In this double issue of The Iowa Review – Winter 2023/Spring 2024 – readers will be entranced by the Night Witches, aging backward, cardiologists, Freddie Mercury, family secrets, FreakFest, coyotes, VHS tapes, and more with poetry by Janice N. Harrington, John A. Nieves, Robert Wood Lynn, John Hodgen, Claire Denson , Eliza Gilbert, Rae Gouirand, Kate Gaskin, Richard Haney-Jardine León, Matthew Minicucci, Michelle Acker , Amanda Smeltz, Stella Wong; nonfiction by Sai Pradhan, Jennifer S. Cheng, Ryan Van Meter, Shannon Huffman Polson, Rochelle Goldstein Bay; fiction by Lucas Southworth, Tom Howard, Gracie Newman, Geri Modell, Chelsea Tokuno-Lynk, Jennifer Genest, Brynne Jones, Alex Burchfield; and cover art by Carlos Maldonado.

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In the Fall 2023 issue of The Iowa Review, readers encounter a broken oven, bad friends, EMTs, a sulking room, breast cancer, claw machines, and more with fiction by Hannah P. Thurman, Sophia Emmons-Bell, Emily Kiernan, Amber Blaeser-Wardzala, James Whorton Jr., and Alanna Schubach; poetry by Felicia Zamora, Kate DeLay, K. Avvirin Berlin, Chloe Martinez, Mag Gabbert, Dorsey Craft, Cindy Juyoung Ok, Jessica Greenbaum, Eric Roy, Steve Langan, Shelby Handler, and David Gorin; and nonfiction by Joseph Holt, Katherine Zlabek, Sean Bernard, Jason Sepac, Joshua Unikel, Lesley Jenike, Tan Tuck Ming, and Matthew J. C. Clark. Also featured is Jason Sepac’s visual essay “Polaroid Automatic 104 Land Camera.”

Discover loads more great lit mags with our Guide to Literary Magazines, Big List of Literary Magazines, and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed in our monthly roundup or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us.

The Iowa Review’s new double issue, 52.2/52.3, includes poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and translations by emerging and established writers such as Mark Chiusano, Kwame Dawes, April Freely, Annelyse Gelman, Kimiko Hahn, David Hernandez, Tom Lutz, Leslie Pietrzyk, Craig Thomas, Teresa Veiga (translated by Jeremy Klemin), and more, including the winners of the 2022 Iowa Review Awards: Amanda Barrett, Ruby Hansen Murray, Stephanie Ramlogan, Avia Tadmor, Bret Yamanaka, and Melissa Yancy. In this issue, readers will find pieces that feature a home for girls, the bardo, weddings, a mountain lion, pending Amazon orders, zero, hurricanes, Ree Drummond, and Juan Felipe Herrera.

The Iowa Review Editor Lynne Nugent introduces contributions to this 2022 double issue as diverse, including “an ode to a drag queen, an account of growing up with a Chinese last name in small-town Minnesota, and a meditation on a cane used as a mobility aid.” Nugent emphasizes The Iowa Review‘s evolution while also acknowledging its inheritance: in their first issue, The Iowa Review featured Donald Justice’s poem “ABC”; this issue features his letters, edited by Jerry Harp. Though that first issue was made up entirely of white, cisgender, heterosexual men (“brilliant men, mind you,” Nugent reminds us: “Donald Justice, William Stafford, Robert Coover, Galway Kinnell”) to her, Justice’s “poem reads like a manifesto for TIR. To launch a literary magazine in 1970 meant asserting against larger cultural forces the value of syllables, words, stanzas. Each of the diverse array of writers in this issue takes up the same cause. A, then B, then C, and building a new world from there.” Works in this issue include fiction by Pallavi Wakharkar , Serkan Görkemli, Rajnesh Chakrapani, Ernesto Barbieri, Kenneth Tanemura, Nikki Ervice, Lindsey Drager; nonfiction by Alison C. Rollins, Lisa Argrette Ahmad, Xujun Eberlein, Christopher Kempf, Michael M. Weinstein, Jonathan Wei, Michaela Django Walsh; poetry by Donald Platt, Sarah Heston, Alisha Dietzman, Samyak Shertok, Derek A. Denckla, Alisha Acquaye, Gunnar Wærness, translated by Gabriel Gudding, Meghan Maguire Dahn; and artwork by b. Robert Moore. Some content is available to read free online.

The newest issue of The Iowa Review (Spring 2022) includes a Portfolio on Poetic Black Resiliency. In the Introductory Notes (which can be read in full online here), the editors write to answer the question, Why resiliency?

First, resiliency goes beyond these repeated moments that speak to Black advocacy for justice and reiterates the continued insistence to continue, first (this has not always been a given, unfortunately). Resiliency also persists in making this world better as we are determined to thrive. This selection of poems goes beyond a buttoned-up stoicism and presents a diversity of emotions and approaches to methods of living, resiliency, and resolve. I have been astounded by the breadth of ideas, breath through the lines, and depth of emotion by the poets kind enough to contribute, some of whom are long overdue for their debut in TIR. The introspection and circumspection in this section spans a range of feelings: from the very personal to the sweepingly political reality of African-American lives over the last four hundred years.

A Portfolio on Poetic Black Resiliency features works by Tracie Morris, Joanne V. Gabbin, Lois Elaine Griffith, Yona Harvey, Nathaniel Mackey, Shelagh Wilson Patterson, Douglas Kearney, Steve Cannon, Harryette Mullen, Asiya Wadud, Janice A. Lowe, Yolanda Wisher, Delali Ayivor, Duriel E. Harris, Terrance Hayes, Jo Stewart, and Tracie Morris. Also featured in this issue is Poetry by Maria Zoccola, Brian Simoneau, Sara Elkamel, Susan Leslie Moore, Mariano Zaro, translated by Blas Falconer, Alice Turski, Jared Joseph, Kevin Norwood, Daniel Barnum, and Colin Kostelecky; Nonfiction by Steffan Triplett, Liza Cochran, and Julia LoFaso; Fiction by Dessa, Danica Li, Aleyna Rentz, Marian Crotty, Su Tong, translated by Ting Wang, Daisy Hernández, Kirsten Vail Aguilar, and Jackson Saul; and Artwork by Tim Fielder.

In this issue: a shrinking house, winter ticks, COVID, Burning Man, Alexander Pope, crisis, spies, a plane crash, wars, Sandy Koufax, and more. Poetry by Stella Wong, Gilad Jaffe, Camille Guthrie, Maxine Scates, Steffi Drewes, and more; and nonfiction by Carol Guess & Rochelle Hurt, Ellis Scott, Greg Wrenn, Amy V. Blakemore, and Andrea Truppin. Find fiction contributors at The Iowa Review website.