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The Malahat Review 232 features the winner of the 2025 Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction, “Little Paradiso” by Gladwell Pamba as well as poetry by Daniel Naawenkangua Abukuri, Ambrose Albert, Isobel Burke, George Elliott Clarke, Marlene Cookshaw, Guy Elston, John Lent, Edward Luetkehoelter, Ismail Yusuf Olumoh, Elizabeth Philips, Ben Robinson, Mark Truscott, and Jade Wallace; fiction by Daryl Bruce, Brett Nelson, and Jean-Christophe Réhel (translated from the French by Neil Smith); and creative nonfiction by Paul Dhillon, and Karine Hack. Cover art: Labyrinth 8 (detail), 2021 by Chukwudubem Ukaigwe, (photo: Steven Cottingham).
They say that in life there are only a few certainties: death and taxes. None of us truly knows when death will come knocking, though some people face its approach with more clarity because of illness. For most of us, though, the moment remains invisible until it has already passed.
This past Thanksgiving, my family experienced one of those invisible thresholds for the second time. The holiday dinner—familiar, warm, full of our usual stories—became a last supper with the beloved patriarch of our family. No one saw it coming. That suddenness, that unexpected finality, brought this idea sharply into focus:
What if this meal became the last with someone you loved? How would that change the way you saw the moment? And what new understandings might emerge when you look back?
These questions form the heart of this week’s inspiration prompt.
Inspiration Prompt: The Last Supper
There’s a quiet mystery at the heart of every family table: we never know which shared meal will be the last with someone we love. We pass dishes, refill drinks, laugh at familiar jokes, and settle into well-worn rhythms—never imagining that a seemingly ordinary evening might become a final chapter.
And yet, when we look back, it’s often the unremarkable moments that take on unexpected weight. A holiday dish that won’t be made again. A story retold for the hundredth time, suddenly cherished because it will never be told the same way. A chair left empty next year. These details, small and human, become the symbols we hold onto long after the meal has ended.
This tension—between presence and memory, between the living moment and what endures—creates fertile ground for art.
When the Ordinary Turns Sacred
Think of a dinner that felt like every other. The clink of utensils. The hum of conversation. Maybe the TV murmuring in the background or a candle sputtering in its glass. Nothing dramatic. Nothing staged.
And yet, inside that moment, something was already shifting. Maybe the person across the table looked a little more tired than usual. Maybe they lingered longer over a story. Maybe the only sacred thing was that everyone was together—something you wouldn’t realize mattered until years later.
These are the thresholds where the ordinary becomes sacred, where the mundane becomes myth.
Symbols That Stay With Us
Symbols emerge without our choosing:
A favorite dish someone made every year, crafted one last time
A joke that breaks the table into laughter and somehow becomes a benediction
A piece of music playing softly in the background, forever tied to that night
These fragments become the reliquaries of memory. They are the objects and gestures through which we understand a person’s legacy—not in grand declarations, but in the undramatic, deeply human shape of a shared meal.
An Invitation to Create
This week, consider exploring that threshold between presence and memory in your creative practice.
Imagine a meal that becomes eternal. Not because anyone knew it was the last, but because the echoes of that night continue to resonate.
You might write a story about a family gathering where every detail becomes a vessel of meaning.
You might craft a poem that holds the ache of endings in one hand and the tenderness of remembrance in the other.
You might paint a table set with symbolic objects, or photograph an empty chair and the light that falls across it.
You might capture the hum of grief and grace in a piece of music.
Whatever your medium, let it hold both sides of the threshold: the ache of something ending, and the quiet hope of what endures.
Because in every “last supper,” there’s a kind of immortality—not in the meal itself, but in the love that gathers around it.
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Jewish Fiction announces their 41st issue! This fabulous new issue contains 15 stories originally written in Ladino, Hebrew, and English, and includes, in celebration of the upcoming holiday, two stories set on Chanukah. Readers have free, online access to works by Dvora Baron, Elia Karmona, Michoel Moshel, Miryam Sivan, Steve Saroff, Galina Vromen, Jessica Keener, Jake Wolff, Sky Sofer, Cynthia Gordon Kaye, Alanna Schubach, Jordan Silversmith, Hal Ackerman, Joe Kraus, and Leon Craig.
Editor Michael Dumanis opens Bennington Review Issue 14 reflecting on the power of language — its creative limits in art, its manipulation in politics, and its real-world consequences — from Russia’s censorship during the Ukraine invasion to the U.S. government’s rhetorical distortions. Like many efforts in the arts, the NEA withdrew Bennington Review‘s funding due to newly politicized priorities. Dumanis acknowledges the support of readers for sustaining the journal and introduces the writing and art that challenge language’s constraints.
Contributors to this issue include Natalie Shapero, William Ward Butler, Aaron Baker, Steve Fellner, Lauren Swift, David Baker, Jen Frantz, Daniel Borzutzky, Randall Potts, Paul Ilechko, Jonathan Duckworth, Stevie Edwards, Michael Quattrone, Maggie Dietz, Delilah Silberman, Sébastien Luc Butler, Maja Lukic, Julia Thacker, Jenny Grassl, Johanna Magin, Angie Macri, Yerra Sugarman, Chelsea Desautels, Joe Hall, Xiadi Zhai, Virginia Konchan, Chris Vasantkumar, Austin Araujo, Jill McDonough, Aza Pace, Sasha Burshteyn, William Virgil Davis, Jeff Hardin, Michael Waters, Kirsten Kaschock, Kevin Mclellan, Beth Weinstock, D.C. Gonzales-Prieto, Olatunde Osinaike, Cortney Lamar Charleston, Matthew Klane, John Dermot Woods, Tyler Barton, Elizabeth Hart Bergstrom , Tom Howard, Jordan Hubrich,David Stuart Maclean, Daniel Kleifgen, Aryn Kyle, Brian Schwartz, Laurence Ross, George Choundas, Emmeline Clein, and Justin Quarry.
Michigan County Atlas: Back Roads & Forgotten Places by David M. Brown Author Published, October 2025
Michigan County Atlas: Back Roads & Forgotten Places is now in its sixth edition and includes a wellspring of information for exploring Michigan geography, history, and recreation, through richly detailed maps. The book is softcover, spiral bound, 11 by 15.5 inches, 224 pages with color throughout. Each Michigan county is displayed as an individual entity.
Features for each county include: history of each county and its many place names, an index of historic sites and museums, an inventory of primary parks facilities, and indexing for places, water and landform, and roads.
The county map features include: parks, hiking trails, historic sites, nature preserves; federal and state public lands and trails; federal township-range and section numbers; boat launch sites, canoe trails, campgrounds; cemeteries, ghost towns, old railroads; waterfalls, landscape features, lighthouses, and more. Sample pages can be viewed on the book’s website here.
The Lake online poetry magazine publishes the best contemporary poetry and reviews monthly. Poet and Editor John Murphy is a champion of poets, both emerging and established, offering the unique monthly feature called ‘One Poem Reviews.’ Murphy says he started this because “it’s not easygetting a book or pamphlet accepted for review these days. So in addition to the regular review section, the One Poem Review feature will allow more poets’ to reach a wider audience — one poem featured from a new book/pamphlet along with a cover image and a link to the publisher’s website.”
If you are a poet, One Page Reviews invites you to share a poem from a recently published collection The Lake readers. This is a great way to get more exposure for your book, make some sales, and connect with other poets.
All you need to do is read the current issue or peruse the archive to get some idea of The Lake‘s aesthetic. If The Lake is a good match, send three poems from your book, a .jpg of the cover and a link to the publisher’s website.
The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought is published by Pittsburg State University with the objective to discover and publish scholarly articles with a broad range of subjects of current interest. The newest issue (Fall 2025) features the articles “Place, Identity, and Resistance in the River Poetry of Emma Perez and Natalie Diaz” by Donna Castandeda; “Love Male Neurosis, and the Tale of two Women in Bram Stoker’s Dracula” by Michael Justine D.J. Sales; “Treasure Island Comes of Age: One Hundred Years of Prequels, Sequels, and Retellings” by Christine Schott; “Who Killed the Duke of Gloucester? History in Shakespeare’s Richard II” by Gary Grieve-Carlson; and “Unearthing the Patriarchy: Cancer, Trash, and Ugliness in Terry Tempest Williams’ Refuge and ‘The Open Space of Democracy'” by Marci Heatherly. The issue also includes essays by Michael Milburn, Thomas Fox Averill, Stephen Bunch, and John Daley, as well as poetry by Kevin Brown, Bradley Samore, Mark Neely, Lauro Palomba, J. R. Solonche, Elizabeth Rees, and Pierre Minar.
Soul Retrieval: A debut novel written and illustrated by Shanna McNair High Frequency Press, June 2025
Poet Mary Dixon yearns for meaning and understanding in Soul Retrieval, a gritty, lyrical reimagining of Kahlil Gibran’s soul-searching masterpiece, The Prophet.
Soul Retrieval begins in present-day, with the chapter “The Coming of the Ship.” Mary is riding a train in France. She is a visitor, traveling alone. She doesn’t speak the language and can’t find her seat. A conductor offers her a spot to sit in between railcars. As the French landscape rolls by, she pulls out a copy of The Prophet. She hasn’t read it in decades.
Page after page, she grows more and more transfixed by its profundity and beauty. And she sees how her story interweaves with the greater story of humanity. She is flooded with hope and reaches an epiphany: she is only as lost as she chooses to be. She only has to find her story. Tears of awe stream her cheeks. She has found new purpose. Mary, she thinks, it’s time that you love your life. Love your life like a question is meant to be loved. Your soul knows the great questions of The Prophet.
Shanna McNair has worked extensively in the visual and performing arts, having shown artwork at various places in Maine; many cafes and spaces and most notably at UMaine at Farmington and The Grand Movie Theatre in Ellsworth. She has shown at SFMOMA and Mad Magda’s in San Francisco and Mash Tun in Portland, Oregon. McNair’s original art pieces in Soul Retrieval are be available for purchase separately as reproduced art prints.
Editor William Pierce opens AGNI 102 with his thoughts on “Mattering,” starting with this thought: “There is a rift, in our troubled century, between imaginative writing and the various mainstream U.S. cultures. I get the sense from conversations, articles, and shifts in educational curricula that a growing contingent fears literature (why else would they work to restrict access?) and an even larger group dismisses it as irrelevant. Those reactions are nearly opposite, but together, they have me thinking about how literature matters. Can fiction, poetry, and essays be a meaningful force for truth? And how — considering that word imaginative — do they stand apart from the various modes of distraction and deception?”
AGNI 102 explores this through works related to crisis and talismans, with the threaded objects of Lia Purpura fronting an issue intent on noticing, holding, and putting forward. Siew Hii, Carl Phillips, and Denise Duhamel (in poetry) and Donald Quist and Rilla Askew (in nonfiction) confront the wiliness of false narrative. Stories by Scholastique Mukasonga (translated by Mark Polizzotti) and Niamh Mac Cabe, with poems by Megan Fernandes and Fereshteh Sari, trace the veins of complicity. And stories by Subhravanu Das and Reyumeh Ejue, with poems by Brenda Hillman, Kimberly Quiogue Andrews, and Peter Balakian, discover honest, tenuous shelter.
The Fall 2025 issue of The Missouri Review (46.3) is themed “Under the Influence,” which opens with Editor Speer Morgan’s commentary, “Much of this issue concerns altered states of consciousness caused by illness, personal struggles, and drugs.” and goes on to explore how altered states — especially those induced by alcohol — shape personal experience and historical events. Speer traces alcohol’s long cultural role from colonial America’s heavy consumption to his own ‘youthful encounters’ with drinking. Like Speer’s commentary, this issue features works that provide a collective reflection on society’s evolving relationship with alcohol and its lasting impact, as well as other ‘influencers.’
Readers can enjoy debut fiction from Arabella Sanders, plus new stories from Seth Fried, Philip Hurst, and Brecht de Poortere; new poetry from Kai-Carlson Wee, Rebecca Foust, and Campbell McGrath; new essays from Jacob M. Appel, Molly Rideout, Cara Stoddard, and S.L. Wisenberg; features on Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Marlene Dietrich; and an omnibus review of four short story collections from Robert Long Foreman.
An Anthology of Rural Stories by Writers of Color, 2025, ed. Deesha Philyaw EastOver Press, December 2025
While choosing stories for this anthology of short fiction, Rural Stories by Writers of Color, Editor Deesha Philyaw wanted “weirdness, for sure,” along with “experimental” and “transgressive narratives.” In her introduction to the book, she writes, “The stories…gathered here are all this and more, in beautiful and unexpected ways.” The collection features work by Noah Alvarez, Victoria Ballesteros, Exodus Octavia Butler, C.G. Crawford, Monic Ductan, LaTanya McQueen, Jennifer Morales, Ruby Hansen Murray, Michael Pacheco, Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera, Sarp Sozdinler, Sejal Shah, Dawn Tasaka Steffler, Sara J. Streeter, Lisa Wartenberg Vélez, and Robert Yune.
Editor Carolyn Kuebler opens the New England Review double issue (46.3-4) by explaining, “It is both an emerging writers issue, with a full two hundred pages dedicated to discovery, and a ‘regular’ issue of NER, where experienced writers and translators have found a home for their newest work. The result is this spectacular new volume, with its thick spine and swirling cover art, which we hope will offer enough color and light to see you through the long winter ahead.” This volume features fifty-eight authors and translators, half of whom have yet to publish a book in any genre, including new work by Devon Walker-Figueroa, Yael Herzog, Kaveh Bassiri, Nathan McClain, Jessie Li, Bruce Snider, Jackie Chicalese, and Lukasz Grabowski; translations from the Slovenian, Japanese, Catalan, and Greek, and much more, with cover image by Shanti Grumbine.
This month’s issue of The Lake is now online featuring poetry by Angela Arnold, Zhu Xiao Di, Margaret Galvin, Usha Kishore, Alexandra Monlaur, Kenneth Pobo, Tony Press, Debbie Robson, David Mark Williams, Greg Wood. Reviews of newly published collections of poetry include Sarah James’ Darling Blue, Rachael Bower’s Bee, Claire Pollard’s Lives of the Female Poets, and Amina Alyal and Sarah Wragg’s Unheimlich at Home.
Valley Voices is a biannual journal of prose, poetry, interviews, and criticism from writers and scholars from the Mississippi Delta and beyond. The Fall 2025 issue includes the special features “Photographing Nature” by Jerome Berglund; “African American Tanka” by Kevin Powell, Lenard D. Moore, L. Teresa Church, Gideon Young, Opal Palmer Adisa, Tara Betts, S. Shaw, Charlie R. Braxton, and Gina Streaty; and Ce Rosenow’s review of Runagate: Song of the Freedom Bound by Crystal Simone Smith. Editor John Zheng in his introduction writes, “Editing an issue of Valley Voices is like an escape to nature or a way to forget the self.” The same experience awaits readers in the essays and criticisms of Howard Lee Kilby, Charlie R. Braxton, Bernth Lindfors, Carolyn Wilson-Scott, and Sydney Bowen-Sweet, and poetry by JC Alfier, Tobi Alfier, Matthew Brennan, Lenard D. Moore, Andrew Riutta, Jerome Berglund, Mike Spikes, Beth Brown Preston, Ron McFarland, Thomas Piekarski, George Freek, and Ken Letko.
Libre’s newest release, Issue Four, was created in partnership with Pratt Institute’s art department with the theme, “Surrealism Tomorrow.” Libre looks to create partnerships that continue this support of humanitarian / disability-centric publications, and this issue’s work is thanks to contributions from Pratt’s staff and students, notably Luka Lucic, Associate Professor of Pratt Institute’s Department of Social Science and Cultural Studies, who provides a forward for the issue.
Libre editors write, “What Pratt’s artists are doing here is similar to an extrication process: abscessed tooth, shiny molar of a fate dealt in decay and lonely back-waters of the diseased gum, brought alive again by cut, strategy, and replacement. These ten students aim mightily towards examination of illness, resuscitation of generational trauma, and archival of death and doubt under the intelligent pretext of heroic foundational upheaval. They mix media with grief and paint water from inside the artwork instead of out, and we’re no longer the lonely examiner but the paint fiber. Mix your hands in mud sometime and place them against something else white. Stand back and point with one hand, saying, ‘this is me, this is who I’ve broken into.’ You’ll understand the point of Issue Four then.”
Artists’ works are featured along with their statements and bios. Libre is a free, open-access journal.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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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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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
click image to open flyer
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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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.
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!
