“We can’t believe it has already been five years since Gold Man Review was born,” writes founding editor Heather Cuthbertson and her colleagues, Managing Editor Darren Howard, Project Editor Nicklas Roetto, Executive Editor Marilyn Ebbs, and Associate Editor Michelle Modesto. “When we started Issue 1, we weren’t thinking about where we’d be in the future – only that we wanted to be an outlet for work that hadn’t an outlet and put authors and poets into print who hadn’t had the chance before. Since then, we’ve had the opportunity to publish award-winning authors, seasoned writers, and even the poet laureate of Oregon, but we’ve also had the pleasure to publish brand new voices and then watch those authors grow and develop their writing careers.”

NewPages can certainly believe you have done all that in five years. Like your readers, we appreciate every page, and we look forward to seeing many more years and pages! Happy Anniversary Gold Man Review!

 Fall 2015 Michigan Quarterly Review includes a special Tribute to Charles Baxter with an introduction by Jonathan Freedman and features:

“Charles Baxter and MQR” by Laurence Goldstein
“What We Owe Each Other: An Interview with Charles Baxter” by Jeremiah Chamberlin
“A Tribute to Charles Baxter” by Matt Burgess
“Notes Toward a Baxterian Taxonomy” by Michael Byers
“Charles Baxter’s Tuneful Bewilderment” by Matthew Pitt
“Darkness Outside the Door: Charles Baxter and the Meaning of Melodrama” by Joan Silber
“Minnesota Nice: The Depths and Limits of Charles Baxter’s Good Behavior” by Valerie Laken

This issue of Michigan Quarterly Review is available to purchase by subscription as well as single copy print or PDF here.

[Cover art note: “Fog uner the High Bridge; photography by Sue Vruno. Our over, with its bridge over the Mississippi at St. Paul, celebrates the many bridges, both actual and metaphorical, that appear in the novels and short stories of Minnesota native Charles Baxter…” MQR]

What if every poem had its own fragrance, beyond the literal smell of the materiality of the page? What if one could smell a poet’s imaginative, conceptual, intellectual world, the text unfurling into an aroma?

Poetry subscribers can look forward to a fresh scent in their mailboxes this month as The Poetry Foundation has worked with Brooklyn-based perfumery D.S. & Durga to create a custom scent for Jeffrey Skinner’s poem “The Bookshelf of the God of Infinite Space.” Like old-school scratch and sniff, the scent has been added to an insert with the printed poem.

The insert celebrates the poetry and scent exhibition Volatile! hosted at The Poetry Foundation Gallery in Chicago through February 19, 2016. “In Volatile!,” the Foundation explains, “curator and design historian Debra Riley Parr presents a number of objects and experiences that invite speculative connections between poetry and scent. Scent artist David Moltz tells the story of a young boy who is transformed into a mythical beast through a series of 12 scents captured beneath 12 glass cloches. Works by artists Amy Radcliffe, Eduardo Kac, and Brian Goeltzenleuchter, poet Anna van Suchtelen, typography artist Ben Van Dyke and ceramicist Seth Bogart are also featured.”

Drunken Boat is inviting applications for all of their staff positions for 2016. Drunken Boat is re-launching in 2016 under new editorship: Erica Mena, poet, translator, and book artist [and cat lover], formerly the Managing Editor, will be taking the helm as Editor and Executive Director. As part of this transition, Drunken Boat is strengthening its commitment to being a leading space for writers and artists around the world to publish provocative, experimental, and otherwise difficult work, alongside the exceptional work we have been publishing continuously online for 15 years.

Drunken Boat is issuing an open call for interested writers and artists to join its (currently all-volunteer) staff. Open positions are:

• Poetry Editor, Poetry Assistant Editor, and Poetry Reader
• Non-Fiction Editor, Non-Fiction Assistant Editor, and Non-Fiction Reader
• Fiction Editor, Fiction Assistant Editor, and Fiction Reader
• Art Editor
• Reviews Editor and Reviews Assistant Editor
• Translation Editor, Translation Assistant Editor, and Translation Reader
• Publicity Editor and Publicity Assistant Editor
• Blog Editor and Blog Assistant Editor

For more specific details, view this Googledoc Applications should be received by December 20, 2015 for consideration.

Eastern Iowa Review is a new annual print publication, providing select essays online for readers to sample. Founding Editor Chila Woychik [pictured] embarked on this venture with six years’ editorial management experience from Port Yonder Press as well as expertise publishing other literary magazines over the past several years. Assistant Editor Beverly Nault and other staff with Eastern Iowa Review bring both academic and professional experience, creating an eclectic team that provides plenty of input from which Eastern Iowa Review will take its direction.

With all her experience, Woychik not only knew what she was getting into with a literary magazine start-up, but sought it at this point in her career. “Book publishing is a lot of work,” she told NewPages. “I loved what I did at Port Yonder for those six years, loved every minute of it, but it became too much. Once I discovered the literary journal market and began to see my own writing being acquired, I felt it was time to move from small press book publishing to journal publishing. It’s been a great change for me; I’m enjoying it immensely.”

The first issue of Eastern Iowa Review actually had a predecessor, Woychik explained, “We actually did a pre-issue we called the Bonté Review (French for ‘goodness’) but found the name didn’t quite portray the sense of place I felt it needed. I’ve lived in the eastern part of Iowa for twelve years now and am enamored with this state, its people, and its topography, especially the rolling hills, trees, and wildlife in this area. I found it to be a fitting name, and though similar to another well-known publication in the state, I feel our focus is different and therefore have no need to compete with or be compared to another. Besides, Iowa is such a fantastic literary venue in itself that it deserves more than one or two journals.”

The (true) inaugural issue of Eastern Iowa Review includes creative nonfiction, literary fiction, and art, while the second issue, Woychik hopes, will be narrowed down “to the thing I love reading and writing the most: Annie Dillardesque lyric essays and Gertrude Steinesque / Anne Carsonesque experimental essays.” The Review isn’t ruling out the hybrid essay at this time, “though terms overlap so much that we’re actually receiving a good number of generic creative nonfiction essays, a few of which we’ve accepted because they were good, though not necessarily containing the lyricism we’re seeking,” said Woychik. “What we’re after is the song, the lyricism, and the uniqueness, the experimental. There are plenty of outlets for general creative nonfiction but I want to wean us off that, if we can find enough of what we’re seeking.”

For their first issue, Eastern Iowa Review was fortunate enough to snag Fulbright Scholar, Pew Fellow, Kingsley Tufts and Pushcart winner Afaa Michael Weaver to contribute an autobiographical piece on craft, and Stephanie Dickinson contributed three short literary fiction works. “As far as I’m concerned,” Woychik said, “Stephanie is one of America’s most brilliant writers; everything she pens is linguistically beautiful, achingly so, even given the tough topics she often broaches.” Although the publication is new new, Woychik hopes that within the next few years they can attract both top-notch and beginning writers. “I would love to see Eastern Iowa Review be the breakout journal for a few soon-to-be nationally well-known authors,” keeping with their overall desire to “attract great writing, lyrical writing, experimental writing, from whomever, and see entire families enjoy it from front to back.”

Writers who submit works can expect that they will be treated to a thorough review process. Submissions are sent through Submittable, then Woychik assigns each piece to one reader/editor or possible more, even up to all four readers/editors. They record their recommendations, Woychik reads those, reads the work itself, and makes the final decision.

It’s a process that will provide readers with “the strongest, highest level, prose” the editors can find in the lyric and experimental realms. Woychik added, “I also have a special interest in seeing young people, beginning in middle grade or so, discover a love of the literary world, something beyond ‘simple’ reading. I’m not sure why we often wait until a person gets into university to introduce them to the world of literary writing. I would like to see young folks catch the rhythm of fine literary writing, the lyricism inherent in good writing, long before they reach college. So we have a ‘wide audience’ requirement, that is, we would like the material, literary and high level as it is, to also be fitting for most all ages.” Beginning with the second issue, Eastern Iowa Review will be able to offer accepted contributors a complimentary copy of the issue plus a small stipend, and also enter their work into the Eastern Iowa Review Essay Award pool, an annual award for the most outstanding lyric and/or experimental essay accepted.

PRISM international – Canada’s oldest literary magazine with its first issue published in 1959 – has taken a huge step in preserving its history. The Prism staff initiated and funded the digitization of its entire archive of magazines. The University of British Columbia’s Digitization Centre completed the task over a four-month period, making 194 issues available online; new issues will be added when published. “The digitization of PRISM international’s archives is an important step in preserving and promoting influential literature, both Canadian and international,” says current Poetry Editor, Dominique Bernier-Cormier, “connecting different communities, and generations, of writers and readers.”

Promotions Editor Claire Matthews entices readers to dig into the past issues, “You can check our early works by writers such as recently [Governor General Literary Award] nominated Robyn Sarah whose work first appeared in PRISM 13:1 [Summer 1973] or Seamus Heaney, who published two poems in issue 12:1 [Summer 1972]. In 1996, PRISM also managed to publish a translation by Seamus Heaney of the Irish poem ‘The Yellow Bittern,’ originally written by the 17th-18th century poet Cathal Buí Mac Giolla Ghunna. In a brief interview, Sarah O’Leary, author of When You Were Small (Simply Read Books, 2008), divulges how she was able to get her hands on work while she editor of PRISM international.”

The Fall/Winter 2015 issue of University of Alambama’s Black Warrior Review features the latest in their chapbook series: Loudermilk by Colin Winnette, author of Haints Stay (Two Dollar Radio, 2015), Coyote (Les Figues Press, 2015), Fondly (Atticus Books, 2013), Animal Collection (Spork Press, 2012) and Revelation (Mutable Sound, 2011).

“Just what makes an essay literary ?” begins David H. Lynn’s Editor’s Notes in the Nov/Dec 2015 issue of Kenyon Review. “I’ve been challenged on that recently, not least because I’d like to extend the capaciousness of creative categories. These notes provide an early opportunity.”

Included in his discussion were these comments:

• Referencing Montaigne – “typically founded on memoir, reflection, or some other form of particular personal experience.”
• The writing can be “rich with the lyricism, the punch of fine fiction”; employ “rhythms, repetitions, and dramatically significant details.”
• “engages something external in the world and undertakes the research or journey necessary to bring the subject back to readers for reflection and meditation and greater knowledge.”
• Language: “Its rhythms, its diction, its metaphors are more than merely precise and effective—they exhibit a particular beauty of sound and sense and expression.”
• “The end here for the reader is pleasure. And literary writing strives always toward such feelings. We delight in, for example, le mot juste.”
• “the experience of fully engaging an essay’s tenor—the argument or subject or meaning—may sweep a reader toward a far deeper sense of fulfillment.”
• Reading the literary essay is “a process that catalyzes us into seeing in a new way, to grasping what may intuitively lie beyond language itself.”
• “readers themselves, engaged and moved by sharing in the transformative experience of the narrator, are not only enabled to see the world differently, they themselves are subtly but meaningfully transformed by the crucible of the literary.”

Read the full edtiorial here.

The newest issue of The Sewanee Review (Fall 2015) focuses on war literature with Architecture of Death: War and the Literature of War. The feature includes fiction and poetry as well as essays by Richard Tillinghast on Nathan Bedford Forrest and Robert Lacy on the home front during WWII along with essays by George Bornstein, Gerald L. Smith, Christopher Thornton, and Robert G. Walker. Jeffrey Meyers’ essay “Hemingway and Goya” can be read on The Sewanee Review website along with Ann Lohner’s fiction “The Iron Trap.”

According to the editors of FIELD Magazine, the publication’s “association with Russell Edson goes all the way back to FIELD #7 (Fall 1972), which featured five of his prose poems, among them ‘An Old Man’s Son’:

There was an old man who had a kite for a son, which he would let up into the air attached to a string, when he had need to be alone.

…And would watch this high bloom of himself, as something distant that will be close again…

“Those weren’t the only prose poems in that issue; we also had one by W. S. Merwin, two by Jean Valentine, and four by Erica Pedretti . . . But everyone knew that if you wanted to talk about the prose poem in contemporary poetry, you began and ended with the strange, commanding genius of Edson.”

Featured in FIELD #93 (Fall 2015), Russell Edson: A FIELD Symposium includes John Gallaher (“So Are We to Laugh or What”), Dennis Schmitz (“Edson’s Animals”), Lee Upton (“Counting Russell Edson”), Charles Simic (“Easy as Pie”), B. K. Fischer (“Some Strange Conjunction”), and Jon Loomis (“Consider the Ostrich”).

Margaret Gibson, author of the memoir The Prodigal Daughter and seven books of poetry, most recently Broken Cup (LSU Press, 2014), is featured in the Fall 2015 issue of The Georgia Review. Editor Stephen Corey writes a special thanks to Margaret Gibson in his introduction “for her cooperation with our proposal to present her sequence of poems as a singled-out chapbook feature.” Set off with a title cover, artwork, and a font style different than the magazine’s, Richer Than Prayer or Vow is fourteen unnumbered pages of eleven poems for readers to really sink into and enjoy.

The newest issue of World Literature Today features poetry written about art. As Assistant Director and Editor in Chief of the publication describes it, “In this issue’s cover feature devoted to poetry inspired by post-1950 visual art, thirteen international poets fashion word-pictures that attempt not only to verbalize a visual analogue but to liberate moments of stasis from the prison-house of space. With each poem, you’ll find reproductions of the art that inspired it, allowing readers to witness the acts of transposition first-hand.

“As their point of departure, the twenty poems included in the section describe mostly paintings—oil, acrylic, gouache, or watercolor on canvas, board, masonite, wood, paper, cardboard, etc.—but also faded black-and-white photos from a family album and etched gourds. Several of the painters who inspired the poets have work in major art museums—Salvador Dalí, Elizabeth Murray, Remedios Varo, among others—yet some of the artists are relatively unknown. The majority of the poems featured are translations from other languages—Arabic, French, and Spanish—and all are published here for the first time in English.”

The Common offers a great ‘package deal’ for teachers who want to use the publication in their classrooms, including discounted subscription prices, plus a free desk copy and sample lesson plans. Classroom subscription includes two issues for every student, plus an in-person or Skype visit from Editor in Chief Jennifer Acker [pictured]. Subscription price: $17/student.

The Common features contemporary literature and art from around the world and can recommend issues for curriculum in:

Contemporary Literature
Creative Writing
Editing and Publishing
Travel Writing
Web Writing
Comparative Literature
Landscape and Architecture
Place-Focused Seminars
First-Year Seminars
Rhetoric and Composition
Interdisciplinary Studies
Translation Programs

The Common editors recommend the publication for high school, undergraduate, and graduate-level courses, helping meet the folowing objectives/core standards:

Help students develop critical thinking, close reading, and rigorous analytic writing skills.
Inspire creative expression.
Encourage students to think of themselves in the roles of editors and publishers.
Enrich knowledge of domestic and global languages, histories, and literatures.

Alaska Quarterly Review‘s Fall/Winter 2015 issue includes an incredible special feature, “They Were My People” by John Luther Adams. AQR introduces the seventy-five page section: “Drawn from his upcoming memoir Silences So Deep: A Memoir of Music and Alaska, Pulitzer Prize and Grammy-winning composer John Luther Adams writes about his music and deep friendship with Gordon Wright and John Haines. They were for him ‘larger-than-life figures’ and ‘the embodiment of Alaska.’” Adams also shares photos and the score for “Mountains Without End” from A Northern Suite and “How the Sun Came to the Forest” from Forest Without Leaves. Alaska Quarterly Review has generously made this entire feature available online for readers to enjoy.

Without much ado, James Smith has stepped into the role of Editor for the Southern Poetry Review. In issue 53.1, he writes of working with Editor Robert Parham [pictured]: “Over the past six to seven years, I have attended with pleasure to our daily work of the journal, the direct contact with poets, the layout of each issue. A steadying voice, Bob always stayed close to what we do. It is an honor now to hold the title of editor and to continue with the work (and play) of the poetry journal that Bob has long cherished.”

Poet David Kirby also offered “David Parham: An Appreciation” which appears alongside Smith’s comment. Kirby writes: “I read once that pioneer anthropologist Franz Boas told his students that evertything is material, even one’s own boredom, that we should never think we’ve seen something twice, because we haven’t. In that sense, Robert Parham is not only a poet and teacher, as all of Southern Poetry Review‘s editors have been, but something of an anthropologist as well, that is, an observer first and foremost and then an illuminator of the small things that shape our lives and thus turn out to be much bigger than we think. [ . . .] Here and elsewhere, Parham echoes something that Mark Strand said, which is that we are lucky simply to be here at all, and because we are, we’re obliged to pay attention, to respond to the world, to witness.”

Parham will contiue on as Editor Emeritus, and he is honored (and likewise honors the publication and its readers) with several of his poems in this issue.

The Wax Paper is a literary magazine “produced in a beautiful newsprint, broadsheet format (22″ x 27.75”) that still smells like ink when you open it up,” Publisher Nicholas Freeman boasts. But readers can also find The Wax Paper online on all digital formats with tech features not available in print, balancing the best of many worlds.

Freeman, founder and director of The Finch Gallery of Chicago, brought together resources from this and Hey Rat! Press of Los Angeles to publish all forms of moving words and still images in the print edition; the website posts images, texts, audio recordings, film, and animation selections in a full archive of contributor work.

Publishing four issues per year, Freeman tells me The Wax Paper name is derived from Studs Terkel’s first radio program, The Wax Museum. “We adopted Studs as our spirit animal while we were mapping out the aesthetics of The Wax Paper. It was only natural to honor him in the name of our project. Through The Wax Paper, we are devoted to continuing Studs’ sensibilities and charisma by publishing an eclectic range of work from artists skilled in their field and empathetic in the depiction of their characters.”

The Wax Paper Editor Hans Hetrick has writing experience from poetry to technical manuals. As Freeman tells the story, the two “became acquainted 60 feet 6 inches away from each other as the famed battery in Chicago’s Mexican Baseball League. Post-game conversation found a common interest and belief that great art must possess a generosity of spirit, a genuine respect for its audience and its subjects, and a dedication to craft. We immediately began work publishing a chapbook, Fighting Love, filled with Hans’ poems and my illustrations. After the publication of Fighting Love, Hans started trying to sell me on founding a magazine. Eventually, I relented, and The Wax Paper was born.”

Freeman and Hetrick took their first cooperative publishing experience into their work on The Wax Paper as a publication open to all forms of written word, image, and any combination of the two. “The first priority of The Wax Paper,” Freeman explains, “is to expand our understanding of the people we share the world with, and in doing so, expand our understanding of ourselves. Works will be selected on their ability to illuminate the humanity and significance of the subjects that inhabit the work.”

Readers of The Wax Paper can expect to find well-crafted, lively work that explores the diverse range of the human condition. Contributors include poets, painters, playwrights, photographers, comedians, screenwriters, illustrators, essayists, fiction and nonfiction writers, translators, songwriters, muralists, storytellers, and anyone skilled in moving words and still images. The Wax Paper features unpublished and veteran artists like Richard Robbins, Thomas Maltman, Becky Fjelland Davis, Roger Hart, Karen Byers, Mike Lohre and Pulitzer Prize winning historian and author Garry Wills who honored the publication by writing their opening essay.

The Wax Paper accepts all forms of moving words and still images for their quarterly printed broadsheet. They are distributed nationally and all written work will be archived on their website. Current reading period is open until June 30th. All contributors are given a lifetime subscription.

If you like six-word memoirs, you’re going enjoy Creative Nonfiction’s Tiny Truths – tweets on a given topic, which until November 15 is Weather. CNF is looking for “True stories—personal, historical, reported—about fog, drought, flooding, tornado-chasing, blizzards, hurricanes, hail the size of golfballs, or whatever’s happening where you are… told within a single tweet. We’re looking for tiny truths that will change the way we see the world around us. Or, you know, simply blow our hair back a bit or make us sweat.” And because the tweet must include the tag #cnftweet, stories are actually limited to 130 characters.

For more on the craft of micro-essays, read The Square Root of Truth a virtual roundtable Q&A by “Fred,” a collective of regular #cnftweet contributors (and named after one of the group’s members), discussing “what a successful cnftweet looks like, how seriously to take this form, and whether it can survive transplantation out of the ephemeral medium in which it germinated.”

This year has brought a number of ways to celebrate the 400th Anniversary of Miguel De Cervantes’ Don Quixote. Restless Books has released a new edition of the novel introduced by leading Quixote scholar Ilan Stavans. This edition inaugurates Restless Classics: interactive encounters with great books and inspired teachers. Each Restless Classic is designed with original artwork, a new introduction for the trade audience, and a video teaching series and live online book club discussions led by experts. Each copy of the book comes with a set of instructions on how to access videos corresponding to specific aspects within the text.

The Hudson Review Autumn 2015 features the essay “Don Quixote or the Art of Becoming” by Antonio Muñoz Molina. The full text of the essay can be read on The Hudson Review website here.

“There are standards, and we can be obedient to them. We can ask punctuation to be of service to meaning, in service of clarification, a hand to hold, a breeze at our backs. Standard punctuation is easy and safe and encouraged. It becomes almost invisible. ‘It was good enough for Shakespeare,’ a teacher once told me, ‘it’s good enough for you.’ Don’t be silly, I think he was saying. Don’t be a sophomore, or a sheep. Because he loved Bernhard and Beckett, too, their everlasting paragraphs induced by the substance and manner of what they had to say; there is nothing capricious about it. Nothing capricious about Merwin, whose unpunctuated, uncapitalized lines can look like leaves being blown from the page, light and dry and moving. Like wind in the fur of the foxes.” From Noy Holland’s Punctuation is When You Feel It, published in the Glimmer Train Bulletin #106.

Poet Lore Fall/Winter 2015 Editors’ Page addresses the idea of sound in poetry and the poetic voice. “Becuase how a poet sounds matters so much to us at Poet Lore, we read the poems we’re considering aloud to one another at each editorial meeting – a decisive exercise. Too often, stanzas that looked promising on the page fall flat in the air. . . It’s hard to describe but easy to recognize the cadences of poetry. As Robert Frost wrote in a letter to his former student John Bartlett a century ago: ‘The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader . . . . I wouldn’t be writing all this if I didn’t think it was the most important thing I know.'”

Also included in this issue is the essay “Say the Word” by Mark Sullivan, which “explores the threshold between hearing and interpreting word-sounds.”

Stephanie Dickison is featured in the Autumn 2015 issue of The Bitter Oleander, including an interview and twenty pages of her poetry and prose. From the interview:

I am inspired by lists of flora and fauna, by descriptions of antique furniture, by art techniques such as ironing in centuries past, or by the evocative power of faces to speak through the sepia of 19th century photography. I’m not a writer of compression or irony or overarching structures of thought and don’t consider myself a writer of the first water or second etc. but I love words and sentences. I love reading and my world has been made glad by the wonderful books I’ve read. I do not know what happens when the writing connection starts, when the interweaving and tightening begin, when I slip into the other and am no longer wholly my more limited self. I travel on my ear as well, but that is more on a subconscious level.

China’s Internet Literature: From “Live-Scene” Poetry to Million-Character Narratives is the special feature in the newest issue of Chinese Literature Today. Editor Jonathan Stalling writes: “While the Internet has radically changed communication in the modern world, one could argue that China’s 289 million online readers are making China the epicenter of the global literary transformation. CLT now delves into this rapidly expanding literary space through the work of leading scholars in the field. Heather Inwood explores how the democratization of publishing poetry online – challenging, or even passing the traditional gatekeepers – has affected, and in some cases, improved the overall quality of poetry in China. Haiqing Yu reveals how short Internet spoof videos called e’gao parody a variety of cultural subjects, from blockbuster films to pop stars, to more serious public figures, leading many to assert that e’gao videos have become an important new form of social engagement. Angie Chau offers readers a front-row seat at the intersection of public intellectual discourse and Internet fame in the case of Internet literature phenomenon Han Han.”

Like most Englishy folk, I love to read in print. But I also love the ease and accessibility of reading online lit mags. The 2River View is a good example of how these two worlds can meet. They offer all content online, both their lit mag issues and their chapbooks, but they also have free press-ready PDF downloads of these. This is great for both personal use, but as a teacher, I’m always on the lookout for free resources to use with students. Here’s both a great free poetry lit mag and a full backlist of poetry chapbooks to use in the classroom. And then there’s the poetry/art cards (Kip Knott, 2009 pictured). Gorgeous. And did I mention the audio of poets reading their works? Really, if you teach and want to get students hooked on poetry, I can’t imagine a better resource.

Science Fiction is the theme of the newest issue of New Orleans Review. Editor Timothy Welsh opens the issue by asking “Why do we enjoy science fiction?” Then explores an answer: “Perhaps it is not the fantastic at all. Perhaps it is instead how science fiction is always in some way about the present. It is an exaggeration, a recontextualization, a defamiliarization. Science fiction takes some aspect of life in the present and blows it out to its logical extremes to see where things breakdown. The best science fiction gives us ways to think about our actual lived circumstances, unencumbered by material reality and with the perspective gained by getting a little bit of distance.”

Welsh considers, though, that in our age of exponential advancements in science and technology, it becomes more challenging to see any great “distance.” He then asks, “What distance is there to take as the stuff of science fiction rapidly becomes the stuff of our everyday?” That is the challenge faced by the contributors to this issue, and as Welsh notes, “though they take and use the tools of the genre, the alternative worlds they imagine do not seem so far off. . . . Perhaps we will find they are closer to home than we expect.”

Contributors to this special issue include Sara Batkie, C. Wade Bentley, Scott Brennan, Gerry Canavan, Sarah Crossland, Michael George, Taylor Gorman, Jeremy Allan Hawkins, Daryl Jones, Greg Keeler, Paige Lewis, Michael Marberry, James Maynard, Lincoln Michel, Danielle Mitchell, Lo Kwa Mei-En, Emil Ostrovski, Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers, John Paul Rollert, Bethany Schultz Hurst, Adrian Van Young, and Lesley Wheeler.

I love Open Minds Quarterly magazine. Subtitled, “The poetry and literature of mental health recovery,” I once used this publication in a composition course I taught themed “Understanding Disability.” Not surprisingly, I was met with a great deal of ‘unknowing’ in that class as well as resistance (both reasons for teaching it). Students who used the word “crazy” soon stopped themselves and others from doing so, exploring what the word means in our society. Students who felt that people with depression should “just get over it” came to a more empathetic understanding of the complexities of this mental health issue. Open Minds Quarterly was one of the publications assigned in that class to help students learn, understand, and connect.

Editor Dinah Laprairie’s Welcome in the most recent issue brought back those teaching memories. She writes about attending several festivals where she staffed tables to promote the publication, noting the responses from people who stopped by. “What is memorable,” she writes of these encounters, “is the people who, unexpectedly, in picking up the magazine, get turned inside out by what they see.

Some go quiet and we see their breathing change, deepen. Something they read resonates, and we see something moving beneath their skin that yearns to come out. They read the magazine silently, and avoid eye contact with us.

Others are curious, pick up a copy, but once they glance at the content they drop it like it’s hot, and quickly make their escape with straight backs and pursed lips, like they don’t want to acknowledge they are eing chased by something.

Women will often return to the table supported by a friend, to look more closely. They whisper to each other.

And then there are those who are so relieved to find a magazine such as this that they make the confession they have been hiding, sometimes for years.

‘My brother, he’s bipolar.’

‘My friend, she’s had difficulties.’

‘My son –‘

or

‘Me, too.’

It is an honour to witness these admissions. Something in what we do, in what our contributors have shared, has made it okay for someone to speak up about an unspeakable subject. Yes, the stigma of mental illness is slowly diminishing, but people are still afraid to broach the subject, to shine light on the dark places we’d rather leave dark.”

Open Minds Quarterly definitely does not leave places dark, this newest issue featuring writing of a woman who meets her birth father for the first time – finding him homeless with signs of schizophrenia, another piece by a mother who undergoes electro-shock therapy, and poems wth titles like, “Aunt Dementia” (Jacqualine A. Hart), “Pain Scale” (E.V. Noechel), “Insomnia” (Maureen Comerford), “My On and Off Schizophrenic Friend” (Cecilia Tolley), “Suicide” (Maranda Russell), and “Freedom is not in the DSM” (Samantha Burton).

“More and more people are speaking up,” writes Laprairie. “It takes a multitude of small efforts to open the conversation, but at some point the doors – the formal front doors and the everyday back doors – will be flung wide open.”

Open Minds Quarterly opens those doors and invites both writers and readers to enter and exit freely.

Adding to their print publication of outstanding writing, New Letters on the Air 30-minute literary program was started in 1977 by David Ray and his wife Judy. Touted as “the longest continuously-running broadcase of a national literary radio series,” the 1,200+ programs that make up the archives feature some of the most globally prominent writers reading from and talking about their work. Changing hands to Rebekah Presson for a period of time, Angela Elam has been hosting the program now since 1996. Some most recent programs feature Michael Nava [pictured], Marjorie Agosín, Junot Díaz, Nikki Giovanni, Dave Smith, and Martha Serpas.

Programs can be heard live for those in the Kansas City area, broadcast on KCUR 89.3 FM on Sunday mornings from 6:00 to 6:30. Broadcasts are then available for online streaming in the New Letters on the Air audio archives. Thanks to a Save America’s Treasures grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Park Service, all past programs – going all the way back to 1977 – are available on the website. Individual programs can be purchased as CDs or in MP3 format.

Beginning with issue 20, Copper Nickel is now offering two $500 Editors’ Prizes – one in poetry, one in prose – for the “most exciting work in each issue, as determined by a vote of [their] editorial staff.” You have to love the guidelines, which I find refreshing in this day and age of data, rubrics, and assessment. It’s nice to know that the abstract, subjective, and aesthetic have not been completely snuffed out when it comes to artistic appreciation of intelligent literary craft. Issue 21 announces the first winners (from #20) were Michelle Okaes for her poems “Bionics” and “How to Live” and Donovan Ortega for his essay “In a Large Coastal City.” Speaking of aesthetic appreciation, can we talk about that cover? (By Mark Mothersbaugh – “Untitled,” ink on paper, 2013)

A great connection with STEM, the Fall 2015 issue of Rattle (#49) called for submission from poets working in the sciences. The editors wanted to explore the relationship between science and poetry through poetry. How does rigorous investigation influence the poetry? Is verse an escape from, or an extension of, the day job? The editors received over 1,000 submissions and from that selected poetry from twenty scientist to answer their questions. Also included is a conversation with Alaskan fisheries scientist Peter Munro and 19 poets from non-scientific backgrounds in the open section.

Bellevue Literary Review “a journal of humanity and human experience” published by the NYU Longone Medical Center takes on challenging issues with each publication, some specifically themed, as is the most recent issue: “Embattled: The Ramifications of War.”

Fiction Editor Suzanne McConnell writes in the Foreword: “War stories are not only the stories of soldiers and combat, although these are plentiful. Our intention with this issue of the Bellevue Literary Review is to encompass work about a broad spectrum of people affected by war in a myriad of ways, in many places and times. Together, we hope they afford some sense of overview and invite thoughtful considerations of war, and especially – as the title of our theme suggests – its ramifications. … The history of war may be largely written by the victors, but the ramifications of war know no such bounds.”

Read more about the authors and works included here.

Story’s second print issue is themed “The Monsters.” The double-sided issue feels like a literary preparation for Halloween, from Lincoln Michel’s horror-ified authors and Dorothy Tse’s “Woman Fish” on Side A, to the Tastoane masks of Corinne Lee’s essay “Kissing the Monster” on Side B.

Allison Campbell edits the Hybrid Poetry portfolio on Side B and says, “Inside are works of art with two minds but, essentially one body. They create a new space between image and word, and ask to be experience with slight divisions of mind but unity of sense,” the mythological two-headed snake Amphisbaena brought to life and wrapping up the issue. Pick up a copy and get a little creeped out, or head over to the Story website for online content.

Happy 10th Anniversary to New Madrid, the national journal of the low-residency MFA program at Murray State University. In her Editor’s Introduction, Ann Neelon takes a look back, noting that “as milestones go, a decade is not insignificant, especially for a low-residency program like ours that operates, within the university budget, according to a make-or break financial model much like that of a small business.”

In looking to the future, Neelon resolves to “keep getting better,” with plans underway “to start up a literature option in Ireland. April 2016 marks the centenary of the rebellion immortalized by William Butler Yeats in his poem, ‘Easter, 1916.’ and our plan is to take advantage of the many exhibits and events the government of Ireland has planned in commemoration. Our first study-abroad course, to be offered in June of 2016, will use the Easter Rising as a lens through which to examine the entanglement of literature, history, and politics. The course will be open to alumni as well as current students.”