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 week, check out what new work was published on the Fiction Southeast website during the month of May: work by Marianne Rogoff, Robin Littell, L. Vocem, Charles Grosel, and more. Read more at the Fiction Southeast website.
Deadline: August 15, 2020
Mizmor is an annual anthology considering high-quality poetry that expresses spiritual experiences with a strong emphasis on the relationship between the modern world and ancient wisdom. We favor true experiences with striking imagery, we do not accept devotional-religious poetry. No fee to submit. Included writers will receive one free copy. Please visit the website for the complete guidelines: www.poeticapublishing.com.
Deadline: July 31, 2020
In solidarity with protesters fighting for justice and equality, award-winning litmag Into the Void is publishing, in paperback and eBook, poetry and prose anthology We Are Antifa: Expressions Against Fascism, Racism and Police Violence in the United States and Beyond. 100% of proceeds from sales will be donated to Black Lives Matter. Submit poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction which in some way concerns this topic. Payment is CA$15 per poem/flash and CA$30 per prose piece, plus a contributor copy. Over 50% of writers included in the anthology will be people of color. Submit: intothevoidmagazine.submittable.com/submit.
Red Rover Magazine is now accepting submissions for our premiere issue, currently projected for a January 2021 release date. Our mission is to inspire the improvement of mental health through the process of writing and creation. Please send us up to 6 poems, 2-5 pages of fiction, or up to 6 pieces of original artwork/photography to [email protected]. Submissions for the premiere issue will be accepted until October 31, 2020.
Each month, the editors will select one short-short story (under 1,000 words). The winning story will grace the front page of the website for the entire month and will be listed on the Stories of the Month Page, as well as the Fiction Page. The reading fee will be $10, and the winner will receive $50. Submit here: fictionsoutheast.submittable.com/submit/163713/story-of-the-month. The first Story of the Month winner is now available! Read Serena Ferrari’s “Zp, Signed with Love.”
Mom’s mac and cheese with cocktail wieners or a favorite meal you like to make. Tasty fare or a hard slog through a dismally over-done Sunday dinner. Dining delights dreamed of when there is little to hand. What else can we “cook up at home”, a plan, a scheme intertwined with adventure. Sure smells good, so tell us in fifty words or so what’s cooking be it real, imagined, or impossible. Submissions are open June 1st through July 15th. Send submissions in the body of an email to [email protected]. No poetry, bios, or attachments please. www.blink-ink.org/submissions/
Guest Post by Christina Francine
The Healing Riverbeds is a sharing of reflections about being human at a time when the world suffers from a pandemic, contains violent unrest, and deals with brutal worldwide environmental concerns. Shobana Gomes considers humans accountability for these “calamities” and examines herself as well. At the same time, she takes a stand as a witness. She thinks about the positives around her too and considers her daughter’s unique way of viewing.
From a children’s point of the world, the solutions are clear: “The world outside was a messy world. It had become toxic and dangerous, and the ones who would be most affected were the children.” In order for her to continue, she would leave her “coloring for another day . . . till the riverbeds heal, till its waters flow freely once again.”
Gomes’ examination and reflection is thought-provoking, one that contemplates human’s positive and negative effects on the world. She also contemplates the challenges of being human and questions the “maze” we’ve all been placed into.
A stirring read that asks the deep questions of life and points toward innocence for answers. The type of read all humans should explore. A recommended meditative read.
The Healing Riverbeds by Shobana Gomes. Independently Published, April 2020.
Reviewer bio: Christina Francine is an enthusiastic author of a variety of work for all ages. When not weaving tales, she teaches academic writing at the college level. She’s also a licensed elementary teacher. Picture books: Special Memory and Mr. Inker. Academic: Journal of Literacy Innovation.
Guest Post by Dawn Corrigan
As a child I read voraciously, but erratically. When it was time to pick a new Nancy Drew, I made my selection based on the cover art, rather than reading in sequence. I reread old books just as often as seeking new ones. It wasn’t always clear where the books had come from.
Thus I had in my adolescent collection a copy of The Charmed Circle, a 1962 “teenage novel” by Dorothea J. Snow. Somewhere along the way it disappeared, but in 2014, in a fit of nostalgia, I ordered a used copy from Amazon, sorting through more than a dozen “Charmed Circle” titles until I found the right one. Then I stuck it on a shelf and forgot about it. But recently, in my search for comfort food reading, I took it down.
I thought I’d read a little and then quickly fall asleep. Instead, I stayed up past two and finished it. That’s how it was when I was a teenager, too. Sometimes I’d finish it, then immediately flip back to the first page and start again.
Which is funny, because even back then the class stuff annoyed me, and it annoyed me even more this time. For instance, it had not occurred to me previously that our heroine, Lauralee Larkin, is elected Homecoming Queen mainly because her parents are willing to host (and fund) an endless array of pizza parties.
Nonetheless, there’s obviously something about the book I really like, and this time I figured out what: Lauralee tries things that scare her, and never gives up, even when those things don’t work out.
It occurs to me now that reading this book over and over again as a youth may have contributed to my ability to keep trying—to keep submitting my writing, to keep applying for jobs that seem like long shots, even to keep asking guys out (right up through my husband). This tenaciousness in the face of much rejection has served me well. It’s pretty much my only move! Fortunately, it’s the only one I’ve needed.
The Charmed Circle by Dorothea J. Snow. Whitman, 1962.
Reviewer bio: Dawn Corrigan‘s poetry and prose have appeared widely in print and online. She works in the affordable housing industry and lives in Myrtle Grove, FL.
Congratulations to two of NewPages sponsored magazines for having selections included in the Best American Essays 2020 due out on November 3, 2020. This year’s anthology was curated by guest editor André Aciman and series editor Robert Atwan.
“My Pink Lake and Other Digressions” by Alison Townsend was originally published in an issue of Cimarron Review. Jerald Walker’s “Breathe” was featured in New England Review 40.3.
Guest Post William V. Ray
As a retired teacher, I’m someone whose reading habits haven’t been much affected by the pandemic. I’m usually reading several things at once. Currently, I’ve caught up with Simone de Beauvoir’s Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter. I used to teach one of her novels but had never read this early but nevertheless striking piece of writing. It is a remarkable read not only because one senses on every page the relentlessly probing mind of the author, but also because of the window it provides into the emergence of the individual who is now recognized as breaking ground for the feminist movement. Although she is not alone in being someone who slowly departs from a bourgeois, Catholic background, she is particularly well suited to describe the journey.
I’ve also been reading Kevin Young’s poetry. At his best, he is one of the poets that makes me wonder at his ability to put together words and images that, while seemingly simple, knock one over with their power to reveal. Blue Laws: Selected and Uncollected Poems, 1995-2015 is an excellent survey of his work, showing his range—from searing exposés, as it were, of the enslavement of African Americans to concise universal cries such as the two-line poem ¨Grief¨: “In the night I brush/ my teeth with a razor.” Cultural icons—Basquiat, Jack Johnson, Miles Davis among others—appear.
For those of us lucky enough to be able to get out to enjoy nature in the midst of the coronavirus crisis, Sydney Lea’s most recent book of poetry, Here, is a nice companion. You can read my short review on Amazon.
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir. HarperCollins, August 2005.
Blue Laws: Selected and Uncollected Poems, 1995-2015 by Kevin Young. Knopf, September 2017.
Here by Sydney Lea. Four Way Books, September 2019.
Reviewer bio: William V. Ray is a retired English teacher who has also been a textbook editor, freelance writer, and, of late, a café owner. His published work includes textbooks as well as poetry and poetic prose. His work appears in Poetry East, The Write Launch, Subprimal Poetry Art, Pudding, The Opiate, The Art Bin, Painters & Poets, Mass Poetry, Poetry Pacific, and elsewhere. He is the editor of the online journal The Courtship of Winds. He lives outside Boston, Massachusetts. For more detail, please visit his page at LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamvray
Deadline: September 1, 2020
Biannual print journal Black Warrior Review seeks 2020 contest submissions. Winners will receive publication and cash prizes ($500 for flash and $1,000 for poetry, fiction, and CNF). Judges: Mayukh Sen (nonfiction), Paul Tran (poetry), C Pam Zhang (flash), and Lucy Corin (fiction). Open until 9/1. They have reduced their submission fee to $15 fiction/nonfiction/poetry. $6 flash. Complete information available at bwr.ua.edu.
Guest Post by Kathryn Sadakierski
Little Women is a timeless classic and remains relevant during unprecedented days. On the surface, the endearing stories of Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March may seem to recount simpler times, but greater complexity underlies what appears to be sentimental. At its heart, Little Women is about family, growing stronger despite distance.
While their father serves as a chaplain in the Civil War, the March daughters, with the loving guidance of their mother, adapt, soldiering on together, each making their own destinies. They support each other through adversities, sharing in triumphs. When Beth falls ill, Amy stays with Aunt March, avoiding catching scarlet fever, but while distanced, she learns about herself, ultimately maturing. Their “castles in the air,” innermost dreams of places far-removed from their Concord home, sustain them, until the Marches realize that the lives they lead are better than anything they could have dreamed, finding beauty even in the bittersweet, as they come of age, surmounting the burdens they once lamented. It is not tangible walls that make up their home, but the love of their family.
Reading Little Women at home during the quarantine came not to be an escape from reality, so much as a telling reflection of it; the novel captures the ebbs and flows of life and time, which, as the Marches saw, are to be cherished. Being at home, away from their father and the promising reaches of the world they had yet to see was difficult for the spirited March girls, but in time, they turned what were once limits into opportunities, each contributing her own gift to the world, from Jo with her imaginative writing, to Beth with her music and compassionate heart. Challenges they overcame shaped them, becoming a source of empowerment. This message of resiliency continues to inspire.
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. 1868.
Kathryn Sadakierski is a 20-year-old writer whose work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Dime Show Review, Nine Muses Poetry, iō Literary Journal, and elsewhere.
Now in its 6th year with a grand prize of $5,000, the North Street Book Prize for Self-Published Books closes to entries on June 30. Top winner in each category will win $1,000. Co-sponsored by BookBaby and Carolyn Howard-Johnson. Categories: Mainstream/Literary Fiction, Genre Fiction, Creative Nonfiction & Memoir, Poetry, Children’s Picture Book, and Graphic Novel & Memoir. $12,500 in total cash prizes. Fee: $65 per book. Final judges: Jendi Reiter and Ellen LaFleche. Submit online or by mail. Winning Writers is one of the “101 Best Websites for Writers” (Writer’s Digest). Guidelines: winningwriters.com/north.
Deadline: July 4, 2020
Headmistress Press, a lesbian-identified publisher of books by LBT poets, is proud to announce our sixth annual Charlotte Mew Chapbook Contest. Our judge for this year is Vi Khi Nao. Our first-prize winner will receive $300 plus 20 copies of the winning book. All entries will be considered for publication. We will be accepting submissions from May 4 to July 4, 2020 through Submittable and will announce a winner in the fall. Our reading fee is always on a sliding scale, with fee waived upon request. FOR MORE INFORMATION: headmistresspress.blogspot.com/2017/07/charlotte-mew-chapbook-contest.html. SUBMIT HERE: headmistresspress.submittable.com/submit.
Deadline: September 1, 2020
We’re thrilled to announce The Hunger Journal has now expanded to include The Hunger Press, starting with our Tiny Fork Chapbook Series. We believe art and literature is eternally important, and we want to use this opportunity to welcome new writers and readers into The Hunger community by producing well-designed, dynamic, hand-bound chapbooks. We will be accepting submissions from June 1–September 1. We welcome poetry, prose, and hybrid manuscripts of 15–40 pages. For more details on the Tiny Fork Chapbook Series and submission process, please go to www.thehungerjournal.com/tiny-fork-chapbooks.
There is now under 1 month left to submit work to the 2020 Orison Chapbook Prize. Send submissions of 20–45 pages in any literary genre (poetry, fiction, nonfiction, or hybrid) from April 1–July 1. Orison Books founder and editor Luke Hankins will judge. The winner will receive $300 and publication by Orison Books. Entry fee: $12. For complete guidelines, see www.orisonbooks.submittable.com.
trampset, an online literary journal of fiction (short stories, flash fiction, excerpts from longer works), poetry (no shape poems, please), and nonfiction (personal essays, micro-memoirs, culture and criticism, reviews), is seeking new submissions on a rolling basis. We want your best brain, your beating heart. Send that good human stuff our way. We are focusing on Black and queer writers for the month of June. We pay $25 per accepted piece. We have 50 free submissions a month through Submittable as well as Tip Jar and Quick Response options. Visit our submissions page: trampset.org/submissions-6e83932b0985.
Mark August 1 in your submissions calendars. That’s the deadline to submit work to the 2020 Orison Anthology Awards. The 2020 Orison Anthology Awards in Fiction, Nonfiction, & Poetry offer $500 and publication by Orison Books in The Orison Anthology for a single work in each genre. Judges: Blair Hurley (fiction), E. J. Koh (nonfiction), and Joy Ladin (poetry). Entry fee: $15. Submission Period: May 1-August 1. Find complete details at www.orisonbooks.submittable.com.
Don’t forget June 30 is the deadline to submit mini-fiction collections between 5 and 15 stories to Wordrunner eChapbooks for their Fall 2020 series to be Reminder :: Wordrunner eChapbooks Closes to Mini-Fiction Collections on June 30published in August and December online and as epubs. Stories may be flash or longer, from 500 up to 5,000 words each. They’d like at least five stories, but no more than 15 (if flash fiction). They will also consider novel excerpts. No genre fiction, please. Stories by authors who receive Honorable Mentions will be considered for their 2021 themed anthology. See www.echapbook.com/submissions.html for detailed guidelines and Submittable link. Payment: $100 plus royalties. Submission fee: $6.
Guest Post by Christine Noelle
Months into the pandemic, I found myself longing for “the good ‘ol days” when it felt safe to travel, and I could focus long enough to immerse myself in a story. Once I read a book nonstop, cover-to-cover during a flight from New York to Seattle. If I read the book again, could it bring back a feeling of normal, when COVID-19 made our daily lives feel so foreign? I pulled the book from my shelf and, to my surprise, I liked that the word safe was in its title.
Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life by Abigail Thomas is a groundbreaking collage-style memoir containing elegantly written vignettes that seem unrelated, but build to a beautiful, meaningful whole. Thomas offers an intimate unfolding of pivotal moments that shaped her life: pregnancy at 18, joys and fears of being a single mother of three by age 26, love and frustration within her marriages, and the tragic death of her second husband. Readers of Safekeeping will bear witness to the art of sensory perspective: the before, the during, and the here-and-now, as told through stories that are poetic, visceral, and universal. The normal of life we all know.
Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life by Abigail Thomas. Penguin Random House, April 2001.
Christine Noelle is a writer and marketing consultant living in the San Francisco Bay area. She is a traveler and lover of trees. http://www.christinenoelle.com
Buy this book through our affiliate Bookshop.org.
In this issue: fiction by Auguste Budhram, Ace Boggess, Martha Keller, and others; nonfiction by Paul Bryant, Catherine Vance, and more; and poetry by James Whyshynski, Sallie Hess, and Donna Isaac. Art by Alice Stone-Collins.
See what was published in May at Terrain.org. Poetry by Charlotte Pence, Michael Daley, Maryann Corbett, Lois P. Jones, Elizabeth Jacobson, Traci Brimhall, Sharon Dolin, Beth Paulson, Alison Hawthorne Deming, and Dennis Held; nonfiction by Andrew Furman and Gretchen VanWormer; and fiction by Amy Barker.
The latest issue of Pembroke Magazine contains poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction by emerging and established authors from the US and abroad. A young mother struggling to nurse trades notes with a gorilla; a Midwesterner finds a bathing suit in a sock drawer that whisks his mind back to a Grecian beach; a woman desperately seeks to return to her home at the edge of the world; a man takes a manic road trip with his schizophrenic uncle; a couple in a gated community is saddled with the job of maintaining an exalted lawn; a woman flees a California wildfire for a holy site near Albuquerque; and much more. Cover art by Margie Labadie.
Earn your MA with an emphasis in Creative Writing in the vibrant city of Mobile, near some of our country’s best beaches. Tuition waivers and assistantships are available as are additional scholarships for excellence and summer creative writing projects. Home of the Stokes Center for Creative Writing. Full-time students can finish the program in four semesters. Students can also enroll part time and/or complete the degree through evening coursework. For more information, visit our website: www.southalabama.edu/colleges/artsandsci/english/.
The Lake‘s June issue features Sheila Bender, Phillip Henry Christopher, Robert Eccleston, Edilson Ferreira, Mercedes Lawry, Bruce Morton, David Olson, Carolyn Oulton, J. R. Solonche, Hana Yun-Stevens, Nwuguru Chidiebere Sullivan, Tanner. Reviews of Matthew Caley’s Trawlerman’s Turquoise and The Valley Press Anthology of Prose Poetry.
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, and interviews. 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 service, too. www.driftwoodpress.net
Deadline: July 31, 2020
From July 1st to July 31st, Crazyhorse will accept entries for our annual short-short fiction contest. Submit 3 short-shorts of up to 500 words each through our website: crazyhorse.cofc.edu. First place wins $1,000 and publication; 3 runners-up will be announced. All entries will be considered for publication; the $15 entry fee includes a one-year subscription to Crazyhorse. For more information, visit: crazyhorse.cofc.edu/crazyshorts.
Deadline: June 30, 2020
2020 BURNSIDE REVIEW CHAPBOOK CONTEST. Judge: Lara Glenum. Winner receives $200 and 10 copies. Chapbooks are elegantly designed with letterpressed covers. Runs March 15–June 30. Submit 18–24 pages of poetry. $15 entry fee. All submissions must be made through our submission manager: www.burnsidereview.org.
Extended Deadline: June 30, 2020
Lynx House Press seeks submissions of full-length poetry manuscripts for the annual Blue Lynx Prize for Poetry. The winner will receive $2,000 and publication. Entries must be at least 48 pages in length. The fee for submitting is $28, and includes a copy of a book from our catalog. Previous judges include James Tate, Yusef Komunyakaa, Dorianne Laux, Dara Wier, Melissa Kwasny, and Robert Wrigley. lynxhousepress.submittable.com/submit
Deadline: June 30, 2020
Autumn House Full-Length Contests for Poetry, Fiction, and Nonfiction are accepting submissions! Winners of each contest receive publication of their full-length manuscripts. Each winner also receives $2,500 ($1,000 advance against royalties and a $1,500 travel/publicity grant to promote the book). The submission period closes on June 30, 2020 (Eastern Time). To submit online, please visit our online submission manager. The judges for the 2020 full-length contests are Ilya Kaminsky (poetry), Dan Chaon (fiction), and Jaquira Díaz (nonfiction).
Deadline: July 31, 2020
The Tolsun Books’ Translation Chapbook Contest, judged by Minna Zallman Proctor, will be held June 1st-July 31st, 2020. Submit a chapbook of about 25 pages of translated poetry, short stories, flash memoir, essays, or hybrids. We favor dynamic voices and non-traditional themes. Winner receives publication and 50 copies of their chapbook. See additional details at tolsunbooks.com/submissions.
**Update 6/29/20: Tolsun Books has decided to cancel this year’s chapbook contest.**
Deadline: June 30, 2020
iō Literary Journal was founded in 2018 with the aim of showcasing an array of artistic expression and creative writing pieces from individuals whose voices are underrepresented, and those who may not have traditional writing or artistic backgrounds. iō Literary Journal is back for Volume 3 and will be accepting submissions to its third print volume up until June 30, 2020. Submit at: ioliteraryjournal.submittable.com.
Once again, Sync Audiobooks is offering a free summer audiobook program for teens (13+) – and perhaps some adults too! SYNC 2020 is utilizing Sora, a student reading app available for free download from OverDrive. Each week Sync shares two YA titles that can be downloaded with no expiration. After the week, the titles are no longer available to download, but previous titles with descriptions remain available on the site.
It’s already Week 5 of the program, but there are seven more weeks remaining. Previous titles include Monday’s Not Coming by Tiffany D. Jackson, The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater, Secret Soldiers by Paul B. Janeczko, Picture Us in the Light by Kelly Loy Gilbert, Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (stupendously performed!), Stalking Jack the Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco, Sisters Matsumoto by Philip Kan Gotanda, and Disappeared by Francisco X. Stork.
All you have to do to access the titles is register your email address. I’ve done so for the past two years and never receive any related junk mail or other solicitations, so this is an great program for teens and adults alike!
Deadline: July 15, 2020
Call for submissions for the Fall 2020 issue of Molecule – a tiny lit mag. Poetry, prose, nonfiction, plays, reviews, and interviews in 50 words or less (including titles and interview questions). Visual art work of tiny things like tea bags and toothpicks, or tiny paintings also wanted: no skyscrapers please! Strict word count. Don’t try and trick us we have small minds. Send submissions preferably in the body of the email or jpeg attachment for photos to [email protected], along with a 3rd person bio no more than 24 words (including name). moleculetinylitmag.art.blog
Deadline: July 1, 2020
The Conium Review 2020 Innovative Short Fiction Contest is open for submissions. Winner receives $500, publication in the next print edition, five copies of the issue, and a copy of the judge’s latest book. This year’s judge is Emily Wortman-Wunder, author of Not a Thing to Comfort You (University of Iowa Press). July 1st deadline. $15 entry fee. Guidelines here: coniumreview.com/contests.
Guest Post by Emily Lowe
Alice Friman’s “Insomnia in Moonlight” in The Gettysburg Review Fall 2019 is a moving poem that grapples with a popular theme within this issue: death. Friman handles the topic delicately, with humor, and with heft. The poem is broken into four irregular stanzas beginning with the dead waking in the night, making noise. This stanza read with immediate intrigue through the life Friman breathed into death about a speaker who cannot sleep because the dead are alive in their thoughts. It suggests playfulness, too, written with a lighter tone than often associated with death and mourning.
Friman then equates the dead to the sun, something bright and fixed, and the speaker to the changeable moon, “she wears my child face—round, / sunburnt, and pensive.” The final lines in the poem are the most striking, offering up the speaker’s recount of a total eclipse where the moon tried to “blot out the sun.” It felt like a reflection of their desire to hold death in their hands and make sense of it, but the speaker admits that the moon fails in its attempt to resist permanence, to resist, as Friman puts so eloquently in her final two lines: “geometric progression, the unerasable / dead, and everything else I don’t understand.”
Reviewer bio: Emily Lowe is an MFA candidate in Nonfiction at the University of North Carolina Wilmington where she is also a fiction editor for Ecotone literary magazine.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
The cover of the latest issue of The Malahat Review is a calming scene: a full moon framed by powerlines over a pastel sky. It invites readers to pick it up and open it to discover what’s inside. I had found two new favorites in the pages: “Nice Girl” by Hollie Adams and “A High Frequency Words List” by Matthew Gwathmey.
In “Nice Girl,” Adams’s speaker likens herself to a mall who would “never automatically / open the doors even though / there’d be a sign saying / Automatic Doors.” She admits she’d keep them locked because she’s “evil / even though in real life / I’m always doing nice things.” This poem is a fun exploration of one’s inner self and the intentions behind actions. There’s a sense of humor in this piece even as it leads to introspection, an enjoyable aspect.
Gwathmey’s poem is in four sections, each one a list of words picked from the Fry and the Dolch sight word lists, used in children’s vocabulary development. This piece is just four paragraphs listing off words, a cool form of recycling.
There is plenty more poetry and prose to find inside this issue of The Malahat Review. Grab a copy to find your own favorites.
Guest Post by M.G Noles
The Mark on the Wall is a brief tale in which Virginia Woolf describes a winter evening at home in the English countryside during WWI. She, like her fellow Britons, are under lockdown because of the war. Frankly, she has nothing but time on her hands, and she is so lonely that all she has to do with her time is gaze at a mark upon a wall.
The curious mark is the platform which allows her to ponder, not only the mark, but her life, her surroundings, and that pesky mark she cannot be bothered to walk across the room to identify. Could it be a nail? Perhaps a bit of gravy? She doesn’t know. So, she allows her mind to fly off in a thousand different meditations on life and death, on what it all means, on her place in the scheme of it all.
Woolf wrote this story in 1917 while the world was falling apart around her. She endured nightly air-raids, rockets blaring, shots fired across the channel. And, so, she used her writing as a way to escape it all.
The contemplation of a mark upon a wall seemed absurd to me when I read it years ago. But, now, having been a shut-in for these many weeks due to Covid-19, I find myself (like Woolf did) gazing at simple things around the house—toothpaste tubes, detergent boxes, and soup cans—and then my mind goes flying away. Life feels so foreign when shut indoors.
Woolf writes that life to her at that time felt like “being blown through the Tube at fifty miles an hour—landing at the other end without a single hair pin in one’s hair!”
That is exactly how I feel right now, too, that life is all of a sudden a bizarre affair in which we are utterly out of control, “with one’s hair flying back like the tail of a race horse.” And, heaven knows where on earth we will land.
The Mark on the Wall by Virginia Woolf. 1917.
Reviewer bio: M.G Noles is a freelance writer and history buff.
Deadline: July 1 2020
Send us your BEST FIVE pieces! Get your work in front of our judge, award-winning KHADIJAH QUEEN, author of six books, most recently, ANODYNE (Tin House, August 2020)!! Prize is open to writers who haven’t yet published a book-length collection or a chapbook. Submission fee: $15 for five pieces. Even if you’re not a winner or a finalist, you may still be published in our print issue and 2) you may be read by our judge. Past contributors include Rae Armantrout, Kiki Petrosino, Philip Metres, Kathy Fish, Andrea Rexilius, Eric Baus, J Michael Martinez and more.
Guest Post by Karen J. Weyant
Sue William Silverman’s life is hanging by a thread.
Or, at least that may be the initial reaction a reader may get from Silverman’s latest collection, How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences. The title itself suggests that Silverman’s book is a catalog of death-defying experiences and yes, there are somber essays that explore her survival as a sexual assault victim and her hypochondriac ventures into the medical world. But other essays are more lighthearted, such as the one piece where, as a middle-aged narrator, she tells about her adventures at an Adam Lambert conference.
In essence, Silverman’s book is a nonlinear exploration of her life arranged into three sections adapted from the Three Fates of Greek Mythology: Clotho (the spinner) Lachesis (the measurer), and Atropos (the cutter). Sometimes, her essays tell stories in the traditional narrative form, while others use more experimental styles. However, read together, this collection is more than just about surviving death: it’s really about having hope and resilience in life.
How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences by Sue William Silverman. University of Nebraska Press, March 2020.
Reviewer bio: Karen J. Weyant‘s essays have been published in BioStories, Briar Cliff Review, Carbon Culture Review, Crab Creek Review, Coal Hill Review, Lake Effect and Waccamaw. She is an Associate Professor of English at Jamestown Community College in Jamestown, New York.
Buy this book through our affiliate Bookshop.org.
Don’t forget to dive into the latest episodes of podcast series Mental Snapback for an idea of what they like. Then consider submitting your own mental health recovery stories to be featured in upcoming episodes. The podcast is for everyone and anyone who has experienced mental illness, whether it be that you have experienced acute or chronic illnesses yourself or someone you love has experienced them. They know the struggle, and don’t want to invalidate that. However, they want to hear about the other side—the recovery of your struggles—to build a foundation of hope for whoever may need it. Currently, they only accept creative nonfiction in the form of essays. Acceptance of manuscripts occurs on a rolling basis, and they will be read aloud on weekly podcast episodes. mentalsnapback.com/submission-guidelines/
COVID LIT is a monthly online lit mag that gives the middle finger to COVID-19 by publishing, promoting, and spreading art, poetry, and prose using the disease’s name. What sets us apart from other magazines? Simple: instead of paying us a submission fee, writers must donate at least $3 to a nonprofit of their choice. Since we launched in late April 2020, our writers have donated over $3000 directly to regional, national, and international nonprofits, so send your best work and use your creative superpowers for good! Visit www.covidlit.org today!
Submissions accepted year-round.
Words & Whispers is an online literary journal seeking to publish poetry and short prose by writers of all ages on a year-round rolling basis. Send us the wild and divine, the eccentric and experimental. For more information please visit www.wordsandwhispers.org.
Guest Post by Bright Heaven’s
Have you ever wondered to yourself (like I did): how do the world’s great entrepreneurs and innovators come up with such unique and brilliant ideas for their businesses? Then this book, The Idea Hunter, a very recent read of mine, is what I will recommend for you.
Ideas rule the world. In fact, the global space runs on an idea cum knowledge economy. It is on this premise that the book was written and it serves to bust the myth that brilliant, earth-shaping, and career-boosting ideas come from brilliant minds. Rather, it seeks to reveal that breakaway ideas come to those who are in the habit of looking for them all the time. These people are referred to as Idea Hunters.
In this book, I learned about how and what it takes for people to create a superb idea that leads to the creation of a successful innovation through the description of the characteristics and behaviors of several successful idea hunters. The Idea Hunter informs and unearths the habits shared by many great innovators and inventors of the past century. From very popular innovators such as Thomas Edison, Walt Disney, Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs etc., to less popular names such as Jack Hughes, Paul Romer, Jim Koch, Greg brown Jay Hooley, Michael D White etc., readers get a raw perception into how they developed their ideas and the steps they took to bring them into reality. What I find most interesting is how several top global brand/companies such as Apple, Walt Disney, Gore-tex, Elixir Strings, and Boston Beer, among others, came into being through a simple albeit conscious act—the serious business of Idea Hunting.
This is quite an average volume consisting of six chapters, and I can tell you that each of the chapters is a goldmine deposited with wisdom on how to generate and actualize ideas.
The Idea Hunter: How to Find the Best Ideas and Make them Happen by Andy Boynton, Bill Fischer, William Bole. Wiley, April 2011.
Reviewer bio: Bright Heaven’s is an educator, a writer, poet, author, public speaker, information scientist, and a budding musician from Nigeria. He has publications in the Korea-Nigeria Anthology and several Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) literary journals. Find him at: https://bright-heavens.site.live.
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Deadline: Rolling
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