The Modernist Journals Project, a joint project of Brown University and The University of Tulsa, focuses on the years 1890 to 1922 and features:

• journals that have been digitized by the JP
• a searchable databse, teaching and research guides to using the MJP
• the “MJP Lab” – a site for experimenting with MJP data
• biographies of authors and artists whose work appears in the MJP journals
• books and essays about MJP journals and topics
• a directory of periodicals published within the years 1890-1922
• the “Cover-to-Cover Initiative” for locating full runs of magazines with their advertising intact

The year ends at 1922 “for both intellectual and practical reasons. The practical reason is that copyright becomes an issue with publications from 1923 onward. The intellectual reason is that most scholars consider modernism to be fully fledged in 1922, a date marked by the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses, Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room, and T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.”

The materials on the MJP website, its curators note, “will show how essential magazines were to modernism’s rise.”

Michigan Quarterly Review has announced this year’s three annual literary prize winners whose works are selected from those published in MQR throughout the year.

Laurence Goldstein Poetry Prize 2013 ($500): Benjamin Busch for his poem “Girls” which appeard in the Winter 2013 issue of MQR. [Photo credit: Richard Mallory Allnut]

Lawrence Foundation Prize 2013 ($1000): Cody Peace Adamns for his story “Victory Chimes” which appeared in the Winter 2013 issue of MQR.

Page Davidson Clayton Prize for Emerging Poets ($500): Anne Barngrover for her poem “Memory, 1999” which appeared in the Fall 2013 issue of MQR.

Read more about the winners and the selection process here.

In 2009, Arc Poetry Magazine started a poet-in-residence program in which the poet in question guides a number of poets through refining their craft. “This is a response to our mission to support Canadian poetry,” write Rhonda Douglas and Chris Jennings, “but also partly in response to the many submissions we receive each month that are so close, but just not yet quite ready for publication.” Tim Bowling was the poet-in-residence for 2012-2013, working with approximately 25 poets, and the latest issue of Arc (73) showcase some of Bowling’s work alongside a selection from eight of the poets he worked with: Vincent Colistro, Rod Pederson, Michelle Brown, Jordan Mounteer, Heather Davidson, Helen Marshall, Ann Graham Walker, and Jordan Tannahill.

As an introduction to the special section in the magazine, Russell Thornton writes, “Bowling’s poetry conjures a world. That world includes one of the grand rivers of Canada and the greatest salmon river on the plant, and the town of Ladner with its fishing community underlife… His rapt awareness of the concrete particulars of his actual place allows Bowling to execute poetry that is, at its most striking, complete in its interconnections, and visionary. His passion for his locale and its inhabitants lifts that locale onto the mythic level.”

Poems included from Bowling are “Christmas Near Vancouver,” “Dread,” On the Morning of New Life,” High Summer,” “High Water,” and more.

Ploughshares has announced Karl Taro Greenfeld as the recipient of the first annual Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction for his short story, “Strawberries,” which appeared in the Winter 2012 issue of Ploughshares, guest edited by Ladette Randolph and John Skoyles. The $1,000 award, given by acclaimed writer and Ploughshares advisory editor Alice Hoffman, honors the best piece of fiction published in the journal during the previous year.

With the newest print version of Ninth Letter, the editors announce some very exciting news. In addition to the two print issues a year, there will also be a web version. The inaguaral web edition is now online, featuring short stories and poetry from creative writing students across the country.

Ninth Letter will also be putting forth an iPad app. This will feature selected works from the current issue but will also include selections from the archives and select writing only available on the app subscription.

And lastly, as part of celebrating their ten year anniversary, Ninth Letter will be sponsoring their first ever annual Literary Prizes. Scheduled for spring, they will offer awards in fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and literature in translation. Please visit ninthletter.com/contest for more details. Contest submissions open in march.

Got a bookstore or library near you with dozens of new lit and alt mags on the racks? Yeah, me neither, which is why we created the NewPages Magazine Stand for information about some of the newest issues of literary and alternative magazines. The Magazine Stand entries are not reviews, but are descriptions provided by the sponsor magazine. Sometimes, we’ll have the newest issue and content on our site before the magazine even has it on theirs. Good reading starts here!

I take delight in skimming through the literary magazine pile every week, reading the editor’s notes, skimming through the table of contents, and seeing what’s new. In the same pile, I received a copy of The Main Street Rag (Fall 2012) and Poetry (October 2012), both of which featured a recognizable name on their covers: Laura Kasischke. In March, she was awarded The National Book Critics Circle Award for her book of poetry, Space in Chains; she has published eight books of poetry and eight novels; and she now teaches at the Residential College at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Featured on the cover of Poetry‘s 100th anniversary issue, she contributes four poems. You must read all of them, particularly “Game.” Here’s an excerpt:

I ran deeper
into the bright black trees
happily
as she chased me: How

lovely the little bits and pieces.
The fingernails, the teeth. Even
the bombed cathedrals
being built inside me.

Then, in The Main Street Rag, we get a little insight as Jane Andrews interviews her. Kasischke discusses her writing style, talks about her published pieces, and gives advice to writing students. “I think I’m a crock pot whether I’m writing poetry or fiction,” she says, “except that with fiction, I’m actively working on a piece of writing over a long period of time. With poetry, I’m only half-aware that I’ve got the crock pot plugged in and that I’m working on something.”

Make sure to check out both!

The newest issue (Summer 2012) of Stone Voices features a new section called Art Exhibition and Literary Showcase. For this exhibition’s theme, “Inspired by Joy,” Editor Christine Brooks Cote says: “Artists and writers were encouraged to submit works that were inspired by joy or were intended to inspire joy in others, and, of course, were also related in some way to art or creative expression.” While only the top submissions are featured in the print issue, the complete selection of the exhibition can be see online at Stone Voice‘s webpage.

While I see many beautiful publications that come through NewPages, occasionally there is still a lit mag or book cover that I find ‘stunning’ enough to post on the blog. This time around, the stunning visual appeal is one that extends beyond the cover. J&L Illustrated introduced itself to us with issue #3 – which comes not only with a florescent orange and black cover, but florescent orange on the page edges all the way around (thankfully NOT on the text pages themselves throughout, which are instead a high quality black and white offset).

From the looks of the previous issues of J&L Illustrated, this colored edge is a signature of their publication, and one I find highly unique and eye-catching. Add to that the 5×7 format with 256 pages, and this mag has a nice, light ‘chunky’ feel that’s easy to tote, grab, and – thanks to the coloration – find in any bag or stack.

As for the content itself, this issue, edited by Paul Maliszewski, features drawings by Shoboshobo and 13 short stories by authors Amie Barrodale, Scott Bradfield, Stephen Dixon, Steve Featherstone, William H. Gass, Michael Martone, Joseph McElroy, Elizabeth Miller, Robert Nedelkoff, Hasanthikia Sirisena, Steve Stern, Mike Topp and Xiaoda Xiao.

Welcome to NewPages J&L Illustrated – nice to meet you!

Now in its 85th year of publication, if you haven’t yet taken a look at World Literature Today, here’s a great way to both introduce yourself to it and catch up. To celebrate its 350th issue, WLT conducted a readers’ choice contest, and below is the winners and runners-up from the shortlist of staff favorites in essays, poetry, short fiction, interviews, and book reviews from the past 10 years of WLT. Over 700 readers voted in their online poll, so you can bet these selections come highly recommended (and all are available full-text online):

Essays
Winner: Aleš Debeljak, “In Praise of the Republic of Letters” (March 2009)
Runner-up: George Evans, “The Deaths of Somoza” (May 2007)

Poetry
Winner: Paula Meehan, “In Memory, Joanne Breen” (January 2007)
Runner-up: Pireeni Sundaralingam, “Language Like Birds” (November 2008)

Short Fiction
Winner: Mikhail Shishkin, “We Can’t Go On Living This Way,” tr. Jamey Gambrell (November 2009)
Runner-up: Amitava Kumar, “Postmortem” (November 2010)

Interviews
Winner: Jazra Khaleed interviewed by Peter Constantine (March 2010)
Runner-up: Pireeni Sundaralingam interviewed by Michelle Johnson (March 2009)

Book Reviews
Winner:Warren Motte, review of How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read, by Pierre Bayard (March 2008)
Runner-up: Issa J. Boullata, review of Sadder Than Water, by Samih al-Qasim (September 2007)

To celebrate Hayden’s Ferry Review‘s 25th anniversary, the eidtors put out a call for “artifact” submissions. The current issue, Spring/Summer 2012, explores the “artifacts” the editors discovered in the process – “literally and figuratively.”

Included in the issue is a section of “Writer Artifacts.” This features notebook entries, poem drafts, photographs, and playful writing from Aimee Bender, Susann Cokal, H.E. Francis, Elizabeth Graver, Ilya Kaminsky, Michael Martone, Stanley Plumly, Jim Shepard, and G.C. Waldrep. “They are reminders both of the inspiration behind – and the work of – writing.”

The newest issue of High Desert Journal – which always keeps its focus on ‘witnessing and celebrating the world through the work of writers and artists from across the West and across the country’ – includes a couple of great features that caught my eye as I skimmed the issue. One is a look at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering by Linda Hussa, which includes an online HDJ Extra of Hussa reading her poem “Homesteaders, Poor and Dry” and an interview she gave to Lisa M. Hamilton from Real Rural. The other – and I really have to thank HDJ for introducing me to this musician – is an interview by Charles Finn with singer and songwriter Martha Scanlan. The photo image of Scanlan and her accompanist recording out in the field of her ranch in Montana is what first drew me in. In addition to the interview, there is also an HDJ Extra of Martha Scanlan’s Tongue River Stories online.

Just out, Rattle #37 features a selection of poems by fourteen law enforcement officers. “One might not expect any similarity between policing and poetry,” the editors write, “but with reams of paperwork, plenty of drama, and a need for attention to fine detail, poets and cops do have much in common.” And as retired police officer James Fleming explains in his introduction, “a sparse, carefully-written police report can evoke tears.”

Included in Law Enforcement Poets:

James Fleming “Cops on the Beat” (essay)
Madeline Artenberg “Guardians of the Good”
Barbara Ann Carle “Shots Fired”
Sarah Cortez “The Secret”
Betty Davis “Fred Astaire and Betty Davis”
James Fleming “Working Homocide”
Jesse S. Fourmy “Duluth”
Hans Jewinski “Blue Funk”
Suzanne Kessler “Mercy”
Dean Olson “Yellow Sailboat”
David S. Pointer “Hooverites and Jarhead MPs”
John J. Powers “Proof of Service”
G. Emil Reutter “Shoulders”
Vance Voyles “After”
William Walsh “The Old Me”
Sarah Cortez “More Cops on the Beat” (essay)

In the editor’s introduction to issue 17 of Spillway, themed “Crossing Boarders,” Susan Terris comments on the number of poetry submissions received “in exacting poetic forms.” She explains, “In these pages, you’ll find five sonnets. A sonnet, historically, is a little song; and you’ll see this volume is threaded with them, many more small songs of 10-16 lines. We also have a villanelle, a pantoum, several invented forms unique to particular poets. In addition, we have Asian forms of haiku, tanka, and haibun. Why all these poetic forms? I have a facile answer: the greater the danger (and all borders are fraught with danger), the more form works to add control and comfort to an out-of-control and uncomfortable world.”

Begun in 1966, Hanging Loose magazine quietly celebrates 100 issues with its most recent publication.

First published as mimeographed loose pages in a cover envelope, inaugural contributors included Denise Levertov, John Gill, Jack Anderson, and Victor Contoski. As the publication continued, “the editors were in agreement that they were not interested in begging poems from famous writers but that they wanted to stress work by new writers and by older writers whose work deserved a larger audience. In 1968, the magazine introduced a feature which has become celebrated over the years, a regular section devoted to writing by talented high school writers.” This section printed early work by such writers as Evelyn Lau and Sam Kashner.

The loose-page format gave way to the bound edition we now celebrate, and features portfolios of work by a single artist or photographer.

The Spring 2012 issue of The Asian American Literary Review features a forum in which Min Hyoung Song asks participants about the “continuities between the earlier generation of writers which first raised the banner of an Asian American literature and a later generation of writers which inherited it,” and whether or not it “even make[s] sense to talk about contemporary American writers of Asian ancestry as comprising a generation” and what commitments they may share.

Participants in the forum include Genny Lim, Eugene Gloria, Peter Bacho, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Greg Choy, Gary Pak, Cathy Schlund-Vials, Velina Hasu Houston, Susan Schultz, Juliana Hu Pegues, Lavina Dhingra, Audrey Wu Clark, Allan Kornblum, Sunyoung Lee, Neelanjana Banerjee, Marianne Villanueva, forWord, Marie Hara, Anna Kazumi Stahl, Fred Wah, Katie Hae Leo, Giles Li, Ravi Shankar, Mariam Lam, Richard Oyama & David Mura.

A sample of the responses can be read on the AALR website.