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: June 1, 2020 at 5 AM EST
Raleigh Review is open for the 2020 Laux/Millar Raleigh Review Poetry Prize. All entrants to the contest receive the fall 2020 issue. Raleigh Review is a nonprofit literary arts organization now in its 11th year. Works selected during the spring submission period will appear in the fall issue. To submit, visit: raleighreview.submittable.com/submit/.
Guest Post by Bill Cushing
Although best known for his Dune series, Frank Herbert’s 1982 book The White Plague may be just what the doctor ordered these days.
In a nutshell, Dr. John Roe O’Neill, an American biophysicist visiting Ireland on a research grant, witnesses his wife and twin sons killed from an IRA bombing. To say he “loses it” would be a serious understatement. The first chapter opens with an ancient Irish curse—“May the hearthstone of hell be his bed rest forever”—and Herbert delivers fully on this hex from there.
O’Neill returns to the states, isolated and vengeful, and decides that since a political cause took his wife and children from him, he would reciprocate. Designing a genetic virus that does not affect men but kills females, he adopts the name “The Madman,” releasing his biological scourge on the world by infecting low denomination bills.
Once released, the plague destroys the world in short order, causing whole nations to collapse, even forcing the Vatican to relocate to Philadelphia. As the world descends further into self-isolated tribes killing anyone approaching, Scotland Yard conducts its hunt for “The Madman.”
However, this is not simply the story of investigators trying to locate and capture The Madman. That is there, of course, but there is much more.
Like Thomas Mann’s allegorical Magic Mountain—where he uses a tuberculosis sanitarium as a vehicle for examining European nations on the edge of World War I, Herbert uses this book as a means to study nations and their peculiarities. It also offers the author an opportunity to study people’s reactions to the direst of situations as well as their use and pursuit of power.
At fewer than 500 pages, The White Plague offers a much more restrained analysis of such behavior as is seen in the massive Dune series.
The White Plague by Frank Herbert. 1982.
Reviewer bio: Bill Cushing writes and facilitates a writing group for 9 Bridges. His poetry collection, A Former Life, was released last year by Finishing Line Press.
Elizabeth Jacobson sat down with Aby Kaupang and Matthew Cooperman to discuss their 2018 release of NOS (disorder, not otherwise specified). The book, published by Futurepoem Books, documents the odyssey into a foreign environment of hospitals, doctors, and diagnoses. Terrain.org published an excerpt from the book along with this interview.
Interviewer Elizabeth Jacobson starts the interview with the question about choosing to make the decision to let your child live or die and explains that she grew up in a family where a different choice was made.
Aby responds, “thank you for sharing your story a bit. I hope to hear more. I say that because I care, but also because I wish more people would write/speak about the difficult choices. De-stigmatize uncomfortable realities.”
She and Matthew Cooperman go on to explain how the book started as a private journal of Aby’s and transformed into something completely different. They also talk about how their lives have changed since its publication and what new challenges they face with their daughter who is now thirteen. Check out the full interview here…and maybe prepare a tissue or two.
Originally started in 1997 under the name of “Editor’s Picks,” Del Sol Review has transformed from highlighting select work from print journals to being its very own literary magazine. Contributors include Maxine Chernoff, Paul West, Linh Dinh, Holly Iglesias, Deborah Olin Unferth, Michael Martone, and Daniel Bosch.
Del Sol Review accepts unsolicited works of speculative fiction, poetry, prose poetry, creative nonfiction, short stories, and flash fiction year-round. They love works containing unique and interesting subject matter.
Their latest issue, No. 24, is the Richard Basehart Issue. This contains fiction by Joe Kowalski, Zeke Jarvis, Glen Pourciau, Debbie Ann Ice, Evan Steuber, Jenny Drummey, Andrew Stancek, Richard Leise, Risa Mickenberg, Joseph Couchet, Robert Miltner, Ron Riekki, and Mark Walling; and poetry by Michael Salcman, Nancy Botkin, Wendy Barker, Hilary Sideris, Rich Ives, and Nish Amarnath.
I love the little snippets they put with their issues: “Carnivores. Astonomy. Zsa Zsa Gabor Geeks.” or “Innocent, flight, teeth, yecch, and more!”
Black Warrior Review has decided to lower the rates to enter work into their annual writing contests. The submission fee to enter fiction, nonfiction, and poetry is now $15 while the fee to enter flash is now $6. Winners will receive publication and cash prizes ($500 for flash and $1,000 for poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction). This year’s judges are Mayukh Sen, Paul Tran, C Pam Zhang, and Lucy Corin. Open until September 1. Complete information available at bwr.ua.edu.
Guest Post by Doug Mathewson
I watched a TED Talk by Luis Alberto Urrea, and like most TED talks I agreed with every word, but five minutes later I couldn’t remember a one of them. What did stay with me was how smart and well-spoken Urrea was. He has better than a dozen books to his credit, both fiction and nonfiction, as well as numerous awards including a Pulitzer Prize nomination on 2005.
House of Broken Angels is a wonderful book of laughter, family, and heartbreak. Elderly and beloved Mamá has died and grand funeral is planned. The funeral coincides with patriarch Big Angel’s birthday, and he is terminally ill. Big Angel can’t last much longer; his condition worsens daily. The very extended de La Cruz family on both sides of the California – Mexico border comes together for a large farewell party to honor Mamá and Big Angel.
More and more family arrives, and there is food, and there is laughter, but old grievances too. Some to be resolved and forgiven, others as fresh and venomous as ever. New feuds emerge as well. Obscure relatives and friends materialize. Estranged relatives hold back, unsure how they will be received, the pros and cons of reestablishing family contact an ever shuffling deck of emotions. A successor must be chosen for Big Angel, and the logical choice refuses the role.
I loved the world of this book and the de La Cruz family in all of its engaging glory: the romances, the shifts in power, the unresolved mysteries, stories of benevolence, stories of grief and need. The quirky details will make you smile, and the big ideas of the book are very moving and real.
The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea. Little, Brown and Company, March 2018.
Reviewer bio: Doug Mathewson is the Founding Editor of Blink-Ink. His own writing can be found at: www.little2say.org.
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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. Students who enroll in the program full time, can complete it in four semesters. There are also part time and evening coursework options. For more information, visit our website: www.southalabama.edu/colleges/artsandsci/english/.
The focus of The Revolution (Relaunch) is feminism in the broadest sense. This means they are interested in “creative activism” that voices the marginalized and/or criticizes corrupt authority for their online journal. They publish a range of styles—memoir, poetry, cultural criticism, interviews, and profiles featuring activists and grassroots organizations. Submit one piece of prose under 750 words, three poems, or 5 images to [email protected].
Guest Post by Carolyn Dille
Cosmological Koans: A Journey to the Heart of Physical Reality by Anthony Aguirre has so entranced me that I’m reading it as slowly as I can and looking forward to beginning again. Aguirre’s title hints at who could fall under the spell of his book of enchantment: readers who gravitate toward questions and find answers intriguing for the questions they raise, as well as those who like time and space travel, and puzzle- and mystery-loving readers.
Aguirre, a cosmologist at the University of California Santa Cruz, creates his nested and far-flung nets of adventure in language that is candid, colloquial, and often witty. These stories often reminded me of campfire stories, the speculations that we engage in with hiking companions when we’re under the stars and far from our routines. The questions our prehistoric ancestors must have asked: what are those lights above us in the dark; do they have anything to do with us? Now, we know some answers to those questions.
But Aguirre takes us further into the shimmering places in mind and body where what and how we don’t know becomes a quest. The book’s arc reminds me of classic journey stories: Don Quixote, One Thousand and One Nights, and The Decameron.
Cosmological Koans begins its physical/metaphysical journeys with Greek and Buddhist philosophers, flies over a millennium and lands in the 17th century. From there it transports us from Venice to the Arabian desert and Japan, to China, India, and Tibet, to the 20th century, and many other places and spaces.
There are meet-ups along the way: Einstein, Buddha, Galileo, Zen Master Dōgen, Zeno, samurai, Richard Feynman, fictional characters, and more. They shed light on Aguirre’s cosmological koans, which include maps, emotions, measurements, values, dangers, happiness, and how we know what we know. Meandering through these pages of spacetime, I’m feeling the pleasure of knowing and not-knowing in very good company.
Cosmological Koans: A Journey to the Heart of Physical Reality by Anthony Aguirre. W. W. Norton & Company, May 2019.
Reviewer bio: Carolyn Dille writes, teaches Soto Zen and Insight meditation, and edits leapingclear.org, an online magazine of art, literature, and contemplation. In these shelter-in-place days in Santa Cruz, California, she’s also reading Heal-ing Resist-ance by Kazu Haga, and Rebecca Elson’s A Responsibility to Awe.
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Submission accepted year-round.
Mental Snapback Podcast is looking for your mental health recovery stories to be featured in our episodes. This 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. We know the struggle, and we don’t want to invalidate that. However, we want to hear about the other side—the recovery of your struggles—to build a foundation of hope for whoever may need it. Currently, we 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/
Guest Post by Dawn Corrigan
I’ve been rereading some of my favorite books from childhood, a form of comfort food. I recently reread The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Here are my observations.
I was both annoyed by and somewhat seduced by the Christian Scientist / Science of Mind content in the final chapters, which I don’t remember from my many childhood readings of the book, probably because I didn’t understand the context back then.
I liked Dickon much better this time around—he was a little pious for my taste when I was 10. In fact this time he was my favorite character, though Mary was a close second.
When the focus shifted to Dickon in the middle of the book, I was convinced Mary had a crush on him, and was annoyed when I went to Goodreads and learned that in the 1987 made-for-TV movie, Dickon is killed in WWI and Mary marries Colin. But then I got to the Colin part and realized those movie makers were on to something. Mary’s crush shifts to Colin pretty quickly, signaled by her description of each boy in turn as “beautiful.” After she calls Colin beautiful, Dickon starts to fade into the background. I approve of Mary’s boy craziness but disapprove of her choice, which shows she’s still locked into the caste system. Colin is okay, and I’m glad he gets better, but the better he gets the more of a pompous mansplainer he turns out to be. Dickon only provides information when it is asked for. And it’s always on target, and never overly verbose. Plus: Animal Charmer!
At the end of the book, Dickon disappears altogether, and even Mary fades into the background. As Colin gets well, he looms over everything. The ending is not as good as the beginning because we get more Science of Mind and mansplaining and less plot and garden and fewer delicious secrets.
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. 1911.
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.
July 1 is the deadline to submit 20-45 page manuscripts to the 2020 Orison Chapbook Prize. Submissions are welcome in any literary genre, i.e. poetry, fiction, nonfiction, or hybrid. Orison Books founder and editor Luke Hankins will judge. The winner receives $300 and publication. $12 entry fee. For complete guidelines, see www.orisonbooks.submittable.com.
Guest Post by C.L. Butler
The other day while combing the world of literary magazines I came across something both unique and refreshing. I’m referring to Tyler Dempsey’s two poems most recently published in Re-Side Magazine Issue 5. These pieces use erasure poetry crafted from letters from Dempsey’s brother Travis Dempsey, who has been serving a prison sentence since 2009 in Oklahoma.
His poem “protein” captures the woes of the incarcerated for the outside world to hear. It draws attention to the role of economics in prisons to deal with basic everyday needs like nutrition. In “150MphWinds,” Dempsey points to his brother’s everyday observations. He finds the crux between complex and the dignity of simplicity by again showing what we take for granted.
While Tyler Dempsey is the curator of these poems, the words present a unique voice filled with legitimacy for the reader. It feels as if Dempsey’s brother is talking himself, creating a poetic mirroring of these letters. I chose to review these poems to not only produce more reviews on indie authors, but also to bring the attention of the privileged to the art coming from those with the least amount of civil liberties.
Reviewer bio: C.L. Butler is an African American and Dutch poet, historian, and entrepreneur from Philadelphia based in Houston, TX. In 2017 his poem Laissez Faire was published by The Bayou Review. In 2019 he published academic research with the Journal of International Relations & Diplomacy.
The Baltimore Review has not set a theme for their annual summer contest this year. Instead, they want to see short shorts. Send flash fiction, flash creative nonfiction, and prose poetry. They want to be amazed at how you abracadabra a sprinkling of words into magic. And maybe be a little jealous of how you do that. One writer in each category will be awarded a $300 prize and published in the summer issue. All entries considered for publication. Total word limit for each category is 1,000. See www.baltimorereview.org for complete details. Deadline: May 31, 2020. Fee: $5.
In this issue: the Robert Watson Literary Prize-winning story, Brendan Egan’s “War Rugs,” and Prize-winning poem, Emily Nason’s “Sertraline,” as well as an Editor’s Note from Terry L. Kennedy and new work from Helen Marie Casey, Will Hearn, Daniel Liebert, Robert Garner McBrearty, Elisabeth Murawski, Maxine Patroni, Alice Turski, and more. Read more at The Greensboro Review website.
The Common’s Spring 2020 issue released today. Inside the issue: an Arabic Portfolio from Sudan with work by Andel-Ghani Karamalla, Ishraga Mustafa Hamid, Bwader Basheer, Jamal Aldin Ali Alhaj, Mustafa Mubarak, and more. Also in this issue is fiction by Thoraya El-Rayyes, Catherine Buni, Bina Shah, and others; essays by A. Kendra Greene, Suraj Alva, and Tanya Coke; and poetry by January Gill O’Neil, Emily Leithauser, Megan Pinto, Mira Rosenthal, Tara Skurtu, John Freeman, marcus scott williams, and more.
Deadline: Rolling
COVID LIT is a new 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, all submissions must be accompanied with a minimum $3 donation to a nonprofit of the artist’s choosing. Our goal is to publish weekly online content and, eventually, a print anthology, so send your best work and use your creative superpowers for good! Visit www.covidlit.org today and help those who desperately need it.
In this issue, find essays by Edward Lee and Tony Whedon; a photographic exhibit from artists around the world on the theme “Hunt”; poetry by Daniel Galef, Len Krisak, Katie Hartstock, Hailey Leithauser, and more. Featured in this issue are the 2019 Write Prize for Poetry winners and finalists and the 2019 Write Prize for Fiction Winner. Find a full list of contributors at the Able Muse website.
Deadline: Rolling
The Underground Writers Association of Portland Maine seeks poetry, micro fiction, and visual art submissions for Essential, the press’ fourth annual anthology. Submitted works should be inspired by one or more of the themes: isolation, disruption, abandon, and what is essential. It is up to the author to define and make the argument for what is essential in times like these. All are welcome to submit; emerging writers are encouraged. No fee to submit. Simultaneous submissions and previously published work OK. An optional charity-based reading fee is available for an expedited response. Full submissions guidelines at www.undergroundwritersassociation.com/submit.
Online and print literary magazine Into the Void introduces a new series today: #LittleReadings. They contacted past contributors to their journal to submit a video of them reading their work and received an overwhelming response. If you have had work published in their journal, they hope you consider submitting a reading as well.
The first piece in the series is Charlie Scaturro reading his flash fiction piece “Perfect Blue Circles” which was published in their recent issue, #15.
They hope to release a few pieces a week with a weekly roundup newsletter.
Have you checked in on your local indie bookstore lately? Contribute to fundraisers, order books for delivery or curbside pick-up, or just send a supportive message to see how they’re doing while they’re closed to the public.
You can use the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines to find stores in your area in the United States and Canada. The status of what services they’re providing is constantly changing, so it’s good to keep seeing what’s up if you’re able.
Guest Post by Andrea Roach
I am reading Sarah M. Broom’s The Yellow House, a memoir about generations of family and place (New Orleans, pre & post-Katrina, and their family homes). One of the things that I like about this book is the artful way the author brings the reader into what could be an extremely confusing story, with so many characters and the landscape of New Orleans, by initially laying it out like a map: this is where my neighborhood and my house fit into the history of NOLA, and here’s a blueprint of my relatives leading to me. She refers to Katrina as The Water and so, like the Yellow House, makes it its own complicated character. It’s a multilayered achievement that connects history, politics, race, culture, disaster, and identity, while also telling the ways in which we become our homes and our homes become us. I’d recommend!
The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom. Grove Press, August 2019.
Reviewer bio: Andrea Roach is a writer of memoir, essays, and creative nonfiction. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University and was a finalist for The Writer’s Room of Boston Fellowship Award.
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Guest Post by M.C. LeBrun
The Foundling is Stacey Halls’s much-anticipated second novel. Like her debut The Familiars, we are placed in a world where patriarchal powers dictate the mores of the day and women must use their wits to regain their autonomy. This is a tale of two mothers situated on either side of the class divide in 18th century Georgian London but connected by a child, born to one and raised by the other.
Bess Bright, newly delivered of her illegitimate little girl, is passing through the gates of a Foundling home, ushered along in a line of destitute mothers in various states of despair. There is little time for recovery from trauma, heartbreak, and physical pain when a lack of coin means a life on the streets. For the next six years, Bess does all she can to muster together the money she needs to bring her daughter home for good. However, when the time comes, she discovers her child missing, claimed by another who has stolen Bess’s identity.
From the vivid descriptions of Bess’s life on the streets hawking shrimp and sideswiping lecherous hands, we are introduced to Alexandra Callard, an orphan and widow whose vulnerability is more easily disguised by her wealth and power. Agoraphobic and distrustful of the world, Alexandra tightly controls every aspect of her existence and that of her child, Charlotte. Compulsively repressive and lacking in maternal instinct, Alexandra struggles to understand the needs and desires of Charlotte as separate from her own. When Alexandra is finally coerced to permit the presence of a nursemaid in her child’s life, it is then these women’s worlds collide.
An entangled story of juxtaposed dichotomies unfolds: wealth and poverty, power and deprivation, the expressed and suppressed. We the readers are moved from one subjective reality to the other, playing judge to their choices and witnessing the powerlessness of the child at the center of it all. What makes a good mother? Stacey Halls’s finely tuned and richly evocative historical narrative transports us to another era to explore this very modern question.
The Foundling by Stacey Halls. Manilla Press, February 2020
Undergraduate writers, Runestone Journal wants to see your take on digital storytelling. Digital works based on a piece of fiction, nonfiction, or poetry are all welcome.
Editor Richard Pelster-Wiebe will be judging your submissions, and after an initial screening, the selection process will take place during Hamline’s “Introduction to Literary Publishing: Runestone.” The winner will receive a prize of $250.
Submissions are free and are open until October 1, so you have plenty of time to craft a great digital piece.
Before sending work in for consideration, check out Issue 17 of Blue Mountain Review. Published in February, this issue features interviews with Kelli Russell-Agodon, Zoe Fishman, Alex Gannon, Eurydice Eve, Justin Butts, Firewords. You can also find Poetry by Shutta Crum, Betsy Rupp, Jeremy Ray Jewell, and Twixt; plus fiction by Jacquelyn Scott, Kimberly Knutson, and Jim Kelly.
When you’re done reading, head on over to their submission manager and consider submitting your own poetry, fiction, micro fiction, and essays. They do charge a $5 fee. Remember, they particularly want work with both homespun and international appeal.
Guest Post by Olga Zilberbourg
I’ve just finished The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell. It took me about six weeks to read it—it’s a big book, and I’ve had snippets of time. What I loved about it is the way it moved from being a historical narrative into science fictional territory, creating something of an alternative reality for Zambia’s near future. I don’t really know any other novel that does this movement in quite this way. The story is told by a chorus of voices, each of whom is engaging in their own way, and another fascinating way about this book is the unexpected way they come together at the end. I still need to mull it over.
The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell. Hogarth, May 2020.
Reviewer bio: Olga Zilberbourg’s fiction has appeared in Confrontation, World Literature Today, Narrative, Outpost 19’s Golden State 2017 anthology, and others. She co-hosts the weekly San Francisco Writers Workshop.
This annual national short fiction contest features a first place $2,000 cash award and invitation to an awards dinner on Friday, October 9, on the campus of Rosemont College; a second place cash prize of $500; and third place cash prize of $250. Requirements: unpublished works of fiction up to 8,000 words; $15 reading fee. Deadline: June 15. philadelphiastories.org
Guest Post by Kelsey Owen
Lately, I’ve been finding solace in rereading A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. Written to be read like a novel, Eggers’s genre-splicing memoir follows him through becoming a parent by proxy to his eight-year-old brother after the sudden losses of both parents.
What’s so enduring about this book is how, on the surface, Eggers embodies the pessimism and acid-reflux-irony of postmodernism, but he swiftly and frequently undercuts his own nihilism by exalting the constructive power of familial bonds and solidarity between characters—or, real people. Character-ish people. The narrative style itself draws on the ironic, self-aggrandizing voices of writers like David Foster Wallace, sharing the same undercurrent of desire to locate and create meaning in the seemingly vapid and obscene.
Eggers’s competing aspirations to distinguish himself from others and assimilate into something greater than himself makes his journey both intense and darkly humorous, but Eggers’s often last-minute refusals to abandon the silver-lining, his enduring sentimentality amid existential and physical destitution, never fail to lead you back out into the sun.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. Vintage, February 2001.
Reviewer bio: Kelsey Owen is an editorial assistant at Under the Gum Tree.
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Tupelo Press presents two recent releases, Shahr-e-jaanaan: The City of the Beloved by Adeeba Shahid Talukder, and our latest printing of Maggie Smith’s “Good Bones” onto broadsides. Also be sure to check out the Tupelo Press BOGO sale going on at tupelopress.org. View the entire April eLitPak Newsletter here.
American Poetry Journal publishes in print and online every year. We publish full-length books, chapbooks, and an annual anthology. This year’s anthology is Gods & Monsters. APJ is proud to introduce the American Poetry Journal Book Award and residency at City of Asylum in Pittsburgh. Award Publication of Full-length Book & $500 Honorarium from American Poetry Journal and 1-4 Week residency & travel provided by City of Asylum. www.apjpoetry.org
Guest Post by Evan White
I’ve been reading the memoir How We Fight for Our Lives by Saeed Jones. What I like about the book is this: the story of a young, gay black man growing up in the south could go any number of expectedly tragic ways. And in the hands of a lesser writer, a story like Jones’s might have fallen prey to the unrelenting misery that is so often a substitute for poignancy. As it stands, however, How We Fight for Our Lives clips along without stopping to cry, and it’s this clear-eyed observation—this cataloguing of experience, and, by implication, the self—that makes Jones’s story by turns shocking, elegiac, and revelatory. Plus, he’s funny.
How We Fight for Our Lives by Saeed Jones. Simon & Schuster, October 2019.
Reviewer bio: Evan White is a graduate of the University of California, Davis. White co-founded Absurd Publications and published the anthology, All the Vegetarians in Texas Have Been Shot, in addition to the creative journal The Oddity.
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**The Chesapeake Writers’ Conference is keeping a close eye on the current situation and as of now still plans on holding their annual June conference.**
Spend the first week of summer on the St. Mary’s River! The 9th Annual Chesapeake Writers’ Conference offers an immersive experience featuring daily workshops with accomplished faculty in fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and songwriting; a diverse schedule of craft talks, lectures, panels, and readings; a youth workshop for high school students; and a Teachers’ Seminar for educators. All levels welcome. www.smcm.edu/events/chesapeake-writers-conference/
Don’t forget that literary magazine and chapbook publisher Palooka is open to submissions year-round. Even better? They are currently offering free digital copies of past issues to help lift the spirits of creatives and book lovers. So go ahead and grab a copy today. Palooka is open to all voices, forms, and styles. Submit unpublished chapbooks, fiction, poetry, nonfiction, art, photography, graphic narratives, and comic strips. There is a $3 fee for fiction, poetry, and nonfiction journal submissions and an $8 fee for chapbook manuscripts.
Guest Post by Bill Cushing
Okay, we’re all stuck indoors for the duration, so I’ve used the opportunity to get to some books I’ve not read. However, occasionally I like returning to a guilty pleasure—whether it’s a movie or book. Here are two such recommended books.
Although George Fox wrote several novels, Amok remains my favorite; the ride is such fun that I can now breeze through in about two hours. The story isn’t new by any stretch: a Japanese soldier still fights WWII in the Philippines during the 1970s. Hell, even Gilligan’s Island did that one, but it’s the way Fox constructs his story that makes this version so interesting.
For example, he begins by noting that the word “amok” began as a noun. Now, there’s a hook. Additionally, Fox’s story is so cinematic that I was casting it during my first reading some 40 years ago.
When Nicholas Meyer moved from writing scripts and novels (Time After Time and The Seven Percent Solution stand out) to directing films, I felt a sense of loss to the world of letters. Not that I blame the man, and he is actually responsible for two of the better Star Trek films (The Wrath of Khan and Undiscovered Country), so there was an upside.
But his novel Confessions of a Homing Pigeon offers one of the best coming-of-age books around. An orphaned boy of acrobat parents moves to Paris with his paternal uncle. He’s taken from the morally ambiguous relative to Chicago after his mother’s family decides he needs a “proper upbringing.” Quickly tiring of that suburban grind, he decides to return to the beloved uncle and makes his way back to France in a novel quite accurately described as “charming.”
Meyer is a great writer, and this may be his greatest yet least known book.
Amok by George Fox. 1978.
Confessions of a Homing Pigeon by Nicholas Meyer. Dial Press, January 1981.
Reviewer bio: Bill Cushing writes and facilitates a writing group for 9 Bridges. His poetry collection, A Former Life, was released last year by Finishing Line Press.
Have you read the first two issues of online literary magazine Club Plum Literary Journal yet? Check those out and consider submitting your own flash fiction, prose poetry, and art for their next issue. There is no fee to submit. Fiction should be under 800 words. They want the lyrical and the unusual. They accept images of pen-and-ink line art, pencil drawings, watercolor, experimental, impressionistic, or abstract pieces. These can be black and white or in color. They do not currently accept photography at this time.
Deadline: Rolling
the Vitni Review seeks creative writing submissions on an ongoing basis for its spring and fall 2020 issues. Our intention is to publish writing that pushes against convention, which challenges, subverts, or skillfully manipulates tradition, and which serves to advance the understanding of human culture and experience via interesting metaphors, exciting diction, and engaging content. We are especially dedicated to publishing work by writers from historically under- or misrepresented demographics. See our guidelines at www.vitnireview.org/submit.
Shanti Arts, publisher of Still Arts Quarterly, has created a new page on their website just for responses to and thoughts on COVID-19. These pieces of writing and art show how to “choose kindness, generosity, and compassion” during these times.
Right now, readers can find art by MJ Edwards, poetry by Heidi Blankenship, photography by Joseph Murphy, and more. Writers and artists who want to contribute their own work can find out how at the website.
There is just over a month remaining to submit manuscripts to Tolsun Books, an independent, non-profit press based in the Southwest. They are accepting both full-length and chapbook-length manuscripts composed of parts. This includes poetry, short stories, essays, hybrids, translations, and things they haven’t dreamed of. They want both new and experienced writers with high-energy voices. They offer free submissions on the 15th of every month otherwise it is $15 to submit.
Guest Post by Katie Anderson
The Cloud Upon the Sanctuary is a beautifully written series of letters about the evolution of humankind published in 1793. Karl von Eckartshausen describes the “mystery of the New Man” as the synthesis of an alchemical union between man and spirit, or man and God. This transformative art he explains must occur as the mystery teachings from ancient Greece, through a series of stages. This formula espouses an evolution of knowing thyself outwardly, then inwardly.
Eckartshausen illustrates the formula for the transformative art as one that confers wisdom at successive levels, but not as an undertaking belonging to an elite group. He had envisioned it as a spiritual pursuit that the whole of humankind would enter, not a secret practice known only to men in the lodges and salons of the eighteenth century. Eckartshausen uses biblical symbolism and allegory to express the philosophy of an esoteric spiritual counsel 55 years before the advent of Spiritualism and 102 years before Theosophy. This “interior community of light” in union with humankind, produces the illuminated community. Two archetypes embody the exoteric and the esoteric, the Priest and the Prophet, whose union produces the archetype of the illuminated man.
People are looking towards traditional and alternative forms of spirituality to find inner peace of mind. This is in response to the constraints of shelter orders and social distancing measures in place to cope with the Covid-19 pandemic. Quarantine has stripped away human social interaction, but it also has dissolved our illusions. We’re no longer comfortably numb. When there isn’t anyone to talk to, we listen to the silence and talk to ourselves. What might we learn in the interim?
The Cloud Upon the Sanctuary by Karl von Eckartshausen, edited by Isabel de Steiger. William Rider & Son, Ltd, 1909.
Reviewer bio: Katie Anderson is a historian and writer living in Troy, Missouri. Her work has appeared in Eternal Haunted Summer and The Far Shining One.
The April 2020 Book Stand is now up at NewPages! It’s important to continue supporting small and university presses, authors, and indie bookstores now by checking out new and forthcoming titles to keep you company at home. This month, we bring you five new featured titles.
Adelante by Jessica Guzman is the winner of the 2019 Gatewood Prize, selected by Patricia Smith who calls collection “unerringly fresh and restless.”
Barbara Sabol won the 2019 Sheila-Na-Gig Editions Poetry Manuscript Contest with Imagine a Town, studying the concept of home and longing to belong.
Sand Creek and the Tragic End of a Lifeway by Louis Kraft draws on the words and actions of those who participated in the events of the Sand Creek Massacre.
The Story I Am: Mad About the Writing Life by Roger Rosenblatt celebrates the art, the craft, and the soul of writing.
Danielle Vogel’s The Way a Line Hallucinates Its Own Linearity creates a latticework of repair and moves in the space between the poem and the essay.
You can learn more about each of these New & Noteworthy books at our website, and find out how to place your book in our New & Noteworthy section here: https://npofficespace.com/classified-advertising/new-title-issue-ad-reservation/.
Washington Writers’ Publishing House is accepting poetry and short fiction for their first anthology in 25 years. If you are a writing living in or connected to DC, Maryland, and Virginia, you have until June 1 to submit work to the This is What American Looks Like anthology. They seek new and established writers, a cross-section of diverse voices, to write on America today. Be provocative, be personal or political (or both). There is a $5 fee to submit.
Qu Literary Magazine, published by the MFA Program at Queens University of Charlotte, publishes poetry, prose, and script excerpts from new and established voices. Writers are paid for their contributions: $100 per prose piece and $50 per poem.
For readers, past contributors have included Keija Parssinen and Jon Pineda.
Learn more about their submissions (opening soon) and more at their listing.
Guest Post by Preston L. Allen
The poems in Christina Fulton’s exquisite debut collection, To the Man in the Red Suit, are ruminations on a life of the ironic, the beautiful, the poignant, and the bitter-sweet. Prominent among the memories that are fuel for the fire of these poems are the poet’s childhood in New Jersey and the suicide of her workaholic father. My favorite poem, an ode called “To My Father’s Confused and Empty Desk,” ends with the perfectly adroit enjambment of lines:
He only came back
to count your rings,and kiss the scissors
good night.
Sometimes these pretty poems soothe, sometimes they sting, sometimes they fill your mouth with precious stones that you cannot chew but break your teeth on trying. The poet uses no clichés but masterfully creates them: ‘I saw your lies bend’; ‘That imperfect field / where Jesus / taught the lilies to blush’; ‘You can jiggle / but can you bend?’ Long after you read this book, you will be quoting from it.
To the Man in the Red Suit by Christina Fulton. Rootstock Publishing, May 2020.
Reviewer bio: Preston L. Allen is a recipient of a State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship and author of the novels Jesus Boy, All or Nothing, and Every Boy Should Have a Man. He lives in South Florida.
The Petigru Review is looking for surprising stories, poems, essays, and first novel chapters for our annual online literary journal. We are especially interested in supporting diverse and emerging voices. Submissions close 7/31/20 or when we hit 500 submissions. www.thepetigrureview.com
Deadline: May 11, 2020
The Roadrunner Review‘s mission is to provide student writers with a beautiful publishing venue. We publish flash fiction, flash nonfiction, poetry, and cover art. We have an international focus. We also have a particular need for more creative nonfiction and essays. Submissions FREE via Submittable. roadrunner.lasierra.edu/submissions/
Guest Post by José Jiménez Vivaldi
Abuse, suicide, abandonment, and enough alcoholism to mimic a Bukowski novel, Chad Abushanab’s The Last Visit narrates his troubled past in a series of seemingly chronological scenes, each depicting the aforementioned themes. With the collection standing as an exploration into the depths of human pain, Abushanab leads the expedition with such introspection that it sets an example of bravery for its readers.
Though a poetry collection, The Last Visit reads like a novel. The pieces are narrative and contain lots of concrete detail. Most of them could stand alone and give the reader an understanding of Abushanab’s story, but to read only one poem is like viewing a complex image from just one angle. The poems tell different stories, and take different forms as Abushanab experiments with a variety of poetic vehicles, such as the ode, the ballad, the ghazal, and the elegy. However, they’re all are connected by their themes, which directly relate to his upbringing, as well as his struggles to cope with the scars of his past as an adult. Therefore, upon reading the collection in a linear manner, the reader develops a three-dimensional perspective of his story and family.
If there’s one message The Last Visit sends to its readers, it’s that the answers to the present can be found in the past, but the future is yours to define. Chad Abushanab did a wonderful job creating such an insightful piece of literature. Not only should writers aspire to shine a light at the darkness within themselves to create material the way he does, but readers should adopt similar methods of self-reflection to aid their personal growth.
The Last Visit by Chad Abushanab. Autumn House Press, March 2019.
Review bio: José Jiménez Vivaldi is part of this year’s graduating class at Loyola University Maryland.
Buy this book through our affiliate Bookshop.org.
Online magazine of the arts and literature Leaping Clear features artists and writers from around the world who work from dedicated meditation and contemplation practices. These include formal meditation, spiritual inquiry, prayer, integrated mind-body spiritual disciplines, dedicated communion with nature, philosophical reflections, and beyond.
Readers can enjoy an ad-free experience, and writers do not have to pay any submission fees to have their work read. Writers, take note: submissions open on May 1 and close at the end of the month, so you have some time to polish your work and send it over.
Don’t forget that Oyster River Pages, a literary and artistic collective, is open to submissions of fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and visual arts that stretch creative and social boundaries for its fourth annual issue. They believe in the power of art to connect people to their own and others’ humanity. Because of this, they seek to feature artists whose voices have been historically de-centered and marginalized. Additionally, their Emerging Voices section seeks new voices in fiction from those who have published fewer than two publications and who meet our submission criteria. Please see www.oysterriverpages.com for submission details and send your important work for an urgent time.
Deadline: May 31, 2020
UK-based Shooter Literary Magazine‘s 2020 Short Story Competition is currently open to short fiction of any theme/genre, from anywhere in the world, up to a maximum length of 5,000 words. All entrants will receive an e-copy of Shooter‘s Winter 2021 issue, in which the winning story will appear. Winner receives £400 and publication both in print and online; runner-up wins £100 and online publication. The winners will be announced online in July. Entry fee of £7 per story or £10 for two. Guidelines and entry details can be found at shooterlitmag.com/competition.
Guest Post by Christopher Chambers
I discovered Eduardo Halfon in a used bookstore, not so long ago but long enough ago that used bookstores were open and one was able yet to indulge in the decadent past-time of browsing. Halfon’s novel The Polish Boxer caught my eye. I bought it and read it, and then purchased the other two books of his that have been translated into English (all handsomely published by Bellevue Literary Press).
I began Monastery in solitude amid the pandemic. Upon completing it, I experienced the uncanny feeling of when the lights come up after the end of good film and you walk out of the theater into the world, now dark, perhaps raining, and it seems like a strange and different world as you emerge from the world of the film (another of those experiences no longer available to us). We still have books though, and reading as a strategy for survival. I’m slowly emerging from the world of Monastery and I’m in no particular hurry to leave it behind. I’m resisting for the moment reaching for Mourning, the next of his books which awaits on the shelf alongside a selection from the lovely NYRB reprint series, some of which also await reading, some re-reading.
Halfon has said that he’s only writing one book, and everything he publishes is just part of it, as if each book he writes is another chapter. Mourning awaits me, the next chapter of this ongoing book. And I await Mourning, which I suspect will become necessary in the coming weeks and months as we proceed further into this century and all it has in store. Robert Bolaño once said: “The literature of the twenty-first century will belong to (Andrés) Neuman and to a handful of his blood brothers.” Eduardo Halfon is among that number.
Monastery by Eduardo Halfon. Bellevue Literary Press, February 2014.
Reviewer bio: Christopher Chambers is editor of Midwest Review, and author of Delta 88, a small book of very short fiction. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin.
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