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At the NewPages Blog readers and writers can catch up with their favorite literary and alternative magazines, independent and university presses, creative writing programs, and writing and literary events. Find new books, new issue announcements, contest winners, and so much more!

Where to Submit Roundup: November 28, 2025

Happy Friday!
If you celebrated Thanksgiving, I hope it was full of good food, family, and gratitude. Hard to believe this is already the last Friday in November! That means some submission opportunities are closing soon—but don’t worry, NewPages has you covered with our weekly roundup. And because creativity deserves a little seasonal spice, we’ve got an inspiration prompt to shake off any writer’s block. This week? Think ghosts…on Black Friday.

Inspiration Prompt: Tis the Season…for Haunting You

Love it or hate it, Christmas promotions seem to creep in earlier every year, culminating in the greatest retail frenzy of all—Black Friday. I don’t hate Christmas, but let’s be honest: its haunting consumer presence can feel relentless.

Black Friday is here—and so are the ghosts. Is it a mother trampled in the chaos, clutching the toy she died to buy? Or the spirits of Christmases past, present, and yet to come? Christmas may celebrate life, but its shadows brim with ghosts and dark folklore—Krampus among them.

What haunts your holiday? A bargain gone wrong? A tradition that won’t let go? Christmas music that won’t stop playing long after the holiday is gone? Or something stranger still? Write the story, poem, or essay—or create art, collages, comics—that answers the question: What happens when the ghosts of consumerism collide with the ghosts of tradition?

Once you have your answer, scroll down to find the perfect home for your haunting in this week’s submission roundup.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: November 28, 2025”

Magazine Stand :: Mudfish – 25

Mudfish 25 literary magazine cover image

Mudfish 25 is marked by generous representations from many Mudfish writers, such as Stephanie Dickinson, Doug Dorph, Tim Macaluso, Richard Fein, Paul Wuensche, Dell Lemmon, Tom Hunley, Angela Schmidt, Robert Clinton, Paul Schaeffer, Joyce (Chunyu) Wang and many others. Stacy Spencer, winner of the 18th poetry prize judged by Vijay Seshadri, and the two honorable mentions, Elisabeth Murawski and Ann Robinson, set a standard of excellence from which there is no decline. One poem will have readers thinking, ‘yes, this is what poetry is,’ and the next has them thinking, ‘no, this is what poetry is,’ and they are right every time. For the first time, the publication has a single artist, Jack Pierson, whose nakedly gorgeous and varied art unifies all of Mudfish so that it reads like a single poem, a moment’s thought.

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.

What Will My Reflection Show?: Writing Toward Insight and Renewal

Minimalist artwork featuring a vertical mirror reflecting a bare tree against a sunset sky, symbolizing reflection and renewal, with text overlay reading “What Will My Reflection Show? Writing Toward Insight and Renewal.”

I admit to getting stumped sometimes for prompts. I draw a lot of inspiration from life, my hobbies, nature, and the world around me—but when your life feels like a perfect storm that has upended everything, inspiration can run dry. With Thanksgiving approaching, I didn’t want to stick with the safe, old-time idea of thankfulness. Normally, people review a year in January. Why not review your current year as November closes and December looms?

Inspiration Prompt: A Year in Review

As November draws to a close, the calendar reminds us that 2025 is nearly ready to take its place in the archives. Before the year slips away, pause for a moment and ask: What story does this year tell about you?

Every year is a narrative—woven from triumphs, turbulence, and quiet transformations. Maybe yours was marked by a single turning point, a fleeting image, or a moment that changed everything. Write, collage, craft, create toward that. Capture the essence of 2025 in a way that feels true:

  • Was there a victory you didn’t expect?
  • A loss that reshaped your priorities?
  • A subtle shift that will echo into the next chapter?

Let your words and images hold the weight of what was gained and what was left behind. Imagine how this chapter will shape the next.

Not sure where to start? Open up the camera roll on your phone and look back at the moments captured this year. Are there ones you forgot? Ones that make you happy…or sad?

Not ready to look back? Then look ahead. There’s still one month left in 2025—31 days and change. Is there something you’ve been meaning to finish, experience, or begin? Write about the destination you’ve been hoping for and what it would take to move closer before the year ends. Sometimes the act of naming a goal is the first step toward reaching it.

💡 Want more prompts like this? Our weekly newsletter delivers fresh inspiration, submission opportunities, and resources for writers who want to stay motivated and connected.

Subscribe here to join a community that turns ideas into stories.

Magazine Stand :: The Writing Disorder – Fall 2025

The Writing Disorder Fall 2025 cover image

The Writing Disorder publishes quarterly online issues of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, art, interviews, and reviews, highlighting emerging and established writers while blending experimental creativity with classic storytelling. In addition to the mesmerizing artwork of Tom Plamann, the newest issue (Fall 2025) features fiction by Nia Crawford, C. Inanen, Roberto Ontiveros, Sohana Manzoor, Denisha Naidoo, Lia Tjokro, Andy Shocket & Paul Cesarini, David A. Taylor; poetry by Kevin Dwyer, John Grey, Cynthia Pratt, Juanita Rey, Erika Seshadri, Allen Seward; nonfiction by Daniel Buccieri, A. M. Palmer, Robert Eastman. Book reviews in this issue include Eject City by Jason Morphew, reviewed by Patricia Carragon; The Idea of Light by John Ronan, reviewed by Kristin Czarnecki; Sojourns by John Drudge, reviewed by Peter Mladinic.

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.

Editor’s Choice :: Empowered: A Woman Faculty of Color’s Guide to Teaching and Thriving

Empowered: A Woman Faculty of Color's Guide to Teaching and Thriving by Chavella T. Pittman book cover image

Empowered: A Woman Faculty of Color’s Guide to Teaching and Thriving by Chavella T. Pittman
The University of Oklahoma Press, September 2025

Experience and research show that women faculty of color are among the most overworked, unfairly criticized, and least rewarded individuals in higher education, often thwarted in achieving the fundamental goals of an academic career despite consistently delivering on the field’s highest promise — preparing students to contribute meaningfully to the world. In Empowered, Chavella T. Pittman offers these highly effective yet underappreciated scholars expert guidance, encouragement, and practical strategies drawn from decades of experience, showing them how to be unapologetically authentic in their teaching, advocate for their classroom excellence, practice self-compassion, and reclaim joy in their work. Through research-based tools for navigating intersectional race and gender tensions, exercises to withstand toxic dynamics, and methods to resist silencing and amplify their voices, Pittman equips women faculty of color to meet the outsized challenges they face in academia and to fully realize the careers, contributions, and lives they have long deserved.

Book Review :: all one in the end—/water by Soham Patel

Book Review :: all one in the end—/water by Soham Patel book cover image

Review by Jami Macarty

In her third collection, all one in the end—/water, Soham Patel draws inspiration from Lorine Niedecker’s “Paean to Place” to explore how poetry can offer grounding and community amid the disorientation of capitalism and technology. Patel’s poems are lyrical sites where we think together about where we live and how we care for it and each other, highlighting her interest in communities that “make inclusion an initiative.”

Patel crafts her poems from multiple perspectives — reader, writer, friend, sibling, and vegan with a “vata constitution” — to argue for honesty about human motivation. By referencing the vata dosha’s link to wind and ether, she clarifies her aim: to increase awareness of how “need breeds greed” and to inspire conversations that challenge how we see the world — and even “change our gaze.”

Patel shows how time shapes perspective through two poetic devices: the running title and the contrapuntal form. The running title acts as the poem’s first line and spills into the text, creating an uninterrupted flow. This compression accelerates time and pulls the reader into the poem’s immediacy. It also subverts the title’s traditional role as a separate identifier. This device encourages consideration of how we “assemble” and what we “sublimate.” The contrapuntal form expands and slows time by inviting the poem to be read in more than one way — across both columns, down one before winding to the other, or each independently. The form encourages exploration of “origins of place” and “redrawn borders.” These devices help Patel show, through poetics, how “to displace small things in order to destroy a larger trouble.”

Patel’s poetry offers art and community as strategies for confronting global “atrocities” and shared accountability. Rather than simply identifying the flaws in capitalism’s “market value” model or settler colonialism’s “stolen/zoned/purchased” and mined approach, her poetry deliberately avoids condescension or reiterating what is already known. Instead, she takes responsibility and presents alternatives — companionship, community, and “building a poetry” above the highwater mark. In all one in the end—/water, Soham Patel offers refuge.

all one in the end—/water by Soham Patel. Delete Press, September 2023.

Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize (University of Nevada Press, 2025), and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Macarty’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024), 2025 finalist for the bpNichol Award. To learn more about Macarty’s writing, editing, and teaching, visit her author website.

Book Review :: Stock by Jennifer Bowering Delisle

Stock by Jennifer Bowering Delisle book cover image

Review by Jami Macarty

Jennifer Bowering Delisle’s latest poetry collection, Stock, uses search engines and stock photographs as prompts to craft persona, erasure, found, and list poems that critique the staged, clichéd narratives embedded in corporate and domestic imagery. Through a conceptual approach and an “engineered” engagement, the poet seeks to expose the manipulative and biased undercurrents of stock images.

The collection is divided into five sections, addressing themes surrounding motherhood, family, holidays, job searches, and the corporate world. Delisle’s focus on the “composition” of images, searches, and poems drives the collection’s central critique. By using search-engine language to construct poems, she highlights how supposedly neutral visual and textual data are shaped by preconceived narratives. “[Search]” poems such as “Writer” and “Craft” are most revealing, offering glimpses of the poet behind the mask and reinforcing the book’s argument about authenticity’s difficulty amid digital artifice. Most poems inhabit invented personae — especially women in domestic or corporate roles — demonstrating how voices are “encumbered” by superficiality, cliché, and external judgment. At times, the use of persona risks insensitivity, potentially perpetuating the very objectification and reduction it seeks to expose. As the poet writes: “Just who is it / you mean to save?”

Describing these poems as ekphrastic reveals another tension in the project’s logic. Critiquing stock images by elevating them to art draws attention to the complexities and gambles of such an approach. The poems consistently hold up a mirror to societal conventions and ills. However, the absence of alternatives or solutions leaves the impact of this critique in question — does it provoke change, foster awareness, or risk reinforcing issues it seeks to highlight?

Though rich in sociopolitical commentary — particularly on gender roles — the writing sometimes lacks the emotional sympathy that might complicate its critique. Addressing what critique achieves or fails to achieve could deepen the collection’s exploration of artistic responsibility and engagement with the systems it interrogates. Still, Stock is a timely reflection on media, representation, and the aesthetics of contemporary life.

Stock by Jennifer Bowering Delisle. Coach House Books, September 2025.

Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize (University of Nevada Press, 2025), and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Macarty’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024), 2025 finalist for the bpNichol Award. To learn more about Macarty’s writing, editing, and teaching, visit her author website.

Where to Submit Roundup: November 21, 2025

Happy Friday!
Time marches on and before you know it, it will be Thanksgiving already. Here’s hoping the good news garnered this week keeps things on a positive note for the remainder of 2025.

What are you thankful for? Have your writing and submission goals been getting met like you hoped? NewPages is back with our weekly roundup of submission opportunities along with our weekly dose of inspiration to keep your writing fueled.

Inspiration Prompt: Talking Past Each Other

This past week, I finished a Korean drama where two male leads were having what seemed like a normal conversation about their relationship. But the deeper and longer the exchange went, the less sense it made. Were they really talking about the same thing? Were they truly listening to each other? Or were they locked in parallel monologues, each hearing only what they wanted to hear?

For this week’s prompt, explore that fascinating space where meaning fractures:

  • Writers: Craft a scene where two characters believe they’re having the same conversation—but they’re actually talking about completely different things. Let the misunderstanding grow until it leads to an unexpected twist, a humorous reveal, or a dramatic fallout. Bonus challenge: keep the dialogue natural and let subtext do the heavy lifting.
  • Poets: Play with double meanings, misheard phrases, or layered interpretations. How does language betray us—or save us—when we’re not truly listening?
  • Artists: Create a collage, illustration, or mixed-media piece where what’s said and what’s heard are visually at odds. Pair text with imagery that suggests a completely different interpretation, or layer contrasting elements to show the gap between intention and perception.

Tip: Miscommunication can be funny, tense, or heartbreaking. Think about tone shifts, clues that hint at the disconnect, and how the reveal changes everything.

And once you are done crafting your pieces, keep going to find them a home.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: November 21, 2025”

New Book :: A Spoonie’s Guide to Self-Acceptance

A Spoonie's Guide to Self-Acceptance by Kelly Esparza book cover image

A Spoonie’s Guide to Self-Acceptance by Kelly Esparza
Bottlecap Press, November 2025

How do you live life to the fullest when you’re diagnosed with a chronic illness in your twenties? In this grief-inspired poetry chapbook, Kelly Esparza chronicles her experience with living with a chronic illness by cycling through what it means to grieve over a diagnosis and find self-acceptance in a completely life-altering experience.

From debilitating fatigue to joint pain that makes one feel elderly, how does one cope over the loss of what used to be? Kelly strives to show the difficulties of living with a chronic illness, but as with all her poetry, she also finds the beauty and the hope to keep moving on and make the most of what she lives with on a daily basis. Her life may have changed, but she has come out stronger than ever.

Kelly Esparza (she/her) is a chronically ill writer and freelance editor who holds BAs in English and Creative Writing from the University of Arizona. She is also the editor-in-chief of FLARE Magazine, a literary journal that publishes literature and art about chronic illnesses, disabilities, and mental health. Find out more on her website: kellyesparza.wordpress.com.

Magazine Stand :: Blue Collar Review – Summer 2025

Blue Collar Review Summer 2025 literary magazine cover image

Blue Collar Review Summer 2025 issue is a collection of poetry focusing on “the oppressive reality of mindless labor and the dictatorship of bad managers and bosses we are all familiar with in the workplace. . . on the inseparability of war and climate destruction. . . on our struggle for the necessary fightback from the workplace to national politics and the necessity of building a movement capable of defeating this fascist regime and the corporate empowerment at its root.” Contributors include Cathy Porter, Kurt Nimmo, Jessie Kiefer, Roy N. Mason, Gregg Shotwell, Josh Medsker, Emma Weiss, Mary Franke, Dave Seter, Matthew Feeney, John Maclean, George C. Harvilla, Dave Roskos, Mitch Valente, Stewart Acuff, Andrew Slipp, and many more. Sample poems are available to read on the publication’s website.

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.

Love Like Oxygen: A Writing Prompt to Explore Essential Connections

Graphic for writing prompt titled ‘Love Like Oxygen’ with green trees, oxygen molecule symbols, and text inviting writers to explore love as a life force and subscribe for weekly prompts.
click image to open flyer

Our sunny, cold Tuesday is giving way to gloom as rain and snow roll in. Fall. Winter. The time of year when we can see our breath in the air—if we pay attention. This week’s newsletter prompt turns to the one thing all humans need to survive (besides food and water): oxygen.

As December approaches, so does a season of remembering loved ones who passed during this time. That reflection sparked today’s idea: what if someone you love becomes like the air you breathe—essential, sustaining, impossible to live without?

Inspiration Prompt: Love Like Oxygen

Inspired by the Thai drama Oxygen ออกซิเจน, based on the novel by Chesshire, and the universal experience of missing someone essential, this week’s prompt invites you to explore love—or a person—as being like oxygen.

We all need air to breathe—there’s no escaping that fundamental truth. But what if someone in your life was your oxygen, literally or figuratively? Consider what it means to depend on someone so completely, or to be the one others rely on for emotional survival.

Questions to spark your creativity:

  • What does it feel like to need someone as much as you need air?
  • How does that dependence shape your choices, your freedom, or your sense of self?
  • What happens when that “oxygen” is gone—or when you realize you’ve been someone else’s lifeline all along?

Creative directions to explore:

  • A poem about the invisible threads that keep us breathing.
  • A short story where love becomes a literal life force.
  • A visual piece—collage, illustration, or photography—capturing the fragility of connection.
  • A song or script that dramatizes the tension between dependence and independence.

Love, like oxygen, is sustaining, vital, and often taken for granted. How will you bring that truth to life?

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Subscribe today and join a community of writers who breathe creativity.

Magazine Stand :: South Dakota Review – 59.3 & 59.4

South Dakota Review 59.3 & 59.4 literary magazine cover image

The newest South Dakota Review is their annual double issue, jam-packed with enough poetry, short stories, and essays to last you through a long, hard winter, yet light enough to pack in a carry-on as you travel for the holidays. Contributors to this volume include Brandon Amico, Natalie Bavar, Annette C. Boehm, Frances Boyle, Will Burns, Justin Carmickle, Teresa Carmody, C.S. Carrier, KJ Cerankowski, Shane Chase, Amanda Chiado, Abigail Cloud, Travis Cohen, Lauren Crawford, Taylor De La Peña, C.G. Dominguez, Puneet Dutt, Tyler Dunston, Angelica Esquivel, David Greenspan, Dariana Alvarez Herrera, Whitney Koo, Diane LeBlanc, Kristina Martino, Kylie Martin, Abhishek Mehta, Casey McConahay, Amy Monaghan, Syan Mohiuddin, Sam Moe, Sam New, Kathy Nelson, Kris Norbraten, Ralph Pennel, samodH porawagamagE, Adrian Quintanar, Suzanne Manizza Roszak, E.B. Schnepp, Steven D. Schroeder, Robert Stothart, Liam Strong, Tanya Sangpun Thamkruphat, Emily Townsend, Ann Tweedy, William Woolfitt, Miles Waggener, John Yohe, Sophia Zhao, and Jianqing Zheng.

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.

Magazine Stand :: The Main Street Rag – Fall 2025

The Main Street Rag Fall 2025 literary magazine cover image

The Main Street Rag Fall 2025 issue opens with the feature “The Art of Welcome: Joel Matthews in Conversation” an interview with Jess Hylton. ‘Stories & Such’ contributors include Paula Brancato, Michael Matejcek, R. M. Kinder, Stephen O’Connor, Carlos Ramet, Timothy Reilly, and Mark Spencer, and poetry contributors include Joel Matthews, Rebecca Brenner, Ralph Culver, Tom Husson, Matthew James Friday, Michael Gaspeny, Tim Jones, Chuck Joy, Richard Cecil, Elizabeth Libbey, Preston Martin, Benjamin Nash, Fred Pelka, Livingston Rossmoor, Abbie Bradfield Mulvihill, Alissa Sammarco, Rikki Santer, Claire Scott, Matthew J. Spireng, Geo. Staley, Deborah C. Strozier, Tad Tuleja, James Washington, Jr., Ramiro Valdes, Mark Vogel, Jennifer Weiss, Gerald Yelle, Ronald Zack, and John Zedolik.

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.

Editor’s Choice :: Endangered Youth — Taiwan, Hong Kong, Ukraine

Endangered Youth — Taiwan, Hong Kong, Ukraine by C. J. Anderson-Wu book cover image

Endangered Youth — Taiwan, Hong Kong, Ukraine by C. J. Anderson-Wu
Serenity International Publishing, May 2025

Endangered Youth — Taiwan, Hong Kong, Ukraine is a powerful collection of short/micro fiction that captures the struggles of young generations fighting for dignity, autonomy, cultural identity, and freedom of speech. Through vivid storytelling and deeply human narratives, Anderson-Wu brings to life the voices of those resisting oppression, navigating political turmoil, and striving to preserve their heritage in the face of adversity. This collection is a testament to the resilience of people in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Ukraine, where battles for self-determination and democratic values continue to shape their futures.

C. J. Anderson-Wu (吳介禎) is a Taiwanese writer who has published two collections about Taiwan’s military dictatorship (1949–1987), known as the White Terror: Impossible to Swallow (2017) and The Surveillance (2020).

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as our Books Received monthly roundup. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

Magazine Stand :: Broadsided – Fall 2025

Broadsided Fall 2025 cover image

The editors of Broadsided Fall 2025 are grateful to share eleven collaborations accompanied by thoughtful conversations about process, response, and the creative life of the writer and artist. Every November since 2012, Broadsided has presented works by writers creating in languages Indigenous to the Americas — sometimes wholly, sometimes in part. This is Broadsided‘s annual Translation feature, partnering with poets and scholars to solicit and select these poems. In this year’s folio, editor Inés Hernandez-Avila has selected work by two poets working in Mapudungun, the language of the Mapuche people of Chile, and she also offers history, context, and story to the beautiful work. Teachers: Broadsided also has a new lesson plan to support classroom use of Broadsided‘s publications, which are free to download, print, and share.

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 2025 Susan Neville Prizes in Fiction & Poetry

A colorful poster announcing the Susan Neville Prize in Fiction and Poetry, featuring a hot air balloon scene with people and animals.
click image to open flyer

Deadline: December 31, 2025
Booth invites submissions for the inaugural Susan Neville Prizes in Fiction and Poetry. Winners will be announced in April 2026. Fiction Prize: $1,000 + publication. Poetry Prize: $1,000 + publication. Entry Fee: $20. Includes a two-issue subscription to Booth. Guest Judges: Kaveh Akbar and Paige Lewis. Kaveh and Paige will collaborate on judging both Fiction and Poetry. Submissions open from October 1, 2025 to December 31, 2025. All submissions considered for publication. Send any questions to us via email. View flyer and visit website to learn more.

Want early access to our eLitPak flyers? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter! You can also support NewPages with a paid subscription and get early access to the majority submission opportunities, upcoming events, and more before they are posted to our site.

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Hindsight Vol. VI Call for Creative Nonfiction

Flyer for Hindsight Vol. VI featuring a snowy mountain background and text calling for creative nonfiction and art submissions. Deadline: January 15, 2026. Hosted by the Program for Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Colorado Boulder.
click image to open flyer

HINDSIGHT Creative Nonfiction Journal accepts submissions for online and print publication. We accept all forms of creative nonfiction writing, as well as various forms of art, including painting, drawing, photography, and more. See our flyer for submission details and read our latest issues on our website. Get your true stories and art published in our Spring edition!

Want early access to our eLitPak flyers? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter! You can also support NewPages with a paid subscription and get early access to the majority submission opportunities, upcoming events, and more before they are posted to our site.

Interested in advertising in the eLitPak? Learn more here.

Fresh Fiction & Deep Cuts: New Releases from Livingston Press

Promotional graphic for Livingston Press new releases featuring five book covers against a snowy blue background. Titles shown include Shelter Me by Daren Dean, The Journal of Djuna Malik by Liza Wieland, Puns Not Guns by Charles Ghigna, One Hundred Pearls by Barry Michael Cole, and Penguin Noir by Nicelle Davis and Cheryl Gross. Text notes availability from Ingram, Asterism, and direct at livingstonpress.org.
click image to open flyer

New releases from Livingston Press. Check out our deep cuts for backstock! View our flyer for new releases and visit our website for our current catalog.

Want early access to our eLitPak flyers? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter! You can also support NewPages with a paid subscription and get early access to the majority submission opportunities, upcoming events, and more before they are posted to our site.

Interested in advertising in the eLitPak? Learn more here.

The 2026 Leopold Bloom Prize for Innovative Narration

Minimalist flyer announcing the 2026 Leopold Bloom Prize for Innovative Narration by L’Esprit Literary Review. Text invites submissions of short stories or novel excerpts up to 5,000 words, judged by author Michael Nath. Deadline: December 7 via Submittable.
click image to open flyer

L’Esprit Literary Review’s 2026 Leopold Bloom Prize will be awarded to the short story or novel excerpt, of up to 5,000 words, that best exhibits risk-adept narration challenging the conventions of prose and composition. $800 in total prizes, $10 entry fee. All entries receive a digital copy of Issue Seven. Further information can be found on our website and in our flyer.

Want early access to our eLitPak flyers? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter! You can also support NewPages with a paid subscription and get early access to the majority submission opportunities, upcoming events, and more before they are posted to our site.

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Open Reading Period at Accents Publishing

A flyer from Accents Publishing announcing an open reading period for manuscript submissions from November 1, 2025, to December 31, 2025. The flyer includes details about the types of manuscripts accepted, the timeline, fees, and submission process.
click image to open flyer

Deadline: December 31
The Accents Publishing team is excited to announce a two-month open reading period! We are looking for unpublished manuscripts of every genre imaginable. We are excited to read novels, short story collections, memoirs, nonfiction, young adult, children’s books, craft books, lyrical essays, full-length poetry collections, as well as chapbooks, plus any genre in between. View flyer and visit website for more information.

Want early access to our eLitPak flyers? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter! You can also support NewPages with a paid subscription and get early access to the majority submission opportunities, upcoming events, and more before they are posted to our site.

Interested in advertising in the eLitPak? Learn more here.

20th National Indie Excellence Awards

A flyer for The National Indie Excellence Awards (NIEA) with information about eligibility, perks, and how to enter.
click image to open flyer

The National Indie Excellence® Awards honor outstanding English-language books from self-published authors, indie presses, and university publishers. Now in its 20th year, NIEA celebrates excellence across all genres. Eligible books must be published within two years of the March 31 deadline. See flyer to learn more and submit at our website.

Want early access to our eLitPak flyers? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter! You can also support NewPages with a paid subscription and get early access to the majority submission opportunities, upcoming events, and more before they are posted to our site.

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Magazine Stand :: The Lake – November 2025

The Lake online magazine of poetry and reviews logo image

The Lake November 2025 is now online featuring new poetry by Hua Ai, Phil Kirby, Celia Lawren, Martina Maria Mancassola, Gabrielle Munslow, Bethany Pope, Hannah Stone, Rowan Tate, and Sarah White. The Lake also features reviews of new books of poetry. This month, Hannah Stone reviews Katrina Porteous’s Rhizodont, Charles Rammelkamp reviews Andrew Hemmert’s No Longer at This Address, Dustin Pickering reviews hubbies, edited by Jagari Mukherjee. The Lake‘s unique feature One Poem Reviews features one poem from a recently published full collection. November features poets Gopal Lahiri and Abigail Ottley.

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.

Colorado Authors League November 2025 Member Releases

Flyer showcasing Colorado Authors League’s November 2025 new releases with multiple book covers arranged in sections for children’s, historical fiction, romance, nonfiction, and thrillers. Featured titles include Cloud Jumping, Bertie and the Mommy Mix-Up, The $1300 Alphabet, To Outwit Them All, All’s Fayre in Love and War, Silver Charm, I Know Why Old Men Plant Trees, and more.
click image to open flyer

The Colorado Authors League (CAL) supports and promotes its community of published writers while connecting with and adding value to the reading world. Formed in 1931, authors become members to: keep up with changes in the craft of writing, publishing, and marketing, gain greater visibility for their writing, join a group of like-minded people who love writing. View our flyer to see new releases by members this November and learn more at our website.

Want early access to our eLitPak flyers? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter! You can also support NewPages with a paid subscription and get early access to the majority submission opportunities, upcoming events, and more before they are posted to our site.

Interested in advertising in the eLitPak? Learn more here.

Where to Submit Roundup: November 14, 2025

Happy Friday!
After a week of blustery winds and chilly temps, a little sunshine in the high 40s feels like a gift. As the cold settles in, why not warm up your creativity?

We’ve rounded up plenty of submission opportunities—some closing as soon as tomorrow, November 15—so you don’t miss a chance. Plus, we’ve included a fresh inspiration prompt to jump-start your next piece.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: November 14, 2025”

Magazine Stand :: Baltimore Review – Fall 2025

Baltimore Review Fall 2025 literary magazine cover image

Baltimore Review Fall 2025 invites readers to enjoy new fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, online, with a special “micro” feature in this issue. Contributors include Mikki Aronoff, Allison Field Bell, Brett Biebel, Nina Boutsikaris, Mike Bove, Jiordan Castle, Ron Dionne, Dana Brewer Harris, Andra Huang, Abbie Kiefer, Rebecca Klassen, Veronica Kornberg, Helen Meneilly, Megan Nichols, Christopher Notarnicola, Per Olvmyr, Matt Poindexter, Z. Yasmin Waheed, Claire Wyatt, and Allison Zhang.

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.

New Book :: Queer as Folk Tales

Queer as Folk Tales by James Penha book cover image

Queer as Folk Tales by James Penha
Deep Desires Press, October 2025

When James Penha moved to Indonesia more than thirty years ago, he fell in love with its archipelago, its people, and its folk tales. But most of the tales, especially when passed on to him orally by natives, were as fragmentary as an Aesop fable. Penha wanted to ask why a wizard would do this or why a goddess would choose that, but the storyteller had no way of knowing. When Penha did dare to be impolite enough to raise such queries, he would usually be told to “believe it or not. It’s up to you.”

Penha took on the challenge and rewrote and published Indonesian legends with the logic and sometimes the sensibilities and sexualities of contemporary fiction without sacrificing the magic and fantasy and exoticism of the originals.

What Penha, as a gay male, missed in the project were LGBTQIA+ characters and plots. And so he set about queerly adapting tales from around the world. They — as well as Penha’s own original speculative stories — comprise Queer As Folk Tales.

The title reveals the collection’s target audience, of course, but the author says he is pretty sure even straight readers will enjoy the narratives and the characters.

First Snow: A Spark for Creative Wonder

A winter-themed writing prompt graphic titled “First Snow: A Spark for Creative Wonder.” The image features blue snowflake accents, text inviting writers to explore the magic of the first snowfall, and a snowy scene with a snowman wearing a red scarf and hat.
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Here in Michigan, parts of the state experienced their first snowfall this past weekend. For some, it was enough to bundle up the kids and build snowmen. For others, it was just a scum of frost on the windshield. And still others may not have seen a single flake. Weather—always great food for creative fodder, isn’t it?

With the winter solstice just around the corner, what better inspiration for this week’s prompt than the idea of the first snow—or maybe the absence of it?

❄️ First Snow: A Spark for Creative Wonder

The first snow has fallen. Maybe it melted by morning, maybe it dusted the trees just long enough to make you pause—but that fleeting moment when the world turns white carries a quiet kind of magic.

What does it mean to you?

For some, it’s the signal to dig out a beloved family recipe—perhaps your grandmother’s hot chocolate, now reimagined with cold foam and a dash of cinnamon. Could you write a poem about the memory? Or a story imagining her reaction to your modern twist?

Maybe the first snow takes you back to a childhood snow day—the one that saved you from a forgotten homework assignment and gave you time to study, finish, and play. What would it look like to capture that reprieve in fiction?

Or perhaps you imagine a world where snow falls only once a year. What kind of magic would that be? Would people bottle it, sell it, celebrate it? Could you write a speculative piece about a single day of winter wonderland?

Try a lyric essay about crafting snow castles and ice sculptures from the first flakes. Or challenge yourself visually: create a snow scene using colored pencils—but not white. Can you layer and shade until the essence of snow emerges anyway?

These are just a few ways to let the season’s first snow inspire your next creative work—whether it’s fiction, poetry, nonfiction, visual art, or something in between.

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Book Review :: Blade Work by Lily Brown

Blade Work by Lily Brown book cover image

Review by Jami Macarty

In Blade Work, winner of Parlor Press’s New Measure Poetry Prize, Lily Brown writes into palpable presence the space between “Goodbye” and “The Possible.” She achieves this by setting her poems on the “blurred brink” — between dream and waking life, body and realm, memory and the future. The poems flow without sections, enhancing continuity and allowing consciousness to shift and overlap. Through the “aperture” of time, Brown transforms “recollection” into an artistic “estimation of the present.”

Descartes once asked, “How can I know that I am not now dreaming?” This question echoes throughout Blade Work. As Brown similarly explores the reliability of sensory experience and the nature of the external world, she draws attention to the distinction between “what’s in or in front of you,” questioning the very essence of reality.

Within the poems, the speaker frequently awakens from dreams, questioning whether the experiences were “nightmares or reveries, / losses or gifts.” The nature of this inquiry evokes trauma and “grief untwisted.” “These are dark works,” the poet admits, but leaves the reader to ponder what “casts shadows.” The poems gain strength from their ambiguity which underscores the idea that genuine understanding often lies in discerning the “half crafted, / half arranged’ connections that shape our beliefs.

Combined, this ambiguity and quest for the present propel Brown’s approach to craft. In her search for a poetic “valve that lets another consciousness arrive,” Brown’s lines serve as instruments of both excision and concision. Each carefully crafted line is as precise as a knife, an oar, or a pen in motion — distinct acts that mirror the collection’s central tension between a “freezing past” and an uncertain future. Combined with her “jagged” diction and verbs that “judder,” these elements of craft and theme work together to define Lily Brown’s voice “against memory’s airy commerce—” in order to “stay true” to her own “cracked intuition.” After the backstory is “cut / mercifully,” these poems thrumming, winging.

Blade Work by Lily Brown. Parlor Press, January 2025.

Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize (forthcoming University of Nevada Press), and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) and Mind of Spring (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award.

New Lit on the Block :: Aorta Literary Magazine

Aorta Literary Magazine logo

Shaking up the noise that surrounds us daily, Aorta Literary Magazine captivates readers with its fascinating vibe and theme, publishing poetry, fiction, personal memoir, critical essay, photography, and visual art from contributors ages 13-25 every three to four months online.

Aorta Literary Magazine’s name originates from the word “Aorta,” a major artery in the heart. “Aorta represents life and the rawness of life,” states Founder and Editor in Chief Claire You, “just like how, without the aorta, humans would not be able to live. In another aspect, the aorta speaks to being human and what it means to be human. Whether that be the cultural or personal aspect one may have, our literary magazine wants to know! We want to help teenagers and young writers from diverse communities make their writing and art come alive. The editors and audience of Aorta Literary Magazine are always learning a new lens of humanity from our submissions.”

Continue reading “New Lit on the Block :: Aorta Literary Magazine”

Book Review :: Diorama by Sandra Marchetti

Diorama by Sandra Marchetti book cover image

Review by Jami Macarty

Sandra Marchetti’s baseball poetry from Aisle 228 (Texas A&M University Press, 2023), “slides / from view” as her third collection, Diorama, “assembles.” Across three sections, Diorama features occasion-driven poems dedicated to loved ones, poetic influences, and the natural world.

Marchetti’s poems skillfully incorporate both overt and subtle metrics, end rhyme, alliteration, and assonance. Most of her poems are short, seldom exceeding a single page, and feature concise lines that are broken for sonic or semantic effect. Primarily observational, the poems use imagery as the foundational element to “hold and release” the reader’s attention.

The poet seems more focused on capturing specific moments and freezing them in time than existing within their flow. Sometimes, this snapshot-capturing approach, combined with the poet’s frequent use of the indicative mood, weakens the poems’ potential for deeper resonance and emotional connection with the reader.

As they accumulate, the subject-object observations create a layered remove within the poems, leaving the reader unsure of how the speaker feels about this distance. This ambiguity may hint at ambivalence. At the very least, it indicates that the poet is willing to describe the experience of distance, but not necessarily attempt to bridge it within herself, her environment, or the relationships represented in the poems. This creates a fascinating “lucid unease” and unsettling effect.

But then in poems such as “Feather,” “Witness,” and “All that I can tell from here,” Marchetti immerses the reader in a multi-sensory experience, evoking emotions through the symbolism of a feather “off the wing,” the “inevitable / disappearance” of a snake, and pins on a map that show “you and I / span 3,000 miles.” Here, the power of Marchetti’s well-executed and felt description “fades… this distance” between poet and the objects of her observation or desire. By the last poem, “A Swim at Europe Bay Beach in July, Deserted,” even though “the ants [are] eating our cherries / at the shoreline,” we are swimming together — language, observation, feeling, and humanity tuned in poetic balance.

Diorama by Sandra Marchetti. Stephen F. Austin University Press, May 2025.

Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize (forthcoming University of Nevada Press), and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) and Mind of Spring (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award.

Magazine Stand :: Apple Valley Review – Fall 2025

Apple Valley Review Fall 2025 cover image

The Fall 2025 issue of the Apple Valley Review features short stories by Jack Jenkins, Timo Teräsahjo (translated from the Finnish by the author), Sohana Manzoor, Daniel Southwell, and Daniel Choe; a piece of creative nonfiction by Yi Li; and poetry by Steph Sundermann-Zinger, Ekaterina Kostova (translated from the Bulgarian by Holly Karapetkova), Luis Alberto de Cuenca (translated from the Spanish by Gustavo Pérez Firmat), Mario dell’Arco (translated from the Romanesco by Marc Alan Di Martino), Paul Dickey, DS Maolalai, and P M F Johnson. The cover image is by French photographer Jacques Dillies.

Where to Submit Roundup: November 7, 2025

Happy Friday!
The first week of November is officially behind us. I say it all the time, but time flies when you’re an adult—more so than you ever think possible. With Halloween, Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), and All Saints Day behind us, there’s a lot of food for thought. I admittedly watch a lot of Asian dramas, so seeing how other cultures honor the memory of loved ones is fascinating—rituals full of color, music, and offerings that turn grief into celebration.

Do you get random bursts of inspiration from the media you consume or from simply observing the world around you? If your creative well feels a little dry, NewPages is here to help you find a home for your work—and maybe spark an idea or two along the way.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: November 7, 2025”

Book Review :: The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy

The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy book cover image

Review by Kevin Brown

Angela Flournoy’s first novel, The Turner House, gathered together a family to make sense of a life lived in a particular place and understand how to move forward. Flournoy takes a similar approach in her second novel, The Wilderness, though this work focuses on friendship more than family. Nakia, Desiree, Monique, and January are trying to craft lives and careers as young Black women in America. They each spend time in their particular wilderness, but they all have each other to rely upon when they are at their lowest points.

Lest this description sound saccharine and sentimental, Flournoy is too good of a writer to ever let the novel stray into that territory. Instead, she presents each woman’s struggles as real and true to life, and the friends help them survive, but not unscathed, as they all carry scars. January marries a man she knows she shouldn’t, solely because she’s pregnant and it’s the most convenient choice. Desiree is estranged from her sister after growing up without both parents — one leaves and one dies. Monique believes she’s not as successful as the others until she goes viral and becomes an influencer, losing part of her self in the process. Nakia wonders if she should be accomplishing more with her life than running a restaurant, while trying to find love as a Queer Black woman.

The last quarter of the book shifts the focus slightly. The politics that were simmering under the surface throughout — the novel takes place from 2008 to 2027 — become the focal point of the novel, as the United States becomes an even more dangerous place for minorities and those who work for justice. Climate change is worsening, economic gaps are widening, and the police is becoming more militarized and technological especially during the 2020 protests over the killing of George Floyd. These developments lead to the women’s living lives they wouldn’t have chosen or imagined. While they still support one another, their world values them less and less, leading to a wilderness they may not survive.

The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy. Mariner Books, September 2025.

Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels.

Here Comes the Rain: A Creative Writing Prompt for Renewal and Transformation

After a gloomy start to November with gale-force winds and rain, what better tool for inspiration is there? Rainy days often feel synonymous with sadness—plans fall through, the gloom seeps into your mood. But sometimes, a good rainy day can be a portal for imagination. Think cozy games and movie marathons with family, an indoor picnic, or even a living room campout. Rain doesn’t have to be morose; it can be invigorating.

Dark rain-streaked window with blurred warm lights in the background and text overlay reading: ‘Here Comes the Rain. Whether you’re crafting a poem, a short story, a song lyric, or even a visual piece, make the rain a turning point. Your challenge: Write, draw, or collage something where rain becomes a force of transformation.’
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Inspiration Prompt: Here Comes the Rain

Rain has always been a powerful symbol in art and music. From Matsushita Yuya’s “Foolish Foolish” to Brook Benton’s “Rainy Night in Georgia”, Elvis’s “Kentucky Rain”, and Junhee’s “Umbrella (10:00)”, storms often evoke melancholy, longing, and heartbreak. Gray skies and dripping windows feel tailor-made for sad songs.

But does rain have to mean sorrow?

What if the storm is a catalyst for renewal? What if the rain washes away illusions, reveals hidden truths, or sparks unexpected joy? Instead of an ending, let the downpour be a beginning.

Your challenge: Write something where rain becomes a force of transformation. Let it cleanse, awaken, and change the world of your story—or the heart of your character. Whether you’re crafting a poem, a short story, a song lyric, or even a visual piece, make the rain a turning point.

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Magazine Stand :: Sky Island Journal – Fall 2025

Sky Island Journal Fall 2025 Issue 33 cover image

Sky Island Journal’s stunning 32nd issue (Fall 2025) features poetry, flash fiction, and creative nonfiction from contributors around the globe. Accomplished, well-established authors are published — side by side — with fresh, emerging voices. Readers are provided with a powerful, focused literary experience that transports them: one that challenges them intellectually and moves them emotionally. Always free to access, and always free from advertising, discover what over 160,000 readers in 150 countries, and over 1,200 contributors from 58 countries, already know; the finest new writing can be found where the desert meets the mountains.

Where to Submit Roundup: October 31, 2025

Happy Friday and Happy Halloween!
Whether you’re venturing out to watch ghosts, goblins, and witches on the hunt for treats—or hiding indoors with the lights off, hoarding candy for yourself—tonight is full of stories waiting to happen.

If you’re dodging the mayhem, let the sugar rush fuel your writing. If you’re out among the revelers, soak up the atmosphere for your next piece.

Either way, NewPages has you covered with this week’s roundup of submission opportunities. Heads up: several deadlines hit TODAY—don’t miss your chance!

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: October 31, 2025”

Book Review :: The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich by Evan Osnos

The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich by Evan Osnos book cover image

Review by Kevin Brown

Evan Osnos’s collection of essays began as articles in The New Yorker, where Osnos has worked for seventeen years. He’s organized these ten essays into three sections: The Rewards (How to Spend It), The Mechanics (How to Keep It), and The Perils (How to Lose It). All three sections offer their own rewards, depending on what the reader is most interested in.

In the first section, Osnos explores the problem that the ultrarich have, two problems actually: how to spend the vast sums of money they have and how to use those purchases to show people just how much money they have. As the title reveals, yachts are a solution to both problems in the first essay, “The Floating World.” These yachts, though, are not what most of us think of, as there are now categories ranging from superyacht (more than ninety-eight feet) to gigayachet (more than two hundred and ninety-five feet), costing more than two hundred and fifty million dollars (and topping four hundred feet). What truly distinguishes the ultrarich here, though, is the service on the yachts. Given that the law only allows them to carry twelve passengers, even in such a large space, amenities and crew (who don’t count as people) take up the rest of the space, providing each passenger with numerous staff to ensure they have a luxurious time.

In The Mechanics, Osnos delves into trusts; social media and democracy; the move of country-club Republicans to Trump supporters; and how politicians and commentators, such as Tucker Carlson, attack the elite while belonging to the ultrarich. The three essays in The Perils center around fraud, primarily. The first two essays — “Land of Make-Believe” and “Patriot Games” — both portray people who pretended to be richer and more connected than they were to obtain wealth and power, only to lose it all in the end. The final essay, “The Big House,” discusses people who have been convicted of white-collar crime and how they adjust to life after prison.

The collection gives a varied look at those who have more money than most readers can even imagine, which can lead to shock and dismay, as well as anger and outrage. Osnos doesn’t seem to want to stoke any particular emotion in his readers. He’s content to present the stories as clearly and factually as he can, then let the reader decide how to react.

The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich by Evan Osnos. Scribner, June 2025.

Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels.

A Cycle of Horror (or Just a Cycle)

This week, Spooky Season is in full swing with Devil’s Night and Halloween just around the corner. So what better time to take a break from the usual and lean into the paranormal… and horror. Or spooky. Spooky that isn’t horrifying totally counts, right?

It’s the season for watching Hocus Pocus for the bajillionth time and not feeling bad about it. It’s also the season for throwing on your favorite sweater, sitting outside under the falling leaves with a hot cider or cocoa, and letting the chill inspire your writing.

Halloween writing prompt graphic with the title “A Cycle of Horror,” featuring spooky trees, jack-o’-lanterns, and text inviting writers to explore cycles of horror or repetition in stories, poems, or artwork.
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🎃 A Cycle of Horror (or Just a Cycle): Halloween Writing Prompt

Halloween is nearly here, and with it comes the perfect excuse to dive into the eerie, the uncanny, and the unsettling. After watching the first installment of Fear Street and revisiting the haunting loops of Stephen King’s IT, we couldn’t help but think about stories where horror isn’t a one-time event—it’s a cycle.

“Something has returned that was never meant to.”

What returns in your story, poem, or artwork? A curse, a creature, a memory, a reckoning?

Not into horror? That’s okay. Focus instead on cycles and patterns—emotional, societal, historical, or personal. What does it mean to live in a place or a body haunted by repetition? What does it take to break a loop, or to accept it?

This prompt invites you to explore recurrence in any form. Whether you’re working on a short story, a poem, a graphic narrative, or something multimedia, this theme offers rich soil for experimentation.

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Book Review :: Certain Shelter by Abbie Kiefer

Certain Shelter by Abbie Kiefer book cover image

Review by Jami Macarty

In Certain Shelter, Abbie Kiefer sensitively examines how personal and communal loss shape identity, focusing on a woman balancing responsibilities to her children and aging parents. The collection is a tribute to her late mother and reflects on the fading industries in Gardiner, Maine. Kiefer explores transitions from being cared for to caring for others and the granting of autonomy to her sons, alongside pivotal moments in her hometown, such as “My Friend Tells Me About the Last Day at the Bass Shoe Factory.”

As Kiefer examines the “human weight” of loss, weaving together her grief with the collective “sorrow” of her community, she is always “tender / toward relics—” She reveals vulnerability as she “Gently / attests to the nature / of contrast—” Her skill lies in expressing the entwined grief and joy of life, especially after loss. In “I’m So Tired,” she writes: “I had a mother and I miss her and I have joy / and the garden.”

Continuing her exploration of shared experience, Kiefer’s poems celebrate Yankee heritage and are “concerned with the ordinary” people whose labor and artisanry are often unnoticed and underappreciated. “In Praise of Minor,” Kiefer salutes minor poets “faithful to work that will meet / with quiet,” suggesting kinship with notable yet underrecognized Maine poet Edward Arlington Robinson. If Robinson, a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, is considered a minor poet, it invites reflection on the value of all voices in poetry. Kiefer highlights this idea in her six-section prose poem, “A Brief History of E. A. Robinson and the Train Station in Gardiner, Maine.” This poem addresses things that “falter against change” — the town that loses the paper mill and train station, residents who “abide in spareness,” and Robinson himself, who moved away from Gardiner. “But in his poems, he returns and returns.”

Ultimately, parts “hymn” and “wild shards,” Abbie Kiefer’s narrative-lyric poems will endure because “Ground that shakes / can also shelter.” And that’s the truth of this beautiful, tender-hearted debut.

Certain Shelter by Abbie Kiefer. June Road Press, October 2024.

Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize (forthcoming University of Nevada Press), and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) and Mind of Spring (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award.

Book Review :: What Good is Heaven by Raye Hendrix

What Good is Heaven by Raye Hendrix book cover image

Review by Jami Macarty

The poems of Raye Hendrix’s What Good is Heaven are rooted in the farmlands and mountains of North Alabama. They portray the complexities of southern agrarian life, foregrounding both its religious fervor and violent undertones. We experience the bloodletting and the beauty of this place and people through a transgressive character who makes sense of the idyllic vision of pastoral life and the heavy burden of religious oppression.

Hendrix’s moody poems draw from the Southern Gothic tradition and stand out for their use of “sparkling dark” oxymorons: “unowned and belonging,” faithful and forbidden, and “violence / cloaked in an oath of care.” As Hendrix writes the tensions and aberrations of southern life, they neither judge the contradictions nor express melancholy. These are not poems of guilt and capitulation. They are clear-eyed and delivered by someone who has known who they are from a young age and is not afraid to express their will: “The first time I was reborn // I told my mother I wanted / to love a woman.”

Hendrix uses the narrative-lyric mode to tell their queer coming-of-age story within their “Southern stoic” family who “worked the earth” and attended church. Through the poems, we learn that Hendrix survived the Bible and the belt, a grandmother who “pushed my head through the drywall / for being a little dyke,” and conversion therapy. But these poems do not succumb to shame or revenge. Instead, they muck in reality’s fallibility and mercy.

The poems reflect on past formative events, reaching us after a period of reflection. While this may diminish some of their emotional charge, it allows for a more significant poetic quality: understatement. The poems are not dramatic but, like the poet’s people, stoic. Both spare and sparing, the poems are written by someone already free. Hendrix has the power and wields it to create a meticulously crafted, visceral, and vibrant debut.

What Good is Heaven by Raye Hendrix. Texas Review Press: The University Press of San Houston State University, September 2024.

Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize (forthcoming University of Nevada Press), and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) and Mind of Spring (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award.

Where to Submit Roundup: October 24, 2025

Happy Friday!
It’s hard to believe next week starts the final week of October. If life has felt like a holding pattern lately, I get it—and I hope things are starting to shift, even if only by the smallest inch.

When stress and exhaustion make it hard to find inspiration or research submission opportunities, NewPages is here to lighten the load with your Friday roundup: a spark for your creativity and a curated list of places to send your work.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: October 24, 2025”

Book Review :: Girl in a Bear Suit by Jen Jabaily-Blackburn

Girl in a Bear Suit by Jen Jabaily-Blackburn book cover image

Review by Jami Macarty

Jen Jabaily-Blackburn’s debut poetry collection, Girl in a Bear Suit, delves into the intricacies of womanhood, victimhood, and the power dynamics ingrained in both mythology and society.

Chosen by Christopher Citro as the winner of the 23rd Annual Elixir Press Poetry Award, this collection draws on the haunting tale of Callisto from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The poems link transformations to violence, gender, power, punishment, or escape.

Jabaily-Blackburn engages in a modern discussion about the cautionary tales that have historically ensnared girls and women. These warnings, often laced with control and fear, aim to restrict female freedom and autonomy. She examines the circumstances that lead women and girls to become hyper-aware of their surroundings and barraged by warnings — “Do not wear! Do not consume! / Do not go!” Each poem is a “space” where Callisto and other female voices emerge “poised / to speak,” ready to assert their existence.

In a world that often views femininity through a lens of caution and threat, Jabaily-Blackburn highlights the longing for agency. Lines such as “Myths have always made / witches of us / when we refused to bend” underscore the collection’s incisive critique of patriarchal structures and the urgent need for redefining narratives.

The poet’s sharp wit, natural humor, and inventive style propel readers through a whirlwind of emotion, capturing the journey from silence to the liberation of voice. Vivid phrases like “a flip book of Excitement sprinting / spine to edge” capture the exhilarating process of reclaiming one’s story despite societal constraints.

Girl in a Bear Suit compels us to rethink the stories we inherit and share, reshaping our perspective on the female experience. By amplifying the often-muted voices of women and girls, Jen Jabaily-Blackburn enriches our understanding of the complex narratives around gender and survival today. This striking debut is essential to the conversation.

Girl in a Bear Suit by Jen Jabaily-Blackburn. Elixir Press, April 2024.

Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize (forthcoming University of Nevada Press), and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) and Mind of Spring (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award.

Call :: The Dolomite Review Debut Issue

The Dolomite Review Debut Issue CFS screenshot image

The Dolomite Review is currently accepting submissions for its debut issue to be published January 2026.

Rooted in Michigan and steeped in the spirit of the Midwest, The Dolomite Review features writing that captures the subtle tensions of place and people — the rust belt cities, the wind-battered shorelines, the endless fields and small towns where stillness speaks volumes. It’s about the unsaid, the nearly forgotten, the moment just before everything changes.

The theme of The Dolomite Review inaugural issue is “new beginnings and firsts” — first steps, first frost, first love, first loss. The first time you left home. The first time you came back. The editors are interested in beginnings that don’t announce themselves. They want the quiet moments before or after the turning point — the kind that only feel like a “first” when you look back.

This theme is a guide, not a rule. The Dolomite Review is looking for great storytelling and voices readers will want to come back to. If that might be you, learn more about how to submit to The Dolomite Review here.

The Fanatic’s Paradox: When Passion Becomes a Cage

When you’re stuck sitting in a hospital with nothing left to do—no inspiration striking to sketch or write, no book because you forgot to pack one—what else is left except doom-scrolling through your YouTube shorts feed? That’s where I found myself recently, watching artists I follow deal with rude people who are supposed to be their “fans.”

Since I didn’t want to dive into the joys of elder care, stress, anxiety and hospital visits for this week’s writing prompt, I started thinking about the root of the word fan. It seemed like a fantastic way to spark creativity and explore the meaning that’s been left behind as fanatic was shortened to fan.

Dark stage with spotlight illuminating raised hands in silhouette, overlaid with text “Inspiration Prompt: Fanatic’s Paradox” and questions about obsession and creative freedom.
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✍️ Inspiration Prompt: The Fanatic’s Paradox

Our world loves abbreviation. Maybe that’s why we forget that the word fan is short for fanatic. For some, that connection feels uncomfortable—fanaticism carries a shadow of extremity, of devotion gone too far. I’ve even met people who refuse to call themselves a “fan” of anything for that reason.

But the word reminds us of something important: passion can blur into obsession. We often think of fans as supporters, yet history—and our own cultural spaces—show that unchecked fanaticism can smother the very thing it claims to love. Whether in literature, art, music, or performance, creators who step outside the expected often face resistance from those who want them to stay in one lane.

So here’s the question: When does love for art become a cage—and how can creators reclaim freedom from the weight of expectation?

This Week’s Creative Challenge

  • Writers: Craft a story, poem, or essay about admiration that becomes suffocating—whether for a person, a genre, or even an idea.
  • Artists: Visualize the tension between passion and possession. What does obsession look like in color, form, or texture?
  • Musicians/Performers: Blend styles or sounds that “fans” might resist. How does breaking expectation reshape the art?
  • Cross‑genre Creators: Imagine a world where “fanatic energy” dictates what art can or cannot be. How do you subvert it?

💡 Consider: What happens when devotion crosses the line? How do we protect creativity from the grip of obsession?

If this prompt sparks ideas, imagine having weekly inspiration delivered straight to your inbox—along with the latest literary magazine issues, new books, reviews, submission opportunities, and more.

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Book Review :: The Payback by Kashana Cauley

The Payback by Kashana Cauley book cover image

Review by Kevin Brown

The Payback, Kashana Cauley’s second novel is a combination of social satire and a heist novel, with a hefty dose of dark comedy. Jada begins the novel working at a clothing store in the mall, having lost her job as a costume designer in the film industry over what she refers to as the Incident in the early part of the work. However, she is unable to keep that job due to her penchant for theft that she has been unable to overcome. She ends up living with Lanae and hanging out with Audrey, both of whom work in the same store, after the debt police take everything she owns, which wasn’t much to begin with.

The debt police play an important role in the novel, as they find people who still owe on their student loans and encourage them to pay, largely by beating them up or, as in Jada’s case, beating her up and taking what she owns, even though those possessions will barely affect their overall debt burden. This aspect of the novel is Cauley’s sharpest satire, as the victims are exclusively Black women, who are the most likely to have significant student load debt. Bystanders either ignore the beatings or even heap verbal abuse on the women. Jada, Audrey, and Lanae all commiserate about their situation, talking about the promises schools and society made that led them to take out loans for higher education.

They end up making a plan to try to erase all of the government student loan debt by uploading a virus to their servers, then breaking in to remove the hard drive that serves as a backup. Given that the novel is clearly comic, one can expect everything to work out, one way or another, but the core of the novel is the satire of a society that vilifies people for taking on debt, while also saying that the only way to succeed is through a college degree.

The Payback by Kashana Cauley. Atria Books, July 2025.

Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels.

Book Review :: Now We Are Here: Family, Migration, Children’s Education, and Dreams for a Better Life by Gabrielle Oliveira

Now We Are Here: Family Migration, Children’s Education, and Dreams for a Better Life by Gabrielle Oliveira book cover image

Review by Eleanor J. Bader

Gabrielle Oliveira’s latest book, Now We Are Here, delves into the lives of 16 newly-arrived immigrant families from Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras and covers their first three years in the US, 2018-2021. All of these families – 30 kids under 18 and 24 parents – experienced weeks-to-month-long separations after requesting asylum at the border. Although all of the people profiled were eventually reunited and allowed to settle in the country, the long-term damage of their often-traumatic journey – and the subsequent rupture caused by their incarceration – is evident, especially in the children Oliveira introduces.

Indeed, hundreds of hours of interviews reveal that the children desperately wanted to talk to their teachers and peers about what they’d been through since leaving their homelands. Unfortunately, this was discouraged. Instead, Oliveira tracks how the kids’ attempts to talk about their experiences were repeatedly shut down by teachers in what Oliveira calls “the pedagogy of silence.”

“Children often encountered adults who stifled their narratives, changed the subject, or decided that this type of political knowledge could be dangerous or complicated to discuss in the classroom…Educators were not actively seeking to hurt or ignore children. More than anything, teachers wanted their students to feel supported in the present moment and understand that they were now safe.”

But the kids knew better and expressed a deep longing to share their fears and worries with other newcomers. For their part, most parents also wanted to avoid rehashing the past, suppressing discussion of past atrocities in favor of adjusting to new realities. At the same time, most simultaneously questioned their decision to migrate and wondered if uprooting their families had been a mistake.

Now We Are Here is an intensely moving book. And while it barely touches the surface of the current administration’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies, it is nonetheless essential reading for educators and those working with Central American immigrants.

Now We Are Here: Family, Migration, Children’s Education, and Dreams for a Better Life by Gabrielle Oliveira. Stanford University Press, November 2025.

Reviewer bio: Eleanor J. Bader is a Brooklyn, NY-based journalist who writes about books and domestic social issues for Truthout, Rain Taxi, The Progressive, Ms. Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Indypendent.

Book Review :: Abbreviate by Sarah Fawn Montgomery

Abbreviate by Sarah Fawn Montgomery book cover image

Review by Jami Macarty

In Abbreviate, Sarah Fawn Montgomery skillfully examines the myriad ways girls are conditioned to “shrink smaller” so boys can “get bigger.” Through interconnected lyric micro-essays, she reflects on how small, often overlooked or downplayed experiences accumulate into a multilayered life-narrative of diminishment that demonstrates what girls face in various environments, including homes, schools, literature, and video games. Montgomery sensitively and candidly addresses domestic violence, casual intimidation, and sexual assault, revealing the double standards and dismissive attitudes that permeate these spaces.

Starting from middle school and continuing to college, Montgomery illustrates the pervasive nature of misogyny, particularly within educational settings. Both male and female authority figures perpetuate pressures to conform and perform that lead girls to harm themselves, as they struggle with unrealistic standards for their bodies. The title essay places this theme in sharp relief.

In “Abbreviate,” Montgomery uses the situation of female students sharing the same name — “we Sarahs are too many” — to illustrate how girls are forced to adapt for the convenience of their teachers: “When our names are … replaced with a letter, we become small like our bodies, a period at the end to signal that the decision is not ours.”

Despite the awful predicament of this “endless cycle,” some essays celebrate the “small miracles” of female friendship: A refuge where girls can “tend to what haunted” and “heal hurts no one would see or believe.” The saving support of aunts, sisters, and friends helps shift their focus from looking down to “up at the stars.”

By speaking out to “constellate our collective hurts,” girls can escape oppression and reclaim their stories as “someone seen … someone believed.” As Sarah Fawn Montgomery’s essays navigate the patriarchal landscape particular to American culture, a woman emerges with “Strength newly summoned,” understanding herself and her place in the world. Abbreviate is a necessary and resonant book.

Abbreviate by Sarah Fawn Montgomery. Small Harbor Publishing, May 2025.

Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize (forthcoming University of Nevada Press), and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) and Mind of Spring (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award.

Livingston Press Launches New Website & Announces Fall 2025 Book Releases

Promotional poster for Livingston Press’s fall releases, featuring five book covers with titles and authors, set against an autumn forest background.
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We’re excited to share two big updates from Livingston Press!

🖥️ New Website + Book Sale

Our new website is now live—featuring a fresh design and easier navigation. To celebrate, we’re offering many titles at 50% off for a limited time. Whether you’re a longtime fan or new to our catalog, now’s the perfect time to explore our diverse range of literary fiction, poetry, and more.

🔗 Visit us at livingstonpress.org

🍂 Fall 2025 New Releases

We’re also thrilled to announce our Fall 2025 lineup, featuring five exciting new titles from a range of voices and styles:

  • Shelter Me: A Novel by Darin Dean
    A powerful story set against a stormy emotional landscape.
  • The Journal of Dwayne Holt by Lisa Wieland
    A lyrical, abstract exploration of memory and identity.
  • Puns Puns Guns by Charles Ghigna
    A witty, minimalist collection from a master of wordplay.
  • One Hundred Pearls by Barry Michael Cole
    A character-driven narrative with a unique visual flair.
  • Penguin Noir by Nicole Davis & Cheryl Gross
    A genre-bending illustrated tale featuring a noir-style penguin.

All titles are available through Ingram, Asterism, and direct from our website.

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Magazine Stand :: New Letters – Summer/Fall 2025

New Letters Summer/Fall 2025 literary magazine cover image

The Summer/Fall 2025 New Letters upholds their mission to celebrate exceptional literary writing worldwide, continually honoring emerging and established writers and providing readers with exceptional content in print.

Filling out this 200+ page issue is fiction by Julia Hou, Heather Bell Adams, Anthony Varallo, Michael Rogner, John Haggerty, Brian Ma, Elsa Court; essays by B.A. Howard, Allison Weissman, Aleina Grace Edwards, Krista Eastman, Gwyneth Henke, Hector Domingue; poetry by Albert Goldbarth, Heidi Seaborn, Simone Muench & Jackie K. White, J.A. Holm, Gabriel Costello, Dustin King, Lance Larsen, Stacy Gnall; plus a chapbook by Morgan Cross and featured artist Hubbard Savage.

New Letters also hosts the award-winning New Letters on the Air, sharing writers’ voices and preserving decades of recorded literary history available open-access on their website.

Where to Submit Roundup: October 17, 2025

Happy Friday!
This week went down the tubes faster than you could think. What started out ok, got heavy and anxiety-riddled quite fast. Hopefully your week has been going much better. But if you’ve also had a rough week, it’s okay not be okay. To take a break, take a breath, try to shake off the stress.

I have been plotting out an idea for serialized fiction in this duration and one thing that kept coming to me was the idea of “so gravity” (lyrics from an emotional k-pop ballad by VeriVery) but the idea of that…what is attraction? What is gravity? That lyric kept orbiting in my head, and I started wondering: what is attraction, really? What is gravity beyond the pull of planets? That question became this week’s inspiration.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: October 17, 2025”