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!
Here is the latest issue of Willow Springs. This issue features Roy Bentley, Michael Hettich, Andrea Jurjević, Michael McGriff, D. Nurkse who is interviewed this issue, Ira Sukrungruang, Jackson Burgess, Dante Di Stefano, Allison Hraban, Michael Hurley, Amy Seifried, Ojo Taiye, Fritz Ward, Ryan Cannon, William Walker, and more.
A new issue of True Story is out. “Not Your Ordinary Experience of Desire” by Susannah Borysthen-Tkacz and Justin Chen. In True Story #35, a poignant post-mortem of a four-year relationship, told in alternating voices, becomes a catalog of unmet needs and wants . . . and a path to a hopeful future.
Deadline: Rolling
Brush Talks is a journal of creative nonfiction, photography, and poetry related to China. We are currently seeking submissions for our next issue, to be published in the summer of 2020. This can take many forms: general essays, travel essays, profiles, memoir, and narrative nonfiction. We seek submissions about places, people, history, culture, the arts, science and technology—anything related to China that is well written, creative, and true (we do not publish fiction). No submission fee. Please visit our website for more information and read the guidelines before submitting. brushtalks.com
The latest issue of THEMA explores the theme “Six Before Eighty.” Find stories, short-shorts, poems, and photographs by Matthew J. Spireng, J. J. Steinfeld, Cherie Bowers, H.B. Salzer, James “Jack” Penha, Margo Peterson, Alison Arntz, Lisa Timpf, Lynda Fox, Yuan Changming, Georgia A. Hubley, Annie Percik, Robert Wooten, Larry Lefkowitz, and Virginia Howard.
The Spring 2020 issue of Still Point Arts Quarterly celebrates “Grandparents and Other Wise Ancestors.” Featured artists include Karla Van Vliet, Julia Michie Bruckner, Paul Polydorou, and Sheri Vanermolen. Featured writers include Claire Ibarra, Angela Wright, Marianne Mersereau, Janet Sunderland, Gail Tyson, Ilene Dube, Wayne Lee, Douglas Cole, Marc Morgenstern, Denise Tolan, Kaia Gallagher, Anna Leigh Morrow, and Joe Cottonwood.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, The Writer’s Hotel has decided to postpone its annual summer NYC All-Fiction Writers Conference. The event was originally going to take place June 3-9, but is now slated for October 14-20. The application deadline is now August 9. Follow The Writer’s Hotel on social media for updates on their events.
American Life in Poetry: Column 782
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
I’ve mentioned the anthology, Local News: Poetry About Small Towns from MWPH Books, P.O. Box 8, in Fairwater, Wisconsin. Here’s one of the many poems I’ve enjoyed, by Scott Wiggerman, who lives in New Mexico. His latest book is Leaf and Beak: Sonnets, published by purple flag, 2015.
Johnsburg
At the top of the hill, a towering
Catholic church with Gothic spires,
below, a one-pump gas station,
a beauty parlor with a picture window,
at the town’s only four-way stop sign,
a convenience store with a bike stand,
and three smoke-drenched taverns,
their bars of the same solid wood
as the church’s hard benches,
only more polished, more worn down.
We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2019 by Scott Wiggerman, “Johnsburg,” from Local News: Poetry About Small Towns, (MWPH Books, 2019). Poem reprinted by permission of Scott Wiggerman and the publisher. Introduction copyright @2020 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.
“Social Poetics” Uncovers the Poetry of Everyday Workers. By Harris Feinsod. In These Time.
Goldman and Antonio both participated in the Worker Writers School (WWS), founded by poet and activist Mark Nowak, who has offered creative writing workshops with trade unions and social movements since 2005. In Nowak’s stirring new book, Social Poetics, he documents how writing workshops can embolden workers who, to paraphrase Trinidadian historian and writer C.L.R. James, seek to chronicle their own struggles “to regain control over their own conditions of life.”
…Nowak’s work follows in the tradition of Langston Hughes, whose 1947 essay, “My Adventures as a Social Poet,” turned away from lyric poems of individual experience to the poetry of social commitment, poems that “stop talking about the moon and begin to mention poverty, trade unions, color lines and colonies.” Social Poetics relates the history of this tradition: Young English Professor Celes Tisdale and the Abenaki author Joseph Bruchac, for example, created poetry classes in prisons (which included participants in the 1971 Attica uprising).
In 2020 Driftwood Press will offer two courses in its Seminar Series. The first is an Erasure Poetry Seminar instructed by Jerrod Schwarz. He is an instructor of creative writing at the University of Tampa and his own erasure poetry has appeared in PANK, Entropy, Poets Reading the News, and the Plath Project. Applications open through April 30. This course will run five weeks from June 1 through July 3. The course is entirely online.
The next course is the Editors & Writers Seminar. This is a five week online class designed for writers submitting to magazines, for writers who want to be editors of short fiction or literary magazines, and writers who want to become better editors of their own work and others’. The course will be limited to 20 students. Applications are open through April 30. Managing fiction editor of Driftwood Press, James McNulty is the instructor. The course will run from June 1 through July 3.
The Winter/Spring 2020 issue of Alaska Quarterly Review ends with a special feature—”Carrying the Fire: Celebrating Indigenous Voices of Canada.” This literary anthology is co-edited by Sophie McCall, Deanna Reder, Sarah Henzi, Sam McKegney, and Warren Cariou, who are interviewed as an introduction to their selections.
The selected winners and finalists of the Indigenous Voices Awards featured in this issue are: Mika Lafond, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Elaine McArthur, Treena Chambers, Joshua Whitehead, Nazbah Tom, Amanda Peters, Marie-Andrée Gill, Smokii Sumac, Tenille K. Campbell, Francine Merasty, J.D. Kurtness, Naomi Fontaine, Aviaq Johnston, Brandi Bird, David Agecoutay, Dawawn Dumont, and Carleigh Baker. Their work includes both poetry and prose.
Grab a copy of the latest issue of AQR to listen to the varied indigenous voices of Canada.
The January/February 2020 issue of The Kenyon Review featured the winners of their 2019 Short Fiction Contest, and now the March/April 2020 issue features the winners of the 2019 Kenyon Review Short Nonfiction Contest.
Winner
“Hello, Fridge” by Anna Hartford
Runners-Up
“Saving Luna” by KT Sparks
“The Great Glass Closet” by Benjamin Garcia
Check out the introduction to these selections, written by Nonfiction Editor Geeta Kothari, who shares her thoughts on each piece.
Deadline: November 15, 2020
Science is among the most creative of human endeavors. From ancient depictions of scientists and scientific phenomena to contemporary graphic novel formats, from Frankenstein to recent best-selling novels dealing with such themes as pharmacology and climate change, and from memoirs on scientific discovery to essays on “life in the lab,” the people and ideas of science continue to capture our imaginations. We seek work that incorporates ideas, language, characters, main or sub-themes, images, and artwork related to STEM expansively imagined and rendered. Full call: halmagazine.wordpress.com/submit/submit-to-hal-magazine. Send submissions or queries to [email protected].
Deadline: Tuesday, March 31st
The Absurdist Fiction Magazine is an online publication of strange and surreal fiction, featuring a new story every week. We are looking for short fiction (750-1,250 words) that is as engaging as it is bizarre. It can be farcical, unsettling, or just a little off-center—check out previously published work to get a sense of what fits. If you are interested in submitting, please review the guidelines at absurdistmag.com/submissions and show us what goes on in there.
Deadline: April 30, 2020
The Sandeen Prize in Poetry is open to any author, with the exception of ND graduates, who has published at least one collection of poetry. We pay special attention to second volumes. A $15 administrative fee should accompany submissions. Make checks payable to University of Notre Dame. The volumes of the Sandeen Prize will be published in trade paperback format. The author will be offered a standard contract with the University of Notre Dame Press. There will be a $1,000 prize, a $500 award, and a $500 advance against royalties from the Notre Dame Press. Submission information on program website: english.nd.edu/creative-writing/.
Submissions accepted year-round.
The Voices Project (www.thevoicesproject.org), a literary journal, mainly for women and girls, is taking submissions of poetry or prose. We are currently looking to publish the work of poets who
have not yet been published on this site. Prose, no longer than 250 words. Include a short thoughtful bio (160 words or less) with your submission. Multiple submissions welcome, no more than 2. We no longer take anonymous submissions. Check our site and see what we may be missing and submit something to that accord, if inclined. Submit through our website:
www.thevoicesproject.org/submit.html.
Book Review by Katy Haas
Christopher Locke’s 25 Trumbulls Road, 2018 Black River Chapbook Competition Winner, is twenty-two pages of eerie enjoyment. The chapbook reads like five short horror films. Each story is called a “case” and is labeled with a date, which makes them feel a little more real despite remaining firmly planted in the surreal and fantastic. The cases are then broken up into numbered “exhibits,” some of which have been redacted. These redacted sections further steep the stories in mystery—what has been removed and why?
Each story, except one, starts similarly: a family moves into a new home and begins to experience unexplainable events. A woman comes to the newcomer in a dream and leads her into the woods, characters hear source-less voices, objects thrown away return as if tethered to the homeowners. Sure, these are tropes we’ve seen in horror movies for years, but there’s something fresh and poetic about Locke’s little stories. There’s no reliance on special effects or visual jump scares. The horror is all in our imaginations, brought to life by Locke’s straight forward prose. With the short length of the stories, we’re immediately plunged into the darkness with little room to catch our breaths before another tale is introduced.
I read the chapbook while in public, during the middle of the day, sure that if I saved it for my bedtime reading, I’d be too creeped out to sleep soundly. And this is exactly what I want out of a book like this: to be both creeped out and impressed. Locke manages to do both in limited space. 25 Trumbulls Road is a perfectly bite-sized bit of literary horror.
25 Trumbulls Road by Christopher Locke. Black Lawrence Press, February 2020.
About the reviewer: Katy Haas is Assistant Editor at NewPages. Recent poetry can be found in Taco Bell Quarterly, petrichor, and other journals. She regularly blogs at: https://www.newpages.com/.
Since 1990, literary magazine THEMA has been publishing issues focusing on unique themes. Their latest issue is themed “Six Before Eighty” and features work by Matthew J. Spireng, J. J. Steinfeld, Cherie Bowers, H.B. Salzer, James “Jack” Penha, Margo Peterson, Alison Arntz, Lisa Timpf, Lynda Fox, Yuan Changming, Georgia A. Hubley, Annie Percik, Robert Wooten, and Larry Lefkowitz.
Interested in trying your hand at writing short stories, short-shorts, and poems on a theme? Check out the upcoming themes and deadlines.
Runestone Journal proudly announces Volume 6, featuring: creative nonfiction from Hannah Baumgardt and True Dabill, fiction from Maryetta Henry, Gabraella Wescott, and Holley Ziemba; poetry from Lex Chilson, Marina Fec, arizona hurn, Maya Salemeh, Adam D. Weeks, and more; author interviews with Roy G. Guzmán and John Ostrander; and book reviews by the Student Editorial Board. Visit NewPages for more new issues.
Plume releases new poetry every month. In this month’s featured selection, find the second installment of the “5 under 35 Plus” feature with twelve poems by six exceptional poets: JK Anowe, Charlotte Covey, Benjamin Garcia, Sneha Subramanian Kanta, Lindsay Lusby, and Sarah Uheida. Alfred Corn provides five flash for the nonfiction section, and Chelsea Wagenaar reviews Paisley Rekdal’s Nightingale. Plus, more in this month’s regular poetry selections.
The Winter issue of Parhelion Literary Magazine invites readers to change up scenery and put on someone else’s shoes with fiction by Linda Boroff, Lyndsey Ellis, Sierra Lindsay, Mark Jacobs, and Garrett Zecker; flash by Julie Benish and Anthony Tao; nonfiction by Margaret Erhart; and poetry by David Dodd Lee, Sierra Lindsay, Richard Long, Adriana Medina, Jim Moore, and Austin Segrest. Also in this issue are three book reviews; five interviews; and more essay, stories, poetry, and photography in our “Features” section including work by Darren Morris, Leeta Harding, Charles Duffie, Rebecca Moon Ruark, Valley Haggard, Julie Whitehead, and more.
The Mar/Apr Kenyon Review features a special prose section, “The Unexpected,” guest-edited by Jaquira Díaz. Díaz selected work by Lars Horn, Gabriel Louis, Rebecca Nison, Joseph Earl Thomas, Laurie Thomas, and LaToya Watkins. In addition, the issue includes the winning essay and two runners-up from our 2019 Short Nonfiction Contest: “Hello, Fridge” by Anna Hartford, “Saving Luna” by KT Sparks, and “The Great Glass Closet” by Benjamin Garcia. The issue also includes poetry by Erin Belieu, Destiny O. Birdsong, Cortney Lamar Charleston, Heid E. Erdrich, Linda Gregerson, Ted Kooser, Sally Wen Mao, Michael McGriff, and Bruce Snider.
Love on the mind? Visit Ecotone‘s “The Love Issue.” Inside, Jennifer Tseng & Amanda Tseng envision their father, Sarah Seldomridge & Eduardo Espada draw the beginnings of a family, Silas House sings of a boy’s first love, and Jennifer Elise Foerster reads Jane Johnston Schoolcraft. Plus, sonnets, rondels prime, sonzals, and brefs double, from Chad Abushanab, Ashley M. Jones, Amit Majmudar, and A. E. Stallings.
The March 2020 issue of Diode Poetry Journal is with brand new poetry by TR Brady, Brandon Jordan Brown, Sarah A. Chavez, Brian Glaser, Sarah Gridley, Mandy Gutmann-Gonzalez, KA Hays, Kathleen Heil, Janiru Liyanage, Brett Elizabeth Jenkins, Luisa Caycedo-Kimura & Dean Rader, Virginia Konchan, Amit Majmudar, Christopher McCurry, Cindy Hunter Morgan, JoAnna Novak, Meghan Privitello, Iliana Rocha, Daniel Ruiz, Aaron Samuels, Nate Slawson, Kelly Grace Thomas, Svetlana Turetskaya, Jorrell Watkins, Rewa Zeinati, and Jane Zwart.
The Fall 2019 issue of Cimarron Review offers poetry by Jacqueline Winter Thomas, Shavahn Dorris-Jefferson, Luke Patterson, Ainsley Kelly, Anne Delana Reeves, Khaleel Gheba, Zach Mueller, Dayna Patterson, Laura Green, Adam Clay, Sophia Stid, Margaret Cipriano, G.C. Waldrep, and Athena Kildegaard; fiction by Robin Becker, Catherine Wong, JP Gritton, and Clancy McGlligan; and nonfiction by Danielle Thien. Our cover art is “Esotrope” by Monica McFawn.
AQR’s Winter & Spring 2020 edition features stories by Joy Lanzendorfer, Elise Juska, Matthew Lansburgh, and Patricia Page. Also featured are stories by Katya Apekina, Molly Gutman, Daniel Pearce, and Kirsten Madsen. The edition also includes three engaging personal essays, an exceptional collection of poems by twenty-four poets, and a special anthology “Carrying the Fire: Celebrating Indigenous Voices of Canada.” These voices include Mika Lafond, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Smokii Sumac, Tenille K. Campbell, Francine Merasty, J.D. Kurtness, Brandi Bird, and more.
The Winter 2020 issue of Qu Literary Magazine is out. Fiction by Renay Costa and Kevin M. Kearny; nonfiction by Jackie Kenny and Stephanie Dickinson; and poetry by Betty Rosen, nicole v basta, Sara Moore Wagner, Tom C. Hunley, Kelly Weber, and Elsa Ball. Patricia Powell provides “On Listening” in our “The Writing Life” section, and in stage/screen writing: Kate McMorran and Libby M. Gardner.
The latest issue of The 2River View features poems by Bruce Alford, Josette Akresh-Gonzales, Matthew Freeman, Abriana Jetté, Brady Thomas Kamphenkel, Tanner Lee, Tatiana Retivov, Samn Stockwell, Teresa Sutton, and John Whalen. Art from this issue is by Megan Duncanson.
Those same old four walls getting you down? Nothing going on, and not likely to? A road trip is the only cure. Time to get out of Dodge! So where to go, or does it matter? The time to pack up and go is now. Tell us your tails of the trails, your songs of the highway, be they real, imagined, or seemingly impossible in stories approximately 50 words in length. Send your submissions in the body of an email to: [email protected]. No poetry, attachments, or bios please. Submissions are open now through April 15th, 2020. www.blink-ink.org
Cold Mountain Review, celebrating more than 40 years of continuous publication, has launched the Reaching Inside Project.
In an effort to be socially conscious members of the literary world, we began the Reaching Inside Project to provide boxes of ten archived copies of the journal (a total cover value of $80) to organizations with an identifiable need.
The first recipients of this project will be prison libraries across the US. People can choose to help them in this effort by sponsoring boxes. The cost is $20 which covers packaging and shipping. You can even choose a specific prison where you want the box sent. Please note that they do not guarantee the specified prison will accept the box, but will try their best.
In a recent article in The Writer, the future of literary magazines was a hot topic and current editors of journals responded with how the literary magazine publishing landscape is evolving. One thing that was clear was that change and adaptation is needed in order for journals to survive.
Southeast Review created an online component to its print publication known as SER TWO: This Week Online in which they published fresh content on a weekly basis. They are now taking things one step further as they hope to transition to fully online.
Beginning with their Spring 2020 issue, they will offer their biannual issues not only in print format, but also entirely online. Read up on this change in Editor-in-Chief Zach Linge’s Letter from the Editor.
Zizzle Literary launched as a flash fiction literary magazine for families in 2018. Since its inception, it has morphed into a short story anthology series for readers young and old.
Zizzle is now evolving into a small press and hopes to begin to offer novels, graphic novels, and short story collections in the near future. The first of their new offerings, Zizzle Selects, will be released in June 2020. This anthology for teens features flash fiction stories from previous issues of Zizzle Literary and includes a discussion guide.
Qu, the literary magazine from Queens University of Charlotte, features regular articles on The Writing Life.
Patricia Powell, author of Me Dying Trial, A Small Gathering of Bones, The Pagoda, and The Fullness of Everything, dives into how listening is purposeful, and sometimes down right difficult, not only in workshops and writing, but in our everyday lives and our relationships.
When we write we are listening. We often choose a quiet place free from noise and interruptions and close the door. We still the thinking, chattering mind and slowly tune inward. We sit, our bodies like giant ears, waiting for the sound under all things to burp into consciousness. This kind of full-bodied listening provides spaciousness for the work to show up without pressure, for the work to be.
[ . . . ]
Deep Listening can often lead to right speech and right action. We must listen before we act. We must not slouch in our efforts to fight for climate and food and housing justice. We must not slouch in our efforts to fight for racial and gender and wage justice.
Read Powell’s full article in Qu‘s Winter 2020 issue.
Online literary magazine Blood Orange Review released Volume 11.2 in January 2020. This issue was delayed a bit as they worked hard on relaunching their site with a new design.
The majority of artwork featured in this issue was gathered from visual art MFA students at Washington University: Siri Margaret Stensberg, Stephanie Broussard, and Kelsey Baker. Also featured in this issue is art from Sarah Hussein who hales from Egypt.
Besides art, find poetry by Hussain Ahmed, Benjamin Bartu, John Byrne, Isiah Fish, Joseph Gunho Jang, Maya Marshall, and Kim Young; nonfiction by Sarah Rose Cadorette, Kelly Hill, and Austin Maas; and fiction by Wandeka Gayle, Arielle Jones, Sakae Manning, Lois Melina, and Joel Streicker.
Blood Orange Review is currently open to general and contest submissions.
Online literary magazine CRAFT published the winners of its 2019 First Chapters Contest over the course of February.
The contest was judged by Naomi Huffman of MCDxFSG and FSG Originals.
In first place is “Paradise Pawn” by Meg Richardson.
In second place is “Little Squirrel” by Tim Hickey.
In third place is “Empire of Dirt” by Jonathan Bohr Heinen.
See the full list of finalists, honorable mentions, and read the first chapters at their website.
In December of 2019, Seneca Review announced the winner of its annual Deborah Tall Lyric Essay Book Prize.
Final judge Jenny Boully selected Living Room Horses by Minnesota-based essayist and playwright Jessica Lind Peterson. The book will be published in November 2020.
Finalists:
Vanessa Saunders, The Flat Woman
Dennis James Sweeney, You’re the Woods Too
Nance Van Winckel, Sister Zero
Algonkian Writer Conferences hosts the New York Pitch Conference and writers workshop four times a year. The next event is taking place June 18 through 21. Their goal is to help set writers on a realistic path to publication.
This event focuses on the art of the novel pitch “as the best method not only for communicating your work, but for having you and your work taken seriously by industry professionals.”
The registration fee will go up after June 13. Learn more…
Runestone Volume 6 was released at the end of February and features an interview with John Ostrander, prolific writer of comics in the the DC, Marvel, and Star Wars universes.
Ostrander answers questions about comics he loved as a child (he had to hide super hero comics from his mother), the challenges of joining an already well-established comics universe, and how involved in the process he was for his comics being adapted into films.
In terms of working minorities and more diverse characterization in, I’m very proud of that. One of the characters I created was Amanda Waller for The Suicide Squad. There was no one like her at the time, and really not many like her since then. When I was first working on it, I knew that as the head of it I wanted someone who was not super-powered, I wanted someone who was African American, I wanted a female, I wanted someone slightly older, and I wanted them to be tough as nails.
The Problem of Money and Access at AWP. By Alison Stine, Lit Hub.
Is it possible to attend AWP if you’re poor? If you’re not going to be reimbursed by a university, should you even bother? The short answer is: I did it, and many others do too—but it can be a lonely and difficult experience.
…Though AWP was funded to serve writers teaching at the college level, more and more writers just can’t get those jobs, especially not writers of color, women writers, or writers who are disabled. There just aren’t that many jobs anymore to get. More and more, it’s writers outside of academia who participate in AWP—not just to attend, but to present and give readings—and who shoulder expenses themselves.
…It’s not illegal to discriminate against the poor. But when 60 percent of college students face food insecurity every month; when academia runs on the exploitation of adjuncts’ labor; when tenure track professors give lectures to hordes of students, only a fraction of whom will ever obtain jobs in the profession in which they trained (and often paid dearly for), it seems glaringly insensitive not to directly address the deep and systematic income inequalities of the field.
december magazine seeks submissions for our 2020 Curt Johnson Prose Awards in fiction and creative nonfiction. Judges: Dorothy Allison (fiction) & Brittney Cooper (nonfiction). Prizes each genre: $1,500 & publication (winner); $500 & publication (honorable mention). All finalists will be listed in the 2020 Fall/Winter awards issue. $20 entry fee includes a copy of the awards issue. Submit 1 story or essay up to 8,000 words from March 1 to May 1. For complete guidelines visit our website decembermag.org/2020-curt-johnson-prose-awards/.
The Georgia Review‘s Spring 2020 issue will focus on the 2020 U.S. Census. They currently have this special issue available for pre-order for $15.
Featured in this issue you will find work by Coleman Barks, Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Stewart, Lawrence-Minh Davis, W. Ralph Eubanks, LeAnne Howe, Gary Paul Nabhan, Jenni(f)fer Tamayo, Joshua Weiner, Karen Tei Yamashita, and many more.
And if you decided to go to AWP 2020 in San Antonio, they are there at Booth 862. Drop by, say hi, and pick up some swag.
The people behind literary magazine Gold Man Review started SMOLDR back in 2018 with the launch of a writing contest for romance stories based around fictional characters living in Lake Covington.
They released Lake Covington on Valentine’s Day this year and are now accepting votes through March 14 for readers to choose their favorite couple. The top three writers whose couples are chosen will receive cash prizes. Grab your copy of the anthology today and vote for your couple.
Oh, and don’t forget that Gold Man Review is currently open to submissions from West Coast writers for their annual issue through May 1.
Deadline: June 1, 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
Rattle’s special features always help spice up an issue. It’s fun to see what has been included in each issue’s theme and how the writers fit inside it. In the Spring 2020 issue, readers can find a “special tribute section of poems written by students of Kim Addonizio’s poetry workshops (as well as one poem by Kim herself).” An interview with Addonizio is also included after the poetry selections. In addition to her poems, there are pieces by sixteen of her students covering a wide array of topics. Parenthood, love for pets, politics, sex, and suicide just scratch the surface of what these poets focus on in this feature. Grab yourself a copy of this issue of Rattle to discover the full selection Addonizio and her students offer us.
Deadline: April 30, 2020
28th year, sponsored by Winning Writers and Duotrope. $8,000 in cash prizes, including two top awards of $3,000 each. Seeks short stories and essays up to 6,000 words each. Both published and unpublished work accepted. Fee per entry is $20. Final judge: Dennis Norris II, assisted by Lauren Singer Ledoux. Winning Writers is one of the “101 Best Websites for Writers” (Writer’s Digest). See guidelines, past winners, and enter online at winningwriters.com/tomstory.
Magazine Review by Katy Haas
In the past couple years, it has been difficult not to notice the hashtags #MeToo or #TimesUp filling up timelines across the internet. But while so heavily focused on what’s going on in the United States, and despite the connection of social media, many of us have been able to overlook what’s happening in other countries, including one bordering our own. Cristina Rivera Garza in “On Our Toes: Women against the Femicide Machine In Mexico” in the Winter 2020 issue of World Literature Today sheds light on #RopaSucia, which was used “to showcase incidences of misogyny in academic institutions and cultural circles”; #MiPrimerAcoso, stories of “my first harassment”; and #MeToo as tools used by feminists throughout Mexico as they fight to make changes for women in their country.
The Red Wheelbarrow Review, formerly Red Savina Review (est. 2013), is open for submissions. The editors have a fresh focus in line with poet Rich Murphy’s concern that literature is in need of “prophetic voices now.” We seek poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction where word meets spirit in a commingling of the sacred and mundane. We have published writers such as Sharman Apt Russell, winner of the John Burroughs Medal; Rich Murphy, winner of the Gival Press Poetry Prize; Khanh Ha, winner of the Robert Watson Literary Prize; bestselling memoirist Gleah Powers; and many others. Submission guidelines at theredwheelbarrowreview.com/submissions/.
Killer Nashville is the premier forum for all genres incorporating elements of mystery, thriller, or suspense. It brings together forensic experts, writers, and fans of the genre for a weekend in August in Franklin, Tennessee.
The 2020 conference takes place August 20-23. The early registration deadline is March 31 with August 19 being the regular deadline.
They also offer writing contests for both published and unpublished works with winners receiving discounted registration. Learn more…
Deadline: March 31, 2020
First prize: $1,000. Second: $100. Three honorable mentions: $25 each. Entry fee: $8. We are open to any subject, style, genre, or length. What do we want? We don’t know until we see it! Simply send your best, most powerful, unpublished work by email or snail mail. All five finalists will be published online in the June/July 2020 issue of Gemini. Both new and experienced writers have won our contests. Over four dozen winners/finalists may be read online. All entries are read blind so everyone gets an equal chance. We look forward to reading your work! Enter at www.gemini-magazine.com/shortstorycomp.html.
If you didn’t already know, online literary magazine Superstition Review offers a wonderful series called Authors Talk. The latest installment in this series features Todd Dillard going to Twitter to answer questions by his followers. Topics range from writing to craft to cats to . . . Ninja Turtles.
Todd Dillard’s debut poetry collection “Ways We Vanish” is currently available for pre-order. Checkout the podcast to learn how Todd curated this collection and his thoughts about poetry and craft in general.
Applications are being accepted on a rolling basis for the 9th annual Chesapeake Writers’ Conference. The event takes place June 21 through 27. This year’s faculty includes Liz Arnold, Matt Burgess, Patricia Henley, Crystal Brandt, Angela Pelster, and Matthew Henry Hall.
This year they will be offering workshops in songwriting along with workshops in fiction, poetry, screenwriting, translation, and creative nonfiction. They also offer craft talks, lectures, readings, and panel discussions, plus a youth workshop.
Scholarships, course credit, and continuing professional development are also available. There is no fee to apply. Learn more…
