The Asian American Literary Review‘s latest issue is more than just a magazine, it’s a package, it’s a box, literally. Packaged in a box titled “Mixed Race in a Box” are a deck of cards (the back featuring quoted excerpts and the face side, art), a poster, and three bound books: “Mixed Race is a Black Box,” “Mixed Race is an Inbox,” and “Mixed Race is a Pandora’s Box.” Certainly eye-catching, it’s an important issue.

As part of the Mixed Race Initiative, this special issue on mixed race “is not simply a reexamination of race or a survey of mixed voices, important as both are,” say the editors of AALR. “We envision our role as that of provocateur–inspiring new conversations and cross-pollinations, pushing into new corners. All contributions to the issue are collaborative, ‘mixed’ in nature, bringing together folks across racial and ethnic boundaries, across disciplines, genres, regions, and generations. We solicited work from artists and writers, historians and activists, race scholars and filmmakers, teachers and students, among others. The idea is a network of original projects that not only map out multiracialism past and present but also break new ground”

Learn more about the project on their website.

The most recent Michigan Quarterly Review is a special translation issue. “We bookend the issue with two stories devoted to translation as an act and translation as a geopolitical reality in a world of many borders as well as languages,” the editors say. “We have gathered translations from a host of figures—scholars, critics, poets, novelists—and have reprinted the originals in the original language, not to prove our scholarly bona-fides, but to emphasize translation in yet another sense, the shuttling between different alphabets—let’s translate that word into less loaded ones, like “written symbol-systems”—which manifest different appearances to the reader. The hope is not that readers will instantly turn to their Tibetan or Persian or Hebrew or Greek dictionary and cry—aha! I prefer this or that word or locution, but rather sense the arbitrariness of the English-sign-and-symbol system that our extraordinarily learned translators are bringing to bear on their efforts.”

The issue features Gendun Chopel (Donald S. Lopez, Jr.), Euripides (Anne Carson), Ghalib (M. Shahid Alam), Odi Gonzales (Lynn Levin), Anna Herman (Adriana X. Jacobs), Omar Khayyam (Juan Cole), Irma Pineda (Wendy Call ), Sohrab Sepehri (Kazim Ali and Mohammad Jafar Mahallati),Charles Baxter, Tom Earles, Patricio Pron (Kathleen Heil), Jorge Semprun (Sara Kippur), and more.

Laurie McCormick’s collection of photography titled “Miniature Moments in My Daily Life” is featured in the Fall 2013 issue of Still Point Arts Quarterly. She creates everyday scenes with miniature people. She writes, “A few years ago, I heard someone say, ‘Photograph what you love and where you are.’ Something clicked, and I found myself creating and photographing scenes using my collection of miniatures. My collection had been stuffed away for years in a closet, and freeing them brought me tremendous joy. The work presented here . . . comes from scenes reflective of my daily routine.

She has another collection titled “Family Secrets” which focuses on some “painful memories” from her childhood. “I find this work with miniatures to be very therapeutic because of my feelings uncovered in creating these scenes,” she writes. “This work has enabled me to put the past behind me and enjoy the creativity of the moment.”

You can view some of her work at the Still Point Arts Quarterly online gallery, and see more inside the recent issue.

The Summer 2013 issue of The Antigonish Review starts out with a note of thanks. Ellen Rose and Tony Tremblay are retiring as editors of Essays/Articles after thirteen years of work. And after an anecdote of a grad school prank, the new section editor, Tony Fabijančić, writes, “I want to shift the emphasis slightly from the cerebral to the visceral, to the guts of experience, the heat of the sun, dust of the road, without shutting the door on intellectual works, interviews with Canadian literati, and the like. Writers of travel sketches, personal memoirs, other essays which fall under the rubric of creative nonfiction, provided they aren’t boring, don’t descend into sentimentality and are polished gem-hard writing-wise, will always be welcome. Within these general parameters the possibilities are endless…”

The issue features work from  George Elliott Clarke, John Barton, Trevor Sawler, Barry Dempster, and more, plus “Skating on Bubbles, Polar Visions, Accidental Presidents, Houses of Cloud, and more.”

draft, “The Journal of Process,” is now in it’s third issue, and as it is a magazine that publishes drafts of the writing process, it also goes through its own changes:

• In the first issues, they’ve published poetry and fiction. In this one, they’ve now added nonfiction. “We’re very pleased to have early and final drafts of Joe Wilkins’ essay ‘Growing Up Hard’ which was first published in Orion Magazine and a finalist for a 2010 National Magazine Award in the Essay category.

• In addition to the interviews that follow, they have added author comments to the drafts. “As you read this issue’s story by Roxane Gay, you’ll find markers in the margin flagging types of edits. These notes will point to where an edit has been made and what kind . . .”

•  Lisa Ciccarello has been added as the poetry editor. Current editorial board Rachel Yoder and Mark Polanzak say, “we are blown away by the insight she brings with her knowledge and love of poetry.”

September 20 of this year marks 150 years since the death of Jacob Grimm, who died four years after his younger brother Wilhelm. Morgan Mies in his post The Storytellers (The Smart Set, Drexel University), takes a look at our fascination, and sometimes disgust, with these brothers and their story collecting. She makes this comment after acknowledging accusations that Grimm’s were “early forerunners of a German nationalism that eventually turned into Nazisim”:

Whether or not those accusations are justified, the Brothers Grimm saw folktales and legends as absolutely essential material for the formation of any kind of cultural identity, good or bad, fascist or anti-fascist. The Brothers Grimm believed that folktales are fundamental. That’s because folktales and legends express root fears, anxieties, wishes, passions, desires, and regrets. Reading the folktales of a specific people is like reading an individual’s private diary. It is not that the diary is necessarily truer than, say, the person’s public correspondence. But the private diary is certainly more raw and less filtered. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm felt that the German people would wake up to themselves if given the opportunity to read their own collective diary.

In Naugatuck River Review‘s Summer 2013 issue, the editors write, “In this, the 10th issue of Naugatuck River Review, the reader will find the continuation of what is fast becoming a tradition of publishing great modern narrative poetry. Poets in this issue . . . will surprise and inspire all who enter these pages.” They invite the reader in by placing Nancy Chen Long’s poem “How She First Discovered Sex” at the beginning. Here’s a sample:

“Only grown-ups can do it. Kids aren’t allowed to. Even in second grade,
she understood there were things her parents couldn’t tell her until she

was older. But it was Saturday night, and again there were giggles
and rustling noises coming from her parent’s bedroom . . .

. . . Candy wrappers strewn all
about the bed, her mom and dad propped up against pillows, chuckling and

munching, reading the Sunday funny papers . . .

. . . Seeing her at the door, her mom patted the bed. Hop

on up, sweetie. And she did, snuggled in between her parents as they
read the funnies to her, shared Almond Joys, licorice twists, Tootsie Rolls.
So this is sex, she thought, eating candy in bed. One of those fun things

only grown-ups are allowed to do.“ 

Poetry Northwest‘s Spring/Summer 2013 issue is a special photography issue with photography by Doug Keyes, Nance Van Winckel, and Dianne Kornberg. There is also a special feature on the works of Mary Randlett which includes rare photos from Theodore Roethke’s last days.

“This issue also features the distinctive section, Film Roll: An Expose in 24, curated by contributing editor Andrew Zawacki, examining the intersection of poetry & photography. Included are pieces by C.D. Wright, Sharon Olds, John Yau, Paisley Rekdal, Joshua Edwards, Martha Ronk, Susan Wheeler, as well as many others.”

In Creative Nonfiction‘s latest issue, devoted to survival stories, is Tim Bascom’s “Picturing the Personal Essay: A Visual Guide.” Comparing the writing process and form to diagrams, Bascom explains that “the remarkable thing about personal essays . . . is that they can be so quirky in their ‘shape.’ No diagram matches the exact form that evolves, and that is because the best essayists resist predictable approaches.” However, he says that understanding some basic structures can help create a new form. He then goes on to explain different structures: narrative with a lift, the whorl of reflection, the formal limits of focus, dipping into the well, and braided and layered structures.

Also in this issue are stories of survival about a plane crash, a drug trip, a drowning, a search for a missing woman, and a man on the tracks before an oncoming train.

Online Split Lip Magazine has just put forth their first print collection, with writing from 2012-2013. Featured in the print publication are Jared Yates Sexton, Michael Martone, Danielle E. Curtis, Keith Rebec, Jenny Halper, Meredith Turits, Genevieve Hudson, Sean Lovelace, and more.

Stand magazine puts forth a special double issue (199/200) to mark their sixtieth year publishing. It was started in 1952 by Jon Silkin after he had received

In their second issue, the staff of The Liner says that the magazine has honed on it’s identity: “We’ve always loved correspondences, with a particular interest in those of writers and artists, so with this issue we’re launching our new identity as an epistolary magazine of writing and art. Sometimes sending a piece of mail feels like a great act of faith: so much trust is placed upon the postal service with an item which likely has no duplicate in this world. If it is lost, it is gone for good, and yet somehow it usually reaches its destination, even if it takes a while,” writes Editor Gloria Kim.

This issue features Mustafa Abubaker, Neelanjana Banerjee, Morgan Blair, Matt Craven, Sean Dougherty, Romesh Gunesekera, David Jien, Marian Kilcoyne, Andrew Knauer, Elizabeth O’Brien, Allen Sweat, Marissa Textor, Paul Wackers, and Noah Wilson.

September’s Broadsided Press Collaboration, “Confession Concerning the Ocean” features a poem by Elizabeth Langemak, art by Anya Ermak-Bower, and design by Caleb Brown. This is the first time Broadsided has included a “guest designer” in the mix; previous broadsides had been designed by Broadsided Founder Elizabeth Bradfield.

Edited by Elizabeth Bradfield, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Sean Hill, Alexandra Teague, and Mark Temelko, Broadsided has been putting literature in the streets since 2005. Each month, a new broadside is posted both on the website and around the nation.

Writing is chosen through submissions sent to Broadsided. Artists allied with Broadsided are emailed the selected writing. They then “dibs” on what resonates for them and respond visually – sometimes more than one artist will respond offering a selection of broadsides.

Broadsided Vectors can download the poem in full color or black and white and poster it around town, campus, wherever! Check into becoming a Broadsided Vector today!

“Fifty issues, sixteen years: it feels like an achievement for what is generically labelled a ‘little’ magazine,” writes Editor Philip Davis in the 50th issue of The Reader. Inside the issue, the editors give what they deem as the finest writing from their past issues including pieces from Doris Lessing, Simon Barnes, Patrick McGuinness, Raymond Tallis, Carol Rumens, and Howard Jacobson.

There is also a selection of new writing from Blake Morrison ,Connie Bensley, Les Murray, Philip Jupitus, Ian McMillan, Michael Stewart, Sian Davis, and more.

ABZ Poetry Magazine announces in their latest issue (#8) that they will no longer publish annually and instead move to a biennial publication cycle. “Poems for Issue Nine will be read in 2015,” it says.

The current issue, however, features Priscilla Atkins, Jan Ball, John F. Buckley, Rick Campbell, Bruce Cohen, Geraldine Connolly, Mark DeFoe, Richard Hague, Lola Haskins, William Jolliff, Charles Nutter Peck, Rachael Peckham, Kenneth Pobo, Charles Rammelkamp, Daniel Saalfeld, Steve Scafidi, Ciara Shuttleworth, Red Shuttleworth, Richard Spilman, Charles Stacy, Slobodanka Strauss, Stephen Sundin, Melissa Tuckey, Mitchell Untch, and Arne Weingart. Read up; it’ll be two years until you get another.

The summer 2013 issue of Literal features War Photography and “Beware Walmart’s Role in the Gun Control Debate.” The editors note says, “The lack of gun control in the United States affects not only its own citizens, but all of Latin America, particularly Mexico. The unbridled sale of high-caliber weapons and the ease with which they can be acquired has fostered an ambiance of paranoia among those living in the United States and a chronic state of violence in Latin American countries. Through the voices of George Zornick and Pablo Boullosa as well as the art exhibition analyzed by Fernando Castro, this issue of Literal reflects both on how weapons fall into the hands of average citizens and their degree of belligerence.”

Ibbetson Street is now affiliated with and supported by Endicott College in Beverly, Massachusetts. Among other news is that they have published a Pushcart-Prize-winning poem: Afaa Michael Weaver’s “Blues in Five/Four, The Violence in Chicago” (published in their mag in November 2012). Kim Triedman, one of the managing editors, is stepping down, and Rene Schwiesow is stepping up to replace her. “Rene, an excellent poet herself, is also co-host for the popular South Shore poetry venue, The Art of Words and a reviewer for Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene,” writes Editor Doug Hodder.

Issue 9 of Ibbetson Street features poetry by Cornelius Eady, Jean Valentine, Brendan Galvin, Jason Roberts, and more.

In the latest issue of Salamander, Jennifer Barber makes a great point in her editor’s note: “A literary journal, with its many disparate voices and visions, is not something you absorb in one sitting. Maybe you’ll read five or six poems, or two or three short stories, before laying it aside, picking it up again a few days or weeks later. In between, you’ll have changed in barely perceptible ways.  A conversation with a friend; a song you heard on the radio; some moment of insight you’ve stumbled on: each will have an effect. In this sense, you are never the same reader twice.”

In this issue, you’ll find pieces from Stephen Ackerman, Pam Bernard, Andrea Cohen, Rita Gabis, Danielle Legros Georges, George Kalogeris, Ellen Kaufman, Jacquelyn Pope, Anna Ross, Tara Skurtu, and more.

Open to the first page of Grain Magazine‘s latest issue, and you’ll find a note that says, “If you are here for the party, please use the back door.” This issue marks their 40th Anniversary and is subtitled, “Making It.” In the editor’s note, Rilla Friesen writes, “‘Making It’ is, in one sense, about how we make our works what they are. Kyle Beal, our featured artist, writes, ‘I recently overheard a person remark at the novelty and forgotten pleasure of writing with a pencil. A timely real-life event that anecdotally affirms, or at least suggests, the notion that the act of note-leaving has become somewhat anachronistic, or at least quaint. A little like sitting down to make a drawing on a twelve-by-nine sheet of paper.’ Both Lund-Teigen and Beal prompted me to consider how writing is about making something, and we prepare the artefact that you now hold in your hands, the Grain team has made something too. And what we make is worth fighting for–literally and metaphorically.”

The issue features work by Tim Bowling, Lorna Crozier, Dorothy Field, Patrick Lane, Jeannette Lynes, rob mclennan, Jonathan Ball, Adrienne Gruber, David Carpenter, and more.