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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!

Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review – 2020

Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review - Winter 2019

This year’s issue of HSPR is a collection of small things–the way the small things, the things we could almost overlook, often drive art as much as larger considerations. Our 4×4 section this year continues the theme – Richard Kenney, Tobi Kassim, Jessica Fisher and Stephanie Burt all weigh in on the role of small things in both making poems and appreciating them. Contributors include Jena Le, Sandra Lim, KE Duffin, Mary Cisper, Anna Tomlinson, Adam Tavel, Jonathan Wike, Tobi Kassim, and more. A changed logo, different paper, and new fonts are also small physical changes readers can note in this issue.

Contest :: Arts & Letters Prize Competition 2020

Arts & Letters Prizes 2020 flier

For our 22nd annual prizes in fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction, we offer the winner in each category a $1,000 prize and publication in the next year’s Fall or Spring issue. All writers and poets writing in English are eligible to enter, excepting friends, relatives, or current and former students of the current-year judges. All fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction prize submissions will also be considered for publication at regular payment rates. The submission period for our annual prizes is February 1 – March 31. The entry fee is $20. Submit now! artsandletters.gcsu.edu

Carve Magazine – Winter 2020

Carve Magazine - Winter 2020

The Winter 2020 issue of Carve Magazine features short stories by and interviews with Alissa Hattman, Emily Howorth, Sam Simas, and Kate Arden McMullen; poetry by Lucia Orellana Damacela, Jessica Hincapie, Cindy Juyoung Ok, and E. Kristin Anderson; and nonfiction by Brittany Coppla and Joel Clotharp. Additional features include Decline/Accept with “Fit” by Rayne Ayers-Debsksi, a “One to Watch” interview with Brandon Taylor by Anna Zumbahlen, and illustrations by Justin Burks.

Patti Smith on Libraries and the Transformative Love of Books

Year of the MonkeyPatti Smith on Libraries and the Transformative Love of Books. Brain Pickings.

In Year of the Monkey  — her unclassifiable, symphonic exploration of dreams, love, loss, and mending the broken realities of life — Patti Smith recounts how her local childhood library nurtured her inner life, tilling the soil of her becoming.

In consonance with that lovely parenthetical line from one of Nikki Giovanni’s poems celebrating libraries and librarians — “(You never know what troubled little girl needs a book.)” — Smith writes of the endearing, almost unreasonable devotion with which she sought solace for her nine-year-old troubles amid the stacks.

‘The Way of the Wind’ by Francine Witte

Way of the Wind by Francine WitteGuest Post by Arya F. Jenkins

In The Way of the Wind, poet and writer Francine Witte’s sparse but packed novella in flash, loss has a dozen names and belongs as much to the present as the past. After being dumped by her boyfriend of five years, the narrator, Lily, finds herself not only overwhelmed with grief but with the memory of other losses and, as she tries to work through them, takes the reader on a frantic, all-too familiar journey.

The Way of the Wind is divided into short, emotionally-charged chapters that grip from the start. Bitter wit provides respite throughout: “Love is a lot like tennis, you know? The ball is everything. Everything. If you’re not watching it, you might as well be sipping tea.”

As is true in the work of any masterful flash fiction writer, the only thing the reader can count on here is the unexpected. As Witte takes the reader on a bumpy ride full of emotional twists, highs and lows, the angst and dramedy feel familiar; the ache, all too real. Lily tries everything to escape her pain, going over the “ifs,” making excuses for the other, fantasizing to keep from acknowledging that her biggest fear—abandonment—has come to pass. The only way out of grief and loss, the narrator seems to suggest, is by uniting with what there is—other humans who care, and acceptance.

The Way of the Wind by Francine Witt. Ad Hoc Fiction, 2019.

Arya F. Jenkins is a poet and writer whose prose has been recently published in About Place Journal, Across the Margins, Cleaver Magazine, Eunoia Review, Five on the Fifth, Flash Fiction Magazine, Metafore Literary Magazine, and Vol. 1 Sunday Stories Series. Her fiction has received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize. Her latest poetry chapbook, Love & Poison, was published by Prolific Press in November 2019, and her short story collection Blue Songs in an Open Key (Fomite, 2018) is here: www.aryafjenkins.com. 

Call :: Anomaly Open Reading Period

Anomaly Issue 29 screenshotThe online literary magazine from Anomalous Press, Anomaly is open to general submissions through March 1. They charge a $3 fee and offer a modest honorarium.

Plus, they have announced their new issue will launch on April 11. Featured folios include a CantoMundo tribute and Performance Poetry. They will also be doing an event at AWP 2020 with Waxwing and Newfound. Learn more…

Poetry – February 2020

Poetry - February 2020

The Poetry February 2020 issue features work by Zach Linge, Jesus Govea, and Dasiy Fried. More work by Terese Svoboda, Alison C. Rollins, Mia You, Caoilinn Hughes, Virginia Keane, Francine J. Harris, Angela Jackson, Rodney Jones, David Felix, Dujie That, Talin Tahajian, Partridge Boswell, Lani O’Hanlon, Beth Bachmann, John Lee Clark, Maggie Smith, James McCorkle, Zeina Hashem Beck, Jessica Greenbaum, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Mary B. Moore, Gabrielle Bates, Nome Emeka Patrick, Jack Underwood, and Liz Berry. Plus, an essay by Jeffrey Yang.

Call :: Driftwood Press

Driftwood Press January 2020 issueDriftwood Press is not only a biannual digital and print literary magazine, but also a book publisher.

Submissions are accepted year-round with expedited response options available. Besides general submissions for their journal, they are currently open to submissions of novellas, graphic novels, and comic collections.

Many of their authors are offered editorships and interviews.

The Malahat Review – Winter 2019

The Malahat Review - Winter 2019

The Winter 2019 issue of The Malahat Review features 2019 Constance Rooke Creative Nonfiction Prize winner Jeanette Lynes. Also included: Carolyn Nakagawa, Julia Brush, Angélique Lalonde, Franco Cortese, Kurt Marti, Patricia Young, Sherine Elbanhawy, Suphil Lee Park, Emeka Patrick Nome, Hasan Alizadeh, Conor Kerr, Joel Robert Ferguson, Melanie Boyd, Bernadette White, Dominique Béchard, Jon Gingerich, Tatiana Oroño, Robert Hilles, Kulbir Saran, Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang, Dawn Lo, and Sehrish Ranjha. Cover art by Sandra de Groot.

The Literary Review

The Literary Review - Fall 2019

The “Granary” issue of The Literary Review features poetry by Rosa Alcalá, Mario Ariza, Christian Barter, Samuel Cheney, James Ciano, Heather Derr-Smith, Dalton Day, Michael Farman, Stuart Friebert, Ute von Funcke, Elisa Gonzalez, Benjamin S. Grossberg, Jennifer Grotz, Maricela Guerrero, Hannah Jansen, and more; fiction by Jody Azzouni, James Braziel, Rosy Fitzgerald, Case Q. Kerns, Laura Shaine, Christine Sneed, Eva Taylor, and Jenny Wu; and prose by Kelly Luce, Karen Luper, Toni Maraini, and Josip Novakovich.

The Lake – February 2020

The Lake - February 2020

This week, we have The Lake‘s February issue, featuring Gaby Bedetti, David Butler, Brent Cantwell, Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana, Michael Dureck, Rebecca Gethin, David Krausman, Patrick Lodge, Bree A. Rolfe, Laura Stringfellow. Reviews of Jason Eng Hun Lee’s Beds in the East and Patrick Lodge’s Remarkable Occurrences.

Threats against the author of ‘American Dirt’ threaten us all

American Dirt coverThreats against the author of ‘American Dirt’ threaten us all. By Ron Charles, The Washington Post.

And in the current climate, hate quickly becomes weaponized. Gurba told Vox this week that she had received death threats after posting her review of “American Dirt.” And the ad hominem comments about Cummins flying around the Web have been brutal. From the start, too much of the discussion of this mediocre novel has been snarled up in identity politics — a poisonous tendency encouraged by the author herself. In a pleading afterword to “American Dirt,” Cummins confesses that she wished “someone slightly browner than me would write it.”

…But some detractors are determined to short-circuit such a possibility — or any discussion sparked by this novel. Fortunately, Flatiron remains committed to serious debate. Although Cummins’s bookstore tour has been canceled, the publisher has announced plans to conduct town hall meetings involving Cummins and “some of the groups who have raised objections to the book.” Let’s hope those discussions can move forward without bullying, intimidation or violence.

…The best critics of “American Dirt” are clearly motivated by a desire to defend the integrity of Mexican culture and the humanity of our most vulnerable residents. But in today’s toxic atmosphere, those valuable critiques have been drowned out by a cowardly chorus of violence.

Program :: The MFA at Florida Atlantic University

The MFA in Creative Writing program at Florida Atlantic University offers concentrations in fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. Core faculty include Ayşe Papatya Bucak, Andrew Furman, Becka Mara McKay, Susan Mitchell, Kate Schmitt, and Jason Schwartz.

Students have the opportunity to work with online literary magazine Swamp Ape Review (which reopens to submissions on April 1). Learn more…

Trans Representation in Film & TV

Disclosure LGBTQ documentary“Disclosure”: Groundbreaking Documentary Examines a Century of Trans Representation in Film & TV. Democracy Now.

The documentary examines the depiction of transgender people in television and film for more than a century, from the 1914 silent film A Florida Enchantment to the Oscar-winning 1999 film Boys Don’t Cry to the new hit television series Pose. Through in-depth interviews with transgender actors, activists and writers, the documentary reveals the way Hollywood and the media both manufacture and reflect widespread misunderstandings and prejudices against trans people. The film also champions the trans people in film and television who have fought and are fighting tirelessly for accurate and dignified representation on screen.

… There is a lack of historical context for trans people, which we actually see in the legislation, as well. There’s this notion that it’s a new phenomenon, that trans people are a sudden trend that need to be combated, because we have this continual historical forgetting. We don’t know our own past. We don’t know that we’ve been around, because we don’t get to see those images.

The Adroit Journal – January 2020

Adroit Journal - January 2020

The Adroit Journal Issue 31 is here with new poetry by Victoria Chang, Michael Bazzett, Bruce Snider, Mark Halliday, Paul Guest, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Faylita Hicks, Caroline Crew, Paige Quiñones, Abby E. Murray, Natalie Eilbert, and more; prose by Kate Folk, Pete Segall, Alexander Weinstein, Alex Perez, Wendy Oleson, and John Elizabeth Stinzi; and art by Heather Betts, Jenny Shi, Anna Frankl, Niya Gao, You Young Kim, and Serge Gay Jr. Plus five new interviews with Victoria Chang, Danez Smith, Paige Lewis, Corrie Williamson, and Carmen Maria Machado.

Science as Story

Creative Nonfiction Fall 2019 coverIn their recent newsletter, literary magazine Creative Nonfiction has announced a new series of events launching this spring called Science as Story. The best part of this series is that these events will be free thanks to the support from the Fisher Fund of the Pittsburgh Foundation.

From March to May, five scientists will visit Pittsburgh to give public lectures. If you aren’t a local to the area, these will also be available as webinars! Each of these scientist writers will also participate in intimate conversations along with Q&As to discuss the craft of writing.

Plus, they will also be running a six-week writing workshop for scientists who are itching to tell their stories.

Featured authors in this series are Azra Raza, Amanda Little, Dawn Raffel, Danielle Ofri, and Ruth Kassinger. Visit their website to learn more.

Call :: Storm Cellar Summer 2020 Issue

Storm Cellar is currently accepting submissions of writing and art for its Summer 2020 issue. Women, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, poor, neurodivergent, border-straddling, and other under-represented voices especially encouraged to submit.

They accept submissions on a rolling basis with free submissions starting at the beginning of the month. They also offer expedited and tip jar submission options.

2020 Force Majuere Flash Contest FlierBesides looking for submissions for their summer issue, they are also accepting all things flash for their FORCE MAJEURE Flash Contest. Pieces should be under 1,000 words and can contain fiction, nonfiction, marks, images, or any combination thereof.

Deadline to enter is April 30. $5 fee for 1 piece of flash or $12 for 3. Winner receives publication and $300.

Bookselling and Liberation

Bookselling and Liberation: Black Bookstores in America, from the ’60s to the Present. American Booksellers Association 2020 Winter Institute keynote event.

“These Black radical bookstores were part of a larger movement,” said Davis, and they emerged from social movements in the ’60s and ’70s, including civil rights, Black power, feminism, environmentalism, and the peace movement.

… “Our core is from that era because it represents us, and we’re very eager to share that with young people because it was written with them in mind,” she said. “People who were incredibly oppressed wrote for the next generation. And so, a good bookseller makes sure that the next generation gets access to what was left behind for them.”

 

“Death of the Farm Family” by Sarah Smarsh

The Common - Fall 2019Magazine Review by Makenzie Vance

In the Issue 8 of The Common, Sarah Smarsh describes how her grandfather’s home became a central gathering place for friends and family and then how it was lost after his death. She begins two generations before her own and skillfully condenses her three-generational story into a compelling length.

Smarsh recounts how her drifter grandmother met her grandfather and finally settled down after a life of wandering with her teenage child—Smarsh’s mother. Though the farmhouse served as a communal space for family and friends and a home for eccentric farm traditions like sledding in a canoe behind a truck, the farm fell apart when her grandfather died, leaving a hole in their lives.

Smarsh speaks to all when she illustrates the importance of a central gathering place for a community, and she reaffirms the importance of small farms and the lives lived upon them.

 

About the reviewer: Makenzie Vance is a creative writing student at Utah State University.

Call :: Oyster River Pages 2020 Reading Period

Literary and artistic collective Oyster River Pages is open to submissions for their next annual issue! They believe in the power of art to connect people to their own and others’ humanity. ORP likes to feature artists and writers whose voices have been historically de-centered and marginalized.

Submissions open through May 31, 2020. There is no fee to submit.

Contest :: First Pages Prize 2020

With writing being embraced or rejected based on first paragraphs, the First Pages Prize has been established to encourage emerging writers. Besides the annual prize, there is also an awards event in Paris, France and year-round inspiration available on their website.

The 2020 Prize is open through February 16 (extended deadline). If writers submit by the normal February 2 deadline, the entry fee is $25. After the 2, the fee goes up to $35.

The prize is open to un-agented writers who must submit the first five pages of a fiction or creative nonfiction manuscript. $2,250 in cash awards, partial developmental editing, plus travel and accommodation to be in Paris, France for presentation events June 9-10.

This year’s judge is the award-winning author Sebastian Faulks, whose latest work Paris Echo was released June 2019.

Caribbean region needs publishers

Caribbean region needs publishers. Caribbean Life. The state of publishing in the Caribbean has regressed to the conditions of the 1940s, and apart from Barbados, anglophone Caribbean governments give short shrift to the literary arts.

So says Vincentian and leading Caribbean novelist and literary critic, Dr. Nigel Thomas, who while complimenting Barbados at a recent awards function for its vibrancy in promoting the arts, said the island has far to go for greater organisation in permanently recognising its outstanding artistes.

… Thomas who lives in Quebec and is author of 11 books and five novels contends that the absence of recognition for creators in literary arts is part of a bigger problem in the English-speaking Caribbean where those who pen from their imagination have little or no publishing opportunities.

CANCELLED :: Contest :: Stockholm Writers Prize 2020

The Stockholm Writers Festival is an annual event that takes place each spring in Stockholm, Sweden. They host the Stockholm Writers Prize to give emerging writers the time, space, and inspiration to focus on social-justice themed writing.

This year’s prize is open through Saturday, February 15 11:59 PM Central European Time. The winner receives a seven-day residency in Stockholm, Sweden from May 21 to 27 and $1,000 to be used towards travel expenses. Also included is a 1-1 meeting with an agent and individual feedback from the guest judge.

Writers must submit a creative writing sample (up to 1500 words) and a 1000-word personal statement on how they foresee their writing creating change, why this social justice issue matters to them, and how they can benefit from the residency.

**Updated 2/12/20: Stockholm Writers Festival cancelled this year’s contest and fees have been refunded.**

Ascent ascends

Ascent magazine coverLocal literary magazine Ascent ascends under new editorial management. Inforum.

After thousands of submissions and hundreds of pieces of work published for the world to enjoy, a fresh mind and eye is taking over the local literary magazine Ascent. As of January, W. Scott Olsen, an English professor at Concordia College in Moorhead and the author of several books, has stepped back from his role as editor-in-chief of the literary magazine — handing over the reins to colleague Vincent Reusch.

Ascent currently publishes online, with a few hard-copy issues printed each year; however, Reusch is hoping to bring back a regular schedule of printing submitted work.

To submit work, or to read pieces by other authors, visit the magazine’s website at readthebestwriting.com.

Adventures in Publishing Outside the Gates

publishing-industry-small.jpegAdventures in Publishing Outside the Gates by Wendy C. Ortiz. Gay Mag. It can be a long road to publication when signing with a big five publisher. Editors come and go. Books get put on hold for a variety of reasons. Here was a small press publisher who wanted to publish this book the following year. No big publisher could do that. I had no faith at that point that anyone would give me a second look — they already hadn’t. I wanted to hold out for the editors who never responded to my agent, still hopeful I’d get a chance with a big publisher with what would be my first book, but I was learning they never would.

… I wonder about an industry that wants to pay seven figures for a fictional book about sexual abuse. I wonder about an industry that is constantly taken to task for perpetuating white supremacy in its mostly-white field, from receptionist to first reader to editor to CEO.

…My story is just one example of how the publishing industry works. Gatekeepers have kept me, and so many others, out. Now is the time to call out the publishing industry (as we have, as we do, as we keep having to do) for its racism and small-mindedness about who gets published and who does not; who gets massive advances and who does not.

Call :: Wordrunner eChapbooks Spring 2020 Anthology

Wordrunner eChapbooks is celebrating 10 years of publishing with the release of their Spring 2020 anthology.

Writers can submit poetry, fiction, memoir, and creative nonfiction for this anthology through February 29. They want emotionally complex and compelling writing on any theme or subject that has not been previously published. $3 submission fee.

They pay accepted authors $5 to $25.

Why Book Reviewing Isn’t Going Anywhere

Why Book Reviewing Isn’t Going Anywhere. The American Scholar. Now an assistant professor of sociology at McMaster University in Ontario, Chong researches how fiction book reviews come to fruition, trying to solve the puzzle of why some books get reviewed and why so many more are ignored. Her new book, Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times makes the case for the persistence of old-guard professional criticism even in the Internet age.

… reading, especially literary novels—which is what I focus on—has always been practiced by a really elite group of people, and these are often people who are invested in the idea of reading as a way to understand the world around us. People don’t just read reviews to find books to buy, they also read reviews to learn about what ideas are circulating in the culture.

… But to go back to the idea of authenticity and trust, this is just as much if not more of an issue for reviews on places like Goodreads and Amazon. Who is booklover123? Is it the author’s aunt? Agent? An ex-student who feels he deserved an “A”?

Iowa Review Announces 2020 Jeff Sharlet Award for Veterans

Iowa Review - Winter 2019/2020

Literary magazine The Iowa Review hosts the Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award for Veterans. This writing contest is open to U.S. military veterans and active duty personnel. Writing can be in any genre and on any subject.

This year’s contest opens on May 1 and will be judged by Reginald McKnight, author of He Sleeps. The deadline to enter is May 31. First place receives $1,000 and publication in a forthcoming issue of Iowa Review. Second place receives $750 and three runners-up receive $500 each. Check out their site for full guidelines.

You can see the winners of the 2018 contest here: iowareview.org/blog/winners-fourth-veterans’-writing-contest. The 2018 winners were featured in the Spring 2019 issue.

This contest is made possible by a gift from the family of Jeff Sharlet (1942-69), a Vietnam veteran and antiwar writer and activist.

The Cult of Likeability

Jackson Bliss.jpgThe Cult of Likeability (or Why You Should Kill Your Literary Friendships) Craft essay by Jackson Bliss. TriQuarterly.

I’ve noticed a recurring trend in my fiction workshops recently that troubles me, partially because I was once the defendant in the same court of law during my own MFA program: a creative writing student stands up (metaphorically speaking) and then declares almost joyfully that they don’t like a character in the manuscript we’re workshopping or in the novel we’re reading. After I pause and wait for the student to elaborate, I soon realize that their dislike is the critique. I can’t help but wonder if the either/or fallacy of cancel culture I see routinely on social media has in some way reinforced this notion in workshop that unlikeable characters (like people in real life) don’t deserve our attention, which is why we’re allowed to stop considering them at all, once we decide we don’t like them. Frankly, I find this kind of reader response lazy, problematic, ungenerous, and uninsightful, regardless of whether we’re talking about art or people.

…What if the real problem is that, as readers, we’ve become impatient assholes who no longer want to understand the people we’d like to erase, both in literature and in our lives. What if part of the issue here is that, as readers, we now want to cancel the characters that rub us the wrong way (or even worse, who offend us) precisely because we now live in an era where we want to shut up half of those we share the world with.

‘Wilderness of Hope’ by Quinn Grover

Wilderness of Hope - Quinn GroverGuest Post by Carly Schaelling

Quinn Grover takes readers into a landscape of rivers, wildness, and fly fishing in his essay collection Wilderness of Hope: Fly Fishing and Public Lands in the American West. His descriptions of Idaho, Utah, and Oregon rivers make the reader feel as if they can hear the current and smell the water. Central to this essay collection is a discussion about home, and he suggests that certain geographies can make us feel “young and old, safe and unsure . . . closer to those I love, yet perfectly alone.”

Through punchy short essays consisting solely of dialogue and moments of self-deprecating humor, Grover’s collection interrogates the meaning of wildness and the importance of public lands. One of my favorite moments in this collection is an essay called “The Case for Inefficiency.” Grover recounts a fishing trip that gets off to a rocky start—a forgotten sleeping bag, a popped tire. Instead of giving in to feeling inefficient, he asks whether it is possible to measure wasted time. If we walk somewhere instead of drive, but find ourselves outside breathing the air and being more patient because of it, is our time really wasted? To treat public lands well sometimes “requires us to blaspheme the gospel of efficiency.”

You don’t have to know anything about fishing to enjoy this book. You will escape to places you may have never been to and fall in love with them when giving this collection a read.

Wilderness of Hope by Quinn Grover. Bison Books, September 2019.

About the reviewer: Carly Schaelling is a creative writing student at Utah State University.