At the NewPages Blog readers and writers can catch up with their favorite literary and alternative magazines, independent and university presses, creative writing programs, and writing and literary events. Find new books, new issue announcements, contest winners, and so much more!
Deadline: July 31, 2020
Don’t forget The Petigru Review is looking for surprising stories, poems, essays, and first novel chapters for their annual online literary journal. They are especially interested in supporting diverse and emerging voices. Submissions close 7/31/20 or when they hit 500 submissions. www.thepetigrureview.com
Deadline: August 31, 2020
Haunted Waters Press now seeking submissions for consideration in Tin Can Literary Review—our debut fiction anthology celebrating the works of new, emerging, and seasoned authors. We seek stories told in as little as 500 words and as many as 12,000. Selected works to be paid $250 per published story. Also seeking works of fiction, poetry, and flash for paid print publication in the 18th issue of From the Depths and in consideration for 2020 HWP Awards. Penny Fiction 2020 will showcase exceptionally short stories told in exactly 20 words—no more, no less. Details: www.hauntedwaterspress.com.
The summer issue of The Shore features dazzling poetry by: Catherine Pierce, Kim Harvey, Beth Gylys, Joshua Garcia, Sara Moore Wagner, Kristi Maxwell, Dillon Thomas Jones, Matthew Bruce, Lorrie Ness, C.C.Russell, Travis Truax, Stanley Princewill McDaniels, Njoku Nonso, Erin Rodoni, Phillip Sterling, William Doreski, and more.
Deadline: November 30, 2020
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.
The Rathalla Review Spring 2020 issue features work by Timothy Dodd, Liam Strong, Thad DeVassie, Nathan Spoon, Isaac W Sauer, Henry Stimpson, Jeffery H. MacLachlan, Phillip Sterling, Adam Luebke, and Bina Ruchi Perino.
The 2020 issue of Presence features poets Sean Thomas Dougherty and Angela Alaimo O’Donnell. Also in this issue: translated work by María Eugenia Vaz Ferreira, Laura Chalar, Julio Herrera y Reissig, Federico García Lorca, Lucía Estrada, Fina García Marruz, and more; poetry by Ann Applegarth, Collin Becker, Aaron Brown, Ann Cefola, Paola Corso, Susan Cowger, Janet McCann, Stephen Paling, Skip Renker, and others; and interviews with Christian Wiman and Paul Mariani. There is a lot more to discover in this issue, including an “in memoriam” section, book reviews, and a “life’s work” section.
Deadline: June 30, 2020
Barrow Street is accepting submissions for the 2020 Book Prize Contest. This year’s contest judge is Pulitzer Prize finalist Dorianne Laux. Past winners include 2019 Simone Savannah collection Uses of My Body, chosen by contest judge Jericho Brown; Meg Day for Last Psalm at Sea Level; Page Hill Stazinger for Vestigial; and Ely Shipley for Boy with Flowers. Prize winner receives publication and $1500 cash prize. Online contest fee $28. Submit manuscripts online here: barrowstreet.org/press/submit/.
The 2020 issue of The Briar Cliff Review explores themes of violence, disconnectedness, and the legacy of slavery. Find poetry by Jed Myers, Claude Wilkinson, AE Hines, Lindy Obach, Doug Rampseck, Laura Stott, Melanie Krieps Mergen, Mary Fitzpatrick, Dar Hurni, and more; fiction by Deac Etherington, Carrie Callaghan, and others; and nonfiction by Karen Holmberg, Ryan McCarl, and more. Plus, two book reviews and pages of art.
Submissions accepted year-round.
Fiction Southeast seeks articles about writing, interviews, and essays from MFA students as well as emerging and established writers. These can be articles concerning the publication process, writing a synopsis, composing a query letter, dealing with rejection, craft articles, and more. fictionsoutheast.com
Deadline: Midnight (EST), August 1, 2020
Time to spill the family secrets. Submit your funny sister (or soul sister) story by midnight (EST) Aug. 1, for Nickie’s Prize for Humor Writing sponsored by the University of Dayton’s Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop. $300 cash prizes for up to 20 winners. Winning essays will be published online, with the possibility of being included in a future anthology. In the spirit of Erma Bombeck, the tone can be humorous, absurd, offbeat, quirky, or fun in a smart way. All previously unpublished essays no longer than 1,000 words will be considered. Submission fee: $25. Details: humorwriters.org/nickies-prize/.
Rhett Iseman Trull, Editor of Cave Wall poetry magazine has announced the first winner for The Nina Riggs Poetry Award.
“We were thrilled with the many nominations that came in from individuals, presses, and journals,” Rhett commented. “The 10 finalists that went to the guest judge were powerful poems, all worthy of the award, poems everyone should read.”
Guest Judge Maria Hummel chose Rachel Eliza Griffiths’ poem “Good Mother,” which first appeared in Tin House, as this year’s inaugural winner. Griffiths’ poem can be read here.
The Nina Riggs Poetry Award is a crowd-funded award, with the winner receiving at least $500. “Thanks to the generous donations of so many supporters,” Rhett shared, “we were able to award Rachel Eliza $1,000.”
Honorable Mention went to Melissa Crowe for “Dear Terror, Dear Splendor.”
Finalists
Traci Brimhall, “Oh, Wonder”
Tiana Clark, “A Louder Thing”
Carrie Fountain, “Will You?”
Keetje Kuipers, “Still Life with Small Objects of Perfect Choking Size”
Megan Peak, “What I Don’t Tell My Mother about Ohio”
Thomas Reiter, “Companions”
Anna Ross, “One Time”
Molly Spencer, “A Wooing, Outright, of My Beloved Ones”
Rhett added, “We hope many people will nominate poems for the next round. Any poems received before Nov. 1 will be considered for the 2021 award. We are looking for the finest poems on family, relationships, or domestic life published in the last three years. No self-nominations.”
For more information, visit: http://www.cavewallpress.com/ninaaward.html
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
In the latest issue of Pembroke Magazine, Jessica Hertz writes of the “Fictional Women I Have Known.” This five-part piece focuses on Alice from Alice in Wonderland, the mermaid from Hans Christian Andersen’s or Disney’s The Little Mermaid, Persephone, the sister from “The Six Swans” fairy tale, and Eve.
Each section explores the complexities of their feelings, their desires, and their realities. They’re not flat women on a page but are thought-out and developed even in the small space provided. I enjoyed Hertz’s take on each of them, and my favorites were the mermaid and Eve. The mermaid is faced with having to choose between a voice or the ability to dance, a choice she wishes she did not have to make. Eve is faced with a choice—eat the offered fruit or don’t—and Hertz asserts she knew exactly what she was doing when she accepted, a take I appreciated.
Peer into the inner thoughts and feelings of these five fictional women with Hertz as your guide.
Guest Post by Kate Gaskin
In Wider than the Sky, Nancy Chen Long’s second book of poetry, the biological constraints of memory merge with the practice of storytelling to show how families create intimate legacies and private lexicons that both heal and stifle.
Long uses the language of science to meditate on the power of stories to determine—or even rewrite—reality. In “Interstice,” she writes “Our memory is flooded with holes, pocked like cotton eyelet.” To participate in narrative, then, is to admit its fallibility: “There are gaps in our stories / and in our history. People are missing.” “In the Family of Erasure” shows a daughter and mother engaged in a complicated dance through each other’s individual memories in order to arrive at a shared history they can both tolerate.
Throughout this collection, Long mines both the personal and the general to show how memory is a mutable and ever-evolving force that steers migrating butterflies around long-gone mountains and compels a daughter to clean “off the family’s stains . . . to keep her memory-rooms blameless.” In the closing poem “Wordlust,” Long writes of the bittersweet futility of determining shared history: “The world is filled / with words. We are a seaward-bound people, / chasing a flood / of sorrows our stories cannot explain.” These are tender and insightful poems that probe the fallibility of memory, asking which parts of our legacy we can control and which parts are inherited by complex forces that stretch back into our DNA.
Wider than the Sky by Nancy Chen Long. Diode Editions, March 2020.
Reviewer bio: Kate Gaskin is the author of Forever War (YesYes Books 2020). She is a poetry editor for The Adroit Journal.
The latest issue of december includes the 2020 Jeff Marks Memorial Poetry Prize winner and finalists.
First Place
“River” by Kimani Rose
Honorable Mention
“The Mirrored Room” by Carolyn Foster Segal
Finalists
“The Chosen” by Partridge Boswell
“An Invitation to an Eclipse Party” by
“Going to Church” by Gibson Fay-LeBlanc
“Ars Poetica With Clickbait” by Rebecca Foust
“Pink Peonies” by Valentina Gnup
“On Midwest Marriage” by Gina Keplinger
“My Daughter Makes Pan Dulces” by Abby E. Murray
“Origin of a Disaster” by Purnama
“House Bill #118” by Molly Bess Rector
“Rupture” by Raisa Tolchinsky
You can view a selection of these at the magazine’s website, or grab yourself a copy to check out all the placing poems.
Guest Post by Zizheng William Liu
Hatchet is the depiction of a world gone wrong. The book details the life of Brian Robeson, the son of divorced parents, and victim of a horrific plane crash. Left alone in the midst of the Canadian wilderness with nothing but a windbreaker and hatchet, Brian must tame himself to survive.
The story begins in the city, where 13-year-old Brian boards a bush plane to see his father for the summer. Miles up into the air, the plane pilot suffer from a heart attack, rendering the plane flying aimlessly above the Canadian landscape. But Brian had always been under tough situations. Ever since he had witnessed the dreaded secret that led to his parent’s divorce, Brian’s life had spiraled out of control. No, literally. The Cessna 406 bush plane that Brian was riding to see his father crashes, and Brian is forced to live his life in the wild. All the luxuries from the city are gone. Food needs to be hunted, shelter needs to be built, and the pesky mosquitoes need to be repelled. Over a month passes since the initial plane crash, and Brian finally finds a solution. He scavenges a transmitter from the plane ruins and that ultimately leads to his rescue. A fur buyer had been alerted to Brian, but the 54 days that Brian spent in the wilderness had still taken its toll.
A thrilling and powerful piece, Hatchet shows that any problem can be solved, even when life is on the line. In a time when the Covid-19 pandemic has swept through our nation, this book is an insight into the true potential that we all have. When utilized, no problem is too big to be solved.
Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. Scholastic Press, 1986.
Reviewer bio: Zizheng William Liu is an avid writer. His works have been published in multiple literary journals and he is an editor for Polyphony Lit Magazines.
Deadline: June 30, 2020
Change Seven is an online literary journal. We seek to publish the best available fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, visual art, book reviews, and more from both established and emerging talents. We most enjoy writing that comes from experience, is well-crafted, lyrical, distinctive, and accessible. Language is important. We like work that takes risks, that is morally unflinching, not for the sake of spectacle but for some daunting and tender rendering of truth. That is not to say we don’t also admire subtlety and quieter pieces of work. We love those, too. Humor as well. Just make it matter. changesevenmag.com
Guest Post by Mia Willardson
On May 19th, 2020, Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins released the novel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. This dystopian piece is a prequel to Collins’s bestselling series. The Ballad Of Songbirds and Snakes takes place during the tenth annual Hunger Games and centers around young Coriolanus Snow. Snow is chosen to mentor in the Hunger Games and feels mortified when he is assigned the tribute from district twelve, Lucy Gray Baird. In the capital, district citizens were inferiors—less than people. Coriolanus felt disgraced to be assigned a girl from district twelve. However, Snow begins to learn that Lucy Gray isn’t just a girl from district twelve. She’s a very smart young woman who likes to wear rainbow dresses, sing, dance, and make a scene. She begins to become a hit in the capitol and Snow begins to see her in a new light. He begins to believe that she has a shot at winning the Hunger Games.
This story helps Hunger Games fans understand how Katniss and Peeta’s world came to be. The reader is taught the history of the dystopian country, and the hardships Snow and his family faced.
The reader learns how certain events and traditions came to place in the Hunger Games universe. Readers will fall in love with the bold characters in the novel, and will definitely find themselves audibly gasping and laughing along with the story. Collins’s use of striking imagery will make the reader feel as though they are apart of the journey. Collins shocks readers with how much the story can compare to our world and our real-world issues. The story revolves around power, control, and how people will react to it on larger scales. You’d be surprised how children fighting for their lives in an arena would compare to what is happening now. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a must-read and is the thought-changing tale of the year.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins. Scholastic Press, May 2020.
Reviewer bio: Mia is a fifteen-year-old upcoming high school sophomore who adores creative writing and dystopian literary pieces.
Buy this book from our affiliate Bookshop.org.
July 31 is the deadline to submit manuscripts for consideration to Xi Draconis Books. They seek socially engaged, book-length works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry for its 2020 and 2021 production years. They accept novels, short story and poetry collections, memoirs, essay collections, and cross-genre book-length works. Their mission is to publish works that examine social justice issues of all kinds. Head to xidraconis.org/submission-guidelines/ to submit.
Guest Post by Leah Browning
I Refuse is a novel by Per Petterson about two childhood friends. Tommy and Jim are now adults and have been estranged for many years when they unexpectedly cross paths on a bridge outside Oslo.
Per Petterson, who also grew up in Norway, is a thoughtful and moving writer. Overall, I see this book is a meditation on friendship, not only between the two main characters, but between others as well. There are several instances where a spontaneous act of kindness reverberates through another person’s day or even, in at least one case, an entire lifetime.
The book also focuses on something slipperier: the role of persistence or determination in a person’s life. One of the boys has a harsh, even brutal home life; the other has, in many ways, been luckier. Either could be destroyed by his circumstances.
At the beginning of the book, one of the men has been fishing, but it could have been either one: “As a rule I drove home before the first cars came down the hill towards the bridge, but today I had frittered my time away. I hadn’t even started to pack my bag, and the cars that were coming were classy cars, expensive cars. I turned my back to the road, my frayed navy blue reefer jacket wrapped tightly round me. I’d had that jacket ever since I was a boy in Mørk, and only one of the old brass buttons was still intact, and I had a woollen cap on as blue as the jacket, pulled down over my ears, so from behind I could have been anyone.”
Ambition has pushed one of the men in a strange, sometimes cruel direction. In this time of social distancing, reading about the powerful impact of friends and family members feels especially relevant.
I Refuse by Per Petterson (translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett). Graywolf Press, 2015.
Reviewer bio: Leah Browning edits the Apple Valley Review, which publishes short fiction, personal essays, and poetry in spring and fall issues. She occasionally blogs at https://leahbrowning.blogspot.com/.
Buy this book through our affiliate Bookshop.org.
Ongoing Enrollment; Location: Online
Storyville Writing Workshop offers virtual writing workshops online for a wide variety of skill levels. Workshops provide personalized critiques, ongoing email access to the instructor, writing resources, personal virtual meetings via Google Meet, as well as access to writing forums. storyvilleworkshop.com/online-workshops/
Guest Post by Jason Gordy Walker
Reading the prose poems of Calveyra, one feels the guiding presence of an enthusiastic genius, a soft-spoken bard, an artist of nature and deep emotional impression. With his subtle touch, the poet paints miniature landscapes of the mind and the natural world it experiences: “I came looking through loose autumn and slowed to a thistle beside the slide piled high with dead leaves. Wild! recently bloomed and gone into the raw milk.” These poems, all untitled, have a cumulative, epiphanic effect. His common tropes, such as chickens, the wind, the moon, the horizon, and the expanse of the countryside, shimmer with meaningfulness.
Calveyra’s verse pays respect and close attention to the local language of the region he grew up in, Entre Ríos. In translation, the result is occasionally clipped syntax and/or off-beat slices of language thrown into the midst of clear sentences, which leads the reader into a dreamlike state of consciousness: “Oh, the chicken’s already come in clucking with huge umbrella wings and this cheep-cheep will pass will pass and the last one will stay!” He has a talent for switching tones in a single poem. One moment the mood may be ecstatic, the next sorrowful or contemplative, the next whimsical, curious.
Elizabeth Zuba’s breezy translations do the poems justice. Perhaps the best way to absorb the book is to read the Spanish aloud first, refining a taste for Calveyra’s internal rhymes and rhythms. Next, with the originals in mind, read the English translations; the effect is often mesmerizing. During the pandemic, with all of the stress, worry, and panic that comes with it, reading Calveyra prompts one to think, as the poet opens the final piece in his collection, “Please don’t be worried, I’m not.” Calveyra, who fled Perón’s Argentina for Paris in 1961, deserves a wider audience.
Letters So That Happiness by Arnaldo Calveyra. Ugly Duckling Presse, May 2018.
Reviewer bio: Jason Gordy Walker, a student at MFA@FLA, has published poetry in Confrontation, fiction in Monkeybicycle, and criticism in Birmingham Poetry Review and Alabama Writers’ Forum. He is against American Fascism.
Buy this book through our affiliate Bookshop.org.
Deadline: August 1, 2020
Each issue of About Place Journal, the arts publication of the Black Earth Institute, focuses on a specific theme. From 6/1 to 8/1 they’ll be accepting submissions for their Fall 2020 issue Works of Resistance, Resilience. Their mission: to have art address the causes of spirit, earth, and society; to protect the earth; and to build a more just and interconnected world. They publish prose, poetry, visual art, photography, video, and music which fit the current theme. More about this issue’s theme and their submission guidelines: aboutplacejournal.org/submissions/.
Update your calendars—South 85 Journal has announced they’ve changed their reading general reading periods. They’ll now be reading from February 1 to April 16, and August 1 to October 15, though this is subject to change in the future. For now, make note and get your subs ready for August.
Or, if you’ve already been polishing your poetry and flash fiction and are looking for somewhere to submit, submissions for the Julia Peterkin Poetry & Flash Fiction Contests are now open until August 1. Marlin Barton will judge the flash fiction submissions, and Denis Duhamel will judge the poetry.
July 15th is the deadline to submit to the 15th annual Rattle Poetry Prize which has grown to $15,000 for a single poem. Ten finalists also receive $200 and publication, and are eligible for the $5,000 Readers’ Choice Award. With an entry fee that is simply a one-year subscription to the magazine—and a runner-up Readers’ Choice Award to be chosen by the writers themselves—the Rattle Poetry Prize aims to be one of the most writer-friendly and popular poetry contests around. Visit www.rattle.com/prize for the complete guidelines and to read all of the past winners.
Guest Post by MG Noles
The Only Dance There Is is the story of Dr. Richard Alpert, the man who had it all. He had attained the pinnacle of success as a tenured professor of psychology at Harvard University. He had the cars, the girls, the motorcycles, and the friends. He was regarded as a genius by colleagues and students. He was the cool professor all the kids wanted to study with.
It was the 1960s, baby, and Dr. Alpert was riding the wave of social evolution. He wanted to change the world and yearned to break free of the post-1950s zipped-up norms that continued into the early ‘60s. Continue reading “A Study in the Miraculous: The Only Dance There Is”
New poetry by Karen An-Hwei Lee, Jan Freeman, Ashanti Anderson, Ken Babstock, Drew Swinger, W. Todd Kaneko, Susan Parr, Noah Baldino, Faylita Hicks, Erika Martínez, Ian Pople, Bradley Trumpfheller, Alla Gorbunova, Marion McCready, Eleanor Hooker, Tim Seibles, Carol Ann Davis, Karisma Price, Rita Dove, Fran Lock, Emily Fragos, Rajiv Mohabir, Cynthia Guardado, Sandra McPherson, Elizabeth Metzger, Miller Oberman, Catherine Cleary, and more. In “The View from Here” section: Nicolas Bos, Zach Pino, Leah Ward Sears, Mairead Case, and John Green. Plus two essays by Torrin A. Greathouse and Christian Wiman. Check out other poetry contributors at the Poetry website.
This issue’s theme is “Making a Mark,” and the current art exhibition explores this theme. Featured artists include David Sapp, Mary Macey Butler, Cary Loving, and others. Featured writers include Karla Van Vliet, Wally Swist, Paula Penna, Dave Gregory, Bethany Bruno, Gergory Stephens, Mary Lane Potter, Roudri Bandyopadhyay, Sarah Brown Weitzman, Mark Tulin, Joe Kowalski, and more. Find more info at the Still Point Arts Quarterly website.
In the Spring 2020 issue: fiction by Jarrett Kaufman, Emily Alice Katz, J.T. Ledbetter, John Mancini, David Pratt, and Timothy Reilly; poetry by Jeffrey Alfier, Tobi Alfier, John Azrak, Tara Ballard, Chris Bullard, Dorritt Carroll, Ricks Carson, George Bishop, Sudasi J. Clement, Joan Colby, and more; and six book reviews. Be sure to check out our featured interview with Tim Bascom by Beth Browne.
In the Spring 2020 issue of Hiram Poetry Review, find poetry by Jo Brachman, R. Steve Benson, Dan Cardoza, Daniel Daly, J. David, Lynn Domina, Ben Goluboff, Stuart Gunter, Alec Hershman, Joanne Holdridge, Henry Hughes, Richard Jones, Peycho Kanev, Kara Marell, Jose Oseguera, Jonathan Andrew Pérez, William Snyder, and more.
Our latest issue features poetry by Kenda Allen, Jamaica Baldwin, Ronda Pizza Broatch, Satya Dash, Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, Rebecca Foust, Valentina Gnup, Tate Lewis, Abby E. Murray, Phong Nguyen, Eric Pankey, Kimani Rose, Joel Showalter, Ellora Sutton, Raisa Tolchinsky, and more; and fiction by Stacy Austin Egan, Lucy Ferriss, Tyler McAndrew, Casey McConahay, Susan Mersereau, and Griffin Victoria Reed. Read more info at the december website.
The deadline for the Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize 2020 is August 15. This year’s Judges are Dorianne Laux and Joseph Millar. $1,000 for first place and a letterpress broadside, $500 for second, $250 for third. Top five published in Red Wheelbarrow Literary Magazine. Submit up to 3 original unpublished poems. $15 entry fee. For complete guidelines, see redwheelbarrow.submittable.com.
The Awakenings Review, established in 2000, is an annual lit mag committed to publishing poetry, short story, nonfiction, photography, and art by writers, poets and artists who have a relationship with mental illness: either self, family member, or friend. Their striking hardcopy publication is one of the nation’s leading journals of this genre. Creative endeavors and mental illness have long had a close association. The Awakenings Review publishes works derived from artists’, writers’, and poets’ experiences with mental illness, though mental illness need not be the subject of your work. Visit www.AwakeningsProject.org for submission guidelines.
Deadline: August 31, 2020
FishFood Magazine is accepting submissions for its very first short story contest. Stories must be under 1,000 words. There is no set theme, so feel free to get as creative as possible. The winner of the contest receives $1000 plus publication of the story in FishFood Magazine: www.fishfoodmagazine.com.
Deadline: Year-round
The Center for Creative Writing has been guiding aspiring writers toward a regular writing practice for more than 30 years. Our passionate, published teachers offer inspiring online writing courses in affordable six-week sessions, as well as one-on-one services (guidance, editing) and writing retreats (virtual for 2020). Whatever your background or experience, we can help you become a better writer and put you in touch with the part of you that must write, so that you will keep writing. Join our inclusive, supportive community built on reverence for creativity and self-expression, and find your way with words. Creativewritingcenter.com.
Deadline: July 31, 2020
The Daphne Review is hosting an online mentorship program for talented high school student writers and established writers/teachers acting as their mentors. We’re currently taking applications for both types (students and qualified mentors) until July 31st! To apply, submit a resume and brief cover letter to [email protected]. Start Date: August 3-28. Format: online. Classes: flash fiction, poetry. Pay for mentors: $50 per hour for skype or $200; $25 per hour for email or $100; total: $300 via paypal. www.thedaphnereview.org
Deadline: Tuesday, June 30th
The Absurdist Fiction Magazine is an online publication of strange and surreal fiction, featuring new work every Thursday. We are currently looking for short stories (750-1,250 words) as bizarre as they are engaging. Stories may be humorous, unsettling, hallucinatory or thoughtful, or just a little off-center. We really just want something weird. Check out previously published work to get a sense of what fits. If interested, please review the guidelines at absurdistmag.com/submissions and submit!
Deadline: July 15, 2020
Submissions are open for Nimrod’s Francine Ringold Awards for New Writers. The Ringold Awards offer prizes of $500 and publication for fiction and poetry, and are open only to writers with no more than two previous publication credits in their genre. For poetry, submit up to five pages; for fiction, one short story, 5,000 words maximum. The contest is open internationally. All finalists will be published and paid at our normal rates. Manuscripts may be mailed or submitted online: nimrodjournal.submittable.com/submit. Each entry must be accompanied by a $12 entry fee. Email [email protected] or visit nimrod.utulsa.edu for complete rules.
Guest Post by Rebecca Moon Ruark
“Eve, / How often do you think of me? / the house now, the kids, and / Everyone needs to eat, I know how tired / You are to mother the world”— “Oh” from The Desperate Measure of Undoing: Poems by Jessica Fischoff
Poetry is meant to be read aloud, preferably to an in-person audience. Luckily, one of the last live poetry readings I attended pre-pandemic featured Jessica Fischoff reading from her poetry chapbook.
The Desperate Measure of Undoing: Poems is a little book with big impact. Fischoff’s poems borrow from women of myth but are their own unique creations. The poet plays with persona, writing her poem, “Oh,” quoted above, not from Eve’s perspective but from that of the serpent. In a recent interview, Fischoff told me that “Oh” came from a prompt to write from the perspective of a villain. The poem reads as a letter from the serpent, who has been abandoned in the garden by Eve, and grants age-old Eve new agency and power.
There is a lot to admire in this chapbook that explores the feminine through the ages and through fresh takes. Original cover art and flower-illustrated front and back pages complement the poems and provide the reader a garden-like respite from our world’s current situation.
Read more about Fischoff and her debut poetry chapbook in a new interview at Parhelion Literary Magazine.
The Desperate Measure of Undoing by Jessica Fischoff. Across the Margin, 2019.
Reviewer bio: Rebecca Moon Ruark is features editor for Parhelion Literary Magazine, which publishes features, along with fiction, nonfiction, and poetry in winter, summer, and fall issues.
Pick up the Spring 2020 issue of The Chattahoochee Review for the winners of the Lamar York Prizes.
Fiction
“With Mercy to the Stars” by Lisa Nikolidakis
Nonfiction
“Catharsis, Diagnosis” by Rachel Toliver
The nonfiction winner was selected by judge Alice Bolin, who says the essay, “begins as straightforward memoir and blooms into something stranger and more wonderful: a treatise on the obsessive-compulsive act of storytelling, analysis of classic graphic novel, a meditation on how comics tell stories, and on how our lives, with their nonsensical, sometimes brutal vignettes resemble comics.”
Fiction judge Anthony Varallo writes that he was “drawn in from the first page, happy to be in the company of a young narrator who is just starting to glimpse the limitations of the adulthood that awaits her, as confining as the cage that houses her father’s prized bear.”
Be sure to check out these pieces for yourself in The Chattahoochee Review.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
If you’re using pride month as a time to become more familiar with LGBTQIA+ writers, I recommend grabbing a copy of the Spring 2020 issue of Hiram Poetry Review. Inside is the four-page poem “I Didn’t Know You Were Transgender” by Mercury Marvin Sunderland. This poem is a response to the observation cisgender people have made: “I didn’t know you were transgender / they tell me / I thought you were a cis man.”
Sunderland spends the poem speaking to these people, asserting his place in the gender spectrum. At one point he declares:
if you knew
even a scrap
of trans culture
you’d know i
already do look
like a trans man
because we are a diverse multitude all over the earth.
With this poem, he challenges the idea of what someone is “supposed” to or expected to look like, challenges the argument that using “they” as singular “destroy[s] the english language,” challenges the idea that “stick[ing] medicine in me” means “i want to be cisgender.”
Throughout the four pages, Sunderland provides a better understanding of what it means to be a trans man, and what it means to be Sunderland himself.
Last month, Esther Vincent of The Tiger Moth Review was invited to read poetry on the Thrive Hour Community Corner Facebook group. This group is provides free live sessions to help keep users thriving and accepts donations for families in need.
You can now find these readings on the literary magazine’s website. Each of the three videos includes several poems. Most of these have appeared in The Tiger Moth Review, like “Tree” by Lee Soo Jin or “Elegy for a Silent Stalker” by Ow Yeong Wai Kit. There are also other familiar names such as Mary Oliver and Joy Harjo included.
Take a moment to appreciate eco-poetry read aloud for you by visiting The Tiger Mother Review‘s website.
Guest Post by Suzanne G. Beyer
I just finished reading Library Girls of New York, Carolyn Rhodes’s 2019 memoir of growing up in two New York City libraries. I had no clue that Andrew Carnegie provided an apartment above NYC libraries for the custodian and his family to live in. But there’s a lot I didn’t know until I read her book.
You’d think that such an upbringing—no picket fence, no grassy yard, no flowerbeds—could be a reason for an under-privileged childhood . . . quite the opposite for author Rhodes! Continue reading “Step Into the Library with Carolyn Rhodes”
Deadline: July 15, 2020
Light and Dark is seeking your best short stories for our sixteenth online issue! We are particularly interested in stories that deal in some way with the dichotomous nature of existence. Please send us nothing longer than 3,000 words. All stories will be published on our website: www.lightanddarkmagazine.com. The author will also receive a token payment of $15. We look forward to reading your best work: lightanddark.submittable.com/submit.
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! chestnutreview.com
Guest Post by Ethan Hayes
“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” These are the immortal opening lines of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, a novel filled with so many more beautiful lines. The novel is concerning the generational story of Maconda and its founders, the family of Jose Arcadio Buendia.
I have found the novel to be filled with a wonderful whimsy that has made García Márquez famous. Every line is poetry that flows through the magical story that fills the pages. The main characters are the motley crew of Jose Arcadio Buendia’s family, who range from the dirt-eating Rebeca who wandered into the family to Jose Arcadio, the first-born son of Jose Arcadio Buendia who inherited his strength.
The novel is told in such a wonderful fairy tale style that blends magic into the storied events that plague this family and the town that they founded. One of García Márquez’s best works.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. 1967.
Reviewer bio: My name is Ethan Hayes. I am a writer from Colorado. I like to write fiction and fantasy as well as short prose. You can find my blog at https://ewwhayes.wordpress.com/.
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Deadline: June 15, 2020
Harvard College Children Stories is currently accepting submissions to compile an anthology to support kids during the Covid-19 pandemic. Please visit our website if you would like to support this project and learn more about submitting: harvardchildrensstories.com/anthology. Thank you so much!
In the May 2020 issue of Poetry, find work by A.E. Stallings, Perry Janes, Raymond Antrobus, Mary Ruefle, D. M. Spratley, Desirée Alvarez, Kelle Groom, Kayleb Rae Candrilli, Safia Elhillo, Janice N. Harrington, Zakia El-Marmouke, Eileen Myles, Lupe Mendez, TC Tolbert, Karen Skofield, Daniel Poppick, Jennifer Barber, Inua Ellams, Stuart Barnes, Travis Nichols & Jason Novak, Kyle Carrero Lopez, Ricki Cummings, Dean Browne, Jennifer L. Knox, Jayme Ringleb, Gerard Malanga, Helen Mort, and Srikanth Reddy. Plus, Vidyan Ravinthrian in the Comment section.
This month’s Plume featured selection: Reginald Dwayne Betts: On Art, Poetry, the Particular Fucked Up Parts of Incarceration, and the Multitudes of I. Work by the poet is introduced with an interview by Amanda Newell. In the Essays & Comment section, find “Rescuing Ourselves” by Celia Bland. Chelsea Wagenaar reviews Sara Wainscott’s Insecurity System.
Deadline: August 1, 2020
Volney Road Review is paying $10 per accepted piece. Send us your best prose, poetry, art, photography, and comics for issue 3.1. We will publish digitally on September 1st, 2020. volneyroadreview.com/submit/
Guest Post by Heidi Seaborn
Finishing up my MFA at NYU, I wanted to read a first collection by a poet who had travelled this same path, Jen Levitt. While I waited for the delivery of Levitt’s The Off-Season from my local bookstore, I went in search of her poetry online. When I found “The Reality Show,” I knew I had met a kindred spirit—someone who delivers ironic humor but approaches it without a suit of armor. Her emotional temperature is tempered only by coolness of her cultural references.
Any poem about physique, about not feeling attractive and the brutality of middle school brings its own pathos, but this poem embeds, “In montage I mourn the boy killed by this classmate / for liking to wear heels & makeup, / also the jury’s devastating hearts / that go out to shooter / because twenty-one years is a lot of time” in the middle, a turn that is both jarring but important to weight this poem. The stakes are suddenly clear. With the line, “like the time it takes to get over middle school,” the reader accepts the burden of living in the speaker’s body, as well as one’s own.
Body and sexuality dominate this Levitt collection. In the titular poem, “The Off-Season”, the speaker wrestles with the awkwardness of coming of age—made more acute by her growing awareness of her sexual orientation. When I read this poem to my queer daughter, she said the poem was so evocative of that ‘puzzling’ experience. Levitt is piecing together the puzzle that is her—as she matures. She is also coming of age as a poet, under the influence of Elisabeth Bishop and Emily Dickinson. Yet, her poems in conversation with Bishop and Dickinson steer clear of worshipful dialogue, instead they reveal a more naked self. The Offseason is a graceful revelation of body, sexuality, growing into one’s self as a person and a poet.
The Off-Season by Jen Levitt. Four Way Books, 2016.
Reviewer bio: Heidi Seaborn is Editorial Director of The Adroit Journal and author of the award-winning collection Give a Girl Chaos (C&R Press/Mastodon Books, 2019) and two chapbooks.
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