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!
Happy Friday and happy February. It’s time to discover new and ongoing submission opportunities with our Weekly Roundup for the week of February 3, 2023.
It’s our first official roundup for February so that means there are quite a few new opportunities to explore.
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Publishing open access online in cycles of eight to ten weeks with short breaks between, the newly established Intrepidus Ink lives up to its name. From the Latin, intrepidus characterizes resolute fearlessness, fortitude, and endurance. Editor-in-Chief Rhonda Schlumpberger wanted to showcase “alarmingly individual characters through a distinct lens of intrepid culture, not subordinate to other themes, with words that are gutsy and characters who overcome in big and small ways. Our stories tell our tale.” To that end, the publication focuses on flash fiction 300–1,000 words and short stories of 1,500–2,500 words.
Schlumpberger’s background is its own intrepidus tale, as she shares, “I’m a Midwest farmer’s daughter who liked climbing silos to watch the sunset and later joined the Air Force and watched setting suns around the world. I completed my career in the military and worked in molecular diagnostics sales and sales leadership for eight years before abandoning my traveling ways to pursue writing.” She earned an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University (emphasis: speculative fiction, romance) and an MA in English and Creative Writing from Southern New Hampshire University, where she also studied professional editing. She was an Editor at Orion’s Belt Magazine, a Priority Editor at Flash Fiction Magazine, and an intern at Entangled Publishing. She currently reads for Space and Time Magazine.
Continue reading “New Lit on the Block :: Intrepidus Ink”
Under Sleep’s New Moon: Rescued Poems 1970-1990 by Joseph Hutchison
NYQ Books, September 2021
The road a poet travels is often littered with unrealized fragments, half-realized drafts, and unfinished poems that found their ways into a magazine but never earned their way into a book. If a poet is lucky, a few such left-behinds might be “rescued,” released into their true form thanks to abilities that have ripened over many years of practice. In Under Sleep’s New Moon, Joseph Hutchison (Colorado Poet Laureate, 2014-2019) offers a range of such poems, all rescued from twenty years of writing between 1970-1990. The poems in this new/old collection are by turns personal and public, surreal and naturalistic, musical and plain-spoken. But all explore the liminal regions we live in every day, too often unconscious of what we’re finding there. What this poet found there he has lifted into new configurations, where at last the poems can speak for themselves.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
Steam Ticket: A Third Coast Review Spring 2022 is the newest issue of the annual, nationally-distributed journal from the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse. Founded by the English Department in 1996, a dedicated staff of student editors and readers publish the best poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction they can get their hands on. Volume 25 features a craft talk from Joy Harjo, as well as excerpts from craft talks given by numerous writers who have visited U. Wisconsin LaCrosse over the years, such as Brian Turner, Jaki Shelton Green, John McNally, Jesse Lee Kercheval, Robert Lopez, Sam Ligon, and Max Garland. This issue also features new work by authors from six countries, including work from Ukrainian poet Dmitry Bilzniuk, and 22 U.S. States. Award-winning authors and first-time writers are published side by side.
To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
The Kenyon Review’s Winter 2023 issue marks their return to a quarterly publication schedule and the debut of their new magazine design [Gorgeous!], with cover and logo by Janet Hansen and interior design by Sebit Min. It includes a folio of fiction guest edited by Laura van den Berg and Paul Yoon, who selected stories by Tom Comitta, Anna Hartford, Amina Kayani, hurmat kazmi, Danny Lang-Perez, and Sarp Sozdinler. Readers will also find nonfiction by Robert Finch and Diane Mehta; poetry by Megan Fernandes, William Logan, and Maria Zoccola; plus the winner of the 2022 Nonfiction Contest judged by Maggie Nelson, and so much more. The vibrant cover art is a detail of Justify by Krista Franklin, and inside the issue is a ten-page, full-color portfolio of art by Jordan Seaberry.
To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
Swallowing Stones by Lisa St. John
Kelsay Books, January 2023
Swallowing Stones is Lisa St. John’s debut book of poetry in which she explores the process of finding a space for grief and regaining joy. Free verse and formal poems collaborate with philosophy and art to tell the story of a widow’s discovery in finding her place in the world again. From “Stomping My Foot,” St. John begins, “I want to channel some of this horror into poetry.” And later, “Give me back the world / of Mexican beaches / and the two of us dancing / alone / late at night / before bed.” Poems that beckon, beg, promise, and deliver.
Lisa St. John lives in the Hudson Valley of upstate New York, where she calls the Catskill Mountains home. Her chapbook, Ponderings, was published by Finishing Line Press, and she has published her poetry in many journals and anthologies. Her poems have won several awards such as The Bermuda Triangle Prize and New Millenium Writing. Her essays and memoir excerpts have been published in magazines and nonfiction collections.
Posit: A Journal of Literature and Art issue 32 offers readers much to cozy into as the winter months settle in around us: new poetry and prose by Michael Brosnan, C Culbertson, Elisabeth Adwin Edwards, Sean Ennis, Peter Gurnis, Dennis Hinrichsen, Andrew Levy, Rahana K. Ismail, Jean Kane, and Julie Marie Wade; text + image by Francesco Levato and Laura Moriarty; and painting, collage, and ceramic sculpture by Ron Baron, Sue Havens, and Jill Moser.
To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
Guest Post by Kevin Brown
In Easy Beauty: A Memoir, Chloé Cooper Jones shares that she was born with sacral agenesis, a congenital condition that affects her stature and the way she walks. While her memoir focuses on the physical pain she suffers, she is more interested in examining how others see her and how she sees herself. She travels to a variety of locations, often under the guise of doing research—as when she travels to Cambodia to explore why people visit monuments to horrific events—but really to think through her self-image, largely shaped by how others see her as different and lesser-than. Her son’s view of her complicates this search, as she doesn’t want to communicate her emotional discomfort at moving through the world to him (doctors had told her she was unable to get pregnant, so her having a child at all was not a development she expected). Throughout the work, she explores beauty and the myths that have accrued around it, whether that’s through classical art or watching Roger Federer play tennis. While her writing and travels help her develop an idea of beauty that includes her and her view of the world, ultimately her relationships help her find the beauty she already possesses.
Easy Beauty by Chloé Cooper Jones. Avid Reader Press, April 2022.
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. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite or kevinbrownwrites.weebly.com/.
Field Guide to the Human Condition by Adrian S. Potter
CW Books, November 2022
In this newest poetry collection, In Field Guide to the Human Condition, Adrian S. Potter explores how one rebuilds oneself after grief, heartbreak, and challenges. He offers poems that focus on the setbacks and struggles that have the capacity to mold a person into a different version of themselves than the one they once knew. The poems are about grappling with histories, both personal and collective. Potter uses hallmarks from modern life – pop music, discrimination, shifting identities, and toxic relationships – to construct a hall of mirrors, in which each viewpoint reflects a different possibility. Sample poems are available to read on the publisher’s website.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
The Winter 2023 issue of Months To Years marks its five-year publishing anniversary! The editors express, “We are so grateful to you and the community that has grown around Months To Years. When we began, we sought to create both a literary community and a resource for those facing grief. We hope you have found some comfort in what we’ve created.”
This issue brings readers the work of twenty-six creators, consisting of ten pieces of nonfiction, twelve poems, and four visual works. All explore both the universality and unique-to-each-person aspects of death, grief, and loss. Months To Years can be accessed in a variety of digital versions—which include an online flip book, a downloadable PDF, and a web-based experience of each creative work—all available for free. Glossy magazine hard copies can be purchased on the publication’s website via third-party vendor Blurb. A small portion of each hard copy sale helps support the magazine’s work as a nonprofit.
To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
In the War Zone of the Heart: Willie Cuesta Mystery Stories by John Lantigua
Arte Público Press, September 2022
This collection of twelve stories featuring private investigator Willie Cuesta illuminates the histories and issues of the numerous Latin American communities that call Miami home—and how the past continues to haunt them. There’s a family concerned that their mother’s new fiancé isn’t the former Cuban political prisoner and hero he claims to be; a heavily tattooed Salvadoran gang member in hiding from the vicious former colleagues hunting him; a beautiful Haitian woman being stalked by a killer who uses voodoo to stoke her nightmares; and a wealthy American who made his fortune in Guatemala on the backs of its people and is now receiving death threats from his victims.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
Black Women Writers at Work ed Cladia Tate
Haymarket Books, January 2023
Long out of print, Black Women Writers at Work remains a vital contribution to Black literature. Through candid interviews with Maya Angelou, Toni Cade Bambara, Gwendolyn Brooks, Alexis De Veaux, Nikki Giovanni, Kristin Hunter, Gayl Jones, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, Margret Walker, and Sherley Anne Williams, the book highlights the practices and critical linkages between the work and lived experiences of Black women writers whose work laid the foundation for many who have come after. Responding to questions about why and for whom they write, and how they perceive their responsibility to their work, to others, and to society, the featured playwrights, poets, novelists, and essayists provide a window into the connections between their lives and their art. Finally available for a new generation, this classic work has an urgent message for readers and writers today.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
Taking the F Train by Linda Lerner
NYQ Books, October 2021
In Linda Lerner’s Taking the F Train, a New York City poet rides the F Train through the final years of the 20th century into the 21st; both gentrification and technology are rapidly transforming life as she has known it. Her old haunts – cafés, bookstores, diners, are being replaced by luxury co-ops. There are also losses due to illness and aging – those of others as well her own. And it’s not ok, she cries out! At the same time, for every push forward into the future, she’s witnessing an opposite push back into the past by the so-called leader of the free world. Nothing makes sense to her anymore. There’s only what can be salvaged by art…the act of creation.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
Guest Post by Kevin Brown
Jem Calder’s collection of interlocking short stories in Reward System follows a group of British Millennials, focusing on Julia and Nick, as they try to navigate relationships, technology, and jobs during the approaching pandemic. Calder renders his characters with sympathy and compassion, even when they make poor decisions, given the challenges they face. Julia and Nick (and their friends) live with roommates or their parents, move from one job to the next—sometimes by choice, sometimes not—and try to find ways to truly connect with those around them. Society exacerbates all of these problems, whether the structural oppression women (especially) push against or the technology that more often separates than connects (though not always). This focus on technology works especially well in the stories “Distraction from Sadness Is Not the Same Thing as Happiness” and “The Foreseeable.” In “Distraction” a female user of a dating app connects with and meets a male user (Calder uses no names), exploring the new dating landscape, for good and ill. “The Foreseeable” ends the collection, as Julia and Nick are both sheltering with their parents during the pandemic—one more enjoyably than the other—while talking via FaceTime. The connection keeps breaking in and out, a metaphor for all of the relationships in this collection.
Reward System by Jem Calder. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, July 2022.
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. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite or kevinbrownwrites.weebly.com/.
Happy Friday. It’s that time of the week again. Check out new and ongoing submission opportunities with our Weekly Roundup for the week of January 27, 2023.
It’s our last roundup of January. Hard to believe February is here next week already. Don’t forget to take a gander at our Big List of Writing Contests so you don’t miss an early February deadline.
Want early access to these opportunities, many before they go live on our website? Become a paid subscriber to our weekly newsletter. The cost is just $5 a month or you can subscribe for a year for only $50.
Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: January 27, 2023”
Until All You See Is Sky by George Choundas
EastOver Press, February 2023
This collection of essays by George Choundas is a report from the front lines of a first-generation American life: growing up as the outsider, parenting without a clue, and persevering in plague times. Choundas’s award-winning writing has appeared in over 75 publications. His story collection, The Making Sense of Things (FC2), won the Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize. He is a former FBI agent who worked public corruption in the Bureau’s New York Office. His mother, born in Cuba, was a flyer at Macy’s Manhattan flagship until she saved enough to travel Europe for a year. His father, born in Greece, was a tanker captain who, aboard a passenger ship transporting him to his next command, met an engaging American tourist with a Cuban accent.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
Tending Iowa’s Land: Pathways to a Sustainable Future ed Cornelia F. Mutel
University of Iowa Press, December 2022
In the last 200 years, Iowa’s prairies and other wildlands have been transformed into vast agricultural fields. This massive conversion has provided us with food, fiber, and fuel in abundance. But it has also robbed Iowa’s land of its native resilience and created the environmental problems that today challenge our everyday lives: polluted waters, increasing floods, loss and degradation of rich prairie topsoil, compromised natural systems, and now climate change. In a straightforward, friendly style, Iowa’s premier scientists and experts consider what has happened to our land and outline viable solutions that benefit agriculture as well as the state’s human and wild residents. Mutel is author of The Emerald Horizon: The History of Nature in Iowa (Iowa, 2008) and A Sugar Creek Chronicle: Observing Climate Change from a Midwestern Woodland (Iowa, 2016). She is the former senior science writer at IIHR–Hydroscience & Engineering at the University of Iowa College of Engineering and lives in Iowa City, Iowa.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
As new publications cross our screens daily here at NewPages, we are always on the lookout for what makes this newest venture noteworthy. Turns out, New Note Poetry leaps the bar for being a publication readers and writers will want to explore. Publishing seasonal quarterly issues online, New Note Poetry is free for readers as well as writers.
Founding Editor Nathan Nicolau shares the dual inspiration behind the publication and the name. “’New Note’ is a riff on Blue Note Records, the popular jazz record label that was my biggest inspiration, and I wanted to make a publication that added a ‘new note’ to poetry, reflecting the experimental, avant-garde nature of the magazine.”
Continue reading “New Lit on the Block :: New Note Poetry”
Guest Post by Kevin Brown
I was expecting Chuck Klosterman’s The Nineties: A Book to bring back vivid memories from the decade I spent in college and graduate school; what I wasn’t expecting was how Klosterman would present the decade’s events, culture, and people differently than I remembered them. Klosterman covers what most readers would expect: the elections—ranging from Ross Perot’s role in 1992 to the Supreme Court’s role in 2000—the rise of the internet; the music that changed the decade, whether Nirvana or Tupac; the stereotypes and reality of Generation X; the video store’s impact on movie making; the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet empire; major news events, such as the Anita Hill accusations, the Columbine shooting, and the O.J. Simpson trial. Where Klosterman shines, though, is in repositioning what he discusses, asking questions about why nineteen percent of the country voted for Ross Perot (full disclosure: I was one of those, and, yes, I regretted it within a year), how the nineties were more about the potential of the Internet than the Internet itself, and how George H.W. Bush lost the 1992 election after having the highest approval rating in history the year before. Rather than a walk through nostalgia, Klosterman helps redefine how we should view the nineties.
The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman. Penguin Books, January 2023.
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. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite or kevinbrownwrites.weebly.com/.
Complete Poems 1965-2020 by Michael Butterworth
Space Cowboy Books, February 2023
Across Michael Butterworth’s work, elements are reiterated but endlessly transfigured – hitchhiking girlfriends, elm trees, the moon, astronauts, the space race, collage artists, misophonia, marriage, divorce, beached whales, clifftops, the sea, the seasons, mental block, ale houses, the chemical laboratory, ambition, madness, pain, death and impermanence, silver birch trees, suicide, Zazen, riots, train seating indicators, camping, the Welfare State, crows and seagulls, the racist English and Canada geese… are some of his subjects. The subjects of destruction – war, the consumer society, ‘progress’, humanity’s inhumanity, the doings of men (and the necessity of a new woman), galactic war, drug wars, hunting – are never far away, hopefully countered by the tone of optimism found in his later poems inspired by Buddhist philosophy. The effect is at once familiar and yet profound, in language that has the confessional qualities and simplicity of early influences such as Sylvia Plath and the Beats, and the later influence of Zen poets such as Ryōkan. Occasionally the writing is startlingly radical – a reminder of the poet’s beginnings in the New Wave. A collection such as this one from Space Cowboy Books is overdue, and Complete Poems: 1965-2020 brings to more deserving attention a less-heard voice in modern poetry.
NewPages receives many wonderful literary magazine and alternative magazine titles each month to share with our readers. You can read more about some of these titles by clicking on the “New Mag Issues” under NewPages Blog or Mags. Find out more about many of these titles with our Guide to Literary Magazines and our Big List of Literary Magazines and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed here or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay the most up to date on all things literary!
Able Muse, Winter 2022/2923
American Poetry Review, January/February 2023
Anomaly, 35
Arkansas Review, August 2022
Blue Collar Review, Fall 2022
Brevity, January 2023
Catamaran, Winter 2022
Chestnut Review, Winter 2023
Cleaver, 40
Concho River Review, Fall/Winter 2022
december, Fall/Winter 2022
Five Points, v21 n3
Camas, Winter 2022
Cholla Needles, 74
Communities, Winter 2022
Corvus Review, 19
Driftwood 2023 Anthology
Palooka is an international literary magazine of unique fiction, poetry, nonfiction, artwork, photography, and graphic narratives. They’ve featured writers, artists, and photographers from United States, Canada, Australia, India, United Kingdom, Japan, Spain, Pakistan, China, France, Ireland, South Korea, Israel, Finland, Croatia, Brazil, Italy, and Austria. This newest issue features fiction by Jack Harrell, Shome Dasgupta, Michael Loyd Gray; poetry by Rachel R. Baum, Joel Peckham, Pamela Manasco, Sage Ravenwood; a graphic essay by Naomi Rhema Edwards; artwork by Avery Bursey, and cover art by Tomislav Silipetar. Palooka is available for purchase in print or digital format. Visit their website for more information.
To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
When Your Sky Runs Into Mine by Rooja Mohassessy
Elixir Press, February 2023
When Your Sky Runs Into Mine by Rooja Mohassessy is the winner of the 22nd Annual Elixir Press Poetry Award. Shara McCallum had this to say about it: “Rooja Mohassessy’s debut collection belies any notion of a first book. It is a work of expansive vision and formal achievement, sounding an assured and unforgettable voice in poetry. Ekphrasis is at the core of Mohassessy’s poetics, resplendent in her responses to works of visual art and in the richly textured images she creates with intricate diction and syntax.” Mohassessy is an Iranian-born poet. She is a 2022 MacDowell Fellow and a student of the Pacific University MFA program in Oregon. Having published broadly in numerous literary magazines, this is her debut collection.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
Taking the reins of their previous bi-annual literary magazine, Driftwood 2023 Anthology is the first of a new annual, double-the-punch publication! This inaugural release brings readers over 150 pages of fiction, over 50 pages of poetry, and around 80 pages of comics. The anthology is also filled with dozens of thoughtful, craft-focused interviews that take a dive deep into these well-curated pieces of writing and art. The 2023 anthology features the work of Michael Hugh Stewart, Johanna Povirk-Znoy, Vincent Panella, Izzy Buck, Rebecca Starks, Victor McConnell, Jenna Abrams, Marcie Roman, Mason Boyles, Bazeed, Luke Burton, Kimberly Sailor, Margaret Yapp, Bader Al Awadhi, Shaoni White, Anthony Immergluck, Rebert Laidler, Derek Annis, Caroline Harper New, Sarah Levine, Robin Walter, Ana Prundaru, Qiyue Zhang, Kimball Anderson, Yaronn Regev, Dave Youkovich, Stefanie Jordan, Ben Montague, and Olivia Sullivan. Due out at the beginning of March, readers can hop up and pre-order their copy today!
To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
In issue 4.1 of Club Plum online literary journal, an array of characters and narrators try to find their way in rooms and spaces–orange rooms and roughed-up houses, bathroom stalls and bath drains, bedroom mirrors and dating sites and freezers. The places are sometimes ominous or unsure, but they are familiar. And we need that: the familiar and the familiar in the uncanny because then we will understand that we are not alone. Contributions to this issue include flash fiction by Lynn Bey and Sophie Panzer; flash nonfiction by Kayla Pica Williams; prose poetry by Ken Anderson, Kathleen Hellen, D.M. Richardson; and art by Richard Baldasty, Joseph A. Miller, and Doren Robbins.
To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
Into the Good World Again by Max Garland
Holy Cow! Press, March 2023
The poems in this collection are of remembering, not only the anguish and isolation of the global pandemic, during which most were written, but also remembering as a creative or restorative force. Max Garland’s poems walk on a wire of remnant faith that even in the news-glutted age of social media, there’s a role for poetry, “…news that Stays news,” as one poet put it nearly a century ago. There’s an evocative range: from the surrealistic conjurings of a child’s mind at bedtime, to the fragmented memory of an aging widow, struggling to recall the details of her life, or if not the details, at least the emotional truth of that life, realizing that for her, “Memory is more like poetry than poetry.” A first-generation college student, Garland left a ten-year career as a mail carrier to pursue his love of poetry. He earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa in 1989 and has been teaching since 1990; currently, he is Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Garland was Wisconsin Poet Laureate 2013-2014.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
Guest Post by Marc Matorell
The central contention in Leon Fink’s Undoing the Liberal World Order: Progressive Ideals and Political Realities Since WWII is that US foreign policy in the decades following the Second World War had an important component of liberal idealism. Fink presents readers with examples of these progressive ideals in practice. Thus, we learn how, after the end of the war, the US promoted democratic decision-making structures for German workers in the industrial sector to thwart Communism in the areas occupied by the Allies.
In Central America, US liberals found an ally in Costa Rica’s President José Figueres Ferrer, who pursued significant social democratic reforms while remaining anti-Communist. Meanwhile, the liberal US ambassador in New Delhi, Chester B. Bowles, coordinated US aid for India’s agricultural development with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement.
Fink is more convincing in arguing that the role of progressive ideals in US foreign policy declined during the last decades than he is in proving that these kinds of ideals were important in the first place. The examples presented in the text are largely in line with the book’s thesis, but readers may legitimately ask themselves whether these cases are representative of a significant trend or the result of very specific conjectures.
Undoing the Liberal World Order: Progressive Ideals and Political Realities Since World War II by Leon Fink. Columbia University Press, January 2022.
Reviewer Bio: Marc Martorell Junyent graduated in International Relations and currently studies holds a joint Master in Comparative Middle East Politics and Society at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen and the American University in Cairo. His main interests are the politics and history of the Middle East (particularly Iran, Turkey and Yemen). He has studied and worked in Ankara, Istanbul and Tunis. He tweets at @MarcMartorell3.
Unexpected truths are discovered throughout this issue, in all genres. Sometimes the truth can be hard to swallow and in other cases, revelations are surprisingly sweet. Kaleidoscope magazine publishes literature and artwork that creatively explore the experience of disability. Submit your best work to us today! Visit our website and view our flyer for more information.
Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to get first access to opportunities featured in our eLitPak! View the full January 2023 eLitPak.
Sky Island Journal’s stunning 23rd issue 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 125,000 readers in 145 countries and over 700 contributors already know; the finest new writing can be found where the desert meets the mountains.
To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
Registration Deadline: March 12, 2023
Novelists, memoirists, and nonfiction authors: Map Your Book from Start to Finish the supportive opportunity you need to finish, polish, and prepare your book for publication, get personalized coaching feedback, and meet other serious writers. Our three-part format ensures you’ll track real progress throughout the program. Includes in-person workshop in Annapolis, MD in March 2023. Early-bird registration ends Feb 28. View flyer or visit website for more information.
Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to get first access to opportunities featured in our eLitPak! View the full January 2023 eLitPak.
Minotaur Snow by Ryan Quinn Flanagan
NYQ Books, January 2022
Ryan Quinn Flanagan’s Minotaur Snow is an urban menagerie of very human poems. Difficult situations, individual foibles, that unescapable rush of the modern city; the sights and sounds and smells and touch, all told with great humor and at times, compassion. Flanagan peoples the landscape in such a way that his experiences become your experiences, his revelations and perspectives a busy populous of comings and goings all captured in a language that is both highly accessible and littered with odd notions or turns of phrase. Minotaur Snow above all else is a book that captures what is timeless to our shared experience, but with a fierce individuality that washes over everything like a heavy falling snow.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
The author of four award-winning books and a decades-long editor and book coach/marketer, John Sibley Williams can assist with everything from individual poem to manuscript critiques; regular book coaching; 1-on-1 workshops; the creation of pitch letters, press kits, and book proposals; agent/publisher research; and more. His passion is assisting poets and writers by tailoring all strategies to their individual needs. View flyer or visit website for more information.
Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to get first access to opportunities featured in our eLitPak! View the full January 2023 eLitPak.
Registration Deadline: Year-round
Caesura Poetry Workshop aims to support, inspire, and energize poets through affordable monthly Zoom workshops hosted by award-winning poet, editor, and teacher John Sibley Williams. All workshops include poem analysis, active group discussion, and writing prompts. Upcoming class themes include experimenting with punctuation, sharpening poem titles, erasure poetry, New Year’s poetry, building a chapbook, monthly critique workshops, and more. View flyer and visit website for more information.
Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to get first access to opportunities featured in our eLitPak! View the full January 2023 eLitPak.
Join Writing Coach & Author Lynne Golodner July 24-28, 2023 for an intimate oceanside writers retreat in Nova Scotia, for a week of writing, workshopping, community, and connection. This retreat accepts only 8 writers and will focus on how place impacts identity. To apply, send a writing sample along with an explanation about why you would be an ideal participant, and why the theme of place & identity appeals to you, to [email protected]. View flyer for more information.
Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to get first access to opportunities featured in our eLitPak! View the full January 2023 eLitPak.
Deadline: March 13, 2023
Have you ever wished you could attend your own private writing workshop that would teach you exactly what you need to know, at the right pace for you, and provide feedback and guidance in extensive one-on-one sessions? That’s Your Personal Odyssey Writing Workshop. It’s an intensive, personalized, one-on-one online workshop experience combining advanced lectures, expert feedback, and deep mentoring. View flyer or visit website for more information.
Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to get first access to opportunities featured in our eLitPak! View the full January 2023 eLitPak.
Deadline: March 31, 2023
The 17th annual National Indie Excellence® Awards (NIEA) are open to all English language printed books available for sale, including small presses, mid-sized independent publishers, university presses, and self-published authors. NIEA is proud to be a champion of self-publishing and independent presses. Monetary awards, sponsorships, and entry rules are described in detail on our website.
Want to get our eLitPak opportunities delivered straight to your inbox? Subscribe today! View the full January 2023 eLitPak here.
Deadline: March 15, 2023
The 10th Annual Permafrost Book Prize offers publication of a book length work of poetry, $1,000, and distribution through University of Alaska Press. Final judge: Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Deadline: March 15. Entry fee: $20. For complete guidelines, please visit our website. View full flyer.
Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to get first access to opportunities featured in our eLitPak! View the full January 2023 eLitPak.
Our Lady of the Lake University’s 100% online Master of Arts-Master of Fine Arts (MA-MFA) and Master of Arts (MA) in Literature, Creative Writing, and Social Justice prepare critically engaged and socially aware scholars, writers, educators, and professionals. This nationally unique, virtual program combines creativity with practical skills and critical knowledge, while keeping in mind the pursuit of social justice. View flyer or visit website to learn more.
Not a NewPages Newsletter subscriber yet? View the full January 2023 eLitPak here.
Happy Friday. It’s that time of the week again. Check out new and ongoing submission opportunities with our Weekly Roundup for the week of January 20, 2023.
Want early access to these opportunities, many before they go live on our website? Become a paid subscriber to our weekly newsletter. The cost is just $5 a month or you can subscribe for a year for only $50.
Our January eLitPak was emailed to current newsletter subscribers on Wednesday, so stay tuned to our blog today for more upcoming events and submission opportunities from that.
Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: January 20, 2023”
This annual Able Muse Review (Print Edition) Winter 2022/2023 issue continues the tradition of selecting masterfully crafted poetry, fiction, essays, art and photography, and book reviews that have become synonymous with the Able Muse online and in print. Readers can enjoy stories and poems from the 2022 Able Muse contest (Able Muse Write Prize) winners and finalists as well as an editorial by Alexander Pepple, art on the theme “Height,” featured poet Mary Jo Salter, fiction by L. M. Brown, Terese Coe, Silvia DiPierdomenico, Thomas Mampalam, R. S. Powers; essays by Evan Fiscella, Michael Hettich, N.S. Thompson; and poetry by John Wall Barger, Daniel Bourne, Brian Brodeur, Blake Campbell, Dan Campion, Mike Chasar, Tadeusz Dziewanowski, Aaron Fischer, Amy Glynn, Timothy Kleiser, Jenna Le, Burt Myers, Jay Rogoff, Natalie Staples, Donald Wheelock, and Gail White.
No Way in the Skin Without This Bloody Embrace by Jean D’Amérique
Ugly Duckling Presse, September 2022
In Jean D’Amérique’s book-length poem, translated from the French by Conor Bracken, each page is as brief as a hurricane’s eye, glimpsing the eerie territory his speaker traverses like an apocalyptic flâneur. His “body / a devastation inventory,” his stroll a “walk / to curse the sidewalks,” he peers into the ruins—left by the winds of colonialism, capitalism, war, and natural disaster—and sees a “crop of eyes” peering back. What others dismiss as broken, for D’Amérique, is a mirror in shards, “drinking up all the world’s rot / then spilling it all out in diamantine rays.” The first of his books to appear in English, this work reclaims the visceral potency of poetry—it is food, it is “collars of blood,” it is a garment sewn with “a thread of sobs.”
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
The newest issue of Boulevard (Summer 2022) includes the winning poems from the 2021 Poetry Contest by Jennifer Conlon, a Boulevard Craft Interview with Joyce Carol Oates, new fiction from Michael Czyzniejewski, Willie Fitzgerald, Kelly Ann Jacobson, Stephanie Mullings, Elizabeth Stix, and Julian Zabalbeascoa, new poetry from Linette Marie Allen, Diedrick Brackens, Shutta Crum, Nicelle Davis, Jessica Dionne, Benjamin S. Grossberg, Bill Hollands, Betsy Johnson, Alicia Byrne Keane, Jayson Keery, James Lineberger, Alicia Ostriker, Alpay Ulku, Tianru Wang, and Joan Wickersham, and essays by Marianne Abel-Lipschutz, Adrian Acu, Heather Donovan, Barbara Haas, Brandi Nicole Martin, K. B. Merritt, and Marcus Spiegel. Plus, a captivating digital collage by Julia Terbrock on the cover.
Guest Post by Kevin Brown
Alison Mariella Désir’s Running While Black: Finding Freedom in a Sport That Wasn’t Built for Us is a book runners should read; it’s also a book everybody should read. Désir details how running helps her manage her depression and how she has used running to develop a career and passion that has guided her life. The book not only shows what running while Black is like, it shows what being a Black woman in America is like. While the book is a critique of the whiteness of running in America, Désir uses the lens of running to talk about racism, sexism, and their intersection. The Notes pages illustrate the depth and breadth of her research, as she pulls from newspaper articles; scholarly works on issues such as redlining, Jim Crow, racism in medicine, and contemporary legal issues; social media and podcasts; and well-known writers on race, such as Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ijeoma Oluo. This breadth of research, coupled with Désir’s experiences, makes this book a must for every reader. I expected to see running differently after reading Désir’s book, but I didn’t expect to see so many other aspects of twenty-first-century life and racism in new ways. Any book that can have that effect is worth reading, whether one has ever or will ever run.
Running While Black by Alison Mariella Désir. Portfolio, October 2022.
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. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite or kevinbrownwrites.weebly.com/.
The Fall 2022 issue of Consequence continues its mission of addressing the human consequences and realities of war and geopolitical violence using literature and visual art to offer emotional as well as intellectual access to the experiences of victims, combatants, and witnesses of these conflicts. This newest issue features poetry by Tara Ballard, Milton Bates, Denise Bergman, Martine von Bijlert, Robert Bohm, Carl Boon, Laura Da’, Ejiro Edward, Ukata Edwardson, Alan Elyshevitz, Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto, Kennedy Amenya Gisege, D.A. Gray, Brian Patrick Heston, Preston H. Hood III, Charles Kesler, Molly Wadzeck Kraus, Jennifer LeBlanc, Connor McDonald, Eugene O’Hare, Aman Rahman, Ron Riekki, Thom Schramm, Leah Schwartz, Svetlana Sterlin, Ojo Taiye, and Jarred Thompson; fiction by Matt Burgess, Michael Conn, and Gillon Crichton; nonfiction by Kelly C. Flanagan, Bashir Sakhawarz, Victoria Elizabeth Ruwi, Tim Hildebrandt, D.C. Lambert, and Kim Clarke; translations by Salma Harland, Ali Kinsella, Dzvinia Orlowsky, Arno Bohlmeijer, and Anne Fischer; and art by Lindsey Harald-Wong.
Advocatus Diaboli: A Novel by William Baer
Many Words Press, June 2023
Many Words Press—an imprint of Able Muse Press—has released Advocatus Diaboli of The Catholic Themes, initiating a new series by the author of the popular Jack Colt mystery series. Advocatus Diaboli is the story of a murder mystery caught up in a canonization cause. International in scope, it unravels through Washington, DC, Rome, the Vatican, Ireland, and elsewhere. It interrogates the making and makeup of a modern-day saint, juxtaposed to forces for good or ill working to upend or uphold the cause, in the backdrop of the day-to-day failings or goodness of its cast of characters and hagiographies of related saints of the past. Baer’s Catholic experience is extensive in time and scope: he is the founding director of the St. Robert Southwell Summer Workshops and the author of Psalter: A Sequence of Catholic Sonnets.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
Publishing online monthly, The Lake January 2023 issue features works by Zoe Burkett, Cara Losier Chanoine, Julian Dobson, George Franklin, D. R. James, Maren O. Mitchell, Ronald Moran, Toti O’Brien, Jennie E. Owen, and Marjory Woodfield. The Lake also posts up single poems from recent collections for its “One Poem Review” section, this month spotlighting Will Alexander’s Divine Blue Light. The current issue as well as the full archive of The Lake is available to read in a free and open access online. Readers can also find Editor John Murphy’s newly released collection of poems, Home, for purchase on the site.
To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
Red Rook Press is a new student-run publishing house hailing from the University of Alabama College of Arts & Sciences Program in Creative Writing. Funded by the undergraduate creative writing club and the English Department, the staff is made up of all volunteer undergrads with guidance from English Department Faculty. At this time, they are open to submissions of any form and genre from undergraduate or graduate students across any university or college, though they may expand in the future to accept manuscripts from a broader scope of writers. Red Rook’s 2022 submission window closed in December with publications expected in April. They plan to open back up in March for a fall 2023 publication date, with hopes to maintain this spring/fall publication cycle going forward. Welcome Red Rook Press!
To discover more small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
Quartet is an online poetry journal featuring work by women fifty and over and is enjoyed by readers around the globe – twenty countries, including Ukraine and Malta. Originally publishing four issues a year, the editors will be cutting back to three. All is well, they assure readers, but the editors are hoping to regain some writing time for themselves and use the opportunity to increase the number of poems per issue for the triannual publication. “This makes us very happy,” says Editor Linda Blaskey, “because there was so much good work we were turning away each submission period.”
The name Quartet was not based on the number of issues, but rather for the four founding members, a close group of friends. The editors select poems together and each also have their own specific jobs to do behind the scenes but all communication is signed “The Editors” because “we truly feel we are working as a collective. We stand shoulder to shoulder in our pride of what we’ve accomplished with Quartet.”
Readers to the newest issue of Quartet can find works by Anne Barney, Maria Berardi, Anne Wessel Dwyer, Christine Jones, Jayne Marek, Kate Maxwell, Gloria Monaghan, Miriam O’Neal, Michele Parker Randall, Claudia M. Reder, Caroline Reid, Maggie Rosen, Deborah Straw, Dawn Terpstra, Marjorie Thomsen, and Susan Zimmerman with cover art by Franetta McMillian.
There is also and “Editor’s Choice” section with poems that are automatically entered in Quartert‘s single-poem contest with the winner announced Winter 2024.
Graphic novels, comics, comic arts, graphic narrative, visual literature – there are many old and new forms of art and writing continually merging and morphing among communities of creatives, and likewise, more publications opening their submissions to such works or based in them entirely. In addition to the content, there are growing conversations around the forms. Enter SOLRAD: The Online Literary Magazine for Comics publishing daily Monday through Friday.
SOLRAD is a nonprofit online literary magazine dedicated to the comics arts. Run completely by a volunteer staff, SOLRAD publishes original content ranging from comics criticism, original comics, essays, interviews, and the promotion of small-press events and releases. The site is a platform for new, underrepresented, and otherwise marginalized creative voices, in addition to commissioning work from well-established cartoonists, critics, journalists, and authors.
SOLRAD’s name comes from the noun meaning a wavy line in illustration (especially comics) that represents light and/or warmth emanating from the sun or other light sources, and it fits perfectly with the mission of the publication. As Editor in Chief Daniel Elkin (he/him) shares the motivation for starting SOLRAD, “We believe that criticism of the comics arts is equally essential for the betterment of the form, education of the public, and to give the comics arts a place for reflection, discernment, and connection with the larger world. As more and more people are introduced to comics as an art form, the stronger our community becomes.”
“Even more than just this, though,” Elkin adds, “we wanted to provide a legitimate, transparent, and honorable platform that allows for the diversity of creators and critical voices that makes the comics community so rich. While there are certainly places within the comics ecosystem that provide safe spaces, we wanted to take it to the next level and raise awareness of the comics arts outside its own bubble of support and into the larger public sphere to the benefit of everyone involved.”
Elkin brings a wealth of experience with him, having spent over a decade in comics criticism with bylines at Comics Bulletin, The Comics Journal, Comicon.com, and more. Before SOLRAD, he ran the comics website Your Chicken Enemy. Using this expertise, Elkins reads each pitch and, if it seems a good fit for SOLRAD, asks the writer to send a complete draft. From there, Elkin works with the writer, suggesting edits and/or additions. Response time is usually a week to two weeks.
Elkin has found the work with SOLRAD rewarding: “Being embraced from the start by the comics community and moving into the greater arts world, becoming a champion for comics as a medium that deserves as much attention and discernment as any other artform.” And this likewise creates a rewarding experience for readers as well. “At SOLRAD, readers can find a vital place for quality criticism that engages with a given work fully and offers insight into the interpretive process a reader undertakes. Divining an artist’s intention is one thing, but whether or not it connects in the way they’re hoping it will, analyzing where it succeeds and/or where it falls short, is vital stuff for creator and consumer alike. SOLRAD has developed a reputation as an outlet for artists to count on for fair-minded analysis of their work.”
He encourages writers to take a look at SOLRAD and get a sense of our personality and standards before submitting. Some recent contributors to the site include Hagai Palevsky, Kawai Shen, Kim Jooha, Lane Yates, Rob Kirby, Tom Shapira, Tony Wei Ling, and Rob Clough.
Looking ahead, Elkin explains, “Besides continuing to publish top notch criticism from a diverse set of writers, we hope our grant writing activity will allow us to increase the honorarium we pay our contributors as well as move into new media and educational opportunities.”
Welcome SOLRAD!
Smoke & Mirrors by Donna Dallas
NYQ Books, August 2022
Smoke and Mirrors by Donna Dallas spills torment, agony, small miracles and a blind lust for life no matter what the cost. When we look closely and peel back the facade of perfect skirts, soft skin and angelic smiles, we see. We see the ugly, the truth, and everything in between. I am Smoke and Mirrors every day. I am pretty blouse and sweet face pining over which shade of red lipstick is the right one for me…while the real me dies inside. Maybe that defines all of us to some extent. Perhaps we fear to be uncovered or peeled back and have our faults laid out in proud display. Every mishap, every event, every peeling and uncovering has evolved into the Smoke and Mirrors I have laid out on these pages. I’m a successful lie, I do it well. I’m itching to be opened up.
To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as the New Books category on our blog. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!
