The Dawn Review online journal is precisely the kind of effort we need right now. “We are called The Dawn Review because we are committed to renewal, in every sense of the word,” says Founding Editor Ziyi Yan (闫梓祎). All literary writing is accepted: poetry, prose, hybrid forms, etc. Visual art and pieces that combine art with writing are also welcome, and the editors post interviews, articles, and book reviews on their blog, in addition to the publication’s three issues per year.
“Through our issues,” Yan explains, “we champion forward-looking pieces that fight against the restraints of language and form. Our issues are not separated by genre, and our editors read with an eye for inventiveness rather than conformity. We are also committed to renewal in our editorial process – in order to uplift developing voices, we read blindly and provide feedback on all submissions.”
Boulevard Spring 2023 is a double issue (38.112 & 38.113) that includes winning entries from all three of the publication’s emerging writers contests: 2022 Poetry Contest winner Danielle Lemay, 2021 Fiction Contest winner Lacy Arnett Mayberry, and 2021 Nonfiction Contest winner Lee Anne Gallaway-Mitchell. It also features a Boulevard Craft Interview with Danielle Dutton, a symposium on appropriation in art, new fiction from Joyce Carol Oates, David Nikki Crouse, Brad Eddy, Kristen-Paige Madonia, and Alexandra Munck, new poetry from Emma DePanise, Auden Eagerton, Bob Hicok, Abbie Kiefer, Weijia Pan, Doug Ramspeck, JC Talamantez, and Yun Wei, and essays by Amy Mevorach, Rebecca Owen, and Jess Smith. Cover art: Self-Portrait (2020), oil on canvas by Isabelle Roig.
Lit Mag Covers: Picks of the Week recognizes cover art and designs for literary magazines, whether in print or online. These are chosen solely at the discretion of the Editor. Enjoy!
This long-running Canadian publication of ideas and culture, Geist #123 holds an array of content that readers will be drawn to thanks to the cover digital collage, It’s a Different Kind of Cold, 2021, by Nicole Holloway.
Virginia Quarterly Review is a force to be reckoned with every issue, and this Spring/Summer 2023 is no exception, featuring “The Queens of Queen City,” a longform photo documentary by Michael Snyder accompanied by an essay by Rae Garringer.
This photograph by Jessamyn Violet made me look more than twice and is just a sample of the full portfolio of her work, Venice Beach Double Exposures, which readers can enjoy in the 2023 issue of Breakwater Literary Magazine.
The newest issue of Blink-Ink is themed “Secrets” and features twenty-five stories of “approximately 50 words” each. This ‘mini’ print quarterly (with occasional “goodies and surprises” thrown in for subscribers) includes stories like “A Puppy to Call My Own” by Lita Weekley, “Two Teachers” by Paul Germano, “Cosmic Dissonance” by Ada W. Vowell, “Risk of Expsure” by Kathy Lynn Carroll, “The Burial Plot” by Anna Mintz Brooks, ” Graffitti” by Ken Ross, and “The Barbie Motel” and “Checkpoint Barbie” by Nancy Stohlman. Cover art by Sarah Hussin.
The newest issue of Plume online features poems by Bruce Bond and Dan Beachy-Quick, Sandy Solomon, Troy Jollimore, Steven Cramer, Lee Upton, John Hoppenthaler, Dmitry Blizniuk, Carol Frost, Bruce Beasley, Beatriu Delaveda, Ani Gjika, and Andrea Cohen. The issue includes the feature “The Poets and Translators Speak, Remedios: Tommy Archuleta in Conversation with Amy Beeder (and five poems),” as well as the essay “Conjuring the Last Gleeman” by Steve Kuusisto. Readers can also enjoy “Translations Portfolio, From Records of Explosion,” poems by Nianxi Chen, translated from Chinese by Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor and Kuo Zhang, with an interview by Mihaela Moscaliuc.
The Fiddlehead No. 296 (Summer Poetry 2023) is the publication’s triennial summer poetry extravaganza! This issue features poetry from over 50 contributors, including Kim Addonizio, Derek Austin, Ali Blythe, John Barton, Sadiqa de Meijer, Boris Dralyuk, Leontia Flynn, Jim Johnstone, Meghan Kemp-Gee, Dan O’Brien, Douglas Walbourne-Gough, Lisa Russ Spaar, Karen Solie, and many more. A special feature of this issue is a folio of Acadian poetry in translation. Visit The Fiddlehead website to see a full list of contributors, read excerpts from selected works, and order your copy of No. 296 or subscribe for home delivery. Cover art is by Ben von Jagow.
The September issue of The Lake online journal of poetry and poetics is now online and features work by Charlie Brice, Abby Caplin, Eric Chiles, Joe Flood, Katie Kemple, Lanny Ledeboer, Betsy Martin, Kushal Poddar, Lisa Rossetti, Rochelle Shapiro, J. S. Watts, Sarah White. There are also reviews of contemporary poetry collections: Nick Allen’s local universes; Oz Hardwick’s A Census of Preconceptions; and Mary Makofske’s No Angel. Readers can also get a sneak peek of recent published collections in The Lake‘s “One Poem Reviews,” which offers sample poems from Richard Robbins, Kelly Sargent, and Ram Krishna Singh.
Photographer Marion Owen’s bee on the Summer/Fall 2023 cover of Alaska Quarterly Review won’t let you pass up this issue of stories by Jake Maynard, Julie Esther Fisher, Emma Pattee, Miriam Karmel, David Galef, Rebecca Bernard, Myles Zavelo, Claire Seymour; essays by Jenna Devan Waters, Alyce Miller, Gabriela Halas, Michael Bogan, Joan Murray; poems by Matthew Zapruder, Jamaica Baldwin, Virginia Konchan, Jennifer Barber, Robert Wood Lynn, Brooke Sahni, Mihaela Moscaliuc, Mary Peelen, Eva Saulitis, Dannye Romine Powell, Jason Tandon, Kareem Tayyar, Sarah B Sullivan, Mathew Weitman, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Elizabeth Bradfield, Patricia Clark, Rachel Hadas, Andrew Hemmert, Farah Peterson, Annie Wenstrup, Megan Snyder-Camp, Laura Kolbe, Jessica Greenbaum, Amy Dryansky.
Status is the theme of the Summer 2023 issue of The Missouri Review, as Editor Speer Morgan writes in the foreword, “status…with the storytelling that illuminates it, encompasses more than just economic or social position. For most living creatures, status can impact both intraspecific and interspecific chances of survival.” Exploring this theme is new speculative fiction by Emily Mitchell, Naeem Murr, and Jonathan Wei, new stories from John Fulton and Becky Mandelbaum, new poetry by Aaron Coleman, Cynthia Marie Hoffman, and Stephanie Niu, and essays from Grace Plowden and Kathleen Spivack. There is also an arts feature on Vanitas: the Art of Death and Decay, work on Clara Bow, and a review essay on recent books about Gay Life in the 20th and 21st centuries. Cover art: Mirror Head by Estanislao Gonczanski (2018).
The MacGuffin Spring/Summer 2023 issue marks the final volume of long-time typesetter and designer Ione Skaggs. The publication sends her off in grand style with a new story with a post-modern bend from MacGuffin favorite Gracjan Kraszewski to open things up and closes with a touching story that ruminates on both art and artists from Jeffrey Ihlenfeldt. In poetry, Karen Marker admits she’s “Been Following You on Instagram” and Laura Grace Weldon muses on the theater of our own lives in “Rich People We Know Offer Theater Tickets;” all this plus a four-poem spread of food-related poetry to inspire any reader’s next charcuterie foray. Cover art: “Dinner Guests” by Carol Aust, whose works are also featured in a full-color portfolio inside the issue.
Lit Mag Covers: Picks of the Week recognizes cover art and designs for literary magazines, whether in print or online. These are chosen solely at the discretion of the Editor. Enjoy!
Sprinkler by Deanna Dikeman on the Summer 2023 cover of Epiphany is the quintessential image of the season and brought back many wonderful childhood memories.
I got into a stare-down with the Sugar House Review Summer 2023 cover image octopus and lost when I decided I’d rather look inside at all the great new poetry.
As a Michigander, this Michigan Quarterly Review Summer 2023 cover definitely speaks to me on many levels as well as fascinates my artistic appreciation with the mix of oil, acrylic, gouache, ink, marker, and graphite on paper by Andrea Carlson. The work, Future Cache, is currently part of an exhibit by the same name showing at the University of Michigan Museum of Art. The 40-foot tall memorial wall commemorates the Cheboiganing (Burt Lake) Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians violently burned from their land in Northern Michigan on October 15, 1900. Visit the UMMA for more information.
The September/October 2023 issue of World Literature Today presents a cover feature devoted to Indigenous Literatures of the Americas, showcasing contributions by sixteen Native writers from the “long, long continent” of the Western Hemisphere. Additional highlights include short fiction by Uruguayan writer Armonía Somers, five questions with debut novelist Javier Fuentes, and Veronica Esposito’s “Untranslatable” column on Sehnsucht. Along with a book review section brimming with the latest must-reads, creative nonfiction from Canada, plus postcards from Georgia and Ecuador, the September issue offers a tantalizing lineup of the best new reading from around the world.
The Society of Classical Poets Journal publishes a print annual of poetry, translations, and essays selected from those published on the SCP website between February and January as well as artwork for inclusion in the print copy. Throughout the year, readers can find these works on a rolling basis, making each visit to the website a new reading discovery. Recent contributors include Leland James, Julian Fite, Lucia Haase, Monika Cooper, James Sale, Carey Jobe, Paul A. Freeman, Phil S. Rogers, Daniel Howard, C.B. Anderson, Rob Crisell, D.R. Rainbolt, Gregory Roxx, Brian Yapko, and Nathaniel Todd McKee. Readers may also want to take part in the discussion following Julian Woodruff’s essay, “Can Long Poems Still Work?” and Joseph S. Salemi’s essay, “The Cultured Heonist.”
Focused on place, climate, and justice, Terrain.org offers readers editorials, poetry, essays, fiction, hybrid forms, videos, review, interviews, the ARTerrain gallery, the “Upsprawl” case study, and the series Letter to America – all online on a rolling basis. Their email newsletter keeps readers up-to-date on fresh content, like “Oh, possum,” an essay by Laura Jackson Roberts (with audio); “Moon: An Excerpt of A Little Bit of Land,” nonfiction by Jessica Gigot; “What Water Holds,” nonfiction by Tele Aadsen; “Earth and Motherhood, Part II: A Collection of Wildness” by Melissa Mattewson; “Rapid Lightning,” a story by Megan Campbell; “Single Family Residence,” a story by Sara Joyce Robinson; “Land in Formation: Drawings” by Nicola López; poems by Rachel Richardson, Grant Kittrell, William Wenthe, Joe Wilkens, Grant Kittrell, Teresa Mei Chue, and Joseph Powell; and “Care is a Creative Act: Interview with Awren Danahue” by Martha Park. All content is free to read online.
Fictive Dream is an online magazine for short stories (500-2500 words) that give an insight into the human condition. The publication features stories “with a distinctive voice, clarity of thought, and precision of language. They may be on any subject. They may be challenging, unsettling, uplifting, cryptic but, above all, they must be well-crafted and compelling.” The publication accepts submissions on a rolling basis and publishes one story every Friday and Sunday. Recent contributors include Graham Mort, Sharon Boyle, Robert Scotellaro, Kerry Hadley-Pryce, Louis Gallo, Kim Magowan, Claire Polders, Carolina Peleretegu trans. Norma Kaminsky, Catherine McNamara, Megan Catana, Gary Fincke, and Will Musgrove.
Shō Poetry Journal is a new print publication released twice a year, and while it can’t be said it has a happy origin story, Editor Johnny Cordova has turned adversity into a beautifully crafted opportunity for both readers and writers. “Shō is a project that I abandoned in 2003 shortly after the second issue was published. I was going through a divorce, moved from Arizona to California, and wanted a clean break from everything.” Both Cordova and Editor Dominique Ahkong had moved from Southeast Asia to Arizona and started sending their own poetry to journals. “We were struck by how many journals had moved online. We saw a need in the market for a high-quality independent print journal that publishes a wide range of voices, accepts simultaneous submissions, has a reasonable response time, and that feels good in the hands.” And thus, Shō was created.
Cutleaf publishes a new issue online every other week and will update readers via email so they can keep reading fresh new prose and poetry that “responds to our common experience and reflects our differences.” Recent contributions: Gary Fincke explores where emotion lives in the essay “In the Heart,” Kristin Lindsey is visited by the spirits of the past and present in “Ghosted,” Annette Pearson travels towards the past in search of what is remembered and forgotten in “Road Trip South,” Jacob Boyd challenges, deepens, and complicates the principles espoused in John Perry Barlow’s list of 25 Principles of Adult Behavior, beginning with the poem “Remember that Your Life Belongs to Others as Well. Do Not Endanger It Frivolously,” Christen Noel Kaufman learns to hold death in her hands in three poems beginning with “Never Close a Knife Someone Else Has Opened,” and Okwudili Nebeolisa sinks into the kind of loneliness that can only be felt on dark nights beginning with his poem “It’s Never a Ghost.”
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!
2River View, Summer 2023 Alaska Quarterly Review, Summer/Fall 2023 Apple in the Dark, Summer 2023 Arboreal, Number 3 Arc Poetry, Summer 2023 The Awakenings Review, Spring 2023 Blue Collar Review, Spring 2023 Boulevard, 112 & 113 Cholla Needles, August 2023 Cream City Review, 47.1 Cutleaf, August 2023 The Dream Review, Issue 3 The Empty Inkwell, July 2023, Issue 1 Fictive Dream, August 2023 Free Inquiry, August/September 2023 Ganga Review, 2023 The Gettysburg Review, 34.3
South Dakota Review, Volume 57, Number 3, had just been released and includes poetry by Alison Zheng, John Walser, Joanna Acevedo, E J Cousins, Glenn Shaheen, Richard Robbins, Jen Yáñez-Alaniz, Judith Harris, Dylan Willoughby, Tricia Bogle, Gary Charles Wilkens, Joshua Michael Stewart, Simon Anton Niño Diego, Dani Putney, and Lisa Roullard; a novella excerpt by Yelizaveta P. Renfro; short stories by Joe Davies and Rylann Watts; creative nonfiction by Chelsy Diaz Amaya and Stephanie Dickinson; and a scholarly essay by Audrey Fong. Subscriptions and copies can be ordered here.
Lit Mag Covers: Picks of the Week recognizes cover art and designs for literary magazines, whether in print or online. These are chosen solely at the discretion of the Editor. Enjoy!
Artist Fran De Anda’s work is front and back on the 2023 annual issue of Pembroke Magazine. The Magician of Roots (2022) seen here is oil and gold leaf on canvas and is utterly mesmerizing.
Continuing with the ‘gold’ theme, the image on the front cover of Brick 111 is a detail of Zhang Xiaogang’s Light No. 5, 2022, oil on canvas.
PULP Literature covers are always a unique blend of classy, classic, and surreal. Their summer 2023 issue features the painting Dreaming Underwater by Claire Lawrence.
Issue 3 of The Dawn Review celebrates work that is surprising and otherworldly. In every piece, the self is intimately connected to its environment– as the world turns and folds inward, the self is reconstructed, and new usages of language are essential for capturing the transformations that occur in the crossroads. The works in Issue 3 refuse a concrete ending, just as life itself forces us to be constantly reborn. In “Sanctuary with the Burning Self,” Muhammed Olowonjoying renews language, writing, “I oasis of my existence. I camouflage / into fluorescence.” Meanwhile, LeAnn Perry wakes the dead in “Yes, No, Goodbye,” and Edward Gunawan allows personhood to bloom between the lines of his contrapuntal poem. Even as summer ends in Fiona Jin’s “Cassiopeia,” time is relentless, keeping the speaker “so here, so here, so here.” Issue 3 highlights the best work from the Dawn Review’s third reading period, as well as the winner and the finalists of the Dawn Prize for Poetry, judged by Sarah Ghazal Ali. Ultimately, the writers and artists in this third issue buckle against the restraints of language and form – in doing so, they unearth beauty and strangeness in how we build, rebuild, and destroy ourselves.
The 2023 issue of the nationally-acclaimed literary magazine The Meadow captures readers with the cover photo, Lichen Fang, by Mike Clasen. Once inside, featured writers will continue to captivate, with poetry by Stacy Boe Miller, Joanne Mallari, Jeffrey Alfier, Mark Sanders, Lora Robinson, Christine Kwon, Paul Ilechko, Kathryn Levy, Jana Harris, Lori Howe, Richard Robbins, and many others. The issue also includes four essays by Lori White, Kian Razi, David Stewart, and Zachary Greenhill. The Meadow is produced by Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nevada, and is currently open for submissions.
Named for the sacred river, the annual print Ganga Review is a journal of international writings for liberation inspired by a pilgrimage through India. The Ganga Review 2023 features Michele Alborg, Hila Amit, Edward Bruce Bynum, Ch’oŭi, Craig Czury, Daniel De Leon, Antonio Di Bianco, Craig Evenson, Jay Frankston, Ian Haight, Philip Jason, Ever Jones, Ziaul Moid Khan, Hareendran Kallinkeel, Richard Leise, Alexander Mercant, Emily Murphy, E. Martin Pedersen, Patrick Pfister, Sandro Francisco Piedrahita, Thomas Piekarski, Peter L. Scamardo, Stuart Silverman, Michael T. Smith, Joseph Thomas, Ana Vidosavljevic, Kwong Kwok Wai, Sarah Walko, and Saman Zoleikhaei.
Immigration Diaries is a new online journal of short stories, personal essays, poetry, and visual art founded by Yawen Yuan. Yuan lived in Shanghai until she was nine years old when she then moved to New York City. She recounts that for many years after immigrating to the United States, she felt lost and alone in her experiences. Yuan says that after listening to authors like Min Jin Lee, who immigrated from Korea at a young age, both felt more comfortable in their own experiences. Yuan would like to help others the way listening to Lee helped her by creating a place to share immigration stories and experiences.
The Spring 2023 issue of The Baltimore Review their summer contest winners selected by Judge Kelly Weber: Rochelle L. Johnson for flash creative nonfiction; Robin Littell for flash fiction; and Jarrett Moseley for prose poem. The regular content includes poems, short stories, and creative nonfiction by Kayo Chang Black, Brendan Constantine, Roxanne Lynn Doty, Jim Genia, Sara Elkamel, Michael J. Grabell, Bronte Heron, Rochelle L. Johnson, Virginia Kane, Robin Littell, Jarrett Moseley, Robert Osborne, Charlie Peck, Remy Reed Pincumbe, Tom Roth, and Mimi Veshi. Many contributors also provide notes about their work, as well as audio recordings. All issues of The Baltimore Review back to Winter 2012 can be read online at no cost, and content from the online issues is also published in annual print compilations. Founded in 1996, The Baltimore Review showcases writers from Baltimore, across the U.S., and beyond.
Lit Mag Covers: Picks of the Week recognizes cover art and designs for literary magazines, whether in print or online. These are chosen solely at the discretion of the Editor. Enjoy!
“Grave New World” is the theme of Notre Dame Review‘s Winter/Spring 2023 issue with cover art, Invasion, ink on paper (2021) by Isabella Castellane.
The Tiger Moth Review marks the publication of its tenth issue this summer, which celebrates the voices of writers and artists from Singapore, the region, and the rest of the world. Issue 10 is a compact issue that begins with Liberty Leggett’s “Instructions for surviving the twenty-first century,” which includes learning to “breathe salt water.” There is a sense of honoring our ancestors and recognizing the wisdom and knowledge of the communal and collective in KayLee Chie Kuehl, Andy Oram, and Zen Teh’s poetry and art. Death is a theme in this issue, as is the rebirth and reclamation of self and home. Alejandra Pena’s closing poem offers “a rebellion, a lighthouse, a map home” remembering our fathers who parted seas and walked without shoes or sleep in search of “the promised land” now called home. Other contributors from this issue include Claire Jean Kim, Marie-Andree Auclair, Tara Menon, Adrienne Pilon, Amy Akiko, Georgie Bailey, Drew Townsend, Smitha Sehgal, Eliana Franklin, Upasana Mitter, Calvin VanErgens, and Cerra Cathryn Anderson. Editor Esther Vincent Xueming adds, “Two current and former students of mine, Renee Yeap and Joseph Lee, have their prose and poetry featured respectively, and this is an immensely proud moment for me as an educator.”
The third edition of The Gettysburg Review Volume 34 features paintings by Marjorie Thompson, fiction by Linda Mannheim, Jess Jelsma Masterton, Benjamin Powell, Zara Karschay, Gen Del Raye, and Asha Thanki; essays by Talley V. Kayser, Kathryn Nuernberger, Bradley Bazzle, and Rebecca McClanahan; poetry by Alice Friman, Karin Gottshall, David Moolten, Cody Smith, Esther Lin, Michael Waters, Chelsea Hill, Fleda Brown, M. K. Foster, Heather Christle, Afua Ansong, Jeremy Radin, Brian Swann, Nick Lantz, Joseph J. Capista, Christopher Howell, and Bruce Beasley. A complete table of contents as well as subscription and single-copy purchase information can be found on their website.
Perfect for a hot summer’s day, the August 2023 issue of The Lake poetry journal is now online and features Gale Acuff, Kate Gale, Charlie Hill, Beth McDonough, Lauren K. Nixon, Sandra Noel, Nikita Parik, Marka Rifat, Laura Rockhold, Megan Wildhood, A.D. Winans, Victoria Wiswell. Readers can also dig into reviews of David Groff’s Living in Suspense, Bob Hicok’s Water Look Away, and Sarah Wimbush’s Shelling Peas with my Grandmother in the Gorgiolands. The Lake also features ‘One Poem Reviews’ in which authors can share a poem from a recently published collection. This month, discover new works by James Brasfield, Gary D. Grossman, and Kate Maxwell.
You Tell Me is the theme of Mudfish 23 print literary journal. Honesty, emotion, shock, subtlety, poems whose reverberant language and intensity awaken more poems in the reader’s mind. And while the first Mudfish published in 1984 was a slender issue, it has expanded to include poetry, fiction, and artwork. This issue includes the winner of the 16th Mudfish Poetry Prize judged by Marie Howe, “The Voice of One Crying” by Alyssa Stadtlander, as well as honorable mentions by Micahel Miller and Willam Barnes. Readers can also enjoy contributions from Stephanie Emily Dickinson, Paula Finn, Susan Stringfellow, Janet Kirchheimer, Mary Black, George Kramer, Michael Alexander Guy, Timothy J. Nolan, Rachelle Jewell Shapiro, Allison Hammond, Raphaela Simon, Timothy Yanick Hunter, Josina LeWuan, Theodore Darst, Paul Wuensche, and many more. Editor Jill Hoffman strives to select work that is a memorable experience and to make each issue a work of art.
Martial arts fans who are writers, or vice versa, Clinch: A Martial Arts Literary Magazine is a new open-access online biannual of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and visual arts. Editor-in-Chief Grant Young says Clinch was started because of “a gap in the market.” He explains, “There are some great literary magazines out there that focus on sports, but none that focus solely on martial arts. Since I’m a huge martial arts fan and a writer myself, I sought to close that gap. In other words, I wanted to bridge the gap between the martial arts and writing communities; both of which I keep close to heart.”
The Summer 2023 print issue of The Main Street Rag is available for purchase and opens with “Abandoned Places,” an interview with photographer Lynn Black, whose work is featured on the cover. The issue also includes prose works by Frank X. Christmas, Jim Ray Daniels, Ed Davis, Dean Z. Douthat, Barbara Eckroad, Andy Fogle, and Robert Sachs, and poetry by James Breeden, Les Brown, Raymond Byrnes, Steve Cambron, Terri Brown-Davidson, Robert Cooperman, Douglas K. Currier, RC deWinter, Susan Donnelly, Jeffrey Dreiblatt, David Galloway, Alan Haider, Jay Klokker, Cordelia Hanemann, Zebulon Huset, Judith Janoo, Gary Lark, David Lawton, Mark Madigan, Gary Mesick, Nancy Carol Moody, Mary Hills Kuck, Madeleine Cohen Oakley, Brian J. Pilling, Deb Pfeiffer, Matthew J. Spireng, Timothy Robbins, T. Parker Sanborn, John J. Ronan, Richard Ryal, Landa wo, Neil Shepard, Kashiana Singh, Theodore Turner, Tom Wayman, Eric Weil, and Marie Gray Wise as well as several book reviews.
Hailing from Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library in Joshua Tree, California, Cholla Needles is a monthly print literary magazine publishing both established and emerging writers and artists whose distinctive voices and perspectives draw readers in to enjoy experiencing art, photography, and poetry. The newest issue (80) features beautifully mesmerizing cover artwork by Douglas A. Blanc welcoming readers into the issue filled with contributions from Douglas A. Blanc, Rose Baldwin, Brian Harman, Bruno Talerico, Yuan Changming, Duane Anderson, James Marvelle, Roger G. Singer, Terry Firkins, Todd Shimoda, and Jonathan Ferrini.
Lit Mag Covers: Picks of the Week recognizes cover art and designs for literary magazines, whether in print or online. These are chosen solely at the discretion of the Editor. Enjoy!
Image Summer 2023 cover features work by British artist Jake Lever, who installs his gilded “soul boats” in ancient churches. More of his work can be seen inside the publication as well as on Image‘s website.
The front and back cover of the Summer 2023 issue of The Georgia Review features detail from plumb and fathom (2022) by Las Hermana Iglesias, whose work is also featured in this issue.
The cover image of the Summer 2023 issue of The Massachusetts Review features this untitled detail photograph of James Baldwin “in and around Istanbul, Turkey, c. 1968, part of the exhibit God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin curated by Hilton Als at the Mead Art Museum – selections of which are featured inside this issue as well.
In the Summer 2023 issue of Colorado Review, readers encounter people watching and waiting, anticipating and missing signs of one kind or another, move uneasily through this issue. As when the narrator of Kelly Luce’s “The Ugliest Girl at Marcy’s Wedding Pavilion” says, “I liked scanning the sky, looking for signals. Even when nothing happened, there was still that heartbeat. It was a space—it was space—where I could process what was happening in my life.” And in Adam O’Fallon Price’s “The Famous Actress,” a man tries to recapture a time of possibility, of potential, as he flounders in a dream gig he’s unqualified for, the nearby ocean calling to “some deep, uneasy place in himself,” confirming his anxiety. After her baby is stillborn, a young woman in Dyanne Stempel’s “Crashing Shiva” attempts to process her grief by attending the shivas of strangers, looking for cues, hoping “to try on all the random pain of the room.” And in Analía Villagra’s “Need Her Badly,” two next-door neighbors communicate in a passive-aggressive code—thumps on the apartment wall, knocks, taps—to reach out in a strangely antagonistic friendship. “Wunderkammer,” Lesley Jenike’s lyric essay, contemplates our relationship with museums, the ways they speak to us, tell us who we are. Absent much information about her grandfather, Jo-Anne Berelowitz engages in the practice of midrash to create the narratives that give him a life in her essay “Looking for Joseph.” And in “Mirage,” Susanna Sonnenberg recounts the missed, and crossed, signals in her first marriage, the result of having “unconsciously agreed to Not Know things.”
The baseball-themed literary journal The Twin Bill celebrates the Major League Baseball All-Star Game with the release of Issue Twelve. The poems and fiction included in The Twin Bill cover an array of subjects that celebrate the rich history of baseball, including topics that recognize the sport’s vibrant present and its complex and captivating past. Issue Twelve readers can enjoy writing and artwork from Jack Albert, Frank J. Albert, Susie Aybar, Jeff Brain, James Callan, Jason David Cordova, Darel La Prade, Kenny Likis, Elliot Lin, Tommy McAree, Lawrence Miles, Mark Mosley, Edwin Romond, James Scruton, AJ Speier-Wallace, and Sam Williams. The Twin Bill welcomes writers of all levels and experience and publishes based on the MLB schedule: Opening Day, the All-Star Game, the World Series, and Jackie Robinson’s birthday.
Seeing double can be a good thing, as Twin Bird Review can attest. This new open-access online biannual publishes poetry, creative nonfiction, art, comics, and graphic narratives. The name comes from legend, says Editor Amanda K Horn. “Sailors used to get a tattoo of a swallow after the first 5,000 nautical miles traveled, and then another after 10,000 – barn swallows to represent birds’ ability to travel very far abroad and yet still return home. These ‘twin birds’ can also be seen in the human imagination, through which we’re able to explore this world and others, ourselves, the past and the future, all without leaving home.”
Redactions Poetry & Poetics Issue 27 is “The Sitcom Issue” and has poems revolving around sitcoms, including M*A*S*H, Gilligan’s Island, Seinfeld, Hogan’s Heroes, Night Court, Leave It to Beaver, My Little Margie, The Facts of Life, Three’s Company, The Brady Bunch, The Simpsons, and more, as well as an essay about M*A*S*H. This is in addition to the regular content of poetry and poetics, including Kelli Russell Agodon’s interview with Jeannine Hall Gailey about her recently released book from BOA Editions, Flare, Corona.
Blue Collar Review: Journal of Progressive Working Class Literature Spring 2023 has much to offer readers looking for both solace and inspiration during these tumultuous times. The editors introduce poems by Lyle Estill, John Zedolik, and Ada Negri, as translated by Thomas Feeney, which “describe workplace injuries” as well as “poems of resistance to the workplace threats of harm and to the unlivable pay and limits placed by government assistance that impact our health, our lives beyond the workplace, and our chances of being injured on the job [. . . ] a poem by Cathy Porter reminds us many are forced to choose between food and medicines, [. . . ] and Mary Franke’s poem ‘May Day 2023’ informs us, child labor is back.” Blue Collar Review offers several sample poems on its website, including “The Current Political Scene” by Marge Piercy. Blue Collar Review is a quarterly journal of poetry and prose published by Partisan Press with the mission “to expand and promote a progressive working class vision of culture that inspires us and that moves us forward as a class.”
Lit Mag Covers: Picks of the Week recognizes cover art and designs for literary magazines, whether in print or online. These are chosen solely at the discretion of the Editor. Enjoy!
Cover artist Aris Moore won my imagination with this Spring/Summer 2023 cover image for Black Warrior Review: “Her work explores contradictions of strength and vulnerability, and attraction and repulsion, to create beings that are simultaneously awkward and unbelievable, yet familiar.”
From the SFSU Dept. of Creative Writing, Fourteen Hills Issue 29 (2023) features “Lost in the Grandeur” by Jewel Rodriguez.
Room issue 46.2 features their 2022 contest winners for short forms, fiction, poetry, CNF, and cover art. This seemingly whimsical work by semillites hernández velasco, Ghost No More, is from a poignant series of self-portraits exploring the artist’s demand for visibility while not being “ready to be fully seen.”
In Volume 4, Issue 3 of Club Plum, unexpected small worlds light up before us. Maybe the light stings in the Whiskey a Go Go or throbs from the freight train up in the hills. Maybe it reflects off your wet paddleboard or dazzles from your Windex-blue gemstone on your finger. Maybe it nips our geese-girl ankles as we run in the garden or whistles in the ears of the university men who won’t let us speak. Or maybe the light shines from the eyes of a man who was once a little girl and who lays her to sleep forever with love, keeping her safe and remembered. Discover these and more in creative nonfiction by Sloane Gray and Amanda Seney, flash nonfiction by Heather Vaughan, flash fiction by Lisa Piazza, prose poetry by Amy DeBellis, Phoebe Houser, CiCi Logan, Iris Rosenberg, and art by Margaret Karmazin and Steven Ostrowski.
Sky Island Journal’s stunning 25th 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 750 contributors already know; the finest new writing can be found where the desert meets the mountains.
The Spring/Summer 2023 issue of South 85, the Converse College Low-Res MFA Program, features fiction, nonfiction, poetry, reviews, and art by new and established writers and artists. Readers can click over to find fresh fiction by Matt Izzi, Patrick Strickland, Christie Marra, Mike Herndon, Mark Brazaiti; creative nonfiction by Linda Briskin, Alice Lowe, Honey Rand, Harris Walker; and poetry by Dana Tenille Weekes, David Galloway, Susan Michele Coronel, Michelle Holland, Patrick Wilcox, Ellen Roberts Young, Nadine Ellsworth-Moran, Greg Nelson, Ellen Roberts Young, Ann Malaspina, Kevin Pilkington, Christina Baumis, Gordon W. Mennenga. “The Dollmaker: Why You Should Have Read This Book Long Before Now” is an essay by Jody Hobbs Hesler and the issue features photography by Linda Briskin.
The Spring/Summer 2023 issue of Ecotone literary magazine includes four graphic literature pieces that drew me into the publication. Focusing on “Reminaging Place,” Ecotone’s mission is “to publish and promote the best place-based work being written today.” This includes graphic literature curated by invitation, with this issue offering four distinct works. The first is actually a tribute piece by Editor David Gessner for the feature Out of Place. “The Dead Writers’ Society: One Day I Hope to Join” is humorous, heartfelt, and historically informative using hand-drawn images and text as well as photos and photocopied ephemera. It is available to read on the Ecotone website. The three content pieces are offered in a full-color portfolio with an intro by each artist.
“Network of Want” by Angie Kang is hands-down my favorite piece, mainly because it explores desire paths – those pathways made by people and animals following their desired route. Kang uses a limited palate of blue-greens to violet for each scene with the pathway rendered in hot pink. She examines the myriad mindsets and biologies driving these pathways, to take shortcuts, to avoid, to be nearer, and to survive. Her work is a desire path in itself, as I find myself returning to it again and again to meditate on the shared meanings a simple worn path can offer. The intro to this work is available to read on the Ecotone website, but the work can only be viewed with a subscription.
“Whale Fall: Sequences 1, 2, 3” by Mita Mahato sources the term “whale fall” to create a series of images that reflect a system of metamorphizing by combining grids, letterforms, and colors. Whale fall, Mahato writes, “is “the ecosystem that emerges when a whale carcass falls to the ocean floor” and describes how “enmeshed” this phenomenon is with both marine and terrestrial systems of existence. My appreciation for Mahato’s work increased exponentially after seeing her process, which she shares in several videos and images on her Instagram page @mita_mahato. There is an intense amount of cutting out the grid and letters with an Exacto knife that cannot be fully captured in the print images, and that factors into the interpretation as well. Mahato’s intro and work are available to read on the Ecotone website.
“Becoming Water” by S. J. Ghaus is a hauntingly dreamy sequence exploring their sense of identity through self-naming. Ghaus opens the intro, “Four years ago, I picked up a blue colored pencil on New Year’s Eve and began to draw. I’ve been drawing and writing in that specific shade of blue ever since, and I don’t know when I’ll stop.” Coincidentally, this piece is about water, being in water, and identifying as water. Its compelling strength is that singular color and the depth and complexity Ghaus can create with this self-imposed limitation. This work is also available to read on the Ecotone website.
Reviewer bio: Denise Hill is Editor of NewPages.com and reviews material based on her own personal interests.
The Spring 2023 online issue of Split Rock Review features poetry by Joy Arbor, Nisha Atalie, Kellam Ayres, Rebecca Brock, Angelina Oberdan Brooks, Bethany Cutkomp, Scott Davidson, Barbara Westwood Diehl, Monica Joy Fara, Daryl Farmer, Gail Hosking, Christine Jones, Brandon Kilbourne, Jennifer Loyd, Marjorie Maddox & Karen Elias, Monica Mankin, Nathan Manley, Kathleen Mctigue, Megan Moriarty, Nick Powell, Barbara Rockman, Patricia Rockwood, Erika Saunders, Heidi Seaborn, Nancy Squires, Gary Thomas, and Maggie Yang. There is also a comic by Nathan Holic; creative nonfiction by Rebecca Lee Clay, Emily Ford, Dana J. Graef, and Marin Smith; and art/photography by Harry Bauld, David A. Goodrum, Shara K. Johnson, Susan Soloman, and Luke Tan.
An homage to Allen Ginsberg, The Howl is a new online venue for young creators (grades 9-12), fittingly borrowing for their tagline as well, “the best minds of your generation.” As the editors explain, “Much as Ginsberg’s poem details the complex lives of others, we amplify the content that whirls out of the unique storms that young people brave.” An open-access online journal for readers of all ages, The Howl publishes on a rolling basis and accepts poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, scripts, photography, traditional and digital art, music, videos, journalism/op-eds, and other genres ‘best minds’ want to explore.
Under the Gum Tree Summer 2023 issue opens with a Letter from the Editor titled “Unimaginable Resiliency” in which Janna Marlies Maron writes, “By the time you read this it will be nearly one year since I experienced a major relapse of MS in August 2022 that caused debilitating neuropathy throughout my body.” And further contemplates, “I continue to be committed to personal storytelling. If there is one thing I know for sure it’s that our stories always demonstrate an unimaginable resiliency—even what I’ve shared in this letter I never would have imagined that I’d be surviving, until I actually did.”
Contributor writers to this issue include Kristina Ryan Tate, Ali Saperstein, Kathryn Leehane, Suzanne Lewis, Tawnya Gibson, and Alex Noelke. Artwork from Ryan Taylor and Seth Pitt are also featured in this issue.
Under the Gum Tree is available for digital or print copy purchase.
The Awakenings Review Spring 2023 issue is available for readers to enjoy online and features works by writers and artists with mental illness as well as from family members and friends of people with mental illness, though the contributions themselves need not focus on mental illness. The Awakenings Review occasionally dedicates issues to specific topics or features authors who live with a particular illness. The newest issue features poetry, essay, and short stories by W. Barrett Munn, Benjamin Shalva, William LaPage, Carol Lee Saffioti-Hughes, Jesse White, Lloyd Jacobs, Hugh Anderson, Linda Logan, Hope Andersen, Alexander Perez, Richard Risemberg, Adrian Harte, Katherine Szpekman, Valerie Wardh, Brooke Lathe, Anna Adami, Kristina Morgan, Vitoria Perez, Mary Anna Scenga Kruch, Meg LeDuc, Brian Daldorph, Elizabeth Brulé Farrell, Christine Andersen, C.M. Mattison, Alan Sugar, Kate Falvey, Dave Fekete, Kristine Laco, Timothy Lindner, Emily Kay MacGriff, and Jane Marston.
Vita Poetica Journal Summer 2023 issue of the online quarterly publication of creative work explored through a spiritual lens opens with the editorial “Forces of Endurance” by Caroline Langston and includes poetry by Hannah Hinsch, Paul Hostovsky, Phillip Aijian, Jack Stewart, Charles Haddox, Rachelle Scott, Sydney Hegele, Ginnie Goulet Gavrin, Joseph Byrd, Lane Falcon; fiction byd Emily Ver Steeg, James Roderick Burns; visual arts by Lucy Bell, Sarah Walko, Willy Conley. Cover art by Lucy Bell.
Features include the interview, “Art as Attention, Presence, Prayer: Visual Artist Scott Aasman” in conversation with Emily Chambers Sharpe and two reviews: “Spirit in the Dark Brings Religious Influence to Light: A Review of the Smithsonian Exhibit on Religion in Black Music, Activism and Popular Culture” by Mary Amendolia Gardner, and “To See Beyond Walls: A Review of Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard von Bingen” by Cheryl Sadowski.
There are also two Contemplative Practices, which include guided practices with recorded as well as written instructions: “A Blessing for Your Breath” by Rebekah Vickery and “Drawing Praise: A Creative Reflection on Psalm 148” by Samir Knego.
Apple in the Dark online magazine’s Summer 2023 issue features entries from their Flash Fiction Contest judged by Chelsea T. Hicks: Winner Ashley Beresch and Honorable Mentions Brenda Yates and Xochi Cartland, as well as works by finalists Cemile Guldal, Liz DeGregorio, MaxieJane Frazier, Brandi Ocasio, Robert Warf, and Juliana Warta. Readers can also enjoy new fiction by Clara Roberts, Brendan Todt, Bibi Berki, Jan Allen, Kayla Wiltfong, Tyler Barlass, Brooks C. Mendell, Kathy Sherwood, Lea Murray, and nonfiction by Adrianna Sanchez-Lopez, Lorraine Hanlon Comanor, Katharyn Howd Machan.
