New Letters :: NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines

New Letters

Magazine of Writing and Art

Publisher’s Description: For over 75 years, New Letters has been discovering and publishing new stories, poems, essays and art that have, in many cases, defined great writing in the 20th and 21st centuries. William Carlos Williams’s statement, “No ideas but in things,” appeared first in a poem published in this magazine in 1944. In 1946, before he published Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger published a controversial short story in this magazine, “Go See Eddie.”

New Letters has always been the magazine of literary superstars and also the magazine of talented newcomers. More recent issues have included the work of some of the greatest international literary artists, including Sherman Alexie, Annie Dillard, Richard Wright, Margaret Atwood, Allen Ginsberg, Andrei Codrescu, and Rita Dove.

The word “Letters” in the title New Letters refers to written discourse, and the word “New” means that the magazine publishes writing that is newly created or newly discovered, and, even more important, writing that stays new.

Recent issues:

78.1 features poetry by José Domingo Gómez Rojas, a Chilean poet who was imprisoned in the 1920s for writing subversive verse, as well as two essays about Gómez Rojas by Thomas E. Kennedy and Raymond B. Craib. Other works featured in the issue include essays by B.H. Fairchild and Cassie Hay; fiction by Castle Freeman Jr. and Phong Nguyen; and poetry by Albert Goldbarth, Afaa Michael Weaver, and David Ray. Photographs of the Occupy Paris movement by Margo Berdeshevsky and shipping container sculptures by John Salvest, which appeared at the Occupy Kansas City rally, also appear in the issue.

Vol. 77 nos. 3 & 4 of New Letters features 210 pages of art energized by the links among people and places. The issue features a memoir by Amy Lee Scott who searches for connections to her past, an interview with poet Brian Turner who discusses his war time experience and ordinary life, a short story by Robin Hemley and new poems by Marilyn Hacker and Donald Hall. The cover art for the edition is by Eli Reichman.

Vol. 77 no. 2 of New Letters discusses the theme of power in relation to the enduring nature of art and its ability to lend us a reprieve from the forward momentum of time. The 200-page issue includes poetry, fiction and an essay by the New Letters Literary Award winners, poetry by Kim Addonizio, an interview with Walter Cummins, and an essay and photo spread of Paris, France’s, legendary George Whitman on his 97th birthday. The cover art for the edition is by Lisa Grossman.