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Book Review :: House Bird by Robb Fillman

House Bird by Robb Fillman book cover image

Guest Post by Ron Mohring

Reading the poems in House Bird by Robb Fillman, I’m struck first by the conditional, how often the poems express hesitation: “as if,” “almost,” “half-believing,” “grip of hesitation.”

But it’s not doubt the voice expresses, but possibility:

“Then I imagine / what I would do differently” (“Toast”)
“He imagined the way he’d trail them” (“Summer Ending”)
“I see / that what they were offered was not quite / real” (Doo Wop Dream”)

This collection is deeply grounded in familial attachments, in parenthood and the small moments of daily life in and around the home (“My son’s hesitant Yes”) (“Promises”), moments made larger by Fillman’s attention, expanded by his imagination, so that what at first might seem tentative — “Probably by now, my friend / has recovered” (“Witness”) — reveals itself to be the product of close and sustained attention and imagination, the impulse to not only get it down, but to get it right. A fine debut.


House Bird by Robb Fillman. Terrapin Books, February 2022.

Reviewer bio: Ron Mohring is the founding editor of Seven Kitchens Press. His new poetry collection, The Boy Who Reads in the Trees, is forthcoming in 2023 from The Word Works

New Book :: Singing at High Altitude

Singing at High Altitude poetry by Jennifer Markell book cover image

Singing at High Altitude
Poetry by Jennifer Markell
Main Street Rag Publishing, November 2021

Jennifer Markell‘s work has appeared in publications including The Bitter Oleander, The Cimarron Review, Consequence Magazine, RHINO, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and The Women’s Review of Books. She serves on the board of the New England Poetry Club and is a long-standing member of the Jamaica Pond Poets. For the past twenty years, Jennifer has worked in community mental health and as a psychotherapist.

Continue reading “New Book :: Singing at High Altitude”

Magazine Stand :: Ruminate – Issue 61

Ruminate literary magazine cover image

After hurdling the pandemic paper shortage and understaffing at the printers, the Winter 2021-2022 issue of Ruminate is in the mail! Themed “Beginnings and Endings,” the issue features poems by Arah Ko (the 2021 poetry-prize winner), Christine Swint (runner-up), Jane Medved (honorable mention), and work from four additional finalists: Brian Holmes, Jed Myers, Bethany Swann, and Margaret Wack, as well as poems from Kim Garcia, Londeka Mdluli, Tyler Smith, Sarah Snyder, and Phillip Watts Brown. Fiction includes works by Catey Miller, Tega Oghenechovwen, and Fei Sun, and nonfiction “Friendship: A Haiku” by Cynthia Gralla. Some content is available to read on the Ruminate website. There’s also still time to make the May 1 deadline for their 2022 annual poetry contest. Maybe it will be your name here next year!

Where to Submit Round-up: April 8, 2022

This being the first full week of April makes it even harder to believe next week April is half over with already. Don’t let these deadlines pass you by! Keep your submission goals going strong.

Don’t forget newsletter subscribers get early access to new calls for submissions and writing contests. Plus, they also get a first look at our monthly eLitPak. April’s eLitPak is coming to inboxes next Wednesday! So what are you waiting for? Subscribe today.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Round-up: April 8, 2022”

New Book :: The Discarded Life

The Discarded Life by Adam Kirsch book cover image

The Discarded Life
Poetry by Adam Kirsch
Red Hen Press, May 2022

In this fourth collection of poems, Adam Kirsch shows how the experiences and recognitions of early life continue to shape us into adulthood. Richly evoking a 1980s childhood in Los Angeles, Kirsch uses Gen X landmarks—from Devo to Atari to the Challenger disaster—to tell a story of an emotional and artistic coming of age, exploring universal questions of meaning, mortality, and how we become who we are.

Book Review :: Radio Static by James Hoch

Radio Static by James Hoch book cover image

Guest Post by Carla Sarett

Recently, I have been reading chapbooks, partly as a happy result of submitting my own poetry to small presses. So it was my good fortune to select Radio Static by James Hoch, whose work is new to me. I can’t stop reading it now.   

In this sparse book, Hoch writes of his brother who served a long tour of duty in Afghanistan. (Hoch’s brother served from 2003 to 2021, and is now living in Idaho.) In one gorgeous poem entitled “Afghanistan,” the poet transforms his brother “into a Pashto prayer for what he has done” and Afghanistan into “a cough I clear.” In another poem, “Martins,” Hoch hears the “wind whistling through my brother.” The reader senses the truth of what brothers are, and the horror of what soldiers do and are left with.   

Every war creates its own brand of bitterness, its own unfinished business, and its own poetry. America has quit Afghanistan, but these poems will remind us of the men that war created and forgot. Radio Static will become part of this war’s legacy.


Radio Static by James Hoch. Green Linden Chapbook Series, December 2021.

Reviewer bio: Carla Sarett’s recent poems appear in Pithead Chapel, Quartet Journal, Neologism, and elsewhere. Her novel, A Closet Feminist was published in February 2022 by Unsolicited Press. Carla lives in San Francisco.

Magazine Stand :: Fictive Dream – March-April 2022

Fictive Dream short stories online logo

Open to year-round submissions, Fictive Dream publishes short stories “with a contemporary feel that give an insight into the human condition” in a beautiful, easy-to-access web format. Stories are posted regularly throughout the month based on contributions with e-mail updates sent to notify subscribers of updates (it’s free!). Recent stories include works by Kevin Brennan, David Butler, Gary Fincke, V.J. Hamilton, Gay Degani, Phil Cummins, Steve Cushman, Pamela Painter, Jo-Anne Cappeluti, and Cole Meyer.

New Book :: Future Library

Future Library Contemporary Indian Writing book cover image

Future Library: Contemporary Indian Writing
Ed. Anjum Hasan & Sampurna Chattarji
Red Hen Press, July 2022

This anthology brings together one hundred contemporary Indian poets and fiction writers working in English as well as translating from other Indian languages. Located anywhere from Michigan to Mumbai, the sources of their creativity range from the ancient epics to twentieth-century world literature, with themes suggesting a modernist individuality and sense of displacement as well as an ironic, postmodern embracing of multiple disjunctions. The editors present a historical background to the various Englishes apparent in this collection, while also identifying the shared traditions and contexts that hold together their uniquely diverse selection. In aiming at coherence rather than unity, Hasan and Chattarji reveal that the idea of Indianness is as much a means of exploring difference as finding common ground.

Magazine Stand :: Cleaver – Issue 37

Cleaver literary magazine cover image

Cleaver: Philadelphia’s International Literary Magazine has a lot to offer its global readership, including an online Zoom Contributors Reading on April 24 (register to attend). Contributors to the online Spring 2022 issue include stories by Colette Parris, Charlotte Moretti, Eric Rasmussen, AJ Strosahl, Michelle Ross, Ann Stoney, poems by William Erickson, Ronda Broatch, Phillip Schaefer, Robin Neidorf, Quinn Rennerfeldt, flash by Lisa Lebduska, Windy Lynn Harris, Cristina Trapani-Scott, Amy R. Martin, Candace Hartsuyker, Jessica Klimesh, Louella Lester, creative nonfiction by Gregory Emilio, Richard Casimir, Gwen Mullins, visual narrative (comix) by Jennifer Hayden and art by Bette Ridgeway. Cover image by Karen Rile.

Call :: Kings River Review Fall 2022 Issue

Kings River Review logo

Deadline: October 15, 2022
The Kings River Review publishes artwork, creative nonfiction, short fiction, and poetry of current 2-year community college students. Submission Deadlines: October 15 for the fall issue and April 1 for the spring issue. Submission requirements: up to 5 pieces of artwork and photography sent as .JPEG files; creative nonfiction and fiction of up to 3,000 words; and up to 5 poems. Go to kingsriverreview.com for full submission guidelines.

New Book :: Breaking Into Air

Breaking Into Air by Emily Wall book cover image

Breaking Into Air
Poetry by Emily Wall
Boreal Books, June 2022

Poet Emily Wall began collecting birth stories after the birth of her third child, Lucy. She realized that women were always quietly sharing their stories—in living rooms with a mug of tea, or whispered at the preschool playground. She saw the intensity with which women listened to each other’s stories. They were shared, remembered, retold, but not collected, not treated as the art form they are. Wall began asking for and collecting birth stories: women sent her emails, handed her their journals, and recorded their own voices. She collected stories from a lesbian couple, a story from an indigenous father who is fighting for his language, and a story from a grandmother. Some of the stories are about difficult and painful births: a woman who had a miscarriage, a woman unable to get pregnant. And some of the stories are beautiful: a birth in water that happened exactly as the mother dreamed it would. Wall has taken these stories and shaped them into poems, and then into this collection, offering the reader a look into the story that women, for centuries, have been quietly sharing with each other. Published by Boreal Books, an imprint of Red Hen Press, established in 2008 to promote literature and fine art from Alaska.

Contest :: 2022 Curt Johnson Prose Awards

december contest graphic

Deadline: May 1, 2022
december seeks submissions for our 2022 Curt Johnson Prose Awards in fiction and creative nonfiction. Prizes each genre—$1,500 & publication (winner); $500 & publication (honorable mention). All finalists will be listed in the 2022 Fall/Winter awards issue. The $20 entry fee includes a copy of the awards issue. Submit one story or essay up to 8,000 words deadline May 1. Complete guidelines at our website.

Call :: Oyster River Pages Seeks Submissions for Annual Issue

Oyster River Pages logo

Deadline: May 31, 2022
Oyster River Pages
is a literary and artistic collective seeking submissions for our annual issue that stretch creative and social boundaries. In addition to submissions of fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and visual arts, we also seek to promote new voices in our Emerging Voices Poetry and Emerging Voices Fiction sections. We believe in the power of art to connect people to their own and others’ humanity, something we see as especially important during these tumultuous times. Because of this, we seek to feature artists whose voices have been historically de-centered or marginalized. Please see www.oysterriverpages.com for submission details.

New Book :: I Wanna Be Loved By You

I Wanna Be Loved By You poetry anthology book cover image

I Wanna Be Loved By You
Poems on Marilyn Monroe
Edited by Susana H. Case and Margo Taft Stever
Milk & Cake Press, January 2022

This anthology compiles poems about Marilyn Monroe from an array of contemporary poets, among them Gwendolyn Brooks, Ted Berrigan, and Frank O’Hara, and includes a poem by Marilyn Monroe herself. The introduction by Lois Banner provides context for the life of the iconic American celebrity, while the poems gathered here demonstrate Monroe’s cultural and emotional impact. Profits from the sale of this anthology will be donated to RAINN.

Magazine Stand :: Society of Classical Poets Journal – March 2022

Society of Classical Poets Journal literary magazine cover image

Posting works on a rolling basis throughout each month, now is your chance to catch up on all the March 2022 Society of Classical Poets Journal contributors, including poetry and essays by Susan Jarvis Bryant, Russel Winick, Phillip Whidden, Shaun C. Duncan, Joseph S. Salemi, Jack DesBois, Cheryl Corey, Lucia Haase, Margaret Coats, Rohini Sunderam, Phil S. Rogers, Norma Pain, C.B. Anderson, Sally Cook, David Watt, Tamara Beryl Latham, Leland James, Satyananda Sarangi, Brian Yapko, James A. Tweedie, Karen Darantière, Peggy Everett, Gregory Ross, Martin Rizley, and Michael Charles Maibach. The Society of Classical Poets Journal also has unique features, like “Henry Olunga Reads Susan Jarvis Bryant’s Poem on Toxic Masculinity,” and regular invitations for readers to contribute works to celebrate holidays or comment on current events, such as inviting poets to share their poetry in response to the still-unfolding Russo-Ukrainian War. All content is free to access online, but signing up to become a member entitles you to a copy of the annual journal as well as receiving a round of feedback on your poetry from Editor Evan Mantyk.

Book Review :: Pocket Universe by Nancy Reddy

Pocket Universe by Nancy Reddy book cover image

Guest Post by Jami Macarty

Nancy Reddy’s Pocket Universe confronts the bloody battle of birth, namely a child’s and when a “woman becomes a mother,” but there are other kinds of births, too, within obstetrics, child development, and because the word birth doubles as transition—“into the next life.” The collection opens with the 16th century practice of male doctors moving “between delivery room and morgue,” which put women’s lives at grave risk before epidemiology revealed the necessity of washing hands to prevent communicable disease. From some history of birth, birthing medicine and practices, the poems move to the “failings / of our postpartum bodies” and perinatal anxieties and realities, where the “baby teaches me / I am not what I thought.” The poems of the third section deal with hauntings: “The ghosts of all those women” who lost children in childbirth, including the poet’s grandmother, and the fears particular to a mother of sons. Women’s legitimate “catalog of grievances” continues “inside the long future” of motherhood and marriage in the book’s fourth section, where the poet wonders “if domestic has to be / the opposite of desire.” To answer herself: “inside this mother’s body / / there’s a woman in here still.” Stitched throughout the collection is the enormous responsibility placed on and the shocking disregard for women, often blamed for experiencing pain during childbirth and “perinatal mood and anxiety disorders” in the birth “history written by a man.” This is poetry that admits: “It is so hard / to live inside a body,” and yet “our collective unbearable luck” of “[t]he new world’s not / an unmixed blessing.” Ultimately, Reddy’s is a celebration of this “blessed and lucky life.”


Pocket Universe by Nancy Reddy. Louisiana State University Press, March 2022.

Jami Macarty is the author of The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona, and three chapbooks, including Mind of Spring (Vallum, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. Jami’s writing has been honored by financial support from Arizona Commission on the Arts, British Columbia Arts Council, and by editors at magazines such as The Capilano Review, Concision Poetry Journal, Interim, Redivider, Vallum, and Volt, where Jami’s poems are forthcoming.

Magazine Stand :: The Lake – April 2022

The Lake logo

The newest issue of The Lake journal of poetry and reviews is now online featuring Brent Cantwell, Julian Dobson, Stephen House, Ann Iversen, Rustin Larson, Jennifer A. McGowan, Kirsty Niven, Hannah Stone, Sarah White. Reviews include Marc Totterdell’s Mollusc and Marilyn L. Taylor’s Outside the Frame: New and Selected Poems. There is also a new feature called “One Poem Review,” which the editors describe as “just that: One poem featured from a new book/pamphlet along with a cover JPG and a link to the publisher’s website: as a way to help poets’ works reach a wider audience.” This month’s One Poem Review is “Self-Portrait: Between the Car and the Sea” from Elaine Sexton’s collection Drive. Visit The Lake website for more details.

New Book :: Tower

Tower Stories by Andy Plattner book cover image

Tower: Stories
Fiction by Andy Plattner
Mercer University Press, April 2022

The characters in this collection of stories by Andy Plattner, Assistant Professor of English at Kennesaw State Universit, move through their lives with the sense that something is missing. When attempting to fill the void, they discover that the problem isn’t what’s missing, the problem invariably has to do with a truth they’ve been trying to avoid.

Continue reading “New Book :: Tower”

Magazine Stand :: New England Review – 43.1

New England Review literary magazine cover image

Twenty-nine writers and translators fill out the pages of the Spring 2022 New England Review, including poetry by Sally Wen Mao, Keith S. Wilson, Rosalie Moffett, and Megan Fernandes, fiction by Rob Franklin and Ann Menendez, and essays by Kim McLarin, Sara Michas-Martin, and Robert Anthony Siegel. Visit the New England Review website to learn more about this issue and how you can subscribe.

Contest :: 2022 Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize now Open for Submissions

line art red wheelbarrow on white background

Deadline: July 31, 2022
RED WHEELBARROW POETRY PRIZE 2022: Judged by Juan Felipe Herrera! $1,000 for first place and a letterpress broadside printed by Felicia Rice of Moving Parts Press, $500 for second, $250 for third. Top five published in Red Wheelbarrow Literary Magazine. Submit up to 3 original, unpublished poems. $15 entry fee. Deadline: July 31, 2022. For complete guidelines, see redwheelbarrow.submittable.com/submit.

Magazine Stand :: Brilliant Flash Fiction – March 2022

Brilliant Flash Fiction logo

Brilliant Flash Fiction Publishes quarterly at the end of January, March, June, and September, and this quarter’s issue features writers Jessika Grewe Glover, Wim Hylen, Annabel White, Lindsey Harrington, Simon J. Plant, Roberta Beary, Daniel DeRock, Helen Sinoradzki, and Salvatore Difalco. All content is free to read online with subscriptions (also free) providing email updates with individual stories. The archives are also easy to access, and there is a no-fee, cash-prize writing contest that closes on April 15, 2022, judged by Pamela Painter. What are you waiting for? Go check them out!

New Book :: Zero Point Poiesis

Zero Points Poiesis book cover image

Zero Point Poiesis: Essays on George Quasha’s Axial Art
Edited by Burt Kimmelman
Aporeia, June 2022

Published by Aporeia, an imprint of Marsh Hawk Press, Zero Points Poiesis gathers essays by writers Vyt Bakaitis, William Benton, Edward S. Casey, Chris Funkhouser, Matt Hill, Andrew Joron, Robert Kelly, Burt Kimmelman, Kimberly Lyons, Cheryl Pallant, Tamas Panitz, Carter Ratcliff, Gary Shapiro, and Charles Stein who elucidate George Quasha’s unique achievement as poet, artist, and thinker. They’re complemented by Thomas Fink’s interview with the poet on the poetics of preverbs, an introduction by Burk Kimmelman, and forward by Jerome McGann.

Book Review :: Imago, Dei by Elizabeth Johnston Abrose

Imago Dei by Elizabeth Johnston Abrose book cover image

Guest Post by Nicholas Michael Ravnikar

With a comma that interrupts a Latin phrase etched in Christian history, Elizabeth Johnston Abrose’s Imago, Dei offers disjunction to give worn tropes new context. This deliberate juxtaposition rejuvenates the flat and stale of tradition.

A cycle of eighteen poems in free verse, the collection’s pieces each center in the third person on an unnamed female. Like the larva that becomes caterpillar that becomes chrysalis to become an adult – or imago – moth or butterfly, she is both identical with and different from her other incarnations.

Cited quotations in epigraph from both entomological and biblical literature underscore a tone of scholarly detachment and/or posture of dissociation. References to insects in the garden spin a theme of metamorphosis to encompass, which reinvigorates the classical Greek spiritual depiction of Psyche as butterfly.

Across its arc, the chapbook teases out narrative threads of youth marked by all-too-common traumas of evangelical Christianity: shamed sexuality, abuse masquerading as discipline in the guise of the father, a concomitant confusion of pain with love. For those considering such traumas from personal experience to reflect on the substance of religion’s impact on their lives, this collection, while perhaps triggering, may serve to reaffirm and validate.

Imago, Dei by Elizabeth Johnston Ambrose. Rattle Poetry, February 2022.

Nicholas Michael Ravnikar is a neurodivergent writer of poems, plays and fiction who is presently disabled. Previously employed as a college prof, copy editor, bathtub repair technician, substance abuse prevention agency success coach and marketing specialist, he lives in Racine, WI with his partner and their children. Connect with him on social media and get free chapbooks at bio.fm/nicholasmichaelravnikar.

Magazine Stand :: Superpresent – 2.2

Superpresent literary art magazine cover image

The spring 2022 issue of Superpresent: A Magazine of the Arts is available for reading online, PDF download, or print purchase. Responding to the theme “private/public” were over three dozen contributors, including writers Duncan Forbes, Leah Halper, Gemini Wahhaj, Carole Glasser Langille, Sarah Legow, Heikki Houtari, Luke Roe, Timothy Resau, Jennifer Moses, and Audra Burwell, artists Kelly Wang, Hau Huang, Wanyu An, Mariana Jimenz, and Jessie Cunningham-Reid. There are also films by Hanna Henson and Michael Henderson, viewable via embeds, links, and QR codes.

New Book :: Dancing Mockingbird

Dancing Mockingbird by Steven Dale Davison book cover image

Dancing Mockingbird
Poetry by Steven Dale Davison
Kelsay Books, February 2022

Dancing Mockingbird is one of several books coming out this year from journalist and professional writer Steven Dale Davison. The poems in this collection offer readers a meditation on the natural world and the feelings and insights they evoke. The works are grouped in sections for mountains, animals, and bodies of water under such labels as The Rail of Silence, A Vast Nest, Extra Terra, Elementals, and Speak the Lake. Interlogos – love poem interludes – are nestled between each section, and a Prologos and Epilogos complete the reader’s journey.

Book Review :: IN. by Will McPhail

IN. by Will McPhail book cover image

Guest Post by Kevin Brown

I’ll start by saying that IN. by Will McPhail is not just one of the best graphic novels I’ve read in a long time; it’s one of the best books I’ve read in a long time.

The plot is simple: readers follow Nick, an illustrator, as he tries to truly connect with people. We see montages of his daily life, moving from one wonderfully-parodied coffee shop to another, and his superficial interactions with neighbors and strangers, as well as his mother and sister. His internal monologue shows his desire to have a meaningful conversation with them, but he is unable to bring himself to do so.

When he finally breaks through and has a brief, but real, conversation with a plumber repairing a toilet, he begins to find the ability to connect with more and more people. In those moments, the art dramatically changes, moving from basic black and white sketches to larger, full-color, imagistic scenes that represent the joy and responsibility he feels in those moments.

He also meets and begins dating Wren. While he becomes able to connect with more people in his life, he is unable to have an honest conversation with her. Their relationship falters because of a tragedy occurring in Nick’s life, one that ultimately enables him to find a true and meaningful connection that could last the rest of his life.

After two years of a pandemic that has separated people and forced us to find creative ways to build and sustain relationships, this graphic novel feels like exactly what we need. McPhail reminds us that our lives are too brief to spend on the surface, and we should dive deep into our relationships while we have the time.


IN. by Will McPhail. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, June 2021.

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. You can find out more about him and his work on Twitter at @kevinbrownwrite or at http://kevinbrownwrites.weebly.com/.

Book Review :: The Fine Art of Losing Control by Ashley Shepherd

The Fine Art of Losing Control by Ashley Shepherd book cover image

Guest Post by Diana De Jesus

In Ashley Shepherd’s The Fine Art of Losing Control, Willa Loveridge’s world is falling apart. She is failing her Foundations of Western Art class, her ex-boyfriend shares intimate photos with his friends, a roommate hates her, and her step-father and mother are occupying themselves with the upcoming arrival of their new baby. Lastly, she learns the father she never met suddenly emerges to pay for her college tuition.

To reclaim control, Willa heads to New Zealand to track down her father. However, the flight to Queenstown makes an emergency landing at Christchurch Airport. Desperate, she decides to tag along with Daphne Purcell, a YouTube sensation, she meets on the plane.

From the onset, Willa and Daphne hitchhike and get into a caravan with a cult, then escape and later hop onto another van, this time with Tosh, a popular Korean actor, and Ollie, a Scottish kid who is attached to his guitar and challenges Willa in every way.

During her journey to find her father, Willa never imagines the lessons, friendships, and romance that will develop. Gradually, she gets out of her comfort zone and discerns she cannot control everything but rather allow events to unfold naturally.

The Fine Art of Losing Control by Ashley Shepherd. Semisweet Fiction, 2019.

Reviewer bio: Diana De Jesus is an educator from Queens, NY. She is a fan of books, 80’s music to rock out to, and old television shows. Additionally, she has a blog she is still very slowly and surely updating. (dianereadsandreviews.wordpress.com)

Books Received April 2022

NewPages receives many wonderful titles each month to share with our readers. You can read more about some of these titles by clicking on the “Books” tag under “Popular Topics.”

Fiction
American Blues: A Novel, Polly Hamilton Hilsabeck, She Writes Press
How to Adjust to the Dark: A Novella, Rebecca van Laer, Long Day Press
Chances in Disguise, Diana J. Noble, Pinata Books
Vincent Ventura and the Curse of the Weeping Woman, Xavier Garza, Pinata Books
Evangelina Everyday, Dawn Burns, Cornerstone Press
Aftershock: A Novel, George H. Wolfe, Livingston Press
The High Price of Freeways, Judy Juanita, Livingston Press
Halley’s Comet, Hannes Barnard, Catalyst Press
Disruption: New Short Fiction from South Africa, Ed. Rachel Zadok, Karina Szczurek, Jason Mykl Snyman, Catalyst Press
On My Papa’s Shoulders, Niki Daly, Catalyst Press
The Cedarville Shop and the Wheelbarrow Swap, Bridget Krone, Catalyst Press
Fly High, Lolo, Niki Daly, Catalyst Press
The History of Man, Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, Catalyst Press
The Distortions, Christopher Linforth, Orison Books
Have I Said Too Much?, Carmen Delzell, Paycock Press
Your Nostalgia is Killing Me, John Weir, Red Hen Press
Seasons of Purgatory, Shahriar Mandanipour, Bellevue Literary Press

Continue reading “Books Received April 2022”

Book Review :: The Damage Done by Susana H. Case

The Damage Done by Susana Case book cover image

Guest Post by Jami Macarty

In The Damage Done, Susana H. Case creates a poetic noir, “drawn from the history of the FBI in the 1960s and 1970s,” where “[a]ll kinds of things / spin out of control,” where “anything could happen.” Like all noir, the book opens with a dead body: Janey’s, a fictionalized amalgam of a Twiggy-like supermodel and a girlfriend of one of “the Panthers.” Janey’s unsolved death becomes a means for the poet to speak about the objectification of women—in life and death—as well as those implicated in the death of a woman. The woman’s death also becomes a means for the poet to speak about prejudice and corruption within the NYPD and FBI, whose detectives and agents exploit Janey’s death, using it as justification to coerce information, plant evidence, and initiate “warrantless taps.” The authorities insist that “people / don’t always know what they know.” They abuse their power with impunity: “It can be arranged that the wrong one / is fingered, a natural patsy.” This is a book about the power “of information, of disinformation”; a book about power games: “play or get out of the game.” This is a book about collateral damage to the lives of women and Black people: “(Witnesses always see a black man.) / So what if the law implicates the wrong / man, the cops argue, sooner or later / / he’d do something bad—think of picking / him up as a sort of prevention detention.” In the end, the lawman is the one who has the privilege; he “wonders whether / walking away is all you can do,” and he gets to live and to walk away. But, Susana H. Case joins the revolutionaries of the 60s and 70s, whose causes are just as poignant now.


The Damage Done by Susana H. Case. Broadstone Books, February 2022.

Jami Macarty is the author of The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona, and three chapbooks, including Mind of Spring (Vallum, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. Jami’s writing has been honored by financial support from Arizona Commission on the Arts, British Columbia Arts Council, and by editors at magazines such as The Capilano Review, Concision Poetry Journal, Interim, Redivider, Vallum, and Volt, where Jami’s poems are forthcoming.

Where to Submit Round-up: April 1, 2022

crop faceless woman dipping pen in inkwell
Photo by Angela Roma on Pexels.com

Happy April! We are still awaiting nice weather to decide to show up and stay instead of snowing, freezing, and raining and going back and forth between cold and warmish temperatures in a single day. If you’re stuck in bad weather blues, too. Use this time to keep writing, editing, and submitting.

Check out the submission opportunities featured on NewPages this week and don’t forget that when you subscribe to our weekly newsletter you get first access. And if you missed our announcement, we are once again open to submissions of flash reviews. Please check out our updated guidelines and consider sending a review our way (no fee!).

Continue reading “Where to Submit Round-up: April 1, 2022”