Literary Magazines :: NewPages Guide

PMS poemmemoirstory

HB 217

1530 3rd Avenue South

Birmingham, AL 35294-1260

Phone: (205) 934-8583

E-mail: tmharris <at> uab <dot> edu

Simultaneous submissions: yes Email submissions: no Reading period: 1/1-3/31 Response time: within 12 weeks Payment: no Contests: no ISSN: 1535-1335 Founded: 2001 Issues per year: 1 Distributors: Ingram Periodicals Copy price: $7 (US), $8.50 (CDN) Average pages: 130 Sample price (postpaid): $7 Subscription 1 year: $7

PMS poemmemoirstory is a140-page, perfect-bound, women’s literary journal published annually by the University of Alabama at Birmingham. While we publish the best work written by women today, we also solicit a memoir for each issue from a woman who has experienced something of historic import. Emily Lyons, the nurse who survived the 1998 Birmingham clinic bombing, wrote the first of these; women who experienced the World Trade Center on 9-11, the Civil Rights Movement, the war in Iraq, a lesbian wedding in Boston, and Hurricane Katrina have also published their stories. Representative writers include: Robin Behn, Maxine Chernoff, Nikky Finney, Amy Gerstler, Honoreé Fanonne Jeffers, Allison Joseph, Alyce Miller, Molly Peacock, Sonia Sanchez, Ruth Stone, and Natasha Trethewey. Selections from PMS have been reprinted in Best American Poetry (2003 and 2004), Best American Essays (2005 and 2007), New Stories from the South (2005), and Best Creative Nonfiction (2007).

Recent issues:

Issue 9 features work by Alison A. Chapman, Hannah Fried, Rae Gouirand, Jane Kokernak, Wendi Lee, Kara Moyer, Lorissa Rinehart, Liz Robbins, Edythe Haendel Schwartz, Mary Ellen Talley, Gina Troisi, Jean Valentine, Helen Wickes, Tiphane Yanique, and more.

A very special issue of all African American women writers guest edited by writer Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, PMS 8 features such figures as Elizabeth Alexander, Lucille Clifton, Edwidge Danticat, Nikky Finney, Nikki Giovanni, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Tayari Jones, Allison Joseph, Evie Shockley, Patricia Smith, and an interview by Remica L. Bingham with Pulitzer Prize winner Natasha Trethewey. Each issue of PMS includes a memoir written by a woman who is not necessarily a writer but who has experienced something of historic import; PMS 8 features the memoir "From the Old Slave Shack" by the guest editor's mother, Trellie James Jeffers, Professor of English and Dean of Humanities at Talledega College.

Issue 7 includes writing from Maxine Chernoff, Vicki Covington, Lightsey Darst, Nikky Finney, Lois Marie Harrod, and Holly Welker. Each issue features a memoir by a woman who is not necessarily a writer but who has experienced something of historic import; this issue we hear from Miranda Gillespie who writes about working with the Center for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia in “Love Is Finished.”