the book: that Atwood’s late husband had compiled it and that it was a collection of works on the relationship between birds and humans—in a sense, the awe the former has long inspired in the latter. I also told him I’d been hoping to get it for him and that if he liked the look of it, I still wanted to.

As we drove home, he cracked open the book. I peeked over to see the title of the first piece, a poem: “Night Crow” by Theodore Roethke. When he read it to me, I had the sudden realization that it was a poem I’d been searching for for years. These miraculous-feeling events coalesced into an experience of serendipity that we had not felt in a long time. When we curled into bed that night, he read more of the book aloud to me and we looked together at the beautifully included reproductions of sketches, paintings, and scientific drawings of birds. We rested quietly in the knowledge that we, through our friend Carol, the surviving fledgling, had been touched deeply by the avian world as well.

The Bedside Book of Birds: An Avian Miscellany by Graeme Gibson. Penguin Random House.

Reviewer bio: Amber Thompson is a Pushcart Prize nominee who recently published her debut poetry chapbook. She can be found at www.amberthompsonwrites.wordpress.com.

Event :: Willow Writers’ Fall 2020 Virtual Workshops

Registration Deadline: Rolling
Willow Writers’ Workshops is going virtual this fall! We will offer workshops, providing writing prompts, craft discussions, and manuscript consultations. All levels are welcome. Writers’ Workshops available on Thursday nights, Sunday afternoons, Saturday mornings, and Monday mornings. Fall seminars include Generating Story Ideas and Creating a Strong Sense of Place; Gothic Fiction, and Flash! Writing Short, Short Prose. Workshops and seminars run in September and October. The facilitator is Susan Isaak Lolis, a published and award-winning writer. For more information, check out willowwritersretreat.com.

Read It Again

Guest Post by Preksha Bothra

“Never let anyone make you feel ordinary.”

There were a lot of oh-I-wanna-read-this-again moments in Taylor Jenkins Reid’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. Nothing, literally nothing, in this book went the way I expected. A couple of times I was completely surprised with what happened. I didn’t even fully get it until I read the novel twice. Not many books have had that effect.

This book will definitely not bore you, because it’s never slow. The chapters skip from one husband to another quickly but without leaving any important details behind. The only one time that I didn’t like what I was reading was somewhere in the middle of the book, where I became a little tired with Evelyn and her marriages, but that is my only complaint. Highly recommended.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Washington Square Press, May 2018.

Reviewer bio: Find Preksha Bothra at on Instagram.

Buy this book from our affiliate Bookshop.org.

Call :: Grand Little Things Open to Formal Verse

Deadline: Rolling
Grand Little Things is open for submissions! Visit us at grand-little-things.com/submission-information/ for more info! GLT is looking for formal poetry (think sonnets, villanelles, etc.) or blank/free verse that uses traditional poetic techniques. Open to never-been-published-writers and up and comers, as well as established writers. No fee required.

Event :: Poetry Lab’s Submit It Like You Mean It

Poetry Lab's 2020 Submit It Like You Mean ItEnrolling now: six-week virtual seminar offered by The Poetry Lab, Submit It Like You Mean It: All You Need to Know to Successfully Submit Poetry for Publication. Reliable, effective submissions strategy with in-depth guidance on cover letters, bio statements, simultaneous submissions, where to submit, how to create a tracking sheet, and much more. Our goal is to demystify the path to publication with practical tools and insider knowledge in a friendly environment. Registration fee is $95 and includes one-month subscription to Duotrope. Scholarships are available. Class begins October 6, 2020. Learn more at our website.

Still Point Arts Quarterly – Fall 2020

The Fall 2020 issue homes in on “The Secret Life of Objects.” Featured artists include Cary Loving, Birgit Gutsche, Aaron M. Brown, Jeffrey Stoner, and more. Featured writers include Dawn Raffel, Judith Sornberger, Emily Uduwana, Kathleen Aponick, William Doreski, Keltie Zubko, Adrienne Stevenson, Susan Currie, and others. Find more info at the Still Point Arts Quarterly website.

Spoon River Poetry Review – Summer 2020

The Summer 2020 Issue of SRPR is out. In this issue, you’ll find cover art by Brittany Schloderback; the SRPR Illinois Poet Feature with new poetry by Simone Muench and Jackie K. White, with an interview of the poets by Carlo Matos and Amy Sayre Batista; and new poetry by Jose-Luis Moctezuma, Paul Martinez-Pompa, Julia Wong Kcomt translated by Jennifer Shyue, Michael Leong, Emily Carr, and more.

New England Review – 41.3

New England Review Volume 41 Number 3 is out. Featured work by May-lee Chai; Jeneva Stone; Laurence de Looze; Alyssa Pelish; John Kinsella; Clifford Howard; and translations of Scholastique Mukasonga, Karla Marrufo, and Nelly Sachs. Fiction by Kenneth Calhoun, Meron Hadero, Kate Petersen, and Kirk Wilson; poetry by Anders Carlson-Wee, Victoria Chang, Justin Danzy, Elisa Gabbert, torrin a. greathouse, Christina Pugh, and more; plus cover art by Heidi P.

Kaleidoscope – No. 81

During periods of unrest and uncertainty, when ominous dark clouds roll in and the sky becomes black, it can be easy to give in to feelings of despair. Kaleidoscope contains stories of adversity but it also offers hope. Featuring the essay “Between Rooms” by N. T. McQueen, the story “Mother Bear” by Melissa Murakami, and the essay “Nacre Upon Nacre” by Jenna Pashley Smith. In addition to these three, this issue contains an array of thought-provoking poetry and other wonderful stories of fiction and nonfiction. Issue 81 brings the promise that storm clouds will dissipate and the sun will shine again.

Jewish Fiction .net – #25

This Rosh Hashana marks exactly ten years since the founding of Jewish Fiction .net! Since our first issue came out on Rosh Hashana 2010, we have published over 430 works of fiction never before published in English, which were originally written in sixteen languages. We are a truly international journal with readers in 140 countries. Our new, 10th-anniversary issue of Jewish Fiction .net is now out and features 18 first-rate works of fiction originally written in Spanish, Yiddish, Hebrew, and English. We hope this special issue brings you pleasure, intellectual delight, entertainment, and comfort during this challenging time.

Call :: Storm Cellar Now a Paying Market

Deadline: Rolling
Storm Cellar is a literary journal of safety and danger, in print and ebook formats since 2011. We seek the voices of Black, Indigenous, POC, LGBTQIA+, gender nonbinary, neurodivergent, fat, disabled, border-straddling, poor, and more marginalized authors. We encourage connections, in work or by creator, to the Midwest, broadly construed. Now paying. Send ambitious, surprising new art and writing through stormcellar.submittable.com; learn more at stormcellar.org.

Brevity – Sept 2020

The essays in this guest-edited special issue of Brevity consider all aspects of illness and disability: what it is, what it means, how our understanding of disability is changing. Our anchor author is novelist and essayist Esmé Weijun Wang, author of The Collected Schizophrenias. Other authors featured include Barbara Lanciers, Meg Le Duc, William Fargason, Ona Gritz, Kelly Weber, Maya Osman-Krinsky, and more. The “Experiences of Disability” issue is guest edited by Keah Brown, Sonya Huber, and Sarah Fawn Montgomery. Artwork by Jill Khoury.

Remembering September 11 with Wisława Szymborska

Guest Post by Autumn Barraclough 

With September 11 close at hand, I’ve found my thoughts turning back to another time in American history in which our country suffered. I found myself reflecting back on September 11 and pictures.

In the poem “Photography from September 11,” Wisława Szymborska captures my thoughts as she describes the figures, forever frozen in history, as they jump from the twin towers. Her solemn respect and care for these souls resonates throughout the poem as she describes their flight, rather than their demise. This poem helps me to remember the tragedy of September 11 without the political connections—just understanding that humans were hurt and that I still have a country to love and care for that is full of people that care for each other in their own way.

Reviewer bio: Autumn Barraclough is a college student studying English. She is a Virginian at heart and loves to delve into the connections between France and Virginia, aspiring to create a written work that expresses that relationship.

Call :: BLUELINE Open to Submissions until November 30

BLUELINE: A Literary Magazine Dedicated to the Spirit of the Adirondacks seeks poems, stories, and essays about the Adirondacks and regions similar in geography and spirit, focusing on nature’s shaping influence. Submissions window open until November 30. Decisions mid-February. Payment in copies. Simultaneous submissions accepted if identified as such. Please notify if your submission is placed elsewhere. Electronic submissions encouraged, as Word files, to [email protected]. Please identify the genre in the subject line. Further information at bluelineadkmagazine.org. Check out their 40th anniversary edition published in 2019 for a taste of what they like.

450 Pages of Poetry & Prose to Love

Magazine Review by Katy Haas

Issue 48 of Paterson Literary Review is a hefty 450 pages. A reader is guaranteed to find something they admire or connect with in those near-500 pages.

Readers can look forward to Vivian Shipley’s “A Glossary of Literary Terms for My Son,” a poem creatively and seamlessly broken up into nine different literary terms. Mary Ann Mayer writes an ode to “Walt Whitman’s Pants,” a poem that ends up being educational with its historical context. Penny Perry’s “Fig Bars” ends up being extremely relevant as the speaker sits with her husband and daughter as a wildfire burns twenty miles from their house.

And that’s just a small sampling of the poetry. The issue also includes prose and reviews. It’s nearly impossible to walk away from this brick of an issue without finding something to love.

A Portal to Powerful Nonfiction

Magazine Review by Katy Haas

The art of John Belue dons the cover and pages of the Fall 2020 issue of Creative Nonfiction, and I absolutely love it. His work remixes vintage photos, thinly cut strips overlaying another photo to create an almost portal-like image. The art drew me into the “Memoir” issue of Creative Nonfiction and the writing made me stick around even longer.

Megan Doney’s nightmares haunt her after a shooting at the school where she teaches in “The Wolf and the Dog.” While her dreams leave her powerless, she imagines finding power if the situation ever happens again. The piece begins viscerally, a dark view into Doney’s mind after surviving a horrific event.

Mary Beth Ellis gets deeply personal in “Weaponry of the Cold War” as she walks readers through her vaginismus diagnosis. While the subject of her writing is both physically and emotionally painful, Ellis uses humor in unexpected places, her writing cynical and skeptical, light when it matters. As Ellis says, up to 14% of the female population suffers from vaginismus, and there is not much to read about the subject. Ellis adds her voice, her story, giving other people with vaginas something to relate to.

Whether you pick up Creative Nonfiction‘s latest issue because the art caught your eye, or because you crave powerful nonfiction, you will not be let down.

Congrats on 10 Years to Jewish Fiction .net

Congratulations to Jewish Fiction .net for ten years of publication!

From their website: “Since our first issue came out on Rosh Hashana 2010, we have published over 430 works of fiction never before published in English, which were originally written in sixteen languages.”

You can see this writing at their website, starting with their newly released tenth anniversary issue. The new issue offers 18 pieces of fiction originally written in Spanish, Yiddish, Hebrew, and English, including “The Old Days” by David Regenspan in honor of Rosh Hashana.

September 2020 eLitPak :: LitNuts: Crazy About Books

LitNuts eLitPak flier
click image to open PDF

Coming September 21, the LitNuts eNewsletter promotes books from independent presses. A special offer is now available for authors! Subscribe to the newsletter (it’s free!) and indicate that you are an author. We’ll send you discount codes for free and discounted advertising that can be used during our launch, now through January 2021.

View full September eLitPak here.