THEMA :: NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines

THEMA

many plots/one premise

Box 8747

Metairie, LA 70011-8747

Phone: (504) 940-7156

E-mail: thema[at]cox[dot]net

Response time: 3 months after premise deadline Payment: short story $25; short-short/poem/artwork $10 ISSN: 1041-4851 Founded: 1990 Issues per year: 3 Copy Price: $10 Average pages: 150 Sample price (postpaid): $10 (US), $15 (CDN) Subscription (Individuals): $20 (US), $30 (CDN) Subscription (Libraries): $20 (US), $30 (CDN)

Publisher’s Description: Each issue of THEMA is based on a different unusual theme. The journal is designed to provide a stimulating forum for established and emerging literary artists, to serve as source material and inspiration for teachers of creative writing, and to provide readers with a unique and entertaining collection of artistic theme interpretations, in the form of stories, poetry, black-and-white artwork, and photography.

"I wish more magazines were like this one." - NewPages review (Off on a Tangent, THEMA 16:1 spring 2004).

Recent issues:

“You don’t understand.” “No, you don’t understand!” Who is right in this argument? Both? Neither? The truth depends on one’s individual perspective. THEMA invited authors to explore the nature of “reality” through the theme: Your Reality or Mine? (24:1, spring 2012). Do you believe in elves? You might, after reading Fabrizio Napoleone’s delicious “Chocolate Haze.” In “The View from Here,” by Jane Gibbish, a child struggles to understand her father’s increasingly erratic behavior. Kelly Lydick’s agonizing “Not, There, Again” will leave you reeling over the main character’s disturbing point of view. This issue of THEMA will leave you thinking long after you have closed the book.

What comes to your mind when you think of one thing done superbly? THEMA’s autumn 2011 issue, One Thing Done Superbly, showcases a wide variety of “superb things.” Interpretations covered a wide range, from works of art, as in Cheryl Mathis’ “The Viewing,” to an autistic child’s triumph in Alice Blair’s “Victory Lap,” to a prank in Gayla Chaney’s “Augury at Roy’s Diner.” Norbert Petsch’s “Safe Harbor” adds a surprising twist to the theme, as does Jon Sindell’s “Del.” Look out on your lawn at dusk and you may be rewarded by what Tetman Callis describes in “Lawn.”

In THEMA’s summer 2011 issue, About Two Miles down the Road, authors explore what might be, or what was, just two miles down the road. These “two miles” cover a diversity of locales and situations, from an eclectic group of railway passengers forced to hike through the snow in Melinda Brasher’s short story, “On the Train to Warsaw,” to American tourists lost in the French countryside in Julian Zabalbeascoa’s creative nonfiction, “The Real France,” to a real life-changing experience in rural Mississippi of 1955, in Virginia McGee Butler’s “A Change in Plans.” And for goodness sake, watch out for the snake in Sarah M. Lewis’ “Hoop Snake”!