Quartetis an online poetry journal featuring work by women fifty and over and is enjoyed by readers around the globe – twenty countries, including Ukraine and Malta. Originally publishing four issues a year, the editors will be cutting back to three. All is well, they assure readers, but the editors are hoping to regain some writing time for themselves and use the opportunity to increase the number of poems per issue for the triannual publication. “This makes us very happy,” says Editor Linda Blaskey, “because there was so much good work we were turning away each submission period.”
The name Quartet was not based on the number of issues, but rather for the four founding members, a close group of friends. The editors select poems together and each also have their own specific jobs to do behind the scenes but all communication is signed “The Editors” because “we truly feel we are working as a collective. We stand shoulder to shoulder in our pride of what we’ve accomplished with Quartet.”
Readers to the newest issue of Quartet can find works by Anne Barney, Maria Berardi, Anne Wessel Dwyer, Christine Jones, Jayne Marek, Kate Maxwell, Gloria Monaghan, Miriam O’Neal, Michele Parker Randall, Claudia M. Reder, Caroline Reid, Maggie Rosen, Deborah Straw, Dawn Terpstra, Marjorie Thomsen, and Susan Zimmerman with cover art by Franetta McMillian.
There is also and “Editor’s Choice” section with poems that are automatically entered in Quartert‘s single-poem contest with the winner announced Winter 2024.
Graphic novels, comics, comic arts, graphic narrative, visual literature – there are many old and new forms of art and writing continually merging and morphing among communities of creatives, and likewise, more publications opening their submissions to such works or based in them entirely. In addition to the content, there are growing conversations around the forms. Enter SOLRAD: The Online Literary Magazine for Comics publishing daily Monday through Friday.
SOLRAD is a nonprofit online literary magazine dedicated to the comics arts. Run completely by a volunteer staff, SOLRAD publishes original content ranging from comics criticism, original comics, essays, interviews, and the promotion of small-press events and releases. The site is a platform for new, underrepresented, and otherwise marginalized creative voices, in addition to commissioning work from well-established cartoonists, critics, journalists, and authors.
SOLRAD’s name comes from the noun meaning a wavy line in illustration (especially comics) that represents light and/or warmth emanating from the sun or other light sources, and it fits perfectly with the mission of the publication. As Editor in Chief Daniel Elkin (he/him) shares the motivation for starting SOLRAD, “We believe that criticism of the comics arts is equally essential for the betterment of the form, education of the public, and to give the comics arts a place for reflection, discernment, and connection with the larger world. As more and more people are introduced to comics as an art form, the stronger our community becomes.”
“Even more than just this, though,” Elkin adds, “we wanted to provide a legitimate, transparent, and honorable platform that allows for the diversity of creators and critical voices that makes the comics community so rich. While there are certainly places within the comics ecosystem that provide safe spaces, we wanted to take it to the next level and raise awareness of the comics arts outside its own bubble of support and into the larger public sphere to the benefit of everyone involved.”
Elkin brings a wealth of experience with him, having spent over a decade in comics criticism with bylines at Comics Bulletin, The Comics Journal, Comicon.com, and more. Before SOLRAD, he ran the comics website Your Chicken Enemy. Using this expertise, Elkins reads each pitch and, if it seems a good fit for SOLRAD, asks the writer to send a complete draft. From there, Elkin works with the writer, suggesting edits and/or additions. Response time is usually a week to two weeks.
Elkin has found the work with SOLRAD rewarding: “Being embraced from the start by the comics community and moving into the greater arts world, becoming a champion for comics as a medium that deserves as much attention and discernment as any other artform.” And this likewise creates a rewarding experience for readers as well. “At SOLRAD, readers can find a vital place for quality criticism that engages with a given work fully and offers insight into the interpretive process a reader undertakes. Divining an artist’s intention is one thing, but whether or not it connects in the way they’re hoping it will, analyzing where it succeeds and/or where it falls short, is vital stuff for creator and consumer alike. SOLRAD has developed a reputation as an outlet for artists to count on for fair-minded analysis of their work.”
He encourages writers to take a look at SOLRAD and get a sense of our personality and standards before submitting. Some recent contributors to the site include Hagai Palevsky, Kawai Shen, Kim Jooha, Lane Yates, Rob Kirby, Tom Shapira, Tony Wei Ling, and Rob Clough.
Looking ahead, Elkin explains, “Besides continuing to publish top notch criticism from a diverse set of writers, we hope our grant writing activity will allow us to increase the honorarium we pay our contributors as well as move into new media and educational opportunities.”
The editors welcome readers to the Winter 2023 issue of Superpresent: “In the spirit of all who hunger, we welcome you to the seventh issue and third year of Superpresent magazine, assembled in this third year of a global pandemic and the first year of war in Ukraine. In this issue contributors explore food, drink, feeding, hunger, appetite, and many related and peripheral matters. We received over 400 submissions from 18 states, 17 countries, 80 poets, 53 writers, and 120 artists. In addition to self-styled artists and writers, contributors include a fireman, a doctor, a biologist, a librarian, an urban planner, a bartender, two journalists, a tarot reader, a designer, and a neuroscientist. The work selected ranges from the literal (a feast, actual family recipes, voluptuous images of fruit, vegetables, meat, eggs, and snack packs) to the metaphorical (food as fashion, food as sex, sex as food) to the tangential (critiques of the chemical industry, alternative uses for kitchen tools, precise measurements of the sodium, fat and carbs found in common foods) and includes memory pieces (jello and ball pits, rotting bananas) and humor (a gorilla fights a fly for a frozen treat?) and a little irony (the makings of Molotov cocktails delicately arranged as a still life – or should this be filed under metaphor?).” Decide for yourself by visiting Superpresent‘s website where the publication can be read online, downloaded as a PDF, or is available in print for purchase and subscription.
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 works include “Calendar Poems,” an essay by Margaret Coats, two different views on New Year’s Resolutions in poems by David Whippman and Evan Mantyk, two New Year’s Eve poems by Susan Jarvis Bryant, poems against birth control by Joshua C. Frank, “Where Ever-present Joy Knows Naught of Time” by Cynthia Erlandson, “Crimes Against My Sanity” and other poems on parenting by Anna J. Arredondo, “Addiction” by Paul Buchheit, “Freedom in Forgiveness,” a villanelle by Dan Tuton, “On Attending a Holiday Ensemble with My Wife” by Jeremiah Johnson, “The Fall of Babylon” by William Harrison, “Wisdom” by Russel Winick, “How Troubling to Know Mrs. Pain” by Norma Pain, and so many more great reads. Visit their website today!
The Winter 2022/23 issue of The Writing Disorder online literary magazine is now available for reading and enjoyment. To close out 2022, there are 22 contributors in this issue offering all new works: fiction by Vicki Addesso, Don Donato, Jenny Falloon, Lyle Hopwood, Doug Jacquier, Ellie May Mandell, Ed Peaco, Andrew Plattner, Judy Stanigar; poetry by Phoebe Cragon, Richard Dinges, Jr., Kristen Hoggatt-Abader, Arezou Mokhtarian, Jim Murdoch, Christina E. Petrides, Brent Short; nonfiction by Margaret King, Yolanda Wysocki, and the art of Natalie Shou. The Writing Disorder is published quarterly online with the mission to “showcase new and emerging writers – particularly those in writing programs — as well as established ones.”
“To the Quick” by Karen McPherson is a brief poem made up of three tercets. It’s a poem of wizened recognitions that can truly only come with age, which the narrator acknowledges in her skin, “Hardening. // Softening. Veined and rugose.” where she wears her weariness for “hoarding my personal past while coveting others’ futures – ” (How does McPherson know my mind so well?) The speaker goes on to forgive and make plans, trim a kitten’s claws and compare those clever little mechanisms to her own nails, exposed and absurd as a result of tearing “away soft crescents with my teeth.” “To the Quick” delivers readers as promised, to that pit inside that yearns for understanding and connection while at the same time being fully grounded in the concrete non-attachment to time, which moves steadily forward. We eventually figure some things out, “forgive the lapses,” and remain mystified all the same. McPherson succinctly finds that sweet spot in “To the Quick.”
Reviewer bio: Denise Hill is the Editor of NewPages.com, which welcomes reviews of books as well as individual poems, stories, and essays. If you are interested in contributing a Guest Post to “What I’m Reading,” please click this link: NewPages.com Reviewer Guidelines.
Issue 22 of the print literary magazine Minerva Rising: Then and Now is a celebration of all the writers who have been published by Minerva Rising over the last ten years. The writers and poets published in this issue wrestle with what it means to be women in the world with all the complexity of life – trauma, domestic violence, aging, societal norms, mindfulness, well-being, reconciling with our past, depression, and grief. These beautiful stories, essays, and poems testify to the wisdom and creativity in every woman. They remind us that as women, we are all connected, and at Minerva Rising, our voices are not only heard but amplified. Visit the publication’s website for ordering information.
Issue 14 of Under a Warm Green Linden online poetry magazine is a double issue on Indigenous Ecopoetics, guest-edited by Beatrice Szymkowiak. Readers can explore thirty-eight poets whose new work expands the possibilities of ecopoetics—illustrating and reimagining relationships between culture, land, history, and nature: Kimberly Blaeser, Abigail Chabitnoy, Laura Da’, Diane Glancy, Joan Naviyuk Kane, Chip Livingston, dg nanouk okpik, Elise Paschen, Vivian Faith Prescott, Jake Skeets, James Thomas Stevens, Margo Tamez, among others. Under a Warm Green Linden offers recordings of many contributors reading their works, including featured poet Margaret Noodin, author of Bawaajimo: A Dialect of Dreams in Anishinaabe Language and Literature and two collections of poetry in Anishinaabemowin and English, Weweni and What the Chickadee Knows; Noodin has also translated over thirty books for children into Ojibwe. Visitors to the publication can enjoy hearing her singing her poem “Binawan / Dew Falls.”
In addition to celebrating their 10th Anniversary, CleaverIssue 40 features selections from the first annual Cleaver Flash Competition. Judge Meg Pokrass comments, “It was only after rereading the stories for a number of weeks that my favorites became clear. Ultimately the winners were the ones that inexplicably moved me emotionally above everything else, and that I kept re-engaging with, trying to figure out how the writer worked their magic. It became a matter of recognizing that certain pieces had chosen me, not the other way around.”
Readers can enjoy works from First Place Winner Sabrina Hicks, Second Place Winner Janet Burroway, and Third Place Winner Dawn Miller, as well as Honorable Mentions by Paul Joseph Enea, Fannie H. Gray, Emily Hoover, Lisa Lanser Rose, James LaRowe, Andrea Marcusa, Christina Simon, Andrew Stancek, Laura Tanenbaum, and Kris Willcox, and Finalists by Joe Alan Artz, Madeleine Barowsky, Lyn Chamberlin, Nicholas Claro, Sarah Freligh, Theo Greenblatt, Amanda Hadlock, Meredith McCarroll, K. T. Moore, and Ron Tobey. Lex Lucius contributed paintings to this issue.
Appropriately named given their location in Central Kentucky – “horse country” – Yearling also fits because it is (still) new and is published annually by Workhorse. What name could be more appropriate for this print poetry journal now joining the herd?
While Yearling may be new, the publications’ masthead come with a great deal of experience. “We are educators, writers, performers, enthusiasts for language, and the voice of every single person.”
Manny Grimaldi (he/him), Managing Editor, began as a regional actor in Shakespeare, with a degree in Dramatic Arts and Anthropology from Centre College. He is cunning with the spoken and written word and has published single pieces of poetry in Club Plum Literary Magazine, Kentucky State Poetry Society’s Pegasus Fall 2022, and the Lexington Poetry Month anthologies for 2020 and 2021.
Christopher McCurry (he/him), Editor, co-founded Workhorse in 2015, a publishing company and community for working writers. He believes “everyone should write poems and that
Celebrating their 15th anniversary with Issue 30 of Superstition Review, readers can enjoy art by Corey S. Pressman, Jenny Wu, RAEchel Running, Shirin Mellat Gohar, and Valyntina Grenier; fiction by Amy Reardon, Gabriel Granillo, Michael Colbert, Mohamed Shalabi, Morris Collins, Patrick Henry Thomas, and JT Townley; nonfiction by Audacia Ray, Brooke White, Carlo Rey Lacsamana, Cassandra Whitaker, and Kaia Preus; poetry by Charlie Peck, Constance Hansen, Cynthia Marie Hoffman, Danny Rivera, Joanne Diaz, Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer, Natalie Giarratano, Rachel Nelson, Rebecca Griswold, Remi Recchia, Susan L. Leary, and Yong-Yu Huang; interviews with Angie Cruz, Leopoldo Gout, Manuel Muñoz, Raquel Gutierrez, and Rudy Ruiz. Superstition Review is an open access online publication.
South Dakota Review Volume 57, Number 1, kicks off its new volume with poetry by Ana Maria Caballero, Ross White, Dana Salvador, Jennifer Met, James Cihlar, Eloise Klein Healy, Sean Cho A., Claudia Putnam, Pen Pearson, and Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán; fiction by LJ Kessels and Charles Holdefer; and nonfiction by Lane Chasek, Mardith Louisell, Gail Hosking, and Richard Holinger, as well as an experimental collaborative essay by Corinna Cook & Jeremy Pataky.
The Autumn 2022 issue of Storm Cellar: A Literary Journal of Safety and Danger, available in print or ebook, is nicknamed “Hobby Horse” and features fiction by David Busboom, Mandy-Suzanne Wong; flash by MAP, Carolyn Oliver, Ali Abid, DM O’Connor, JWGoll; creative nonfiction by Philip James Shaw, Theresa Lin; poetry by Tyra Douyon, Cecilia Díaz Gómez translated by Kiran Bhat, Natalie Louise Tombasco, Martha Zweig, Rigel Portales, Danielle McMahon, Stephen C. Middleton, Leigh Lucas, Ranney Campbell, Naomi Kanakia; images by Lesley Finn, Marija Mičić, Melody Serra, Sijia Ma, Jean Wolff, Mario Loprete, Erick Buendia, Dylan Willoughby, and cover by Maria Svartvadet Jakobsen. “We want everybody to get weird and enlightened and learn and fall in love and have superpowers,” the editors write. “We want to surprise and delight and horrify and provoke. Storm Cellar is not a distraction but a cure for boredom.” Your safety and danger await!
Editor Speer Morgan, in the Foreward to The Missouri Review Fall 2022 issue, comments on the “compelling new techniques in the arts” that, while innovative at their onset, “are often picked up and imitated until they seem to have always been used.” This issue’s theme, “Deep Focus,” comes from the technique used in early film, such as the 1922 Weimar production of Nosferatu, and Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane. He goes on to draw parallels with Walt Whitman’s “broad theme: We are large, we contain multitudes. We are partly right, partly wrong, but given the transience of life, we should fully visit this moment and this gathering of people with compassion, cheer, and attentiveness and then move on.” Great advice for the many seasonal family gatherings we encounter as well as other situations which bring us together, including reading the lives of authors and narrators in literary works. Included for readers in this issue is new fiction from Drew Calvert, Jonathan Johnson, Matthew Niell Null, Valerie Sayers, and Rohini Sunderam. New poetry from Andrew Hemmert, Rebecca Lindenberg, and Felicia Zamora. Essays by Robert Cochran, Jim Steck, and Mako Yoshikawa. Features on James Van Der Zee’s Harlem Renaissance photography, Florine Stettheimer and the Art of Modern New York, with an omnibus review from Lisa Katz on books by and about translators.
Editor Carolyn Kuebler opens issue 43.4 of New England Review with a reflection on the shift in submissions to the publication throughout the pandemic, how “Covid-19 is no doubt the best documented pandemic of all time” and how quickly the situation changed around us so that in choosing works to publish, “it was more often the defining factor in pieces we did not publish. We didn’t need anyone to tell us how strange this all ways. Something stranger still was already taking place.” Kuebler writes, “So much of this writing felt a few steps behind, even in just a matter of weeks or months.” Recognizing how it has become woven into contemporary works, and also that pre-pandemic writing or writing that does not acknowledge it at all, reveals how “writers are able to fully inhabit, imaginatively, a world that preceded 2020, as well as they can inhabit this new one.”
This issue offers readers a Covid diary by Zoe Valery, Leath Tonino’s defense of the American Outback, a short play by British author Charlotte Turnbull, multi-page excerpts from poem sequences by Sandra Simonds and Diana Khoi Nguyen, new shorter poems by Kim Addonizio, Aumaine Rose Smith, and Josh Tvrdy, explorations into the archives by Michelle Peñaloza and Nicky Beer, first English translations of poems by Meret Oppenheim and Daniela Catrileo, new short stories by Yume Kitasei, Megan Staffel, and J. E. Suárez, and in “Rediscoveries,” Donald Mackenzie Wallace’s excerpt “Revolutionary Nihilism And Romantic Notions” taken from the 1912 edition of Russia, published in London by Cassell and Company. Some content is available for readers to access for free online.
The Malahat Review Issue 220 features the winner of their Far Horizons Award for Poetry, “Inner Child Work” by Meryem Yildiz, as well as poetry by Chelsea Coupal, Joel Harris, Ana Rodriguez Machado, Richard Sanger, Susan Glickman, Rachel Crummey, Ben Gallagher, Shauna Andrews, Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang, A. Light Zachary, Manahil Bandukwala, Tasos Leivaditis, N. N. Trakakis, Annick MacAskill, Carl Watts, Camille Lendor, Jérémi Doucet, Erin Conway-Smith, Daniel W. K. Lee; fiction by Rachel Lachmansingh, Susan Sanford Blades, Zilla Jones, Shazia Hafiz Ramji; and creative nonfiction by Gabriel Cholette, Brian O’Neill, and Monica Wang. Readers can find an online interview with Shazia Hafiz Ramji about her story, “Selvon in Calgary.”
If you seek “musings, hallucinations, fantasies, determinations and peregrinations that depart formal structures and do not recognize parameters,” then you need look no further than NĪNSHAR Arts, an open access online publication of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, paintings, drawings, etchings, photography, digital art, and sculpture images publishing on a rolling basis.
“Disability Justice” is the newest issue of The Massachusetts Review. Guest edited and introduced by Cyrée Jarelle Johnson and Khairani Barokka, the volume presents “writing by disabled authors that pushes back against dominant depictions of disabled people as helpless, minor, or merely as patients and nothing more. . . The work in this issue reclaims the narrative of illness and disability from medical experts and scientists. It centers the wisdom and expertise of those living painful lives, sick lives, disabled lives, neurodivergent lives. It insists that such lives are worth living, are beautiful, are deserving of documentation. It brings our universes into being and our bodies into focus.”
Contributors include Zuo You, Zefyr Lisowski, Claude Olson, Brian Teare, Vivian Li, Lynn Buckle, Djenebou Bathily, Levent Beskardes, Bhavna Mehta, Ally Zlatar, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Saleem Hue Penny, Rosebud Ben-Oni, Michelle Renee Hoppe, Ife Olatona, Panteha Abareshi, Andy Jackson and Gaele Sobott, Adrienne Marie Barrios and Leigh Chadwick, Christine Barkley, Abu āl-`Alā´ al-Ma`arrī, Camisha Jones, Jodie Noel Vinson, Maureen Seaton, Ellen Samuels, Kay Ulanday Barrett, Olivia Muenz, Clare Richards, John Newton Webb, , Travis Chi Wing Lau, Daniel Sluman, Pinka PopsicKle, Ekiwah Adler-Belendez, Kieran Mundy, Joselia Rebekah Hughes, Wakaya Wells, Yi Zhe, Stephanie Papa, and Salma Harland. Some content is available to read free online.
The Winter 2022 Rain Taxi Review of Books is available at bookstands or by membership subscription and includes interviews with poet Dara Barrois/Dixon and multi-genre writer Carl Watson, features on novelist Pauline Melville and poet Susan Lewis, and reviews that will take readers from the classic literature of Stendhal to the contemporary cartooning of Kate Beaton and cover art by Roger Williamson. Check out the complete table of contents of issue 108 here.
The Portrait of New England Volume 2 is the first issue back from the publication’s hiatus, which NewPages.com covered in this interview with its new editor, Matthew Johnson, and founding editors Brett Murphy Hunt and Jon Bishop. Portrait of New England is a regional-based online literary magazine that published poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction from writers with ties to New England – which can include being a current or former resident or attending schooling in the region. NewPages.com is happy to welcome the publication back with contributions from Andrew Yim, Donna Mitchell, Eric D. Lehman, Emily Fabbricotti, Emily Ehrhart, Benjamin Thomas, Ann Taylor, Alexander B. Joy, Ed Ahern, Charlotte Friedman, Cortney Davis, Kathryn Sadakierski, Joanne Corey, Melissa D. Burrage, John Grey, Patricia Peterson, Katherine Gotthardt, Katherine Gotthardt, Gayle Lauradunn, Frank William Finney, Angela Acosta, and Natalie Schriefer. Submissions for the next issue are open from March 1-May 31, 2023.
The Shore issue 16 marks the online quarterly publication’s fourth full year of production, and the newest issues keeps to their standard of selecting poems from new and established poets that are “cutting, strange, and daring.” Featured in this issue are works by Ellery Beck, Nasser Alsinan, Ryan Varadi, Michael Goodfellow, John Glowney, Heather Qin, Helen Nancy Meneilly, Mary Simmons, Justin Carter, Michel Agunbiade, Maggie Boyd Hare, Maya C Thompson, Ronda Piszk Broatch, Chris McCann, Margaret M Kelly, Daniel Dias Callahan, Katie Tian, Martha Silano, Marina Brown, Mike WIlson, Anthony Gabriel, Christopher Citro & Dustin Nightingale, Shannon Hardwick, Kevin Roy, Jay Brecker, Lauren Badillo Milici, Grant Schutzman, Monica Cure, Brandon Hansen, Erin Wilson, Lucas Dean Clark, M Cynthia Cheung, Leland Seese, Joey Wańczyk, Kimberly Ann Priest, Joe Dahut, and Vanessa Couto Johnson with haunting art by taylor d waring.
Headlining the Jan/Feb 2023 issue of World Literature Today is Senegalese writer Boubacar Boris Diop, laureate of the 2022 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Also inside, Emily Doyle interviews R.O. Kwon (“On Sex, Soul Loneliness, and Walking toward Terror”), while Shoshana Bellen, Cleyvis Natera, Ana Ojeda, and Danae Sioziou provide additional conversational exchanges. Further highlights include A.E. Copenhaver’s “Eco-Lit to Read Now” booklist, a new poem by Ted Kooser, and an excerpt i9from Deena Mohamed’s forthcoming graphic novel Shubeik Lubeik (Pantheon, 2023). With more than two dozen book reviews, recommended reading lists, and other great content in the latest issue, be sure to take WLT—your passport to great reading—with you into 2023 and beyond.
For Issue 10 of Waxing & Waning, the editors went with their standard call: “We want what’s on the fringe. Whatever is deep and true. The moon represents this idea: what is dark, what is brooding, what is wild, what is crescent and changing. We want to feed the beast in you, the one buried beneath layers of manners and anxiety and internet induced abyss, repetition, and relative sameness. Work submitted to Waxing & Waning should be honest and well-executed. It should scream coherently; it should bring experiences and knowledge out of us that we have not seen before. It should rip out our black hearts and put them in front of our eyes. Bring us the work everyone else is afraid of. Bring us the work you’re afraid of. Bring us the work that gets at the trueness frightening you out of the routine. In a world blanketed in monotony—we seek to search outside of ourselves so we can better love, give love, and sacrifice for whatever art could bring. We hope to wax in truth and wane into poetics—to shelter ourselves from reality. To bathe in the light of the moon.”
Stepping up to meet this call for Issue 10 are contributions of poetry by A.N. DeJesus, Esme DeVault, Benjamin Green, Marian Shapiro, Taunja Thomson, and Andrew Walker; fiction by Robert Cramblitt, Max Firehammer, Joseph Morice, Chris Motto, Elizabeth Quirk, Eugene Radice, Douglas Steward, and Rebecca Wood; creative non-fiction by Mackenzie Broderick, Christie Green, Joan Halperin, Melanie Reitzel, and Anne-Christine Strugnell; art by Katie Allcorn, Karyna Aslanova, Gianna Sozzi, and Alice Teeple; a play by Paul Antokolsky; and Editor’s Note by Lance Ümmenhofer.
Waxing & Waning is published under the April Gloaming Publishing imprint, which includes a special focus on Southern literature as well as novels, memoirs, poetry collections, and anthologies. Print copies of Waxing & Waning and the Waxing & Waning Presents Series can be purchased here: www.aprilgloaming.com/shop
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 Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed here or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us!
About Place, December 2022 Aji Magazine, 17 Atlanta Review, Fall/Winter 2022 The Baltimore Review, Fall 2022 Blink Ink, 50 Bomb, Winter 2023 Boulevard, 110 & 111 Brick, 110 Cave Wall, Number 17 Communities, Winter 2022 Cutleaf, 2.24 december, Fall/Winter 2022
From the Department of English at Auburn University, this Southern Humanities Review is a double issue and their 2022 Witness Poetry Prize Issue, featuring the winner, “Tulsa Triptych” by Daniel Donaghy as well as poems from finalists as judged by poet Rick Barot. The rest of the issue is filled with nonfiction by Kate Lister Campbell, Gage Saylor, Caroline Sutton, and Justin Jannise; fiction by Talia Lakshmi Kolluri, Rachael Fowler, Max Hipp, John Kim, Greg Tebbano, Neal Hammons, and Stephanie Macias; poetry by Nicole Stockburger, Ashley Kunsa, Tennessee Hill, Desiree Santana, Jubi Arriola-Headley, M. Cynthia Cheung, Jacob Griffin Hall, Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, emet ezell, Marissa Davis, Cindy Juyoung Ok, Jai Hamid Bashir, Benjamin S. Grossberg, Jamie L. Smith, Helena Mesa, Zoë Fay-Stindt, Julia C. Alter, Aneeqa Wattoo, Adam J. Gellings, B. Tyler Lee, Ajay Sawant, Piedad Bonnett, and Karen McPherson; with cover art by Doris Alexander Thompson.
Waxing & Waning publishes one print and one online issue per year, along with one special edition contest, the Waxing & Waning Presents Series, that amplifies voices of underrepresented populations.
For the 2022 Blackout Edition, the writers’ prompt was:
“As 2021 draws to a close, George Floyd’s killer behind bars, Breonna Taylor’s still enjoying their time of freedom, and countless other BIPOC people’s deaths still without justice, our humble literary and arts journal is seeking writing and art that exemplifies the BIPOC experience worldwide. In a time of racial unrest, where privileges are being called out and people are being asked to change their behaviors to make the world we live in accountable for its unfairness and injustices, we at Waxing & Waning are looking for creative work that both includes this aspect, but we are also looking for any and all work about the modern BIPOC experience, even outside of race. Give us your poems about sunsets, stories that strike a chord in the human experience, art that screams to be heard. Be deep, true, honest. Here is not where limits lie. We want it all.”
The contributors for The Blackout Edition Prose: Winner Rim Chon, Runner-up Emil Rem, Marian Fredal, Leslie Grover, and Patrice Washington; Poetry: Winner Shamon Williams, Runner-up Glenn Marchand, Biman Roy, and Sabrina Spence; Art: Winner Christina Sayers.
The 2023’s special edition contest will be titled The Pride Edition and will be open to all writers and artists in the LGBTQIA+ population. Submissions for this will open at the beginning of the year.
Waxing & Waning is published under the April Gloaming Publishing imprint, which includes a special focus on Southern literature as well as novels, memoirs, poetry collections, and anthologies. Print copies of Waxing & Waning and the Waxing & Waning Presents Series can be purchased here: www.aprilgloaming.com/shop
“A literary legacy since 1958,” December‘s newest issue (33.2) features the 2022 Curt Johnson Prose Award Winners: “Goodnight, Irene” by Miriam Gallou, Fiction Winner; “Slow Dance” by Garnett Cohen, Fiction Honorable Mention; “On Her Waters Summoning Us Down” by Gisselle Yepes, Nonfiction Winner; “Of Cats and Men” by Anjanette Degado, Nonfiction Honorable Mention. Other contributors to this issue include poetry by Joanne Allred, David Axelrod, Nancy Botkin, Mary Crow, Kim Ports Parsons, Ricardo Pau-Llosa, Dan Rosenberg, John Schneider, Steven Schreiner, Heidi Seaborn, Mark Smith-Soto, Carole Stone, Florence Weinberger, John Sibley Williams, Erin Wilson; fiction by Quinn Adikes, Bruce Kilstein, A.C. Koch, Jenna-Marie Warnecke; nonfiction by Jacob Aiello, Jiadai Lin, Neha Potalia; art by Joy Curtis, Basil Kincaid; illustration by Sherry Shahan; and cover art by JJ Manford.
Wordrunner eChapbooks‘ 47th issue, Winter 2022 fiction echapbook, is Death in the Cathedral: A Novella in Five Stories by Malcolm Dixon. These five linked stories immerse readers in the turbulent, disturbing and sometimes hilarious misadventures and rivalries of Catholic schoolboys in late 20th century Liverpool—Stephen Mattimore, the boy who tries to play by the rules, his rebellious and scornful classmates who torment their cassocked teachers, the misfit who runs the campus sundries shop. Death, lurking in the title story, whether sudden or anticipated, alters everyone. Outside the confining Cathedral College flows “the inky black waters of the Mersey, opaque to the point of invisibility, like the dark unwritten page of [Stephen’s] future.” This collection may be read free online or you can purchase an ebook edition for only $2.99. Authors receive 50% of all royalties, it’s a way to support a small press, and they make thoughtful gifts during the holiday season!
If you’re in search of some new media outlets, The Conversationalist is a nonprofit feminist media outlet publishing online journalism focused on a global perspective, from the personal to the political. The Conversationalist is a platform for original reporting and commentary from writers with under-amplified perspectives. The publication takes an empathetic approach to increase media literacy and inspire conversation around sensitive challenges in global affairs. Recent articles include “Made in Pakistan” by Anmol Irfan, “Buffalo and Uvalde, Six Months Later” by Raina Lipsitz, “Russia’s New Anti-LGBTQ Legislation is Just More of the Same Authoritarianism” by Chrissy Stroop, “Freedom to Want” by Melissa Chadburn, “Can We Writer Our Way to a New Word?” by Racel Pafe, and numerous others on topics like adult friendship, climate change, books, travel, community, abolition, food, and more. “Feminist stories. Global Perspectives. Zero BS.” Find more great reading at the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines.
The newest issue of Jewish Fiction .net is its Chanukah issue, which includes 12 stories originally written in Yiddish, Hebrew, and English. This brings to almost 550 the number of works published by Jewish Fiction .net, that were either written in English or translated from 18 languages. Readers can find works by Tsilye Dropkin, Wayne Karlin, Hamutal Bar-Yosef, Peter Alterman, Avital Gad-Cykman, and many more. All available to read free online. And some exciting news: Academic Studies Press will be publishing an anthology of fiction from Jewish Fiction .net – 18 stories, each translated into English from a different language! This book will come out this fall, so keep your eyes open for updates.
The Iowa Review Editor Lynne Nugent introduces contributions to this 2022 double issue as diverse, including “an ode to a drag queen, an account of growing up with a Chinese last name in small-town Minnesota, and a meditation on a cane used as a mobility aid.” Nugent emphasizes The Iowa Review‘s evolution while also acknowledging its inheritance: in their first issue, The Iowa Review featured Donald Justice’s poem “ABC”; this issue features his letters, edited by Jerry Harp. Though that first issue was made up entirely of white, cisgender, heterosexual men (“brilliant men, mind you,” Nugent reminds us: “Donald Justice, William Stafford, Robert Coover, Galway Kinnell”) to her, Justice’s “poem reads like a manifesto for TIR. To launch a literary magazine in 1970 meant asserting against larger cultural forces the value of syllables, words, stanzas. Each of the diverse array of writers in this issue takes up the same cause. A, then B, then C, and building a new world from there.” Works in this issue include fiction by Pallavi Wakharkar , Serkan Görkemli, Rajnesh Chakrapani, Ernesto Barbieri, Kenneth Tanemura, Nikki Ervice, Lindsey Drager; nonfiction by Alison C. Rollins, Lisa Argrette Ahmad, Xujun Eberlein, Christopher Kempf, Michael M. Weinstein, Jonathan Wei, Michaela Django Walsh; poetry by Donald Platt, Sarah Heston, Alisha Dietzman, Samyak Shertok, Derek A. Denckla, Alisha Acquaye, Gunnar Wærness, translated by Gabriel Gudding, Meghan Maguire Dahn; and artwork by b. Robert Moore. Some content is available to read free online.
Topical Poetry contributors share poems based on a recent public news/event, preferably from the previous or current week. Editors select the best ones and publish them on the website twice a month, on every other Sunday. “Poetry on current events can be transformational, thought-provoking, and everlasting.” Recent works include “Always” by Dustin Brookshire, “Carrier of Souls” by David Chorlton, “None of This Had to Happen- Channeling Jane Hirschfield” by Lynne Kemen, “A Tale of Black Friday” by Lois Perch Villemaire, “On the Many Shades of Protest (& Prayer)” by Jen Schneider, and “The Pen” by Bänoo Zan. All content is free to read online.
The Woven Tale Press editors for Vol 10 No 8 promise readers “haunting images, eco-friendly sculpture, unusual mixed media, poetry, fiction and more!” Contributors include Craig Cotter, Stacey Fletcher, Jana Harris, Nell Jungyun, Kenneth Kesner, Roberto Loiederman, Joseph A. Miller, Natalie Oliphant, Craig Palmer, Sara Joyce Robinson, Susan B. Wadsworth. The Woven Tale Press welcomes fiction and creative nonfiction prose writing, poetry, and all mediums in the visual arts, including installation works; galleries are invited to submit the work of artists they represent. For their site, The Woven Tale Press seeks posts by both visual artists and writers, on any aspect of their creative process. Artists can submit their website URL for review consideration. If you are interested in becoming an art correspondent for The Woven Tale Press — to report on your local art scene— WTP would love to hear from you! Visit their website for full details.
Published in the summer 2022 issue of Brick, “Porous” by Jessica Moore investigates motherhood and imagines the many types of containers in and around pregnancy, birth, and life. Moore opens by stating, “I have an affinity for the liminal.” This fascination of “spaces between” opens an exploration of moments and feelings “beyond the physical.” Reflecting on motherhood, both years before and after giving birth to twins, Moore muses on the space love contains and the boundaries, containers for love, that also grow with motherhood. A car crash eight years before giving birth results in a head injury which causes Moore to pay closer attention to losses and to memorize a passage from John Berger that sparks an unintended attention towards how the mind “alter[s] and appropriate[s]” our own words—memorized words are, themselves, unable to be contained. The containment of words read and memorized culminates in an observation that words, like fetal cells from a pregnancy, live in the body long after birth. The essay itself is a container of Moore’s words blended with other writers’, a container that goes on to live within the reader, revealing the liminality of language.
Reviewer bio: Megan Eralie (she/her) is a nonfiction writer, poet, and graduate student living in Logan, Utah, who thinks having two cats is a personality trait. You can find her on twitter @smeggggs.
About Place Journal editors invite readers to their December 2022 issue themed “Center of Gravity” with these comments: “Justice is the center of gravity and resistance is how we get there. While the fight for social justice, reproductive rights, and the environment has been an ongoing struggle, the present moment demands an even more urgent response to these grievous times. As James Baldwin reminds us, ‘the role of the artist…is to illuminate that darkness [and] to make the world a more human dwelling place.’ In this light, the Center of Gravity issue explores poetry, prose and visual art that articulate the possibilities of resistance and envision worlds in which justice is a reality.” Contributors include Natiq Jalil, Gerburg Garmann, Michele Reese, Alison Palmer, Helen Stevens Chinitz, Joe Milazzo, Cheryl Byler Keeler, Jeremy Paden, Cristina Correa, Hannah Dierdorff, Lisa Kwong, Mary Newell, Joanne Diaz & Jason Reblando, H. E. Riddleton, Petra Kuppers, Akua Lezli Hope, Ingrid Wendt, Allison Cummings, Carla S. Schick, Joseph Ross, Evelyn Reilly, Julie Runacres, Ariel Resnikoff, Allison Cobb, Mariana Mcdonald, Cassandra Rockwood Ghanem, Gail Folkins, Gerburg Garmann, Jorge Losoya, Bunny McFadden, RBD, Mary Edna Fraser, and Jack Bordnick.
We will begin scheduling interviews on December 16, 2022.
PRODUCTION EDITORS: As an integral part of the managing editor’s office, production editors are responsible for layout and formatting of all content prior to posting at MAYDAY. In addition to an interest in literary publishing, strong applicants might also have experience with digital journalism, publishing, and/or proofing or editing copy. MAYDAY is published on WordPress, so experience with this platform will be helpful, but it’s not prohibitively difficult to learn, either. We provide staff training and ongoing support. Familiarity with the Chicago Manual of Style will also be helpful, though it is also not an immediate requirement.
POETRY EDITORS: In addition to reading submissions and selecting work for publication, poetry editors will be encouraged to solicit work for the magazine and help develop various feature series and ongoing projects in collaboration with other editors on staff. Ideal candidates for the poetry editor positions may or may not have an educational background in writing or literary studies, but should have experience publishing their own work and/or editing the work of others.
A succinct nonfiction essay by Catherine Sinow, but one that will sit in the mind long after you’ve finished reading it, “Tom Is Dead” is about tragedy befalling a family and the complications of grief that come from no longer being close to that family. The work, published in Issue 3 of Marrow Magazine, is about rifts between people but also about closeness, and how those two things can co-exist sometimes in strange and painful ways. Sinow utilizes the small space the essay takes up well, and while the word count is low, the content is packed with effective language, like these opening lines, “Once I was friends with two brothers. I had a falling out with both of them. Eight months later, their dad was hit by a car and killed.” The blend of craft and content makes the essay a real brain-worm of a piece, and it’s a slightly morbid, slightly bittersweet, altogether powerful read.
“Tom Is Dead” by Catherine Sinow. Marrow Magazine, Issue 3, 2022.
Reviewer bio: Virginia is an English graduate student at Utah State University. They like talking with cats better than talking with people.
Aji Magazine Editor in Chief Erin O’Neill Armendarez writes of Issue 17: “Every poem, story, essay, photograph, or work of graphic art in this issue invites readers to consider alternative experiences and ways of being, coaxes us out of our day-to-day normal into someone else’s world. Pieces in this issue will inspire laughter, pathos, and perhaps deep reflection. In a world where writers, musicians, and artists are being silenced, threatened, imprisoned, even killed, we are so thankful for all of you, for the communities from which you come, for the unique perspectives you share with Aji, a small magazine, to some degree a speck on the stage of contemporary national art and literature.” The online magazine includes partner and director of Continuum Art Studios Shelley Schrieber as the featured artist, an interview with Keith Hamilton Cobb that “delves into critical conversations on racism, action, and difficult truths,” and over 100 pages of writing and artwork from four dozen contributors. All for free online, so head on over and take a look today!
Poetry Magazine December 2022 includes the special feature “Wholly Seen: The Work of Diana Solís,” which includes Carlos Cumpián’s essay “Encounter Diana Solís,” a portfolio of Chicago poetry community portraits taken by Solís in the 70s-90s, two poems by Solís, and the essay, “Making Light Together” by Robin Reid Drake. Other contributors to the issue’s regular content include Cindy Juyoung Ok, Tacey M. Atsitty, Alan Pelaez Lopez, Peter Mason, Donte Collins, Rebecca Hazelton, Dara Yen Elerath, Dorianne Laux, Marcus Wicker, Diamond Forde, and Charif Shanahan. Poetry Magazine‘s full content can be found on their website along with subscription information for the print copy.
Issue 6 of Rivanna Review offers readers an eclectic collection of content “from Virginia and beyond,” with stories by Jerry Gabriel, Christine Schott, Dylan James, and Mitchell Toews; features like “Osoyoos Homecoming” by Sonia Nicholson, “Southwest Petroglyphs” by Edward Boucheron, a tribute to Melody Edwardsen by Ed Meek, an introduction and portfolio of “Venice Watercolors” in full color by Karen Rosasco, a tribute to Isaac Boyd by Carol Cutler, photographs by Raegan Pietrucha, an intriguing series of “Welsh Portraits” by John Thomas (1838-1905), and articles on the Lang Fairy Books and the Little Free Library, book reviews, and the column “News from Hapsburg,” which features “The Bell Ringer,” James Pettigrew. If you appreciate history, literature, arts, and photography – the Rivanna Review has got you covered!
“Our ideas of love were different, too. I wanted, I was desperate, to know you truly, Dad.”
Beth Kephart’s [pictured] short nonfiction piece “The Sum of Which Parts” focuses on a collection of items belonging to her now deceased father to let readers into his world at the end of his life during the COVID-19 lockdowns. From his wallet to a picture of his Wii bowling team, Kephart uses these items to help us understand what it was like for her father, and, in turn, what it must have been like at a time of extreme isolation for much of the older generation without the access or mastery over technology. Kephart then pairs the physical distance of the lockdowns, where she wasn’t able to visit her father without the barrier of technology, with the emotional distance she feels existed between her and her father. Beautifully weaving the two together, “The Sum of Which Parts” effectively tackles the complexity of parent/child relationships, in particular during strange and unforeseen circumstances, such as a global pandemic.
“The Sum of Parts” by Beth Kephart. Upstreet, 2022.
Reviewer bio: Zoe Dalley is a graduate student specializing in literature, composition and culture. They have a particular interest in horror, experimental literature, and anything within the realm of the bizarre.
The Fall 2022 issue of The Greensboro Review (#112) features the Amon Liner Poetry Prize winner, Dom Witten’s “Broken Showerhead,” and an Editor’s Note by Terry L. Kennedy in which he pays tribute to friends who have passed, as well as new work from Todd Davis, Chris Edmonds, Larry Flynn, Cynthia Gunadi, Matt Hart, AE Hines, A. Van Jordan, Sarah MacKenzie, Louise Marburg, Chris Mattingly, Aidan O’Brien, Skyler Osborne, Suphil Lee Park, Carol M. Quinn, Madison Rahner, Sarah Elaine Smith, Caitlin Rae Taylor, Abby Wolpert, and Dean Young, with a folio of Kelly Cherry’s work. This issue is dedicated to Kelly Cherry (1940-2022), Jeff Towne (1929-2022), and Dean Young (1955-2022).
Still Point Arts Quarterly says this about its publication: “a truly beautiful and engaging art and literary journal.” Having held this quarterly in my hands and viewed it online many times over the years, I can attest that this is no hyperbole. Produced four times a year, each issue focuses on a theme and features historical and contemporary art, fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. “The Quarterly has been praised for its rich content as well as its splendid layout and design. Intended for artists, nature lovers, seekers, and enthusiasts of all types.” Themed Cities: Centers of Culture and Creativity, the newest issue holds good to these promises, with art and writing spanning the globe from San Francisco with “Walking Through Time” by Mitchell Near; Nanjing, China with “An Intersection of Time” by Dwight E. Watson; to Carl Boon’s “My Chicago,” Vivien Zielin’s “The Artistic Delicacies of Paris,” and David McVey’s “Glasgow in Squares” – just to name a few. Featured artists include Lorin Cary, Laruen Curtis, Linda Woolven, Theodosia A. G. Tamborlane, Lori Arbel, JoAnn Telemdschinow, David A. Goodrum, Deborah McGill, Caroline de Mauriac, MJU Edwards, Rosalie Sanara Petrouske, Mark Saba, Lu Lius, Nanci Stoeffler, and Jane Gottlieb. The publication is free to read online and available to purchase in print.
Celebrating their third year of publication, Hole in the Head re:View has attracted readers, writers, photographers, and artists from around the globe – 130 different countries, from Albania to Zambia, with nearly 200,000 page views and 30,000 unique visitors/readers. Sounds like a good place to read and be read! And though the day has passed, there’s much to be gleaned from this issue’s special section, “Headlines – Thanksgiving recipes, real & imagined” with works from Fannie Flagg, Christopher Rubio-Goldsmith, Virginia Elizabeth Hayes, Pamela Sumners, Phyllis Schwartz, William Welch, Anne Rankin, Diana Tokaji, Jeanne Julian, Maxine Susman, and Tricia Knoll. The rest of the issue is rounded out with poetry and artwork from over 30 more contributors – all free to read online.
Like the famous Milwaukee cream-colored bricks, Cream City Review’s Winter 2021 issue stands out from the crowd with its focus on marginalized works and experiences. In Robin Gow’s “Sufjan Stevens and How I Taught Myself to Cry,” the beauty and heartache of the trans experience dance with the anguish of familial trauma and bittersweet aftertaste of romance gone wrong. The inability to cry—and its ties to testosterone and holding oneself together with mere stitches—explores the helplessness of bottled-up emotions through the lens of singer/songwriter Sufjan Stevens, whose famously morose lyrics wield the power of tightened chests and melancholic sighs. Through this, Gow expertly captures the trans experience and its ties to emotional suppression and release.
“Sufjan Stevens and How I Taught Myself to Cry” by Robin Gow. Cream City Review, Fall/Winter 2021.
Reviewer bio: Mina Weeks (they/she) is a multi-marginalised K-pop stan who tweets, teaches, and writes fanfiction to get them through their existence. Find them on Twitter @minami_noel or on Instagram @meena.noel.
The editors invite readers to the Fall 2022 online issue of The Baltimore Review by considering our relationships to reading and writing and the universe, “When we read and write, aren’t we trying to bring order to the intellectual and emotional universe, at least our small piece of it? With whatever tools we have. Though the landscape is bound to change. Or maybe we just need to go outside and be in the world.” Perhaps a little of each, a balance, which readers can seek in the Fall 2022 Baltimore Review filled with poetry, fiction, and nonfiction by contributors Matt Barrett, Michael Beard, Brecht De Poortere, Gustavo Pérez Firmat, Jared Hanson, Marcia L. Hurlow, Kael Knight, Lance Larsen, Winshen Liu, Susan Blackwell Ramsey, ZG Tomaszewski, Donna Vorreyer, Lydia Waites, and Lucy Zhang.
Jenny Catlin’s [pictured] essay, “A Place I Didn’t Try to Die in Los Angeles,” touches on themes of shame, women’s lack of power, and personal agency. Throughout the piece are moments of dry humor, contrasted with surprising moments of tenderness. Catlin’s prose is both incredibly poignant and incredibly scathing. Her ability to create stark and bold images, while commenting on societal issues is phenomenal. You cheer for her, as she decides not to die, and moan as she makes other choices detrimental to her life. You cannot help but cry with her as she cries in “the Nut” (the now-closed seedy Nutel Motel), and understand what she means when she writes, “There is a kind of alone that only exists in cities as big as Los Angeles.” The piece is infused with emotion and power. Catlin’s diction carries the essay and sets the tone for the entirety of the piece as they expertly balance harsh realities with the inner turmoil that follows. Many women who have felt powerless and forced into difficult choices will not only relate to Catlin’s essay but may see a direct reflection of themselves here as well.
“A Place I Didn’t Try to Die in Los Angeles” by Jenny Catlin. The Gettysburg Review,
Reviewer bio: Taylor Franson Thiel is a creative writing graduate student at Utah State University. She wrote this review because she had to for a class, but she means every word. She can be found on Twitter @TaylorFranson
New independent publisher Dark Onus Press and fledgling literary magazine Dark Onus Lit will open to submissions on January 1, 2023! They will be open to submissions of dark-themed works year-round and do not charge a reading fee.
Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers explores isolation, class, and gender in her nonfiction essay, “Shame.” Set mostly in Guilford County, North Carolina, Rogers recollects her complicated relationship with her grandparents who live secluded on a gothic farm. Rogers sympathizes with her grandmother’s inability to escape a marriage to a man who acts as a family patriarch and predator. When Rogers graduates high school and attends Oberlin University, she fulfills a dream of higher education her grandma could never afford. Despite the liberal, nerdy, queer community Roger finds on campus, she feels out of place and looked down upon because of her ties to small town Guilford County. Rogers explores how humans value themselves above others based on class and education, both unearned privileges. She uses humor and calculated characterization of her grandmother to show readers how isolating it is to exist on the edges. The essay ends with a haunting image of Roger’s grandma, trapped behind the glass window above her sink, washing the dishes, staring at the view of an eroding barn and fields of clay. The image humanizes isolation as women observe the world around them but are unable to fully participate.
Reviewer bio: Lauren McKinnon is a creative writing master’s student at Utah State University. She teaches English and is the Assistant Graduate Director of Composition. Lauren is currently writing her first book of poetry about the Southern Utah desert, motherhood, and woman’s bodies.
The call for the Fall 2022 issue of Valley Voices (v22 n2) was themed, “Where Are You From?” and meant to be a simple question that may not have a simple answer. In his introduction, John Zheng writes, “There are different answers because the question can be geographical, political, racial, and ethnic, it can also mean curiosity, attitude, suspicion, or exclusion.” This issue spotlights Mississippi Delta poet and musician Jack Crocker, and in response to the call, includes over 100 pages of nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and reviews. A full table of contents can be found for each issue on the Valley Voices‘ website. Writers – the next call for submissions ends December 30, 2022, and the theme for their spring issue is “Goodbye.”
