NewPages Blog :: Magazines

The Wag’s Revue certainly offers something different, writing and art that you won’t find in most journals. In the editors’ note, they say, “What we’re saying is what art has always said: insert yourself (fingers, tongue, then pulsing heart) through us to discover what warm depths lie beyond. We just want to get your brain wet. Call us crazy for trying.” Continue reading “Wag’s Revue – Summer 2012”

This issue sizzles, ignites, burns, and lights a literary fire with the special theme of “Heat.” The contest winner, Ann Cwiklinski, contributes a third-person narrative about a woman who takes her children for a day at the beach, but she cannot relax as she is constantly on the lookout to keep her children safe. Yet, as the sun blazes down on her, she is drawn to the water. She wants to take a swim by herself and perhaps disappear. Titled “Selkie,” this story came from Cwiklinski’s research about Irish folklore: “These weren’t romantic fairytales, but matter-of-fact stories about some local woman who jumped into the sea one day, her mild eccentricities finally making sense to her neighbors: ‘Shoulda known that she was part seal!’” Continue reading “The Baltimore Review – Summer 2012”

Ragazine.cc is chock-full of pieces to feast your eyes on: art, photography, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, interviews, reviews, and columns. There are two great poems by Nicole Santalucia. The first, “Emptying Out the House,” drew me in with the first three lines: “The only thing we found under her bed / was a note taped to the bed frame / that said who should inherit the mattress.” And her poem “What Stands Behind Me Now” has wonderfully captivating images: Continue reading “Ragazine.cc – July/August 2012”

Fox Chase Review covers a wide range of poetry in which there is probably a poem for every one of us. While I didn’t love all of it, there were certainly several poems and poets in this issue that I loved. Stevie Edwards contributes two poems that really hit me in the gut. First is “What I Can Say I’ve Left, What I’ve Mourned”: Continue reading “Fox Chase Review – Summer 2012”

While I’ll admit that the three poems from Anne Barngrover are what initially drew me into this issue, there was so much more to keep me there. The whole issue of Contrary is filled with pieces containing delightfully juicy details, taut images, and unique ideas. Continue reading “Contrary – Summer 2012”

After falling behind for a small amount of time, The Puritan is now back up and running, this time with a new reading format. Available to read online or as a PDF, this issue offers a number of poems, fiction pieces, and interviews. The magazine features writing that “may push toward the symbolic frontier, challenging limitations and forging into previously unexplored aesthetic territory. But it may also revisit and revitalize traditional forms.” Continue reading “The Puritan – Spring 2012”

I have been reading this issue of Plume now for a couple of weeks, each time going in to reread the poetry, catch parts of it I might have missed. Each piece has its own unique pull, making this issue of Plume one for everyone. But as a monthly magazine, a new one will be our shortly, so make sure to read this one soon. Continue reading “Plume – Number 13”

The latest American Poetry Review has an immensely quotable essay by C.K. Williams “On Being Old.” In it, he says he doesn’t “blab” about poets whose work he doesn’t like. He once, to his current chagrin, dismissed the work of the great Elizabeth Bishop. He writes, “I think we all tend to believe we can see through the vagaries of our moment to some absolute standard of judgment—this must be a characteristic of human consciousness itself—but the conviction is absurd.” Continue reading “The American Poetry Review – July/Aug 2012”

If I had to choose a metaphor for the 2012 issue of Artful Dodge, I’d liken it to one of those brown paper grab-bags they sell at the dollar store. You know the ones—unmarked and mysterious, they could contain something awesome just as easily as they could contain something you could just as well live without. This issue is a huge literary grab-bag, containing a wide assortment of essays, fiction, poetry, and art spanning a varied range of themes and subject matter. Some of the work is surprising, gripping, and moving, while others, not quite as much. Continue reading “Artful Dodge – 2012”

In Atlanta Review, it’s all poetry, all the time. No visual art or prose (save for the editors’ introductions and contributor notes) finds its way into this journal. With all this space, the editors will consider up to five poems by a single author for a given issue, and they take pride in publishing the works of both new and established authors. The editors evidently prefer brief works and excerpts: in such a small space, 59 poets (in addition to Kabir, Tukaram, Akho and Nandeo, who turn up in translation) and 92 poems appear. On its website, the journal is described as “a haven for our common humanity, the things that unite us across the boundaries of nation, race, and religion.” Each Spring/Summer issue therefore devotes space to literature from a single nation. Continue reading “Atlanta Review – Spring/Summer 2012”

Conclave is a journal that revolves around strong characters in poetry and fiction, so don’t let the lady on the cover of the latest issue scare you away. Think of her as a concierge waiting to show you to your room. But this isn’t your typical hotel. Here you will rub shoulders with guests from out of space and time. Some of these guests are (or were) real people staying for the night while others come from the imaginations of talented writers. Continue reading “Conclave – Spring 2012”

In May of this year, my pregnant daughter’s friend lost a baby two weeks before its due date. My daughter sobbed the news to me via cell phone, gasping, “I feel so guilty that I’m still pregnant!” Five weeks later, two days after she gave birth to a healthy girl, I dismounted badly from a horse; my blown knee collapsed under me, and I knew, horribly, that my grandmothering summer was over, faded into surgery and rehab. Continue reading “The Examined Life – Spring 2012”

I have a soft spot for university literary journals. Maybe it’s because I have a closer connection to these folks because I was a college student not too long ago and know what it’s like to wade through the slush pile in a tiny room at night with only a Snickers bar to keep me going. Continue reading “Fox Cry Review – 2011”

Garbanzo is out to break some rules. I find this refreshing in the relatively staid world of literary magazines. Perhaps it’s my background in zine publishing that makes me sympathetic to those willing to buck the trends. First of all, this inaugural issue comes handsomely clothed in a silkscreened dust jacket. How many lit mags have you seen lately with a dust jacket, silkscreened or not? That’s what I thought. Garbanzo is also bound with fancy rivets and includes an attached ribbon bookmark (a thoughtful and handy feature). On the inside there are a few fold-out pages, and even some handwritten poems that nicely break up the otherwise printed text. So, this is a nice-looking publication, a labor of love. I can’t help wondering how long the editors will be able to maintain this level of quality for their limited run print editions (they also publish a digital version), but I will suspend my doubts for now. Continue reading “Garbanzo – 2012”

Sometimes we look to the canon for context: the depression era philosophies and legacies of John Steinbeck, Thomas Wolfe, Pearl S. Buck. Would an American imagination have been materially different absent James Hilton, Sinclair Lewis, Edna Ferber? What if the novels of A.J. Cronin or William Faulkner remained galleys buried on the literary cutting room floor? I approached my reading of this issue of The Gettysburg Review with the canon as context; that is, does the literature in a climate of economic downturn answer similarly situated voices from the dustbowl terror of the mid 1930s? Not exactly. The truth may lie in other comparisons—perhaps an awareness of the hysterical faith-based tomes that characterized the literature of the climax of the Roman Empire, the deoxyribonucleic acid of other revolutions, a monk’s blood. In sum, I found The Gettysburg Review to stand on its own, neither an answer nor echo of the past but rather a collection of talented men and women who have unique stories to tell. Continue reading “The Gettysburg Review – Summer 2012”

A good poetry journal is like one of those good coffee-table photography and art books. You can open them to any page and find something so thought-provoking that you are carried away and forever changed (NOTE: This is one great challenge of a paperless world). The editors of the Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review have certainly accomplished this. HSPR has been around for more than thirty years and has had just two editors. Since 2008, the review’s second editor, Nathaniel Perry, has done an excellent job of picking up where Tom O’Grady, the founding editor, left things when he retired. In the past, The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review has published the work of a Nobel Laureate, several Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners, and two U.S. Poet Laureates. Continue reading “The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review – Winter 2011”

Several of the poets included in this survey of “Voices in German” were familiar to me. The Expressionist Ernst Stadler, killed in battle in World War I, is represented by three evocative landscapes translated by Martin Sheehan and William Wright. Gertrud Kolmar, who disappeared in the Holocaust, mourns a child “(n)ot born because of my sins.” Her moving poem “Fruitless” is translated by Sandra Dillon. Continue reading “International Poetry Review – Spring 2012”

An inherent complication arises when writers (or editors or critics) consider the meaning of “place” in literature. It’s certainly true that an author is influenced by the geography and communities that shaped him. It’s equally true on another level that people are the same all over, filled crown to toe with the same hopes and fears. This issue of the Michigan Quarterly Review contains pieces that are accented by the flora and fauna and hardy inhabitants of the Great Lakes region. The contributors indeed communicate the unique feeling of being lost in the Minnesota prairie while tapping into the pathos that unites us all. Continue reading “Michigan Quarterly Review – Spring 2012”

I can’t speak for anyone else, but the New England Review represents so much of what I hope to be when I grow up. In addition to choosing high-quality fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction to represent the present and future of literature, the New England Review also features scholarly material that puts the writing of the past into context. Continue reading “New England Review – 2012”

Open Minds Quarterly, whose subtitle is “The poetry and literature of mental health recovery,” is a welcome contribution to the growing body of discourse by and about “consumer/survivors of mental health services.” OMQ is a project of the Northern Initiative for Social Action (NISA) based in Ontario, Canada, whose purpose is to “eliminate stigma” by informing “mental health professionals, fellow consumer/survivors, and their family and friends—as well as society at large—of the strength, intelligence, and creativity” of its authors. A small, glossy, 8 1/2 X 11 journal, OMQ is a showcase for persons who have stories to share about mental illness; it’s not a literary feast. But it’s worth reading, and submitting to, especially if your concerns coincide with NISA’s. Continue reading “Open Minds Quarterly – Winter 2012”

Although not the leading story in the Summer 2012 issue of Prairie Schooner, Justin Taylor’s “Flings,” is the one that seems the most summery, as it takes place in that in-between time of adjusting to life after graduation, soon after a group of friends leave a “semi-elite liberal arts college” in Ohio. The story follows each of the friends individually, as they make their ways to Portland, Oregon, bumbling through the friendships crossed with the romantic entanglements that define post-collegiate life. Many of the characters are vaguely artsy, with Andy working on an epic novel, and two of the female characters having internships in an experimental film festival, before “rapidly learning the extent to which they had overestimated their interest in experimental film.” Taylor’s writing excellently explores the confusion of this period of life, when one is trying to define one’s self in the world, as well as the narcissism that can come with a headlong pursuit of the arts. He understands the messy, crisscrossed relationships of a tight-knit group of friends right out of college. His writing is tinged with a sense of humor about the overly sincere and serious. Continue reading “Prairie Schooner – Summer 2012”

Room’s website describes it as “Canada’s oldest literary journal by, for, and about women. Published quarterly by a group of volunteers based in Vancouver, Room showcases fiction, poetry, reviews, art work, interviews and profiles about the female experience. Many of our contributors are at the beginning of their writing careers, looking for an opportunity to get published for the first time.” Continue reading “Room – 2012”

The allure of the Spring 2012 issue of Salt Hill starts with an enticing cover, a black and white illustration by Aaron $hunga where a character named “Mr. Rhombus” is told to get ready “to enter Xenocave.” More of $hunga’s graphics detail a fantastical story in the concluding entry in Salt Hill. As if that graphic wasn’t enough of a warning about the kind of fiction contained in this issue, the editors’ note reads, “The twenty-ninth issue of Salt Hill is evidence of how capricious and flimsy our perceived world is, how gray and clouded the separation between phenomenological reality and the science fictions looming behind it. Or in front of it. The fantasies stuck between its dark matter. Either which way, the work in this issue pursues out-there dimensions.” Perhaps because of this dipping into strange avenues, the best work in this edition is the poetry, as well as amazing artwork done in ink on paper by Faye Moorhouse. Continue reading “Salt Hill – 2012”

Snail Mail Review prides itself on being a print magazine that maintains “mail-only interaction” with its writers. Interestingly, although this magazine revels in the virtues of print, one main reason that it attains the amount of quality work as it does might be because of its online presence. Although the magazine is amateur-looking (they hope to move from saddle-stitching to perfect-binding soon), Snail Mail Review is professional in the way that it belongs to LinkedIn, has a Facebook page, Gmail address, and many calls for submission on literary websites and blogs. These calls work. In the introduction to this issue, Editor Christine Chesko writes of a gigantic stack of submissions sitting on a chair in Co-Editor Kris Price’s house. Continue reading “Snail Mail Review – Spring 2012”

Perhaps it’s only my personal attention span, but I believe that focused collections of any art can be easily perused and set aside for any number of reasons. A collection of one type of literature or art must be read or looked at one piece at a time and held for reflection. A combination allows for any mood and many returns. Such is the Still Point Arts Quarterly’s summer issue and their idea to showcase their current site exhibit. Continue reading “Still Point Arts Quarterly – Summer 2012”

A great literary magazine is one that makes you think and ponder and take several moments out of your busy life to just appreciate art and life. Thema offers some absolutely remarkable writing that grabbed me and forced me to sit and reread several times. I found myself thinking about the economy, relationships, writing, reading, art, and even the galaxy at large.

Continue reading “THEMA – Summer 2012”

Nearly 50 years ago, a few poets gathered near Princeton, NJ, to read their poems to each other. According to the editors of U.S. 1 Worksheets, this small group of poets formed the U.S. 1 Poets’ Cooperative, and many of the original poets are still involved in the Cooperative and continue to submit to the journal, which is headquartered in the Princeton suburb Kingston, NJ. Continue reading “U.S. 1 Worksheets – 2012”

Watershed leans in the environmental direction, at least in this issue. Given that it’s a journal celebrating the Susquehanna Watershed, this makes sense. The issue includes poetry, narrative nonfiction, and an oral history focused on contemporary Native Americans living in Pennsylvania, a state that doesn’t currently recognize any existing Indian tribes within its borders (yes, there’s some bitterness there, as expected). Black and white photos dress up the text of this slim volume. Continue reading “Watershed – 2011”

Given my interests, while there is much to be said for the literary content of this publication, the focus on this review will be on the photography in this thirtieth anniversary issue: a special section consisting of 141 stunning glossy pages of photographs and brief essays commemorating “Liberty and Justice (For All): A Global Photo Mosaic.” From guest editor Benjamin J. Spatz’s introduction to the project: Continue reading “Alaska Quarterly Review – Spring/Summer 2012”

I should start by saying that I’ve been holding a grudge against apt for some time now. It turns out that if you don’t read their guidelines very carefully and submit something out of their reading period, they send you a very snarky e-mail. I’m not a fan of snarky e-mails; in fact, they kind of hurt my feelings. So I had vowed to hate apt forever. Continue reading “apt – 2012”

The Chicago Review remains one of the best eclectic reviews; its pages are continually full of essential reading. Packed with a consistently broad range of diverse and challenging writing, every issue delivers one surprise or another, and the latest doesn’t disappoint. Continue reading “Chicago Review – Winter 2012”

Since 1956, the Colorado Review has been dedicated to publishing the best in contemporary creative writing from both new and emerging writers, and the Spring 2012 issue is no exception. Continue reading “Colorado Review – Spring 2012”

Conjunctions is a slippery, difficult journal, and its current issue, “Riveted: The Obsession Issue,” is no exception. As is par for the course with Conjunctions, the writers appear heavily vested in a particular attention to language, with extremely idiosyncratic patterns and constructs of thought. Although ostensibly clustered around a theme, their writing offers broad interpretations of various obsessions that run the gamut from the expected to the unexpected, the probable to the improbable, the tangible to the intangible. Continue reading “Conjunctions – Spring 2012”

Grain: The Journal of Eclectic Writing is based out of Canada and prides itself on publishing challenging writing and art each quarter. This issue includes the winners of the 2011 Short Grain contest. Continue reading “Grain – Winter 2012”

Here are five reasons why High Desert Journal continues to be one of the best “regional” literary magazines around. Continue reading “High Desert Journal – Spring 2012”

On the whole, the poetry in the Spring/Summer 2012 edition of Iodine: Poetry Journal is “poetry of witness,” a term put forth (if not created) by Carolyn Forché. Not every poem is dark and foreboding, however, but the journal is filled with wounds that beg to be healed, even if it hurts to do so. After all, isn’t that the essence of iodine, the tincture, to begin with? Continue reading “Iodine Poetry Journal – Spring/Summer 2012”

Let’s call it “folk art.” It’s certainly folk literature. It would be chic to call it urban myth, but I call it my history. Who doesn’t remember the sand man and the boogie man? I feel sorry for them. Then there’s the wahoo man, and the weird aunt and the uncle who . . . The Journal of Ordinary Thought is just that. My neighborhood, my people. It’s not just a trip down memory lane; it’s decent literature, in the language of the people I grew up with, speaking to me about many of the events that we experienced and that you’ll enjoy reliving. Continue reading “Journal of Ordinary Thought – Winter 2012”

I usually try not to pigeon-hole magazines into a theme, but with this issue, it’s difficult not to do so! Clearly, there is a bird theme flapping its wings in this issue, from the multi-media “Penguins” cover art, to the more than a handful of stories that were cleverly pecked and then nestled together in this charming and diverse journal. And it just so happens that many of my favorite pieces of the issue were the ones which involved birds. Continue reading “New Ohio Review – Spring 2012”

The Ocean State Review’s debut issue features the work of writers who presented at the University of Rhode Island and/or its Ocean State Summer Writing Conference, and includes art, poetry, fiction, nonfiction and craft essays. Continue reading “The Ocean State Review – 2011”

In this issue’s introduction, which Editor Brad Fruhauff has entitled “Literature by Necessity,” Fruhauff reminds us that a rich literary diet “[confronts] some of the hardest realities of our time” and “will ask you to feel grace for a strung-out drug addict as well as for a cynical woman dealing with her abortions . . . to be merciful with an adulterer and to re-live the death of a childhood friend. These pieces,” says Fruhauff, “are not safe.” Continue reading “Relief – Spring 2012”

Brian Johnson takes over as the editor of Sentence in this issue, and if his first issue at the helm is any indication, this journal won’t miss a beat with the change. Continue reading “Sentence – 2011”

Spillway, an independent, semiannual journal based in Orange Country, California has been around since 1993. But, Editor Susan Terris remarks in her editor’s note that it’s only been in recent years that Spillway became a themed journal. Continue reading “Spillway – Fall 2011”

The summer issue of Tin House: cue an essay on “miserablism”—not in music, as Simon Reynolds once used to describe Morrissey and other gloomy Manchester bands but in fiction, as Gerald Howard employs in an essay on the “Merritt Parkway Novel.” More on that later, but let that brief introduction to this issue suffice to say that this isn’t exactly light-hearted beach reading. Who wants that anyways? The editor’s note says, “Consider this summer reading as providing a few grains of sand in your suntan lotion, a little bit of grit to remind of you the depth and breadth of the human condition.” So, let this Tin House do just that—give a dark, realistic, take on summer reading. Continue reading “Tin House – Summer 2012”

If you like literature that looks, sounds, smells and tastes like Mississippi Delta blues and jazz, then Valley Voices: A Literary Review, published by Mississippi Valley State University (MVSU), would make a nice addition to your library. This issue celebrates the journal’s 10-year anniversary with a collection of what Editor John Zheng calls “the best creative works, poetry and stories, Valley Voices has published.” This issue is evidence that the journal has long lived up to its stated dedication to promoting the works of MVSU students and the cultural diversity of the Mississippi Delta through writers from the Delta, while maintaining standards of excellence in poetry and prose. Continue reading “Valley Voices – Spring 2012”

Excerpts from Jean Donnelly and John Olson could be used to sum up the style of work in the latest issue of Verse, a magazine that publishes chapbook-length submissions. Donnelly’s “Some Life” begins “read poems to know / how to live,” and midway through switches to the abstract Continue reading “Verse – 2012”

In the poem “A Figure Half Seen,” published in the latest issue of The Wallace Stevens Journal, Dennis Barone writes that, when Wallace Stevens left an exhibition of the work of the artist Jean Arp, Continue reading “The Wallace Stevens Journal – Spring 2012”

Witness is, according to the editors, “an internationally recognized journal that blends the features of a literary and an issue-oriented magazine to highlight the role of the modern writer as witness to his or her times.” A publication of the Black Mountain Institute of the University of Las Vegas, Nevada, “an international literary center dedicated to promoting discourse on today’s most pressing issues,” this issue’s theme is “Disaster.” As the description suggests, the magazine is provocatively responsible (yes! one can be both!), of consistently high quality, and, in this issue, ruthless. The world is more full of disaster than you might want to know. Continue reading “Witness – 2012”

Different from traditional stories or poems, these pieces offer up small slices of life that are not necessarily whole stories but vignettes that absolutely invoke emotion, doing so in a small amount of space. I barely put down my pen the whole time I read as I took down notes and wrote down quotes. Continue reading “Vine Leaves Literary Journal – July 2012”

The thing I immediately noticed about SNReview is its online format—clean and crisp. It doesn’t attempt to use a lot of graphics or design, which is actually really working for it: black type, in an easy-to-read font, on top of a white page. Alternately, each piece can be viewed as a PDF with active links to previous issues and the website. Beyond the format, this particular issue’s fiction, nonfiction, and poetry delivers so that the graphics don’t have to. Continue reading “SNReview – Spring/Summer 2012”