At the NewPages Blog readers and writers can catch up with their favorite literary and alternative magazines, independent and university presses, creative writing programs, and writing and literary events. Find new books, new issue announcements, contest winners, and so much more!
Worlds End by George Myers Jr. Paycock Press, January 2025
Richly illustrated in color, George Myers Jr.’s novel Worlds End is a singular achievement, a one-of-a-kind tale about a time-obsessed historian and naturalist who’s trying to have his ephemeral life’s work included in his town’s time capsule. The illustrated Worlds End is told episodically through the items in the narrator’s map cabinet, where he has stored his research and memories about vanishing species, Mary Shelley, a beekeeper’s wife, a World War I ambulance driver, Marco Polo, and a woman with a prehensile ponytail. Myers blends the real and remembered in a haunting story about all that slips away. Myers also the author of Fast Talk with Writers and Mixers: On Hybrid Writing.
Flash Phantoms is a new online monthly dedicated to publishing the best horror stories of 1000 words or less as well as micro fiction horror of 100 words. They also offer readers a Story of the Month that includes an interview with the writer whose work is selected for this feature.
“Starting a lit mag has always been a goal of mine,” says Editor-in-Chief Laura Shell. “Granted, I didn’t think I’d do this so soon in life, but one day in November, I just decided to go for it.”
Shell is herself a lover of all things horror, who, if she could listen to only one song for the rest of her life, would choose “The Mob Rules” by Black Sabbath. As far as her more literary credentials, Shell has published in numerous magazines and just celebrated the release of her first anthology of horror/paranormal stories, The Canine Collection: Horror Stories Spotlighting Man’s Best Friend, which draws upon her experience as a veterinary assistant.
Joining her at the helm is Assistant Editor Pam Mets, who combines her English degree with her love of all things horror, and Lead Reader Terry Strait, whose horror sensibilities guide the final selections and who advises, “If I can’t picture what you’re selling in my mind, then submit something else.”
For writers, Flash Phantoms accepts submissions through Submittable. “I read them first,” Shell explains, “and decide if a story is worthy enough to be sent to Pam and Terry. If Pam and Terry like the story as well, then I will notify the author that their story will be published. This process usually takes up to two weeks. We do not provide feedback, but I’m considering offering that service for a fee, perhaps later on in the year.”
The resulting selections are then published in an open-access online format, and each story is accompanied by related artwork or photography. Some inaugural contributors include Deborah Sale-Butler, Leah Scott-Kirby, Devin James Leonard, Laura Cody, Daniel Kipps, Kris Green, Rebecca Klassen, Benjamin Sperduto, Lori Green, Kim Moes, Dale L. Sproule, Max Tackett, Chris Scott, David Turnbull, and Hidayat Adams.
Looking forward, Shell hopes to add writer services and create a means to pay writers. For now, the publication hopes to entice more readers who might offer their highest praise: “That Flash Phantoms site is f**king kick ass.”
The Canine Collection: Horror Stories Spotlighting Man’s Best Friend by Laura Shell Black Bed Sheet Books, March 2024
From veterinary assistant and exciting rising author, Laura Shell, comes Canine Collection, a fast-paced selection of four horror/paranormal stories featuring our beloved canines. In “My Sister’s Keeper,” a lonely woman worries that her vampire sister will turn on her new best friend, that just happens to be a dog. Will the vampire sister accept the canine as a pet or as a source of nourishment? In “The Shape of the Shift,” a shapeshifter is surprised to learn that the people around him aren’t what they appear to be, including the love of his life. In “Jinn or Jinx?,” the wishes granted by an ancient Jinn not only come with bizarre consequences but also reveal dark family secrets. In “Immortal Me,” a woman discovers she is immortal after surviving a brutal beating. While she tries to keep her newfound persona a secret, her attacker learns the truth and comes after her for a second time, but she has a few surprises for him.
Through the poems in their debut chapbook, Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect, Koss “face[s] the world so raw and open,” endeavoring to address a traumatic past and to make “some beautiful things.” Accomplishing this entails “filling in the blanks” between the “sticky” memories of childhood “horror and experience” and taking “the liberties one / can take when” “art is conceived.”
The poet, “dancing [their] pen between” the verse line and the prose sentence, offers poems from the perspective of adulthood, looking “backwards” at the flawed adults who abused and abandoned them. Because the poems move between past and present selves, the writing is “in flux between connections and short circuits.” And, at turns, a “Cry or curse” infused with purpose: To name the “opt-out mother” and a father who “left when [they] were six”; To admit being “a victim more than once”; To grieve the death of a lover by suicide; To face the delusions of friendship and therapy. The writing also contains a “picture [of] tomorrow” in which coming to terms performs the magical act of making the trauma “go away.”
Unfortunately, it does not work that way. “There is no winning.” But trying to “be honest now” “ease[s] the pretending” and enables the poet/person to “become who they are.” Whether identifying as “craggy boxing bitch,” lesbian, “one-speed train,” or “withdrawn and frequently tired,” the poet is “a bit at odds with” self but is determined to “just feel what [they] feel.” To a survivor of abuse and oppression, the felt expression is the ultimate liberty and triumph.
These poems are “proof of… dysfunction,” but they also prove the function of art as a “salve” for what we “see / and don’t.” Whether engaging with self through trauma, queerness, psychology, or art, Koss approaches the page “with an open sense of wonder.”
Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize (forthcoming University of Nevada Press), and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) and Mind of Spring (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. To learn more about Jami’s writing, editing, and teaching practices, visit her author website.
Lit Mag Covers: Picks of the Week recognizes cover art and designs for literary magazines, whether in print or online. These are chosen solely at the discretion of the Editor. Enjoy!
The Summer 2024 Tahoma Literary Review cover is After the Rain by Shyama Golden which “depicts a face-off with a yakka from Sri Lankan mythology” and is “a semi-autobiographical painting that represents a transformative time” in the artist’s life.
From our friends in Toronto, Juniper is an online poetry journal that seeks to “bring readers back to themselves and leave them with a deeper understanding of the world(s) in which they live.” Cover photo by Susan Winemaker.
A literary magazine dedicated to the spirit of the Adirondacks and beyond since 1979, Blueline features poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and art focused on nature’s shaping influence.
When Pulitzer Prize-winning writer-activist Viet Thanh Nguyen was asked to deliver Harvard’s annual Charles Eliot Norton lectures in 2023, he admits that he was intimidated. After all, a string of luminaries had preceded him – Leonard Bernstein, Nadine Gordimer, Czeslaw Milosz, Toni Morrison, Igor Stavinsky, and Wim Wenders, among them – but in accepting the honor, he agreed to probe what it means to write as an “other.”
To begin, he had to face his otherness as an amalgam: On one hand, he’s an outsider because of his race (Vietnamese) and working-class, refugee background. But he’s also an insider because of his occupation (English professor at USC) and current social standing (MacArthur Foundation and Guggenheim fellowship recipient).
Furthermore, Nguyen understands that his privilege is not representative of other “others.” Nonetheless, he defines otherness as encompassing all who are “out of step, out of tune, out of focus, even to themselves.” This, he writes, includes “the Asian, the minoritized, the racialized, the colonized, the hybrid, the hyphenated, the refugee, the displaced, the artist, the writer, the smart ass, the bastard, the sympathizer, and the committed.”
That is, pretty much everyone aside from white, ruling-class males.
The essays in To Save and To Destroy move seamlessly between the personal and the political, and while Nguyen presents a plethora of sometimes-obtuse literary references, he expresses heartfelt solidarity with refugees and those in exile. While he contests their categorization as voiceless – he believes everyone has a voice, even if it’s ignored – he is unfailingly sympathetic to individual struggles. Particularly moving is his account of displacement’s impact on mental health. In fact, by zeroing in on his mother’s psychiatric hospitalizations, the book provides a deeply-felt account of exile’s toll. It’s beautifully wrought.
Nguyen’s deepest wish is for humanity to move into “expansive political solidarity” for collective liberation. It’s an inspiring, if aspirational, vision.
Reviewer bio: Eleanor J. Bader is a Brooklyn, NY-based journalist who writes about books and domestic social issues for Truthout, Rain Taxi, The Progressive, Ms. Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Indypendent.
Publishing quarterly online, Cleaver Magazine publishes cutting-edge contemporary fiction, nonfiction, poetry, interviews, essays on craft and the writing life, and book reviews showcasing Philadelphia voices among national and international artists that represent the fullest diversity. The Winter 2024 issue spotlights Creative Nonfiction Finalists: Pamela Balluck, Ellen Wilson, Margo Sanabria, Barrett Warner, and Judith Serin. Readers will also enjoy fresh poetry by Christopher David Rosales, John Minczeski, Herman Beavers, Bradley J. Fest, Elly Katz, Anders Howerton; flash works by Eden Royce, Jeffrey G. Moss, Zoé Mahfouz, Coleman Bigelow, Tracie Adams, Connor Fisher, Kiely Todd Roska, Jessica Klimesh; fiction by Lindsey Godfrey Eccles, David Lydon-Staley, Jeff Gabel, Sinclair Cabocel, Krista Puttler; and a visual narrative by Clifford Thompson. Cover design by Karen Rile.
The poems of Cory Lavender’s Come One Thing Another form a “chromosomal / bridge of inheritance, progenitors resurrected.” Informed by his family’s lore, Lavender recounts the “crackling murmur” between generations while dispensing with categorical divisions between genre (poetry and memoir) and persona (poet and narrator).
Come One Thing Another is a collection of memoiristic poetry. Cory Lavender is the person recording the lives of his “Milk Father,” an uncle accidentally shot over the “fate of [his] heifer,” an aunt who survived the Depression, and a great grandmother with a bad temper, among others on his mother’s and father’s sides of the family.
The Roy and Lavender families are chock full of rebellious, tell-it-like-it-is characters with ties to Africa, Jamaica, Germany, and Nova Scotia. Lavender, the poet among them, writes idiomatically and colloquially, giving voice to and “capturing” his relatives’ “likenesses” in rangy poems that offer opinions on deer hunting, plastics pollution, lobster prices, and “Hard Times” that affect the way of life of his family, who farm and hunt the land in a “guns and grub” relationship that makes them intimately aware of change. “Nothing like it used to be.”
To “extend remembrance” is at the heart of what motivates Lavender to write his family story. The poet is also writing to address the “shadows” and “tangle” regarding his place in his family tree.
Necessarily, a few poems address the fact that he, like his father, “grew up unaware he’s mixed,” “half-ashamed of [his] signature curls.” In the poem “Fort Cory,” the most self-telling poem within the collection, the poet confesses feeling “embarrassed writing this.” Such are the personal and artistic pressures to measure up to the “hallowed coordinates” of the people he loves.
Despite being “Besieged by insecurities,” Cory Lavender walks his own “stretch of shore” in his “cobbled ode” and heartfelt memorial.
Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize (forthcoming University of Nevada Press), and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) and Mind of Spring (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. To learn more about Jami’s writing, editing, and teaching practices, visit her author website.
Submission Deadline: March 30, 2025 Submit your fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction to Black Fox Literary Magazine’s Winter Prize with theme Rise or Ruin! Deadline: March 30, 2025! Registration is also open for our online January class: Goals, Routines, and Mindset for Writers on January 18, 2025 at 1-3 PM EST. View flyer for more information and a link to our website.
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Kaleidoscope takes a closer look at relationships, aging, neurodiversity, chronic illness, ableism and resilience in its first issue of 2025. Each issue of the magazine explores the experience of disability through the lens of literature and fine art. Submit your best work to us today! View our flyer for more information and a link to our website.
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Deadline: March 3, 2025 Winning is great, but our contests are about more: they boost you toward ultimate writing success. Every entrant receives concrete feedback as well as the opportunity to revise before final judging. In addition, finalists receive a professional editorial experience that ends with publication. Contest runs until March 3. View our flyer for more information and a link to our website.
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Deadline: January 19, 2025 The Martha’s Vineyard Summer Writers’ Conference is offering Full Fellowships for Parent Writers, LGBTQIA+ Writers, Writers of Color, Educators, and more! Devote a week to your writing at our 2025 Summer Writers’ Conference! Winners receive the Full Attendance Package, which includes registration, lodging, and a manuscript session. View flyer for more information and link to apply!
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The MFA in Writing at Lindenwood University focuses on the study and practice of the craft of creative writing. Our program offers a variety of craft classes, literature classes, and writing workshops, all in small-group settings and taught by experienced writers who are published authors, journalists, and editors. Students can participate in several industry learning experiences, such as serving as an editorial assistant for The Lindenwood Review, our national literary journal. View flyer to learn more.
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Application Deadline: February 16, 2025 View our flyer and visit our website to learn more about our week-long residential writers workshops hosted at Kenyon College.
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Deadline: February 1-28, 2025 Third Street Review, a quarterly literary journal, welcomes submissions of Flash Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, Poetry, Art, and Photography. If you have something wild, wooly, and wonderful, we want to see it. We value the work of individual creators—show us who you are and what you can do. In addition to being a paying publication, we promote across social media platforms and nominate for awards. Jump in—we can’t wait to meet you! View our website to learn more.
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The Colorado Authors League (CAL) supports and promotes its community of published writers while connecting with and adding value to the reading world. Formed in 1931, authors become members to: keep up with changes in the craft of writing, publishing, and marketing, gain greater visibility for their writing, join a group of like-minded people who love writing. View our flyer to see new releases by members and a link to our website.
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Humana Obscura Winter 2024 features work from 44 contributors from around the globe, including cover art by Maggie Lerum, an interview with artist Sally Podmore, and spotlights on the work of photographer Jason Dean and poet Alison Granucci.
Other contributors include Abby Harding, Amy Aiken, Anne Kulou, C.X. Turner, Civil Winters, Cristina Sanchez, D. Dina Friedman, Dani Selyebi, Dawn Erickson, Debbie Strange, Deirdre Hennings, Doug Stone, Hilda Weiss, Holly Willis, Janet Ruth Heller, Jenny Ward Angyal, Jonny Rodgers, Karin Wegmann, Kathleen Christensen, Kathryn P. Haydon, Lindsay Rockwell, Lucía Tartaglione, Lucie Bonvalet, Luke Levi, Marcie Flinchum Atkins, Randy Brooks, Rebecca Weil, Robert René Galván, Rick Bogacz, Rose-Marie Keller-Flaig, Sally Arapari, Sarah Hewitt, Sean Felix, Shane Coppage, Stella Damarjati, Susan Marsh, Tim Dwyer, Victoria Bracher, Walter Heineman, and Wendi Schneider.
47 Submission Opportunities including calls for submissions, writing contests, and book prizes.
The month is half over with and that means deadlines have may have passed you by. But never fear, NewPages is back with new writing opportunities and those that have extended their submission deadlines as well. Let’s help keep those writing and submission goals going strong together!
Paid newsletter subscribers can get early access to the majority of submission opportunities and upcoming events before they go live on our site, so do consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription today. You also receive our monthly eLitPak Newsletter which features even more opportunities and other literary goodness. Our next eLitPak will be sent next Wednesday!
BALLOONS Lit. Journal is a young-reader-oriented open-access online journal also available as a ready-to-print PDF. An independent journal based in Hong Kong publishing poetry, fiction, art, and photography from contributors creating for school-aged readers 12 and over, they offer readers works that are “fresh, surprising, unforgettable, extraordinary, mind-blowing, humorous, bold, unique, layered, witty, educational, original.”
Dr Ho-cheung LEE, founding editor, introduces this newest issue, “Like in the previous issues, this 16th installment of BLJ offers you a well-planned journey from fear to bravery, from the dance of wildlife to the inner struggles of a young mind, and from authentic imagery to fanciful and perhaps rhetorical thoughts.”
Readers can enjoy poetry by Andrew Sprung, John Grey, Richard Smith, Eric Bryan, Dean Flowerfield, Erica Chester; fiction by Makayla Nielson, Catherine Kelley, Plamen Vasilev, Kelly Hossaini, Stephanie Yu Lim; and artwork by Joseph A. Miller (including cover art, Archer).
Hey, readers and writers! There’s this incredibly beautifully crafted magazine online with a most seditious editor-in-chief. They’re pirates, on a mission to make teenage voices heard and counted. They sculpt, shape, and help these voices find themselves through writing. It’s a place where ideas run wild, get a bit messy, and then come out as the most brilliant, unapologetic version of themselves. Are you game? Then check out Meraki Review!
According to Founder and Editor-in-Chief Meheru Alaspure, “This magazine is for the dreamers, the tortured souls who understand that writing is both a violent act that sears the skin and a sacred one that inscribes meaning upon it. Writing is rhapsody, adrenaline, and joy—the tide that rushes against the shores of pain and begins the healing.”
Publishing every four months, Meraki Review features poetry, fiction prose, creative non-fiction, memoirs, prose-poetry hybrids, and artwork online by both teens and adults for an international teenage readership.
Alaspure wants Meraki Review to be “a community where teenagers feel safe to express themselves freely, support one another, and inspire each other to improve. Together, we will form a global platform that shines a spotlight on hidden voices and their galvanizing stories. The word Meraki means to do something you love and are passionate about. That pretty much sums up the ethos of our magazine!”
In Ismail Gaspirali’s 1890s story The Muslims of Darürrahat (the Peaceful Country), the not entirely intrepid narrator, Mullah Abbas Efendi, arrives in the imaginary land of Darürrahat. He has been led there by mysteriously appearing guides, who take him from Alhambra palace in Andalusia through an underground tunnel, where he emerges in Darürrahat to find a Muslim utopian country filled with progressive people and dotted with beautiful Islamic architecture and technologically advanced cities. As in most works of utopian imagination which are also aimed squarely at social critique of the author’s present day, there is nothing simple about this world or this literary work.
The Muslims of Darürrahat first appeared in serialized form in the widely circulated Central Asian newspaper Tercüman, which was edited and largely written by Crimean Tatar educator, journalist and Muslim reformer Ismail Gaspirali. This is the full story’s first appearance in English, translated by Çiğdem Pala Mull and the centerpiece of a book edited by Sharon Carson to include introductory materials, a contextual timeline, and three interpretive essays exploring the story as a work of nineteenth century utopian imagination which has some compelling resonance in our time.
Published in collaboration with North Dakota Review, The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota offers readers free digital downloads of titles which can also be purchased as low-cost paperbacks.
“Self-portrait” is the theme of Still Point Arts Quarterly Winter 2024, featuring art and photography, fiction and non-fiction, and poetry. Widely praised for its rich and valuable content and splendid presentation, Still Point Arts Quarterly from Shanti Arts is intended for artists, writers, nature lovers, seekers, and enthusiasts of all types. Current and past copies may be downloaded for free from the publication’s website and print copies are available for individual purchase as well as by subscription.
Contributors to the Winter 2024 issue include Marcia Yudkin, Dave Donelson, Diana Woodcock, Jeri Griffith, Elizabeth Rose, Mark Mathew Braunstein, Elise Chadwick, Ella Vilozny, Lorraine Jeffery, Karly Van Vliet, Karen Elias, Jiana Cipriano, Rosalyn Kliot, Wendy Lou Schmidt, and Judith Skillman.
Meet Me at the Library: A Place to Foster Social Connection and Promote Democracy by Shamichael Hallman Island Press, October 2024
Libraries have a unique opportunity to bridge socioeconomic divides and rebuild trust. But in order to do so, they must be truly welcoming to all. They and their communities must work collaboratively to bridge socioeconomic divides through innovative and productive partnerships.
Shamichael Hallman argues that the public library may be our best hope for bridging divides and creating strong, inclusive communities. While public libraries have long been thought of as a place for a select few, increasingly they are playing an essential role in building social cohesion, promoting civic renewal, and advancing the ideals of a healthy democracy. Many are reimagining themselves in new and innovative ways, actively reaching out to the communities they serve. Today, libraries are becoming essential institutions for repairing society.
Drawing from his experience at the Memphis Public Library and his extensive research and interviews across the country, Hallman presents a rich argument for seeing libraries as one of the nation’s greatest assets. As an institution that is increasingly under attack for creating a place where diverse audiences can see themselves, public libraries are under more scrutiny than ever. Meet Me at the Library offers a revealing look at one of our most important civic institutions and the social and civic impact they must play if we are to heal our divided nation.
This newest double issue of Cimarron Review (221 & 222) offers readers fiction, nonfiction, and poetry with a wide-ranging aesthetic, favoring the bold and ruminative, the sensitive and shocking, imaginative and truth-telling. Contributors include Eryn Green, H. Thao Nguyen, Ash Good, Michael Mark, Tara A. Elliott, Angela Ball, Lydia T. Liu, Nicole Melanson, Cecil Morris, Sergio Reyes, Jane E. Martin, Bergita Bugarija, Ashira Shirali, Ben Walter, Richard Sonnenmoser, Divya Mehrish, and many more. Cover art: “State Forest Campground” by Michelle Disler.
Edited by Emma Jeffrey, ti-TCR 20: On Collective Care is a special issue of The Capilano Review that examines the potential of art and writing to expand our capacity for empathy and care on a collective scale, and to activate tangible forms of community-building. Why write poetry during the apocalypse, if not for the hope of a kinder world?
The issue includes contributions by Kristin Bjornerud, Leah CL, Preeti Kaur Dhaliwal, Mark Foss, Christina Hajjar, Amanda Hiland, Penn Kemp, Alysha Mohamed, Dora Prieto, Belén Rios Sialer, Sneha Subramanian Kanta, and Jasper Wrinch.
This web folio is free to access, with the option to donate to Islamic Relief Canada’s Gaza Emergency Appeal, which provides urgent aid to displaced civilians in Gaza.
When Oliver Michaels was elected to represent the people of Maine in Congress, he pledged to fight hard for working-class and low-income people. But as progressive bill after progressive bill is defeated, his fury is mounting and he is seriously considering leaving the prestigious body. In addition, he and his wife have separated and he is depressed and lonely.
It is at this point that New York Times reporter Alex Broussard, Michaels’ college girlfriend, contacts him about an anonymous tip she’s received about collusion between two Senators, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, and a corporate polluter. According to her source, the three individuals are embroiled in a pay-to-play scheme that has allowed industrial malfeasance to continue unchecked, with the dumping of tons of chemical waste into the waterway of a small, rural, Indiana town. Spiking cancer and respiratory illnesses in the area have concerned residents for decades, but it is not until Broussard and her colleagues begin investigating that the scope of the political scheme is uncovered. As the truth emerges, the culprits know they’re in trouble, but rather than come clean they concoct plans to retain their toehold on power.
It’s a tense and well-wrought setup that involves a slew of people – including mafia hitmen – and numerous federal agencies. While the latter work in tandem, suffice it to say that the novel has a happy ending, and anyone needing an infusion of progressive populism – as well as an example of a politician with humility, integrity, and grit – will get a hefty dose.
What’s more, The Senator is a good, old-fashioned story with characters you can root for. The satisfaction of seeing social justice prevail and a romance rekindled makes the novel an enjoyable, fun read. Highly recommended.
The Senator by Maya Golden Bethany. Rising Action Publishing Company, April 2025.
Reviewer bio: Eleanor J. Bader is a Brooklyn, NY-based journalist who writes about books and domestic social issues for Truthout, Rain Taxi, The Progressive, Ms. Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Indypendent.
In addition to a full line-up of general contributors to its Poetry 2024 issue, Atlanta Review Fall/Winter 2024 features contest finalists and winners. Selected and introduced by Atlanta Review Editor JD Reilly, Elina Kumra’s “God Is My Love” won the Dan Veach Prize for Young Poets, and selected and introduced by Poet Jeannine Hall Gailey, Carol O’Brien’s “The Woman in the Attic” won the Poetry International Grand Prize.
Orbit, Samantha Harvey’s Booker-winning novel, has almost no plot, choosing a more meditative approach instead. Six astronauts and cosmonauts circle around the Earth sixteen times in the course of the day, living aboard the international space station. There is a different mission launching on that day, one that is going to the moon, implying the demise of the ISS, as humanity looks further out to space. The six reflect on that development, but most of the book is a meditation on Earth, not on space.
One of the two events that occurs in the course of the day is that one of the astronauts—Chie, from Japan—receives word that her mother has died. She has a few moments where she deals with that grief, but not much more. The other event is the build up of a typhoon on Earth, as the six take pictures of it, so meteorologists on Earth can see how it’s developing. It turns into a super-typhoon, wiping out parts of small islands, but Harvey shows little of that destruction.
Instead, there are chapters devoted to reflections on the beauty of the Earth, as well as its ordinariness. There are reflections on the absence of borders as seen from space, implying that national divisions are Earth-bound, human-created problems; however, the narrator also points out that all of the environmental changes they can observe from space are political problems, that the supposed constructs have real effects.
Harvey explores these types of tensions throughout the novel, not settling for traditional views of how humanity is nothing more than a speck in the cosmos. Instead, she writes, “We matter greatly and not at all.” The view from space reminds readers that the Earth is valuable and that we should do all we can to protect it, even though, in the broader view, it will ultimately get subsumed by some cosmic event. Orbital is a celebration of the beauty of life now, even while admitting what the future will bring.
Orbital by Samantha Harvey. Grove Press, December 2023. Winner of the Booker Prize 2024.
Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. IG, Threads, and BlueSky: @kevinbrownwrites
Language Like Water explores the conflicts, challenges, and connections in a daughter’s relationship with her mother over the span of a lifetime. The poems resonate with longing and struggle as the daughter seeks to understand and restore her complicated mother, an enigmatic figure who struggles with depression. Ultimately the daughter recognizes her own strengths as she acknowledges and inscribes moments and memories of sharing and connection.
Bisbing Books has this to say: “Language Like Water is a moving, deeply personal glimpse into the mother-daughter relationship. The complexity of this bond is explored through sharp, evocative imagery that digs deep into the emotional terrain of love, guilt, memory, and loss. There’s a sense that words carry weight far beyond their surface meaning. Read these poems.”
43 Submission Opportunities including calls for submissions, writing contests, and book prizes.
The first full week of January 2025 has come to an end. If you are looking to meet your submission goals for this week, NewPages has your back with forty-three submission opportunities from literary magazines, presses, and more.
Paid newsletter subscribers can get early access to the majority of submission opportunities and upcoming events before they go live on our site, so do consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription today. You also receive our monthly eLitPak Newsletter which features even more opportunities and other literary goodness. Our next eLitPak will be sent next Wednesday!
Celebrate forty years of publication with Fall 2024 The MacGuffin 40.1! Party in literary style with poetry from perennial MacGuffin fan-favorites Rebecca Foust, Poet Hunt 26 winner Patrick Wilcox, and Pushcart Prize awardee Jim Daniels; along with stories from Stephen A. Geller and Mary Lotz. Looking toward the future with authors new to MacGuffin’s pages: hit the mat in Tim Loperfido’s WWE-inspired epic, pay a three-poem visit to Susanna Rich’s Grandmother Mumchy, and take a relaxing, if somewhat hectic, family trip to the pool in Maureen D. Hall’s “The Pool.” Cap off the anniversary with the hometown art spread of woodcuts by Ernest Fackler.
The Fall 2024 issue of The Greensboro Review (#116) features the Amon Liner Poetry Prize winner, James Daniels’s “We Are All Starved for Touch,” an Editor’s Note by Terry L. Kennedy, and new poetry, stories, and flash from Sean Cho A., Jake Bauer, Nathaniel Bellows, Mark Brazaitis, Sébastien Luc Butler, Lucas Cardona, Adrienne Celt, K.S. Dyal, Jason Gray, Mickie Kennedy, Sally Rosen Kindred, Kip Knott, Alejandro Lucero, Jennie Malboeuf, Cori McKenzie, Eric Paul, Lizzy Ke Polishan, Bryan D. Price, Colleen Kearney Rich, Flannery Maeve Rollins, Anna Sheffer, Hannah Treasure, Alex Tretbar, Audrey Toth, Ross White, Christopher Stetson Wilson, and Haolun Xu.
Jayne Anne Phillips’ latest novel, Night Watch, is set in and around the Civil War, as sections take place in 1864 and 1874, with an epilogue in 1883. However, very little of the novel actually occurs in what most readers would think of as the Civil War. There’s only one battle scene, and there is little mention of slavery. Instead, Phillips is interested in the effects of the war, not just on those who fought in it, but on those whose lives are more peripheral to it.
The plot follows Eliza and her daughter ConaLee, as they try to survive while their husband and father, respectively—whose name the reader doesn’t learn until near the end of the novel—is away fighting. They live in rural West Virginia, so they have ConaLee’s grandmother (of sorts, it’s complicated), Dearbhla, living nearby to help, but they are largely isolated otherwise. A Confederate soldier appears in the 1864 section, but his real effect only shows up in the 1874 sections of the novel, as he has taken over the house and family, forcing them to refer to him as Papa. He ultimately has Eliza institutionalized in the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, with ConaLee pretending to be her attendant.
The novel reminds the reader of the traumas that women endured, but also that they continue to endure, especially at the hands of men. Even in the best times of their life, Eliza and ConaLee are largely dependent on men and the decisions they make. Phillips shows the effect of that trauma—and the larger traumas of the war—through characters repeatedly having their names taken from them or having to change their names. At the asylum, for example, Eliza becomes Miss Janet, while ConaLee becomes Eliza Connolly; Eliza’s husband becomes John O’Shea for a time when he loses his memory of who he was. At one point in the novel, Phillips writes, “…the past is the present unrecognized.”
While Night Watch is clearly about the Civil War, it’s also about the lack of freedom and traumas women continue to endure, the present reality that so many are unable or unwilling to recognize.
Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips. Alfred A. Knopf, September 2023; Vintage, February 2025. Winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. IG, Threads, and BlueSky: @kevinbrownwrites
The January 2025 issue of The Lake is now online featuring Fizza Abbas, Edward Alport, C. J. Anderson-Wu, John Bartlett, Melissa A. Chappell, Daniel Dahlquist, Tim Deere-Jones, William Ogden Haynes, Maren O. Mitchell, J. R. Solonche, Rodney Wood.
The Lake also publishes reviews of new poetry collections, this month spotlighting Deborah Harvey’s Love the Albatross, Sanjeev Sethi’s Legato Without a Lisp, and Angela Topping’s Earwig Country. “One Poem Reviews” share a single poem from a poet’s recent book as a way to help them reach a wider audience. This month, readers can sample works from John Bartlett, Estil Pollock, and Myra Schneider.
The Bold, the Brave, and the Wrinkled: Retirement Just Got Rowdy!
Barry and Beth, high school sweethearts separated by time and circumstance, find themselves reunited at the Blue Loon Village senior living center in Minneapolis. Unwilling to settle into lives of boredom, the two become Silver Squad vigilantes and embark on an epic road trip across America. No one they meet will ever be the same!
“A smart, funny tale of a Good Samaritan crime spree.”—Kirkus Reviews (Recommended)
“[A] sparkling road-trip comedy of retiree crimefighters taking the U.S. by storm.”—BookLife by Publisher’s Weekly (Editor’s Pick)
“An original and fun read (think senior citizen versions of Thelma & Louise) from start to finish, The Silver Squad: Rebels With Wrinkles by author Marty Essen is a deftly crafted and extraordinary story that will have a very special appeal to readers with an interest in inherently fascinating novels that imaginatively blend later-in-life romances with elements of an action/adventure.”—Midwest Book Review
“A delightful mix of observational humor, introspection, and respectful affection for the older generation, The Silver Squad: Rebels With Wrinkles is a scenic road trip through the country with a gratifying destination.”—Indies Today (5 Stars)
The Shore Issue 24 faces the brutal cold of our literal and figurative winter with wide, unflinching eyes. It features breathtaking new poems by Sagar Nair, Sierra Hixon, Derek Chan, Mary C Sims, Stella Reed, Dylan Tran, Kyla Guimaraes, Jacob Sheetz-Willard, JP Dancing Bear, Sophia P Smith, Yev Gelman, Michael Okafor, Hana Widerman, Jenna Jaco, Amber Rose Crowtree, Melissa Strilecki, Annie Przypyszny, Dan Albergotti, Zack Carson, Ammara Younas, Brian Satrom, Bri Griffiths, Jan Hallaman, Aiman Tahir Khan, Christien Gholson, Maree Cianci, Joseph Radke, Jeff Whitney, Zebulon Huset, Mihaela Mihailova, Allison Cundiff, Jennifer R Edwards, Lila Cutter, Meagan Chandler, Chris Hutchinson, Lucas Cardona, Jodi Balas, Jo Ann Clark, Johanna Maqiin, Sascha Feinstein, Barbara Duffey, Derek Ellis, and Jennifer K Sweeney. It also features memorable art by Ari Koontz.
In her debut graphic memoir, Feeding Ghosts, Tessa Hulls tries to understand and explain—though, most of all, feel—the intergenerational trauma she inherited from her grandmother, Sun Yi, and mother, Rose. She knows what she experienced as a child, as her grandmother suffered from a mental illness that left her obsessed with writing her story, unable to communicate otherwise, leading Rose not only to devote her energies to caring for Sun Yi, but also to overprotecting Tessa to prevent her from suffering the same fate.
Hulls spends much of the work using research to dig into Sun Yi’s life in China, showing how and why she had to flee during the Maoist revolution. Sun Yi was a journalist who became famous for writing a memoir about her time before she escaped China, fleeing to Hong Kong. However, the trauma of her repeated interrogations before she left the country leads to her mental illness, leaving her uncommunicative except for her constant writing, which becomes less and less intelligible as she ages.
Hulls also spends time talking to her mother, trying to understand how her mother coped with Sun Yi’s struggles, but also why Rose and Tessa were unable to communicate with each other. Hulls works to understand how Rose wanted emotional reactions from Tessa that she was unable to provide, leading Tessa to ultimately leave home as soon as she was able. In fact, she ends up living in Antarctica and Alaska, at various times, putting as much space between her and her mother as possible. A note to readers, as well: Tessa struggles with self-harm for a period of time, though she does not spend much time on that part of her life.
Hulls’ work on this book—ten years in the making—to face the ghosts that have haunted her family for three generations, is an attempt to work through the traumas rather than avoid them. The work is artistically and narratively dense, as Hulls has much to convey to help her and the reader understand the years of suffering, but that work is worth it for all involved. Readers will leave with a clearer understanding not just of Tessa and her family, but the effects that intergenerational trauma can have on those who have no first-hand knowledge of the suffering that began it all.
Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls. MCDxFSG Books, March 2024.
Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. IG, Threads, and BlueSky: @kevinbrownwrites
Consequence Volume 16.2 is full of beautiful and thought-provoking prose, poetry, and visual art that addresses the consequences of war and geopolitical violence. This issue is focused on voices and perspectives from the BIPOC community through a special featured section.
Here’s what poet, artist, and Guest Editor, Marcus Jackson, had to say about the feature: “The editing team and I agreed this issue’s BIPOC Feature should be borderless and present writers and artists who self-identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color from across the globe, not just North America, as diasporas wonderfully outreach regional and continental parameters.
“In this installment of Consequence, the voices range valiantly from stark documentation to elaborate styles and structures, though they all share a sincere belief the written word and the visual image can transcend the horror and grief of geopolitical violence. The profound care and the unblinking courage of the writers and artists in this feature are the enduring reflections and testimonies of communities whose humanity and luminosity refuse to be dimmed by empires’ ruthlessness.“
Corn Dance: Inspired First American Cuisine by Loretta Barrett Oden with Beth Dooley The University of Oklahoma Press, October 2023
Corn Dance: Inspired First American Cuisine tells the story of Loretta’s journey and of the dishes she created along the way. Alongside recipes that combine the flavors of her Oklahoma upbringing and Indigenous heritage with the Southwest flair of her Santa Fe restaurant, Loretta offers entertaining and edifying observations about ingredients and cooking culture. What kind of quail might turn up in your vicinity, for instance; what to do with piñon nuts, sumac, or nopales (cactus paddles); when to add a bundle of pine needles or a small branch of cedar to a braise: these and many practical words of wisdom about using the fruits of the forest, stream, or plain, accompany Loretta’s insights on everything from the dubious provenance of fry bread to the Potawatomi legend behind the Three Sisters—corn, beans, and squash, the namesake ingredients of Three Sisters and Friends Salad, served at Corn Dance Café and now at Thirty Nine Restaurant at First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City, where Oden is the Chef Consultant.
Turning the calendar to a new year is also a great time to be turning the pages on some new books! To help you achieve that goal, check out our monthly round-up of New Books. Each month we post the new and forthcoming titles NewPages selects from small, independent, university, and alternative presses as well as author-published titles and recent reviews.
If you are a follower of our blog or a subscriber to our weekly newsletter, you can see several of the titles we received featured. For publishers or authors looking to be featured on our blog and social media, please visit our FAQ page.
Apart from the writing, very little in Carys Davies’s novel is actually clear, as she sets her story in two historical upheavals. First, there is the Great Disruption in the Scottish Church, when roughly a third of the ministers rebelled against the system of patronage. Second, the Clearances led to landowners removing entire communities of the poor in rural areas from their homes, as they sought to profit from farming, raising cattle (then mainly sheep), a reshaping of the class and literal landscape that occurred from the mid-eighteenth century well into the nineteenth.
John Ferguson, the main character, finds himself caught in both of these significant changes, as he leaves the Scottish Church to become a member of the Free Church, which doesn’t yet have buildings or an infrastructure or means to pay ministers. Thus, he accepts a job that forces him to travel hundreds of miles to a remote island, one that Davies creates as existing somewhere between Shetland and Norway. He has to remove the one remaining inhabitant, Ivar, of that island for a landlord named Lowrie.
However, before he can present Ivar with a letter informing him of the removal, as John doesn’t speak his language, John falls and seriously injures himself, leading to Ivar’s nursing him back to health, unaware of John and his mission. They develop a deep friendship, as John works to learn Ivar’s language, and Ivar realizes how much he has missed community. While John is there, his wife Mary has begun a journey to bring him home, as she fears for his life, given what has happened to other messengers of such news.
Davies’s novel is brief, and the writing is spare and straightforward, beautiful because of that concision. While she sets her characters in an important historical time, her focus is on their relationships with one another, especially how language can bring people together, even when they can’t quite communicate. She reminds readers that true community is not one without conflict, but where one can develop their true selves, even when those don’t fit the expectations society has devised to keep people in line, especially during times of historic change.
Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. IG, Threads, and BlueSky: @kevinbrownwrite
Literary magazines are the finger on the pulse of our world, publishing emerging and veteran writers and artists whose works stand in cultural testament to world events. Check out the New & Noted Literary & Alternative Magazine titles received here at NewPages.com!
Each month, we offer readers a round-up of new issues with content blurbs for our featured publications. Browse the newest in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, graphic narratives, artwork, photography, media, contest winners, and so much more!
bioStories online features new essays every week contributed by writers from around the world offering readers “portraits of the people surrounding us in our daily lives, of the strangers we pass on the street unnoticed and of those who have been the most influential and most familiar to us but who remain strangers to others.”
Contributors in 2024 include Nicole Alexander, MerriLee Anderson, Beth Benedix, Phil Cummins, Mark Cyzyk, Sarah DeParis, Sky Karam de Sela, Hailey Duggirala, Michael Engelhard, Mary Fairchild, Erin Hesse Froslie, Paul Graseck, Lory Widmer Hess, Barbara Krasner, Angela Lam, Zoe Lambert, Sydney Lea, Mark Lewandowski, Alexandra Loeb, Mark Lucius, Bryan Mammel, J. Bryan McGeever, James McKean, Mario Moussa, David Newkirk, Sharman Ober-Reynolds, Leanne Phillips, David Riessen, Anup Saswade, and Clare Simons.
bioStories publishes semi-annual volumes of collected works, all available open-access online.
37 Submission Opportunities including calls for submissions, writing contests, and book prizes.
Happy January! Welcome to our first submissions roundup of 2025. If you need some help to find journals, presses, and more to submit your work to in the new year, NewPages has your back. Enjoy 37 opportunities including calls for submissions from literary magazines and writing and book contests.
Paid newsletter subscribers can get early access to the majority of submission opportunities and upcoming events before they go live on our site, so do consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription today. You also receive our monthly eLitPak Newsletter which features even more opportunities and other literary goodness.
Southern Humanities Review issue 57.4 features translations of Sri Lankan literature in Sinhala and Tamil thanks to a travel grant from the University of Chicago South Asian Literature in Translation (SALT) Project. The magazine’s managing editor was able to attend the 2024 Galle Literary Festival in Sri Lanka to find emerging translators.
This issue features poetry by Liyanage Amarakeerthi translated by Alexander McKinley, Ruwan Bandujeewa translated by Madhubhashini Disanayaka Ratnayake, Christian J. Collier, Staci Halt, Arielle Hebert, Isurinie Anuradha Mallawaarachchi, Brandi Nicole Martin, Matthew Nisinson, M.A. Nuhman translated by Sumathy Sivamohan, Tina Schumann, Nathan Spoon, and Lloyd Wallace. Nonfiction contributors include Brooke Champagne and Austin Segrest. Fiction by Trevor Crown, Jihoon Park, Sunethra Rajakarunanayake translated by Madhubhashini Disanayaka Ratnayake, and Ashley Wurzbacher.
Some content can be read online, and individual copies, as well as subscriptions, are available on the Southern Humanities Reviewwebsite.
Cover Art: Blood Orange Moon, 2024, oil on linen, by Shyama Golden.
The Winter 2024 issue of Cool Beans Lit celebrates the philosophy of Yutori, a form of decluttering your personal space and mind. It’s a Japanese-originated practice of slowing down to give oneself more spaciousness or room to breathe in order to recharge and rejuvenate the senses. A clear mind can also inspire one to explore new genres of writing and art.
In Cool Beans Lit Volume 2 Issue 1, editors are proud to bring readers 31 unique contributors who range from brand new authors and artists to well-established creators with many published works. Authors hail from all corners of the globe, including one who is currently unhoused and sharing his reality in eye-opening detail. The issue features poetry by Arvilla Fee, Marc Meierkort, Alan Perry and Grant Shimmin; prose by Angela Townsend and Li Ruan; and visual art by Kelly DuMar, Nuala McEvoy and Robin Young.
To read and experience art is to walk in another person’s shoes and experience new thoughts and events that stay with you long after reading. It’s a way of channeling a deeper connection to others and gaining greater compassion. This new issue of Cool Beans Lit aims to do just that.
Good River Review comes to readers from the Spalding University Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing. Editor in Chief Kathleen Driskell introduces the Fall 2024 issue noting, “There’s something beautiful in this issue for all readers to find—prose, lyric, dramatic work as well as Lynnell Edwards’s interview with Kevin Prufer focused on his debut fiction Sleepaway: A Novel.” Contributors also include Theodore Brady, Elizabeth Burton, Willie Carver, Andrew Chapman, Quintin Collins, Amanda G. Fillebrown, Anne Marie Fowler, Vincent Frontero, Stacey Goldstein, Michael V. Hayes, Sara Henning, Julie Hensley, G. Wesley Houp, Nicholas Hulstine, Hope Kidd, Jennine DOC Krueger, James Long, Lisa Low, Julia Lundy, Norman Minnick, Hibah Shabkhez, Phillip Sterling, William Waters, and Cecilia Woloch.
The title of Morgan Talty’s debut novel, Fire Exit, might give the impression that the protagonist Charles’s life is on fire, and he needs to escape it. That would give Charles too much agency and too much urgency. However, it’s true that his life is not going well and has not been going well for quite some time.
There are two events that have left him estranged from those he cares about, as well as from himself. First, his mother holds him responsible for his step-father’s death, and he doesn’t seem inclined to correct that assumption. The reader is never clear on what happened, given that the story is from Charles’s vantage point, but the guilt Charles feels is real, as is the distance from his mother. He reconnects with her, but only as she’s losing her memory and her grasp of reality.
Second, he has a house across the river from where his daughter, Elizabeth, grew up with Mary and Roger. Mary is her mother, and Elizabeth knows Roger as her father, as they never told Elizabeth about Charles, her biological father. When Mary found out she was pregnant, she left Charles, as she wanted to raise Elizabeth as a Penobscot on the reservation, so Elizabeth needed a certain level of Indigenous blood. Charles is white, even though he grew up on the reservation with his mother and step-father, who was Penobscot.
Given that much of the novel relates Charles’s feeling stuck in his life, there’s not much of a plot propelling the story forward. Charles checks on his mother, watches Elizabeth from a distance, and spends time with his friend Bobby (who spends most of his time drinking, even though Charles is in AA). Charles spends much of that time considering taking an action that could change the lives of many of the people he knows. Like in most people’s lives, not much happens in Charles’s life, but characters develop, and life moves slowly forward until it lurches ahead, leaving people wondering where it’s gone.
Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. IG, Threads, and BlueSky: @kevinbrownwrite
Dear Reader, the poems of Pine Soot Tendon Bone, Radha Marcum’s second full-length poetry collection and the winner of The Word Works’s Washington Prize, “sing harmonies / to complicate your discontent” with public health, gun violence, and ecological degradation—the evidence at the crime scene and the stratum of prolonged grief “forcing us all off / center” in our cacophonic contemporary lives.
“When the semi-automatic facts rushed in,” when we entered a “Plague Year,” when a valley is “plundered, then / plowed… [and] divided / into… clone homes,” we have need of a poet as attentive to “sorrow” as to “tenderness.” Radha Marcum is such a poet. She acknowledges “worry” at “the fate / of glacier lilies” and “recognize[s] / abundance when it is offered.”
By combining a lyric attention fine as “red silt” with an intellect as “sharp [as cholla cactus] spines,” Marcum is “alert in the juxtaposition.” Her poems “mother stillness / even as they shiver.”
Like a Japanese Sumi-e artist using black ink, made from “pine, soot, tendon, bone,” to make a painting on contrasting white paper, Marcum’s “ink-marks” are meditations on what “traverses merciless spaces” while “looking for … respite, too.”
When a “wildfire haze… / peppers the membranes of our eyes,” Marcum reminds us to hear the “air singing in the redwoods / whose seeds require / / a germinating fire.” By facing what is “irretrievable,” Radha Marcum’s poems also show us what “survived” “the dark / mulch of [our] days.” In Pine Soot Tendon Bone, it is “tenderness” that proves fire-resistant and transforming.
Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize (forthcoming University of Nevada Press), and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) and Mind of Spring (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. To learn more about Jami’s writing, editing, and teaching practices, visit her author website.
Chestnut Review: For Stubborn Artists is an online quarterly of poetry, short fiction, flash fiction, art, and photography from around the world. This newest issue features Therese Gleason, author of Hemicrania, in conversation with Maria S. Picone. Readers can also enjoy new poetry from Amelia Loeffler, Ann Weil, Callan Latham, Isaac Akanmu, Jacob Sheetz-Willard, K. Mobley, Kaitlyn Airy, Liz Robbins, Shiyang Su, Therese Gleason; prose by Andrew Zhou, Jennifer Robinson, Pamela Painter, T. Cutler, Theresa Sylvester; and art by Cynthia Yatchman, Moses Ojo, Nuala McEvoy, Ron Perovich, and Vasundhara Srinivas.
