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Driftwood Press – Issue 9.1

Driftwood Press‘s latest short stories “Wing Breaker” by Rachel Phillippo and “Spanish Soap Operas Killed My Mother” by Dailihana Alfonseca take you from brutal arctic traditions to the cultural traumas of migrants in America. This issue also collects some of the most insightful and harrowing poetry being written today; these poems delve into illness, motherhood, religious pressure, and much more. Wrapping up the issue are visual arts and comics by Io Weurich, Kelsey M. Evans, SAMO Collective, Jim Still-Pepper, Andrew White, Kimball Anderson, & Casey Jo Stohrer. Now at the Driftwood Press website.

Biology and Connection: An Interview with Lauren Taylor Grad

The Woven Tale Press – Volume 9 Number 9, 2021

Lauren Taylor Grad’s work was featured in Woven Tale Press Volume XI Number 9. Jennifer Nelson, WTP feature writer interviewed Taylor Grad recently on the meaning and thought processes behind several of her works along with her pursuit of an MFA.

From using found items to create sculptures to utilizing her undergraduate work in biology to create paintings, Taylor Grad’s work is diverse. One of the most interesting pieces is Tethered which is comprised of used clothing made to create two concrete boulders and a connecting line between them. She also created a video art piece to accompany the sculpture about moving these boulders around a curving path.

Nelson: Why did you feel it was important to earn an MFA?

The decision to go to graduate school and earn my Masters in Fine Arts was not one that I took lightly. It is a huge investment, both in time and money, and I wanted to be sure that it was the right path for me to take before I made that leap. I personally really enjoy academia; I think that the amount of growth and nurturing that occurs in an individual throughout art school in such a short amount of time is transformative, and unlike anything that you can get elsewhere.

Taylor Grad also talked about taking time off after earning her undergraduate degree to try out being a living artist and other avenues before ultimately going back to earn her MFA so that she can also become an art instructor.

Read the full interview here and look at some of Taylor Grad’s amazing work.

Cutleaf – Issue 1 Volume 17

Issue 17 of Cutleaf is live. In this issue, Melissa Helton shares two poems beginning with “The Teenager Has Gone Witchy.” Hanna Ferguson uses food to recount important moments in her life in “An In-Progress Cookbook of Recipes That Stick to My Ribs.” And Joan Wickersham prepares for Halloween with the best of intentions in the short story “The Subterranean Calendar.” Learn about this issue’s images at the Cutleaf website.

Cutleaf – Issue 1 Volume 16

In this issue of Cutleaf, Peggy Xu remembers the joy of culinary whiplash that results when food and culture combine in “Yam’Tcha.” David B. Prather shares three poems beginning with one that takes us into the beautiful mind of “The Boy in the High School Science Room.” And Ray Trotter depicts a scene of speculation and frustration when two men wonder what’s inside a locked workshop in “Scavengers.” Learn about this issue’s images at the Cutleaf website.

Cutleaf – Issue 1 Volume 13

In this issue, Jesse Graves delves into that complicated space where family connects with history and place in three poems that begin with “An Exile.” Ace Boggess tells the story of the winding road the carries eight men to a West Virginia penitentiary in “Welcome to Rock Haul.” Amy Wright remembers the summer after her brother died from cancer, and the line of communication that opened, in “Life After Death,” an excerpt from her forthcoming book Paper Concert: A Conversation in the Round. Read more at the Cutleaf website.

Ruminate – Summer 2021

Our summer issue includes many examples of lives forged by experience. The characters in these poems and stories are shaped and revealed by what they endure. There is heat and pressure in Alex Pickens’ “Derecho.” Shamarang Silas’s poem “The Weight of Trains,” inquires, “What is worship if not the desire to offer yourself to the fire / & everything you have ever loved?” Find out more at the Ruminate website.

About Place Journal – May 2021

“Geographies of Justice,” edited by Alexis Lathem with Richard Cambridge and Charles Coe. An extraordinary testament to extraordinary times: includes poetry from Susan Deer Cloud, Tammy Melody Gomez, Richard Hoffmann, Jacqueline Johnson, Petra Kuppers, and Danielle Wolffe; nonfiction from Teow Lim Goh, Andréana Elise Lefton, David Mura, Nicole Walker, and Catherine Young. Find more contributors at the About Place Journal website.

Still Point Arts Quarterly – Spring 2021

This issue’s theme is “My Deep Love of Place.” Featured writers include Melodie Corrigall, Suzanne Finney, Catherine Young, Amy Cotler, Jeri Ann Griffith, Lawrence Gregory, Sue Schuerman, Cayce Osborne, Penny Milam, David Denny, William Bless, Barbara Cole, Rosalie Sanara Petrouske, and Teresa H. Klepac. Featured artists include Catherine L. Schweig, Walt Hug, Birgit Gutsche, MJ Edwards, and Barbara Anne Kearney. Find more info at the Still Point Arts Quarterly website.

Blackout Poems by Jennifer Sperry Steinorth

Magazine Review by Katy Haas.

The Winter 2020 issue of the Missouri Review includes a selection of blackout poetry by Jennifer Sperry Steinorth. These poems move beyond the traditional blackout poem, though, and move into a realm beyond, each poem a well-crafted work of art. The variety in style is inspiring as she demonstrates the creative ways one can manipulate text. The art speaks as much as the selected words do. Each turn of the page reveals something inventive and exciting, a treasured find in this issue.

Hole in the Head Review – Feb 2021

Hole in The Head Review begins their second year with this new issue. Visit for new work by Tim Benjamin, Richard Jones, S. Stephanie, Connor Doyle, Ashley Mallick, Larkin Warren, Eva Goetz, Ron Riekki, Beth Copeland, Roger Camp, Heather Newman, Tom Barlow, Dennis Herrell, Lily Anna Erb, Dick Altman, Glen Armstrong, Erin Wilson, Yoni Hammer-Kossov, Matthew Moment, Cynthia Galaher, Lisa Zimmerman, Christy Sheffield, Tilly Woodward, and more.

Cleaver Magazine – Winter 2020

In the newest issue of Cleaver Magazine find: poetry by Meggie Royer, Amy Beth Sisson, Heikki Huotari, and more; nonfiction by Jinna Han, Christina Berke, Susan Hamlin, Claire Rudy Foster, and others; a visual narrative by Michael Green; short stories by Dylan Cook, L.L. Babb, and Mike Nees; flash by Steve Gergley, B. Bilby Barton, Darlene Eliot, and more; and paintings by Morgan Motes.

Persephone’s Daughters – No. 7

Issue Seven is three issues in one—a poetry issue, a prose issue, and an art issue. This is our largest issue to date, filled with art, poetry, and prose from domestic and sexual violence survivors, child abuse survivors, and harassment victims. Work by Taylor Drake, Sky Dai, Emma Jokinen, Elena Fite, Siri Espy, Isabella Neblett, Charlotte Kane, Carly Hall, Melanie Ward, Rachael Gay, Mae Herring, Miriam Leibowitz, Mars Rightwildish, Ranjeet Singh, and many more. We were also fortunate to be able to interview Lori Greene for the issue, who created the artwork for the United States’s first permanent memorial to sexual violence survivors.

Months To Years – Fall 2020

The latest issue of Months To Years is out. It includes yet another fantastic roster of talented writers reflecting on grief and loss from diverse perspectives. Work by Zan Bockes, John Q. McDonald, Nancy Morgan, Rosa Angelica Garcia, Co Bauman, Susan Rothstein, Megeen R. Mulholland, Paul Sohar, Stewart Lindh, Bruce Gorden, Michal Mahgerefteh, Karen Storm, Linda Ankrah-Dove, Charlene Stegman Moskal, Marjorie Stamm Rosenfeld, Elizabeth Haukaas, C.T. Holte, Beth Hope-Cushey, Kim Malinowski, Liza Bernstein, Lucy Meynell, and Charlie Morris.

The Georgia Review – Winter 2020

The latest issue of The Georgia Review is out with new work from Terrance Hayes, Arthur Sze, Jenny Boully, Samuel R. Delany, Maud Casey, and many other voices. The issue features the 2020 winner of the Review’s Loraine Williams Poetry Prize, selected by Ilya Kaminsky, as well as three finalists. It also showcases a selection of translated poems by Taiwanese author Sun Tzu-ping, and a long poem by the late Molly Brodak, annotated by her widower, Blake Butler. Moreover, there is an art portfolio of UGA Alumna Meghann Riepenhoff’s work, the artist interviewed by Georgia Review editor Douglas Carlson.

Contest :: 2021 Submissions to Progressive Young Artist Awards (PYAA) Open January 1!

Progressive Young Artist Awards 2021Deadline: November 2021
PYAA looks for original works that show cultivated proficiency, artistry, technical skill, and art that expresses students’ individualistic, creative voices and visions. 2021 submissions open January 1st! Visit our website to learn more about categories and how to submit.

Call :: Stubborn Artists, Chestnut Review is Open to Submissions Year-round

Chestnut Review (“for stubborn artists”) invites submissions year round of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, art, and photography. We offer free submissions for poetry (3 poems), flash fiction (<1000 words), and art/photography (20 images); $5 submissions for fiction/nonfiction (<5k words), or 4-6 poems. Published artists receive $100 and a copy of the annual anthology of four issues (released each summer). Notification in <30 days or submission fee refunded. We appreciate stories in every genre we publish. All issues free online which illustrates what we have liked, but we are always ready to be surprised by the new! chestnutreview.com

At Home In The Dark With Carol Morris’s ‘Into The Lucky Dark’

Guest Post by Susan Kay Anderson

Into The Lucky Dark by Carol Morris, who is part of the Diane Wakoski circle, is much like being invited to coffee at a friend’s house where every time you go there you can be yourself and when you leave you feel like more yourself than ever before. Morris believes that life is a struggle but to read her poems and look at her utterly delightful artwork in this book, it would seem that life is also a place that we seem to haunt long before getting to the ghostly stage of things. This takes a bit of getting used to. It takes a while to read Morris’s poems because to languish in their harsh settings of bars and other meetings/gatherings is to feel the freeze, feel the edges of being an outsider even to oneself and then find the self in the touchstones of such leaving: “Houses in which my talents were useless” (from “A June Divorce”) to finding art and abstractions which make concrete sense. Continue reading “At Home In The Dark With Carol Morris’s ‘Into The Lucky Dark’”

Contest :: National Indie Excellence Awards 2021 Open for Entries

2021 National Indie Excellence Awards bannerThe National Indie Excellence® Awards (NIEA) are open to all English language printed books available for sale, including small presses, mid-size independent publishers, university presses, and self-published authors. NIEA is proud to be a champion of self-publishing and small independent presses going the extra mile to produce books of excellence in every aspect. All entries for the 15th Annual NIEA contest must be postmarked by March 31, 2021. www.indieexcellence.com

Call :: We Pay Contributors: Driftwood Press Submissions Open

Driftwood Press website screenshotJohn Updike once said, “Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity. Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.” At Driftwood Press, we are actively searching for artists who care about doing it right, or better. We are excited to receive your submissions and will diligently work to bring you the best in full poetry collections, novellas, graphic novels, short fiction, poetry, graphic narrative, photography, art, interviews, and contests. We also offer our submitters a premium option to receive an acceptance or rejection letter within one week of submission; many authors are offered editorships and interviews. To polish your fiction, note our editing services and seminars, too. www.driftwoodpress.net

Call :: Girls Right the World Seeks Work for Fifth Issue

Deadline: December 31, 2020
Girls Right the World is a literary journal inviting young, female-identified writers and artists, ages 14–21, to submit work for consideration for the fifth annual issue. We believe girls’ voices transform the world for the better. We accept poetry, prose, and visual art of any style or theme. We ask to be the first to publish your work in North America; after publication, the rights return to you. Send your best work, in English or English translation, to [email protected] by December 31, 2020. Please include a note mentioning your age, where you’re from, and a bit about your submission. Please read our first four issues for an idea of work we like.

Call :: Waymark Literary Magazine Seeks Works of an Individual’s Footpath in Life

Waymark Literary Magazine logoDeadline: November 20, 2020
Waymark Literary Magazine is an online and physical literary magazine dedicated to publishing the works of an individual’s waymark; their footpath in life. Anyone can submit as long as they have a story to tell. We are looking for nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and art submissions to be published in our biannual publication. Check out our Summer 2020 issue for an idea of what we seek.

Call :: Auroras & Blossoms Plus FPoint Collective Seek Work Year-round

Deadline: Year-round
Launched in 2019, Auroras & Blossoms is dedicated to promoting positive, uplifting, and inspirational art; and giving artists of all levels a platform where they can showcase their work and build their publishing credits. We publish short stories, six-word stories, paintings, and drawings. We are also looking for work that tells beautiful stories and articles that are helpful to photographers at every level of their career for publication in our sister journal FPoint Collective Photography Magazine. We are interested in photography, along with articles, tips, stories, and essays relating to photography. International submissions welcome. Submission Guidelines and apply here. Check out past issues for a taste of what we like.

Call :: Palooka Seeks Chapbooks, Prose, Poetry, Art, & Photography

Deadline: Year-round
Palooka is an international literary magazine. For a decade we’ve featured up-and-coming, established, and brand-new writers, artists, and photographers from all around the world. We’re open to diverse forms and styles and are always seeking unique chapbooks, fiction, poetry, nonfiction, artwork, photography, graphic narratives, and comic strips. Give us your best shot! Submissions open year-round. Issue 11 features work by Paul Luikart, Duke Stewart, Nils Blondon, Khalilah Okeke, Tim Chapman, Mark Halpern, Clark Merrefield, Leanne Hoppe, Donald Illich, and Malia Nahinu. palookamag.com

Call :: Storm Cellar Seeks Ambitious New Writing & Art

Girl with Flowers Storm Cellar CoverDeadline: Rolling
Storm Cellar is a literary journal of safety and danger, in print and ebook formats since 2011. We seek the voices of Black, Indigenous, POC, LGBTQIA+, gender nonbinary, neurodivergent, fat, disabled, border-straddling, poor, and more marginalized authors. We encourage connections, in work or by creator, to the Midwest, broadly construed. Now paying. Send ambitious, surprising new art and writing through stormcellar.submittable.com; learn more at stormcellar.org. It is free to submit, but we offer tip jar, expedited, and submission + issue response options.

Call :: 2020 Blueline Reading Period Closes November 30

BLUELINE: A Literary Magazine Dedicated to the Spirit of the Adirondacks seeks poems, stories, and essays about the Adirondacks and regions similar in geography and spirit, focusing on nature’s shaping influence. Don’t forget the submissions window is open until November 30. Decisions made by mid-February. Payment in copies. Simultaneous submissions accepted if identified as such. Please notify if your submission is placed elsewhere. Electronic submissions encouraged, as Word files, to [email protected]. Please identify the genre in the subject line. Further information at bluelineadkmagazine.org.

Split Rock Review – Issue 15

The new issue of Split Rock Review features work by Ted Kooser, David Axelrod, Lauren Camp, William Woolfitt, Celia Bland, and many more writers and artists, including fiction by Adrian Markle; nonfiction by Anna Oberg and Wendy Weiger; a comic by Don Swartzentruber; art & photography by Aaron Burden, Leah Dockrill, Natalie Gillis, and more; and poetry by Ellen Rogers, Connie Post, Jenny Wong, Rebecca Yates, Emry Trantham, and more.

Contest :: Waxing & Waning Presents: The (TN) Tempest Edition

Deadline: January 17, 2021
With the prompts of living during the COVID-19 pandemic and dealing with natural disasters and their aftermath, this special edition of Waxing & Waning attempts to be the home for beauty during devastation, truth in fear, and human nature as it meets eye-to-eye with Mother Nature (in TN & beyond). One way to heal is for writers/artists to create—to put their hardships on a blank page or canvas. Bring us these attempts. $10 submission fee for all categories. Winners of each category (poetry, prose, & art) will receive a $50 prize. About 30 contributors will be selected for publication.

Call :: Breakbread Extends Deadline for First Issue Submissions

BreakBread Literacy Project logoExtended Deadline: November 15, 2020
BreakBread Magazine is a magazine for all young creatives between the ages of 13 and 25. We are always looking for vivid, timely poetry, nonfiction, short stories, comics and visual arts (photography, illustrated narratives, and hybrid work) that explore new directions in arts and letters. Submissions are always free. Visit breakbreadproject.submittable.com/submit to send us your work. Check out our website for more information: www.breakbreadproject.org.

Call :: Pensive Open to Submissions on Black Lives Matter for Spring 2021 Special Feature

Deadline: November 15, 2020
New online publication based at Center for Spirituality, Dialogue, and Service (CSDS) at Northeastern University in Boston. Seeking work that deepens the inward life; expresses range of religious/spiritual/humanist experiences and perspectives; envisions a more just, peaceful, and sustainable world; advances dialogue across difference; and challenges structural oppression in all its forms. Seeking work for feature section on Black Lives Matter to be published in the Spring 2021 issue. Send unpublished poetry, prose, visual art, and translations. Especially interested in work from international and historically unrepresented communities. No fee; currently non-paying. Submit 3-5 pieces via Submittable or [email protected]. Questions? Contact Alexander Levering Kern, co-editor or visit pensivejournal.com. The first issue will have a special online launch event on Wednesday, October 21, 2020. Mark your calendars to learn more.

Call :: Utopia Science Fiction Underrepresented Protagonists

We’re looking for enthralling, upbeat stories set in futures we might want to live in. In contrast to growing dystopian stories and darker themes that seem so abundant in today’s literature. We invite you instead to share in our vision of a better tomorrow. Of a future filled with wonder and hope. We publish stories that transport us to another world, a bright future, one we want to believe in, one we’ll fight to see realized. The theme of our next issue is ‘underrepresented protagonists.’ www.utopiasciencefiction.com

Call :: Essential Voices: A COVID-19 Anthology

While the pandemic has ravaged our world, certain populations have been impacted more deeply than others. Essential Voices strives to give voice to those who have been silenced. Send us your poems, stories, recipes, or works of art that reflect upon the experience of COVID and COVID related issues in your life. This anthology will be published by West Virginia University Press. Visit us at our website for guidelines before submitting to [email protected]. Deadline: December 31.

Call :: Awakenings Review Seeks Submissions Year-round

Established in 2000, The Awakenings Review is an annual lit mag committed to publishing poetry, short story, nonfiction, photography, and art by writers, poets and artists who have a relationship with mental illness: either self, family member, or friend. Our striking hardcopy publication is one of the nation’s leading journals of this genre. Creative endeavors and mental illness have long had a close association. The Awakenings Review publishes works derived from artists’, writers’, and poets’ experiences with mental illness, though mental illness need not be the subject of your work. Visit www.AwakeningsProject.org for submission guidelines.

About Place Journal – Oct 2020

“Works of Resistance, Resilience” is comprised of poetry, fiction, nonfiction and visual art by 83 writers and artists. The issue has five themed sections that explore what it means to live in America at this time of profound reckoning. What does resistance look like? Can resistance contain love, power and empathy? In this age of collective anxiety, the writers and artists from around the world attempt to answer what it means to live and survive during the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond. The Works of Resistance, Resilience will rekindle our desire to learn and thrive and to discover what is needed to change our relationship to the earth and to each other. More info at the About Place Journal website.

Call :: Club Plum Seeks Flash Fiction, Prose Poetry, Hybrid Works, & Art for Volume 2 Issue 1

Deadline: December 31, 2020
Please send your beauties and uglies to Club Plum for Volume 2, Issue 1, dropping January 15, 2021. Send your pain. Send your fury. Send your strange. Unsure if prose poem or flash fiction? Send it our way. See www.clubplumliteraryjournal.com for guidelines.

Call :: Chestnut Review – Home to Stubborn Writers

Chestnut Review (“for stubborn artists”) invites submissions year round of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, art, and photography. We offer free submissions for poetry (3 poems), flash fiction (<1000 words), and art/photography (20 images); $5 submissions for fiction/nonfiction (<5k words), or 4-6 poems. Published artists receive $100 and a copy of the annual anthology of four issues (released each summer). Notification in <30 days or submission fee refunded. We appreciate stories in every genre we publish. All issues free online which illustrates what we have liked, but we are always ready to be surprised by the new! Now reading for the Spring 2021 issue due out in April. chestnutreview.com

Call :: Oyster River Pages Special Black Voices Issue

Deadline: December 1, 2020
Art is a fundamental aspect of being human—not exclusive to any group of people, place, or privilege. However, current events have highlighted the extent to which Black voices have been silenced in numerous sectors of public life and creative fields. In this issue, we want to highlight Black artists exclusively, and be a platform for Black voices, unfiltered and unrestrained by parameters of theme. This is not a call to confess your struggles, your fight, or to defend your identity. This is a call for the art that sits within you. For the ink that bleeds your pages. www.oysterriverpages.com

The Georgia Review – Fall 2020

The Georgia Review’s Fall 2020 issue is out with new work from Kaitlyn Greenidge, Wayne Koestenbaum, Sally Wen Mao, Charles Baxter, Marianne Boruch, Yona Harvey, and many other compelling voices, both emerging and long-established. Special features include a portfolio of artwork from the High Museum of Art’s exhibition Picture the Dream: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement Through Children’s Books and a translation of Vinod Kumar Shukla’s masterful short story “College.”

Contest :: Geri DiGiorno Prize judged by Laux/Millar & Flash Fiction Prize

Raleigh Review Fall 2020 Contest flier
click image to open PDF

Deadline: Midnight on Halloween 2020
Raleigh Review is currently offering two contests. The RR Flash Fiction Prize is being judged by our esteemed Fiction team ($300 Grand Prize, $13 entry fee). Raleigh Review is also offering the Geri DiGiorno Multi-Genre Prize with Dorianne Laux & Joseph Millar as the judges of the finalists. Think of our DiGiorno Prize as a collage prize that includes at least two of the genres among poetry and/or visual art and/or flash nonfiction ($300 Grand Prize, $13 entry fee). Submissions close by midnight on Halloween. All entrants shall receive the prize print issue for free.

Call :: Jelly Bucket Call for Black Lives Matter Submissions

Deadline: December 15, 2020
For its 11th print issue, Jelly Bucket will feature a special section—guest-edited by 2009 National Book Award Finalist, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon—dedicated to the Black Lives Matter movement. Send us poetry, prose, or text-as-art that captures, explores, reflects, reports, ruminates upon, or dialogues with social justice as it relates to the African American experience and BLM. Work from Jelly Bucket has appeared in the Best American anthology series and is annually nominated for the Pushcart Prize anthology. Online submissions only, $2 fee: jellybucket.submittable.com/submit.