Slice Magazine is definitely slick. To begin with, it has a nice shape, slightly more square than rectangular, bigger than the typical paperback book – its very size lending itself more to the coffee table display than the random misplacement on an overstuffed bookshelf. Page by page, the design by Amy Sly and Amanda Ice is hip and pleasing to the eye; this issue is embellished throughout with a color I want to name “pumpkin,” the only additional color enhancing the requisite black and white. Titles are rewarded with their very own pages, the type large, unique, inviting, accompanied by a thematically appropriate illustration or photograph. Even the white spaces between sections of prose are uniquely addressed; while one story is divided by three pumpkin colored X’s, the next is divided by a series of pumpkin colored asterisks, the next by a pair of slightly staggered lines. The cover illustration by Jessica Gomez is immediately followed by an equally appealing cover photograph by Patrick Schlichtenmyer, as if the burden of narrowing in on a single cover layout was simply too much to bear. Teetering somewhere between an art/lit magazine or a lit/art magazine, the overall design and presentation of Slice is definitely exemplary. Continue reading “Slice – Spring/Summer 2009”
NewPages Blog :: Magazines
Find the latest news from literary and alternative magazines including new issues, editorial openings, and much more.
The Sycamore Review – Winter/Spring 2009
My favorite section of this issue was the interviews: Theresa D. Smith interviews the poet Adam Zagajewski, and Mehdi Okasi interviews the novelist Lan Samantha Chang. Zagajewski discusses how he writes poetry, why he writes poetry and themes in his work. “The empirical world is less luminous than our favorite books of poetry,” he concludes. Chang talks about her craft process and how reading other contemporary novelists has challenged her to write differently than she originally intended. These mini Paris Review-like interviews are both informative and inspiring. Continue reading “The Sycamore Review – Winter/Spring 2009”
Third Coast – Spring 2009
A quick glance at the Contributors Notes of the Spring 2009 issue of Third Coast reads like a promotional pamphlet for the country’s top MFA programs. Coast to coast, nearly every school is represented, the teachers of writing, the recent graduates, those still pursuing the elusive MFA or PhD. Yet, despite the ongoing rant that too many MFA graduates will inevitably result in the generic poem or prose, this issue serves as a glorious contradiction. Occupying nearly 200 pages of text, a total of 28 poets writing 36 poems, 15 prose writers writing 6 short stories, 2 creative non-fiction pieces, 1 play, and several reviews for a recommended books section, I applaud the editors of Third Coast for their wonderful diversity of taste, for their willingness to publish both the well established and the newly emerging, for their particular caliber of excellence. This issue provides a little something for everyone in pursuit of a satisfying read. Continue reading “Third Coast – Spring 2009”
Western Humanities Review – Winter 2009
“This issue of WHR brings together several papers from ‘Critical Renovations,’ a symposium held at the University of Utah in November 2007. The symposium invited scholars of English working in a wide range of periods, genres, and media to reflect on, revisit, and perhaps recycle our scholarly past.” Hold onto your hat. Here comes some serious lit crit, cultural studies, scholarly stuff. I mean I. A. Richards, and Eve Sedgewick, and Saussure, and Leo Spitzer, and Ortega y Gasset, and Fredric Jameson, and Paul de Man. I mean “critical gestures,” and an “oblique gloss” on methodological problems, and “developmentalist narratives.” But, don’t despair! There’s something valuable in every one of these dense, academic essays. Continue reading “Western Humanities Review – Winter 2009”
Willow Springs – Spring 2009
Where have I been for the past thirty years? The older I get the more frequently I find myself stunned by the breadth and depth of my absolute cluelessness. Not knowing about Willow Springs is definitely my latest admonishment. If issue 63 is any indication, Willow Springs’s thirty year publishing history is hard earned and well deserved; from cover to cover, the work in this issue is above and beyond. Continue reading “Willow Springs – Spring 2009”
Word Riot – March 2009
This issue has so many good stories, it is a shame that only a few can be singled out. Most interesting perhaps is “An Honest Man” by Doug Rudoff, which begins, “The first thing you should know is that everything that I write here is a lie.” The author then takes us on the journey of a young boy’s life in Mexico, some of which is supposedly true, but we’re never sure what. Another engaging story is “Blink” by Chuck Campbell, about an eighty-one year old widower, his stubbornness, his relationship with his son, and the man’s eroding ability to separate fact from fantasy. Continue reading “Word Riot – March 2009”
SLAM Seeks Bloggers
shaking like a mountain, the journal of literature about music, has added a blog feature called shaking riffs. SLAM is looking for bloggers “who see the sinewy tissue connecting music and literature and want to write about it.” Serious inquiries should be made to editors-at-shakinglikeamountain-dot-com.
Court Green – 2009
The best part of Court Green, published annually by Columbia College of Chicago, is always the “Dossier,” featuring a special topic or theme. And this year’s, “Letters,” is my favorite so far. Whatever the reason – because letter-writing is, in its essence, about the printed word; or because so many of us have some things we can imagine saying to so many people; or because people who love to write and are, by profession, proficient at it, are also, naturally, great letter-writers – these “letter poems” make for extremely inventive and entertaining reading. Continue reading “Court Green – 2009”
The Florida Review – Winter 2008
In her entertaining and highly original Editors’ Note, Jocelyn Bartkevicius says at The Florida Review they’ve been “arguing over what counts as truth.” If names in the Table of Contents don’t make you eager to read the journal (Maureen P. Stanton, Baron Wormser, Tony Hoagland, Denise Duhamel, Michel Burkard, an interview with Terese Svoboda), the editor’s creative consideration of what constitutes fact checking, whether or not authors get to define the genres of their work, and the meaning of “truth” in these post James Frey Debacle times (as the Review’s staff refers to them) surely will. Continue reading “The Florida Review – Winter 2008”
Fugue – Summer-Fall 2008
Mark Halliday, judge for the journal’s annual poetry contest, describes the winning poems as “ready to…confront contradictions,” “avoid dumb enthusiasm,” and provide “neatly managed endings,” which serves equally well to describe Fugue’s editorial approach, and it’s one of the reasons I’ve always liked the magazine. I appreciate Halliday’s winning choices, poems by Lisa Bellamy, David J. Corbett, and Carol Louise Munn, three distinctly different examples of what it takes to make a poem, but all “strikingly alive,” as Halliday says, and all more emotionally charged and more satisfying than they appear on a first reading. These poems tell stories more moving and more complex than their language, at first, seems to imply. Bellamy, in particular, is both clever and tender, a combination of tones that can be difficult to pull off. Continue reading “Fugue – Summer-Fall 2008”
Green Mountains Review – 2009
The theme of this all-fiction issue is shame and glory, “which seemed a marvelously arbitrary way to come across good stories,” writes Leslie Daniels in her introduction to the issue. “As writers, shame set us wildly in motion. And glory is . . . transformation, the alchemy involved in making art,” she concludes. Continue reading “Green Mountains Review – 2009”
J Journal – Fall 2008
J Journal takes a journey to the dark side of humankind – the criminal side, the enforcement side, to those who have been brutalized, taken advantage of…it uses literature to pose “questions of justice, directly and tangentially.” Each poem, each short story brings a situation laden with irony, and leaves it unresolved, leaving the reader to search within, find the discordant inner chord that has been struck and bring it back into tune. Continue reading “J Journal – Fall 2008”
Mid-American Review – Spring 2009
The annual Fineline Competition issue is always one of my favorites. The contest is open to entries of prose poetry, sudden fiction or non-fiction, or other “literary work that defies classification” (500 words or less). There’s a kind of freedom in the “sudden” form that seems to bring out the best in writers of all types. This year’s first-place winner is MFA student Ryan Teitman who creates a little museum of oddities, “The Cabinet of Things Swallowed,” that ends in a surprise or, more accurately, in the promise of a surprise. It’s the sense of promise that I appreciate most in these short works. Take, for example, the start of J.L. Conrad’s “Meanwhile,” one of the Editor’s Choice winners: “My dreams inscribe for me a world in which.” Or Editor’s Choice winner Alan Michael Parker’s opening line in “Our New System of Government”: “We believe we were misinformed.” The editors received nearly 2,000 submissions for the contest. I’m clearly not the only one who appreciates the form. Continue reading “Mid-American Review – Spring 2009”
Naugatuck River Review – Winter 2009
Starting a new publication, especially “in times like these” (TM), is a cause for congratulation, so here’s celebrating the debut of Naugatuck River Review, “a journal of narrative poetry that sings.” (Shouldn’t all poetry?) The “narrative” label may bring to mind first person nature encounters and bittersweet childhood memories, and NRR contains its share. The real pleasures, though, are the memorable characters, the people whose lives show up in small glimpses between the lines. We meet a sawmill worker whose retirement ceremony belies his rough-and-tumble life, a bar patron who learns to resist being treated as an object and authors her own adventure, and a cross dresser who tries too hard to impress. Continue reading “Naugatuck River Review – Winter 2009”
The Ne’er-Do-Well – 2009
More props are in order for the inaugural issue of this Portland prose journal. The Ne’er-Do-Well carries itself like a zine, an enfant terrible sneering at the establishment as all rejected writers in tiny presses are wont to do. Founder Sheila Ashdown explains that her intention was to encourage writers struggling with doubt. To keep writing, she says, “requires a high threshold for psychic pain and awkward conversation.” Continue reading “The Ne’er-Do-Well – 2009”
Notre Dame Review – Winter/Spring 2009
This issue’s theme is “bridges and views,” introduced by a stunning and unusual cover photo that merges beautifully the concept of bridge and view – the relationship of structure to perspective. The image does not have the appearance of stock photography, though I was unable to find a reference to the photographer. These are, of course, rich, provocative, and perhaps even favorite topics for artists from all disciplines and genres. Continue reading “Notre Dame Review – Winter/Spring 2009”
Quarter After Eight – 2009
Quarter After Eight publishes prose-poems, short-short fictions, essays in-brief, etc., all of which must be contained within 500 words or less. The highlighted criterion encourages an “innovative address to the prose form…dedicated to blurring the traditional lines of prose and verse.” This issue features 28 short pieces including the 2008 Robert J. DeMott Short Prose Contest winners, with First Place going to Cynthia Reeves for “Naming the Dead.” As stated in a preface by contest judge Sean Thomas Dougherty, Reeves manages “In barely a page…[to] offer us [an] elegy for the loss of a friend, the gaining of sexual knowledge, and the subsequent hurt that follows years later through the ghost of memory.” “Naming the Dead” is so beautifully rendered it’s difficult to decide if its lines should be quoted in prose or verse, such as in the following: Continue reading “Quarter After Eight – 2009”
The Antioch Review – Winter 2009
Poetry editor Judith Hall introduces the all poetry issue with a beautiful editorial: “Those not spent by life are privileged. A poet, reading in the evening, writing after dawn, enjoys such privileges.” A reader with this issue in her hands is privileged, too, I am happy to say. Continue reading “The Antioch Review – Winter 2009”
The Chaffin Journal – 2007
If you’ve had it with glamour and cuteness in your literary diet, turn to The Chaffin Journal for the antidote. Formerly known as Scripsit, this journal from Eastern Kentucky University is all meat and potatoes. The writing frequently dwells on quotidian themes in rural and small-town locales. That means The Chaffin Journal opts for straight story and verse over risk taking. Overall, the performance is uneven, but sometimes, the lumps in the landscape provide solid, memorable art. Continue reading “The Chaffin Journal – 2007”
ChiZine – January – March 2009
This ezine describes its work as “treatments of light and shade in words.” The website is dark and ominous and each quarter only three or four poems and stories appear for consumption. The editors are quite selective and have a particular style they are looking for. They also pay well: seven cents a word for a short story, which translates into $210.00 for a three thousand word narrative – a nice sum in today’s market! Continue reading “ChiZine – January – March 2009”
Eclectica Magazine – January/February 2009
This magazine has been in existence since 1996, making it one of the more long lasting and consistent ezines of its kind. They seem to have very eclectic tastes in what they present to the reading public, hence, no doubt, the name. In this latest issue, there is much to choose from, including a spotlight on pop culture chronicler Chris Epting; a letter from Editor Tom Dooley; commentary; fiction; poetry; non-fiction; travel articles; reviews and interviews; and some satire. Continue reading “Eclectica Magazine – January/February 2009”
The Farallon Review – 2008
Tim Foley and the other editors of The Farallon Review aim to, “share the work of writers who still believe that short fiction is a unique artform, worth writing, and worth reading.” The realistic fiction in this new journal is certainly long on imagination and features distinctive narrators. Continue reading “The Farallon Review – 2008”
Journal of Ordinary Thought – Fall 2008
Chicago’s remarkable populist tradition includes a diverse range of voices, from Carl Sandburg to Gwendolyn Brooks. The Journal of Ordinary Thought is a firm product of that tradition, showcasing everyday people from the neighborhood with something to say. Some are joyfully discovering their creative potential; some are more urgent to make their opinions heard. The theme here, “Notes for a People’s Atlas of Chicago,” playfully reveals the limitations of maps in detailing the experience of lived space. Given an outline of the city, participants created their own atlases and legends. Included are maps denoting the Cubs/Sox divide, the barrage of condos being built, places to buy the best pierogies or find residences of IVAW members. Continue reading “Journal of Ordinary Thought – Fall 2008”
Manoa – Winter 2008
Enduring War: Stories of What We’ve Learned is an edifying volume that is not exactly lacking in timeliness: Have war stories ever been irrelevant? But this is not a volume to be read with self-righteousness; the lessons from world conflict are never easy to swallow. As Manoa reveals, war always seems to exist on the periphery of our consciousness, something that happened “over there” or “back then.” The photographic images of Darfur refugees may not be graphic or shocking, but they do capture the feeling and pain that can easily get lost in the drone of the media. In his introduction, Editor Frank Stewart quotes the novelist Carlos Fuentes: “Literature makes real what history forgot.” The task of literature, then, is to uncover the truth that the makers of history (and war) will find unpleasant. Continue reading “Manoa – Winter 2008”
The Missouri Review – Winter 2008
“A poet’s love of poetry is everything,” says Rodney Jones, interviewed in this issue by Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum. The Missouri Review editors love what they do, too – they have created something that is clearly a labor of love. Continue reading “The Missouri Review – Winter 2008”
storySouth – Winter 2009
Jason Sanford, the founding editor of this literary magazine is stepping down after seven years at the helm and ceding his position to Spring Garden Press out of Greensboro, N.C. He will, however, continue to direct the wonderful and very needed Million Writers Award. As his farewell salute, he has presented a selection of the best fiction, essays, and poetry from the last seven years. Continue reading “storySouth – Winter 2009”
The Sun – March 2009
I absolutely love The Sun. Without fail, in every issue I’ve ever read, there has been writing aplenty to admire. The Sun is one of the most democratic literary magazines I have ever encountered in that it celebrates and honors anyone who has something worthwhile to say. I have never read a less than stellar piece of writing in it. Edited by Sy Safransky, The Sun’s contents are always a revelation, a slap in the face reminder that brilliance and compassion are lurking everywhere. Continue reading “The Sun – March 2009”
Tuesday; An Art Project – Fall 2008
The third issue (v2n1) of Tuesday; An Art Project comes in a plain, thick, yellow wrapper. Inside is the table of contents, a feature poem, short bios of the authors, editorial information, and – most importantly – cards and postcards containing the poems, prints and photographs. There are only seventeen cards, and they are all striking. Continue reading “Tuesday; An Art Project – Fall 2008”
20×20 – 2008
20×20 is a new London-based magazine of “visions” (black and white photographs and drawings), “words” (prose and poetry), and “blenders” (hybrid compositions of graphics and text). A note at the end of one contributor’s piece, “Deconstruction of a Failure,” sums up nicely the inaugural issue’s editorial slant. Kiril Bozhinov writes: Continue reading “20×20 – 2008”
Amarillo Bay – February 2009
With the presentation of this volume, Amarillo Bay is celebrating its eleventh year of existence, certainly a notable accomplishment, and welcomes the reader to browse its archives which contain over four hundred works. The latest edition has four short stories, one piece of nonfiction, and six poems to choose from. Continue reading “Amarillo Bay – February 2009”
The Antigonish Review – Autumn 2008
This issue includes the Great Blue Heron poetry and Sheldon Currie fiction first, second, and third prize contest winners, poems from an additional 20 poets, three short stories, short book reviews, a review essay, and what is classified as an “article,” an “academic” style analysis of poet Anne Compton’s award-winning poetry book Processional. Solid and satisfying reading from cover to cover. Continue reading “The Antigonish Review – Autumn 2008”
Boston Review – January/February 2009
Boston Review essays tend to follow a somewhat predictable pattern, and I couldn’t be happier about it. A serious, well-informed, literate, critical mind challenges the conventional wisdom about a controversial and highly politicized subject or issue of undeniable significance and urgency. Here are the two opposing views we commonly hear and debate, the writer begins, but there is something wrong with each of them, and I want to offer an alternative, he concludes. Subjects covered in the current issue of the Review include the “post-racial” in the Obama era (Stephen Ansolabehere and Charles Stewart III); free market regulation (Dean Baker, Robert Pollin); tax cuts (Jeff Madrick); Guantanamo (David Cole); Afghanistan (Barnett R. Rubin); Iran (Abbas Milani); and new (old?) philosophical approaches to God (Alex Byrne). Continue reading “Boston Review – January/February 2009”
The Hudson Review – Winter 2009
The “translation issue” begins with a tribute to the late Hayden Carruth (1921-2008) by poet David Mason, which concludes: “I wish to remember . . . an understanding of what is centrally important in life, what is truly marginal, and how poetry unites us more than it divides us, how language touches what we love, and how the love remains.” A beautiful tribute to a fine American poet, but also a fitting introduction for considering works in translation. Continue reading “The Hudson Review – Winter 2009”
Isotope – Fall/Winter 2008
Isotope (literary nature and science writing) has made some attractive changes. Perfect binding, expanded contents, recycled paper (for nature and science writing!), pleasing coated paper that really shows off the artwork. This issue’s art portfolio (and the cover art, too) is stunning: impeccable reproductions of paintings by Deborah Banerjee, “The Edge of Sight: The JPL Paintings.” JPL stands for Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California where the painter lives. The tension between Banerjee’s still life oils and the concept and imagined vision of propulsion, the spacecrafts’ raison d’être, is both restrained and explosive. The relationship of spacecraft to space (background) is fascinating and entirely unique from painting to painting. The painter’s explanation/description of what she has attempted to do is as beautifully composed, and as interesting, as her paintings. Continue reading “Isotope – Fall/Winter 2008”
Main Street Rag – Winter 2008/2009
I sit down to read and suddenly I have company. There are a few dozen people I’ve never met in my living room telling me how they do their work (interviews with Cathy Smith Bowers and Robert Boisvert); who they are; what they think; and entertaining me with stories. I even know where they are from (which is listed with their names at the top of the page). Their voices are casual, direct, unadorned. Some angry, some wistful, some yearning. It’s almost as if I can feel them tugging at my elbow for my attention. Continue reading “Main Street Rag – Winter 2008/2009”
MiPOesias – July 2008
A fun, quirky look. Editor and publisher Didi Menendez calls this issue “a carousel of poetry, short stories, and recipes.” The carousel image is an extension of the magazine’s cover, a full-bleed photograph of a woman clearly enjoying her ride on a beautiful merry-go-round. MiPOesias is as colorful and bold as a carousel with its full-color half and full page author photos; blue, teal, lime, evergreen, pink, brown, yellow, and tan page borders; large sans serif fonts and reverse type; and recipes, complete with color photos of pasta, muffins, Cuban meatloaf, and breaded catfish. If there is a relationship between the poems and stories and the recipes, it escapes me, although the recipes were provided by writers (though not by writers whose work appears in this issue of the magazine). Continue reading “MiPOesias – July 2008”
Ninth Letter – Fall/Winter 2009
Ninth Letter is part literary journal, part coffee-table book – the kind of coffee-table book you go back to again and again, admiring the gorgeous artwork and spectacularly designed pages each time with the same sense of awe, surprise, and delight. You’re proud to display it in your living room, you want to show it to everyone who visits. You find something new you’ve never seen before every time you look at it. It’s big, heavy, substantial, hard to hold, and harder to put down. Continue reading “Ninth Letter – Fall/Winter 2009”
The Normal School – 2008
Only one issue into its run, The Normal School has an enviable hit/miss ratio to go along with the ambition behind the magazine’s creation. The fiction, poetry and nonfiction between the covers inspire the reader to question “their own motives, sense of place, or quantum mechanics and the boundaries of art.” In more plebian terms: you’ll laugh, you’ll cry and you’ll remember the pieces long after you’re done. Continue reading “The Normal School – 2008”
One Story – 2009
One Story subscribers – there are more than 3,000 – receive one “great short story” in the mail every three weeks or so. The story (as object) is a handy size, small enough to fit in a handbag or briefcase or knapsack. It has a simple cover, just the author and title, and a brief bio note and magazine contact info at the back. A clean design. Easy to read. Easy to keep or share. The story is complemented on-line with a Q&A with the author and a link to the one-story blog (I notice people rarely comment on the stories, although they do respond to the editors’ literary and publishing news and opinions). Continue reading “One Story – 2009”
Underground Voices Magazine – February 2009
This literary magazine likes to publish “quality, hard-hitting, raw, dark fiction, flash fiction, short stories, prose and poetry.” The online version comes out monthly and there is a print edition that is published annually in December. Archival and recent material is often intermingled. Continue reading “Underground Voices Magazine – February 2009”
Waccamaw – Fall 2008
This is a fledgling literary journal published by Coastal Carolina University in Conway, South Carolina, named after a river that runs through it. The fall issue features fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and essays. The editor, Dan Albergotti, quotes Robert Frost’s observation, “There is nothing as mysterious as something clearly seen,” and says Waccamaw is looking for “work that is at once clear and mysterious.” Continue reading “Waccamaw – Fall 2008”
Washington Square – 2009
The Table of Contents had me pretty excited: poems from John Yau, Molly Peacock, and Paul Muldoon (among many others); fiction from Steve Almond; a “conversation” between Alice Quinn and Adam Zagajewski. And the issue lives up to these names’ promise, but I was just as excited by the work of those whose names I did not immediately recognize: Suzanne Buffam, whose translation of Paul Eluard’s poem “Pour Vivre Ici” matches the original’s deceptive simplicity syllable for syllable (“Like the dead I had but one element”); a sardonic epistolary short story by Rudolph Delson, “An Open Letter to John E. Potter, Postmaster General,” comparing his Van Brunt postal station to the far superior Park Slope station; an amazing portfolio of black and white drawings, so different from each other it’s hard to believe they were done by the same artist, Andres Guzman, a recent graduate of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design; and a lyric of taut little quatrains, “Sabina,” by Olivia Clark. Continue reading “Washington Square – 2009”
Ascent – Spring 2008
At the risk of sounding a bit dramatic, I have to say I was enthralled by the beauty contained within Ascent, the seasonal literary journal out of Concordia College. Filled with highly-memorable essays, poems and short stories, this issue found a place inside my tote bag for over a week as I found myself rereading it several times. Continue reading “Ascent – Spring 2008”
The Gettysburg Review – Winter 2008
The Washington Post once accused this journal of “carrying literary elitism to new, and annoying, heights,” and TGR proudly uses this quote in their advertising. Under the expert guidance of editor Peter Stitt, they have been consistently presenting high level fiction, nonfiction, poetry, criticism, and art for many years. I have always been particularly attracted to the poetry, which ranges from the lyrical and evocative to the audacious. Continue reading “The Gettysburg Review – Winter 2008”
GLOSSOLALIA – Fall 2008
GLOSSOLALIA is devoted to the rare breed in the literary world known as flash fiction, pieces that are most often 500 words or less. With its abstract tic-tac-toe cover and its theme for this issue, “Tongues on Fire,” one gets the sense that the miniscule fraction of experiences that these narratives expose us to, as well as the time that passes us each day, are meant to be digested as rapidly as life seems to happen. Continue reading “GLOSSOLALIA – Fall 2008”
The G.W. Review – Spring 2008
By accident, or by design, I’m not sure which, this issue of George Washington University’s student-led magazine is ripe with food imagery. The award-winning student fiction (called “Senior Contest”) sets the tone with Jessica Deputato’s “Flour and Water,” a story about food, family, and flesh (tattoos) – the undiluted bonds between them. A poem by Andrew Payton, “The Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Blues,” continues the food theme, albeit tongue in cheek, or should I say fork in powdered yellow cheese substitute. Amy Katzel’s poem, “I am Peeling You,” moves the reader from the endless possibilities in the title (eggs? apples? potatoes?) to a more graphic, no less food-oriented exploration (“off my eggshell wall”) and lament (“We did this to each other, / my voice, yours, / Minutes and years, mornings // all the slices of burnt toast, gallons of milk, / books started and finished”). Janelle Holden remembers a different kind of breakfast, one that evokes the flavors of a trip to “San Ignacio, Belize”: Continue reading “The G.W. Review – Spring 2008”
The Kenyon Review – Winter 2009
A glorious 70th anniversary issue. “Within these pages we offer a model of what KR has aspired to across those decades,” explains the editor’s note, “remarkable stories by friends of long-standing…and emerging authors who offer vibrancy and freshness right now and who may well come to take their own places among the renowned.” Long-standing friends in this issue include Joyce Carol Oates, E.L. Doctorow, and Carl Phillips. This issue’s “New Voice” is poet Kascha Semonovitch, introduced by Kenyon Review poetry editor David Baker. The edition also features the winners of the magazine’s short fiction contest (limited to writers under 30 with submissions of no longer than 1200 words, selected and introduced by Alice Hoffman); poems by a roster of “poetry stars,” in addition to Carl Phillips (Linda Gregerson, Michael S. Harper, Rachel Hadas, Carol Muske-Dukes, among others); and essays by Rebecca McLanahan, Wyatt Prunty, and Alfred Corn. Continue reading “The Kenyon Review – Winter 2009”
Miranda Literary Magazine – Winter 2008
This is a somewhat quirky fledgling literary magazine that is just cranking up and has fond hopes for its future. Not only are the winter offerings presented online, but a print edition is also available for purchase. The website is a little difficult to negotiate, but the offerings range from fiction and poetry to interviews and book reviews. Continue reading “Miranda Literary Magazine – Winter 2008”
Narrative Magazine – Fall 2008
Anyone wishing to peek into the future of the online literary magazine needs only to pull this one up on their screen. There is a brief signing up process and then an impressive array of work that is available for the choosing. This particular issue has fiction, nonfiction, poetry, “features,” and one “classic,” which happens to be an essay on writing by W. H. Auden. To keep one further entertained, the website has cartoons that are changed regularly, a “ Poem of the Week,” and a “Story of the Week.” Continue reading “Narrative Magazine – Fall 2008”
New England Review – 2008
Fifteen pages devoted to a new translation of Jean de la Fontaine’s 17th century fables in verse (translated by Craig Hill)? How could these little tales of “country wisdom” interest me, I wondered? Wow, did I rush to a hasty and erroneous judgment! This is marvelous stuff. An impressive translation of work that is much more engaging and original than I remembered from college French classes. Difficult work, this example of “Revisitations,” as this section of the journal is called – verse that rhymes to mirror the original with precision, grace, and panache. And de la Fontaine’s little stories aren’t half bad either! These translations are from a full-length collection of the fables out this past fall from Arcade with illustrations – imagine! – by Edward Gorey. Continue reading “New England Review – 2008”