NewPages Blog

Publishing short (500-2500-word) fiction that “gives an insight into the human condition,” the online Fictive Dream featured a summer series called “Revisits.” Each Revisit is a selection of three previously published stories that have a similar theme: Love, Abuse, Growing Up, Grief, Rivalry, Magic Realism, Friendship, Missing, Sex, and War. Editor Laura Black curated the series and introduces each issue. A great way to sample the Fictive Dreams back catalog as well as a conveniently curated collection for the classroom.

Beautiful Things is a weekly column  of “very brief nonfiction that find beauty in the everyday” published on the River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative website. Edited by Michelle Webster-Hein and Sarah M. Wells, the inspiration for the column was Michelle Webseter-Hein’s essay, “Beautiful Things,” published in River Teeth 15.1 and appearing in a series of excerpts on the website.

Contributors to Beautiful Things include Stacy Boe Miller, Andrea Marcusa, Dina Relles, Kelly Morse, Carolee Bennett, Christopher Bundy, Andrea Fisk Rotterman, Pamela Rothbard, Steven Harvey, Allen M. Price, Nikki Hardin, Emily James, and many more.

Writers are invited to contribute flash, nonfiction of 250 or less to be considered for publication. Readers are welcome to comment on the stories using Disqus.

Dr. Gerald Maa has been named the new Editor-in-Chief of The Georgia Review as Stephen Corey steps down with this last issue, Fall 2019.

Maa, along with Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis, founded the Asian American Literary Review in 2009 and has been serving as editor-in-chief. In his introduction to Georgia Review readers Maa writes, “A print periodical—dare I say here—is capable of cultivating communities in ways that no other medium can. To open up a journal—break a spine, perhaps—to carry a volume, or run your fingers over your name printed on a page is very special. But to congregate around a print journal is also special in its own right.”

The Fall 2019 issue is Corey’s final as editor, and in it, he offers what Maa calls “a valedictory essay that should not be missed.” Indeed. Reading it, I unexpectedly found myself overwhelmed with emotion. Corey marvels as he remembers first accepting the job as editor, looking back now having “published polished and mature work by writers not yet born – and I don’t mean born as writers, I mean born – when I started working at GR both excites and spooks me.” Likewise, the end of such a great era for GR readers does not go unnoticed nor lightly in our hearts.

As Corey refrains in his final farewell: “Good literary-magazine editing is an intimate act.”

Between October 2016 and February 2017, Heron Tree online poetry journal published a series of works “constructed from materials in the public domain in the United States.” Editors Chris Campolo and Rebecca Resinski then compiled these into a PDF ebook, Found in the Public Domain, that is free to download.

Contributors include Melissa Frederick, Wendy DeGroat, Karen L. George, Howie Good, Tamiko Nimura, Winston Plowes, Deborah Purdy, M. A. Scott, Margo Taft Stever, Carey Voss, and Sarah Ann Winn. The booklet includes a section of notes from each contributor on their source(s) and process.

Heron Tree publishes poems individually on their website and collects them into volumes and special issues. All content is available for readers online. The publications is open for submissions for volume seven through December 1, 2019.

In addition to publishing poetry, interviews, and reviews twice a year online as well as chapbooks, Under a Warm Green Linden accompanies each issue with a selection of beautiful, affordable, high-quality print broadsides signed by the authors. The adjectives to describe these broadsides are my own; I have sought them out for purchase with every new issue – so I can attest to their production value! Add to that, Under a Warm Green Linden donates a portion of all proceeds from sales to the Arbor Day Foundation and the National Forest Foundation – both with specific reforestation efforts. To date. Under a Warm Green Linden supporters have helped plant 300 trees. A win all around!

Pictured: “Narcissus on the Hunt” by Jennifer Bullis

Looking to spark your motivation for writing? Try the latest prompt from 3Elements Review: Carriage, Pinwheel, Scour.

Each quarter, 3Elements Review presents three elements, and all three must be used in the story or poem in order to be considered for publication. 

The editors expand on this guideline, “Your story or poem doesn’t have to be about the three elements or even revolve around them; simply use your imagination to create whatever you want. You can use any form of the words/elements for the given submission period. For example, if the elements are: Flash, Whimsy, and Seizure; we would accept the usage of Flashed, Whimsical, and Seizures.”

3Elements also accepts artwork and photography based on at least one of the elements – “but creating something that represents all three elements will really impress us.”

The deadline for this quarter is November 30, 2019.

The Fall 2019 issue of Rattle Tribute to African Poets features seventeen poems “representative of the urgency and excitement that makes the poetry coming out of the continent feel so vital.”

Authors whose work make up this tribute include O-Jeremiah Agbaakin, Ifeoluwa Ayandele, Kwame Dawes, Jonathan Endurance, Zaid Gamieldien, Rasaq Malik Gbolahan, Pamilerin Jacob, Temidayo Jacob, Labeja Kodua, Akachi Obijiaku, Anointing Obuh, Chisom Okafor, Ukamaka Olisakwe, Chidinma Opaigbeogu, Olajide Salawu, and Charika Swanepoel.

There is also an interview with Kwame Dawes by Editor Timothy Green.

Contemporary Chinese Poetry is the special focus of the latest issue of Chinese Literature Today (v8 n1), with several works by each poet. The featured authors and the translators include:

Wang Jiaxin, translated by Diana Shi and George O’Connell
Che Qianzi, translated by Yang Liping and Jeffrey Twitchell-Waas
Li Dewu, translated by Jenny Chen and Jeffrey Twitchell-Waas
Hu Jiujiu, translated by Matt Turner and Haiying Weng
Mi Jialu, translated by Lucas Klein, Michael Day, Matt Turner, and Haiying Weng
Huang Chunming, translated by Tze-lan Sang
Chen Li, translated by Elaine Wong

The publication also includes a feature section on Newman Prize Laureate Xi Xi, with the 2019 Newman Prize Nomination, the 2019 Newman Prize Acceptance Speech, new poems translated by Jennifer Feeley, excerpts from several works, reprints, and an analytical essay of Xi Xi’s fiction by Wei Yang Menkus.

Understorey Magazine is an online publication of Canadian literature and visual art inviting “compelling, original stories and art by Canadian writers and artists who identify as women or non-binary.”

For Issue 17 themed Nature: Writing on a World under Threat, the editors are offering free editing services for submissions. In an effort to “inspire new and emerging writers, as well as support established writers,” the editors are offering to “send our thoughts on what already works and what can be improved.” Not all works will be published, but with this effort, Understorey hopes to help women writers “polish” their writing and “find a place to share it with the world.”

A very generous offer indeed! Submission deadline is September 30.

Cleaver: Philadelphia’s International Literary Magazine online features Writer-to-Writer: Essays on Craft and The Writing Life.

Recent essays include “On Revision: From story to STORY, With a Little Help from a Doomed Vole and Robert McKee” by Lea Page [pictured]; “From Play to Peril and Beyond: How Writing Constraints Unleash Truer Truths” by Jeannine Ouellette; “Into the Woods: What Fairy Tale Settings Can Teach Us About Fiction Writing” by Dana Kroos; “Three Secrets to Create the Writing Life You Want” by Lisa Bubert; “In Defense of Telling” by Scott Bane.

The latest issue of New England Review (40.2) includes “Polish Poetry in Translation: Bridging the Frontiers of Language” edited by Ellen Hinsey [pictured], NER‘s international correspondent, with translations by Jakob Ziguras.

Hinsey discusses her approach to this collection, coming to the difficult question of “how to choose among so many brilliant authors? Should one pick a range of poets, or focus on individual key texts that might reflect a Polish reader’s idea of major ‘missing’ poems?”

Continue reading “Polish Poetry in Translation”

If you love rules and regulations, following forms and formulas to make something work, gnashing your teeth and pulling out your hair to meet perfection – and you love poetry – then you’re going to love this free Prime 53 Summer Challenge Poetry Contest. 

Press 53 Poetry Editor Christopher Forrest [pictured] and Publisher and Editor in Chief Kevin Morgan Watson devised a new poetic form: the Prime 53 poem.

Continue reading “Prime 53 Summer Challenge”

With the Spring/Summer 2019 issue, Ecotone Editor Anna Lena Phillips Bell [pictured] introduces a new “department” to be included in each issue of the journal, “Various Instructions, in which writers and artists will offer lists, prompts, formulas, how-to’s, and the like.”

Drawing inspiration from Eric Magrane’s “Various Instructions for the Practice of Poetic Field Research,” Bell writes that “these instructions are an invitation to think deeply in and with place. They have proved enduring; I’ve been glad to use them in teaching and in my own poetic practice.”

Continue reading “Ecotone Offers Venerable Instructions”

In his “Front Matter” editor’s note to the July/August 2019 issue of Kenyon Review, David H. Lynn announces his intention to step down from his role as The David F. Banks Editor of the publication:

“. . . about a year from when this issue arrives off the press, I’ll be stepping down as editor. The decision came to me rather suddenly, I confess, and several years earlier than I’d previously imagined. What had long seemed a comfortable bike ride, despite occasional potholes and sudden challenging hills that maintained my interest and attention, was now unexpectedly weighing in my legs and on my shoulders. I was growing a bit weary and impatient for other vistas, other challenges.”

In discussing the role and responsibilities of editor, Lynn responds to the label of gatekeeper :

“It’s hostile and resentful, suggesting that the role of literary editors is to maintain high barriers. With all my heart, however, I believe that the appropriate charge for an editor of the Kenyon Review is to resist any such notion of guardianship, of excluding any class or set of writers. Rather, whoever is appointed to follow me, she or he or they, should continue to seek to include, to aggressively search out new voices and new talents and even new media with which to publish them, while also nourishing and supporting many of those talented authors we have discovered and honored for the past two decades and more.”

We wish Lynn a smooth transition away from his wonderful work with Kenyon Review – may he indeed be met by beautiful vistas and invigorating challenges.

Crazyhorse Fiction Editor Anthony Varallo’s Editor’s Note to the Spring 2019 issue couldn’t be more timely. In it, he recounts a conversation with a colleague asking, “What do you do with all your books?”

A conundrum for most NewPages readers, no doubt, since being book people still means holding onto physical copies of books, no matter how many e-versions we could be reading also/instead.

I once envisioned the perfect adulthood as being one surrounded by books. I guess I also should have envisioned the time to read them all! Much like the Twilight Episode, Time Enough At Last, we here at NewPages find ourselves surrounded by books and literary journals with barely enough time to glance the covers and contents before another batch arrives in the mail.

We do make time, however, to read, to write reviews, to appreciate others’ reviews, and keep up with the literary world in general. Still – here are all these physical books.

Varallo [pictured] writes, “For many years, I acquired books with the idea that I was building a library. A library that would give me pleasure for years, I’d hoped, or a library that might be useful to others . . . “

We had also held such visions at one time, purchasing a dozen or so quality bookcases and having some built in. They quickly filled the office and spilled into numerous rooms in our home. And who read them? Did we have time? Did they even “look good” ? As Varallo comments, “I tell my colleague about the tower of books on my nightstand, the one that stretches higher than my lamp. I describe the books stacked horizontally on my bookshelves, not in the artful, decorative style you sometimes see in glossy magazines; these are stacks of pure necessity. Books piled on top of other books, sometimes bending the covers of the books beneath them.”

This is the reality of ‘too many books.’ Yes, there is such a thing as too many books. And the truth of the matter in our case is, they should be freed onto others so that they can be read.

We cleared off the bookshelves in the office. Cleared out almost every bookcase in the house. We boxed up books and magazines and donated them to various libraries, colleges, universities and K-12 classrooms in our area and a bit beyond (Hello Alaska friends!). After this initial clearing out, we are still met with a steady stream of books and lit mags that come through. It is our work, after all.

What to do with them? We have a plan hatching and look forward to sharing it with you later this summer. In the meantime, What do you do with all your books?