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NewPages Blog

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!

New Lit on the Block :: MORIA Literary Magazine

woodbury universityOlives are a succulent fruit, each containing a seed with which to grow more nourishing deliciousness. What better inspiration, then, for MORIA, the new literary publication from Woodbury University, where an olive grove once stood on the land that now houses this Californian educational institution.

Faculty Editor of MORIA Literary Magazine, Dr. Linda L. Dove, tells me MORIA refers to a special type of olive tree in ancient Greece that is protected by the government. “As a tree sacred to Athena, the goddess of wisdom, the original ‘Moria’ was believed to have been planted by her at the Parthenon and includes the meaning ‘to be part of’ something larger than itself. Here at the literary magazine, we recognize and celebrate that Woodbury University is a part of a tradition of learning that is larger than itself, just as literature and the writers who make it are part of a tradition of creative engagement and cultural production that is larger than any one individual alone.” Beautiful.

Continue reading “New Lit on the Block :: MORIA Literary Magazine”

Malahat Review 2017 Prize Winners

The Malahat Review issue #201 (Winter 2017) includes two prize winning works:

nancyholmesFar Horizons Award for Short Fiction
Selected by Steven Price
“Faster Horses” by Katherin Edwards

Constance Rooke CNF Prize
Selected by Brian Brett
“Flaubert’s Hummingbirds” by Nancy Holmes [pictured]

Read more about The Malahat Review prizes as well as interviews with each of the winners here.

 

Question Everything Advises Danielle Lazarin

danielle lazarinIn her craft essay in the February 2018 #133 issue of Glimmer Train’s Bulletin, Danielle Lazarin tells readers to “Question Everything” as she does in her own drafting process. Her essay opens:

“On some days, my writing notebooks look like an inquisition, my pages topped and ended with questions: in all-caps, underlined, circled. Many are small: What do the kids want to be called? What is her work? Handwriting=obsessive or careless? Maybe she cries on the subway home, after dinner? But they’re big, too: What is true, the memory of it, or the moment? Is she lacking? DO WE REQUIRE HOPE?  Though they may appear frantic, a series of scribbled questions aren’t signs of confusion or desperation but of sufficient curiosity on my part to propel a story forward. At every stage of my work, questions are my most essential writing tools. I use them to move through to the other side of murky. It’s only by stepping into that unknown and uncomfortable space repeatedly during my process that I can become more deliberate in the story I’m telling.”

Also included in this month’s GT Bulletin are Thomas Fox Averill’s “Writing Archival Fiction” and Aline Ohanesian “On Rejection.” The Bulletin is free to read online and have delivered monthly to your e-mail.

Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week

willow springs

Willow Springs Issue 81 features this brightly colored image, originally a 13 x 13 silkscreen. The “inside cover” replicates this image, but with “Spokane Garbage Goat” replacing the issue number. I had no idea what this was, so promptly headed to Google, where I learned of the iconic status of said goat. Absolutely delightful, as is artist Chris Bovey’s work, more of which can be found at Vintage Prints.

copper nickel

Rebecca Berlin’s marker on paper “Circles That You Find” brightens the cover of the Spring 2018 (#26) issue of Copper Nickel. See more of her work at Rebecca Berlin Art.

fiddlehead

Keeping with vibrant colors, The Fiddlehead Winter 2018 (# 274) issue features Monika Wright’s “With Powerful Intention” acrylic on canvas. In her artist’s statement, Wright comments, “With organic shapes, fluid light, lines and circles, I am employing universal symbols of unity, wholeness and infinity connected by lines, representing the boundaries which separate us, but which also highlights our shared path.” See more of her work here.

Prime Number Magazine – January/February 2018

The phrase “prime number” is one that generally gives me the chills, reminding me of past days of math classes and the frustration tied to them. However, Prime Number Magazine manages to have the opposite effect: it’s a fun and quirky online journal with a lot to offer readers.

Continue reading “Prime Number Magazine – January/February 2018”

Geist – Fall 2017

I was pleasantly intrigued looking through this Fall 2017 issue of the Canadian literary magazine, Geist. Between the unique artwork and photographs, I found interesting poems, anecdotes of encounters with native peoples, and unique short stories, culminating in a cryptic crossword puzzle that I am compulsively returning to.

Continue reading “Geist – Fall 2017”

The Healing Muse – Fall 2017

As a journal published by the Center for Bioethics and Humanities, The Healing Muse has a commitment to encouraging healthcare that is personal and compassionate. In a time when our access to healthcare in America is being regularly threatened, the work done by this journal is essential as ever. Featuring work that centers exclusively on the body and illness, The Healing Muse is a shining example of the power of medical humanities.

Continue reading “The Healing Muse – Fall 2017”

Hiram Poetry Review – Spring 2017

The cover of Hiram Poetry Review’s 78th issue features a photo of two young men who look like they are turn of the century bohemians, one holding a mandolin in his hands, the other with an open book, neither looking into the camera or at each other. They look kind of baffled by their own existence, like they’re thinking about the passage of time. Maybe I’m projecting a little, but regardless, I felt it captured the themes of this edition nicely. The pieces in this edition seemed particularly interested in growing older and how we change or fail to change.

Continue reading “Hiram Poetry Review – Spring 2017”

Eleven Eleven – 2017

Issue 23 is notable for a number of reasons, including the departure of longtime Faculty Editor Hugh Behm-Steinberg—and what an exit it is. The current issue of Eleven Eleven (8” x 8” if you’re curious) is large, daring, fun, and occasionally a hot mess. Consistency is hard to achieve with student-run publications; editors are cycling out each year as new staff comes whirling in, and errors occasionally slip through the cracks. In most cases, the missed edits are those spellcheck would ignore—e.g. a “bowl” movement or a phrase in Latin “hat” translates—but others, like “Dega’s painting” (it should be Degas’ or Degas’s), remain unchanged too, unfortunate blemishes on otherwise pristine pages. Viewed separately, these missed edits are minor blips, but piled together (and there are plenty more), the issue is cheapened, and even the best pieces, impeccably written and edited as they may be, are done a disservice.

Continue reading “Eleven Eleven – 2017”

2017 Able Muse Write Prize Winners

Winners and finalists for the 2017 Able Muse Write Prize for Poetry and Fiction are featured in the Winter 2017 issue of Able Muse: A Review of Poetry, Prose & Art.

d r goodmanWrite Prize for Fiction
Final Judge: Jill Alexander Essbaum
Winner: “Target” by Leslie Jill Patterson

Write Prize for Poetry
Final Judge: Annie Finch
Winner: “Fall Rewinding” by D. R. Goodman [pictured]
Finalists: Ann M. Thompson; Scott Ruescher; Rob Wright

For a full list of honorable mentions and short list selections, visit the Able Muse 2017 Write Prize announcement page.

The Florida Review Prison Focus

lisa roney

The Florida Review Editor and Director Lisa Roney in the 41.2/2017 issue Editor’s Note writes in a recurring thread about the U.S. prison culture, her early experiences knowing young people who went in and out of jail, and – of all things – changing the publication’s submission policy to accept traditional postal submissions from those without Internet access, “whatever the circumstances might be.” This, of course, would open submissions to our nation’s incarcerated population who are not allowed access to the Internet.

About the Special Section on Prison, Roney writes, “we include writing by prisoners, as well as their family members and friends. It is the presence of this Triumvirate (victims, prisoners, family and loved ones) that testifies to the widespread tragedy that violence, addiction, and poverty and their results have become in this country – and our constant sense that there must be some better way. Writing, of course, is one of those better ways.”

2017 Gulf Coast Prize Winners

The Winter/Spring 2018 issue of Gulf Coast features the winners of their 2017 Gulf Coast Prizes contest:

spencer wisePoetry
Judged by Cate Marvin
“The Weather Underground” by sam sax

Nonfiction
Judged by Diane Roberts
“The Peacock and the Bell Captain” by Spencer Wise

Fiction
Judged by Chinelo Okparanta
“That Boy Could Run” by Rudy Ruiz [pictured]

For a full list of honorable mentions and biographical information on each writer and judge, visit the Gulf Coast Prize page.

ALA Intellectual Freedom Blog

JohnsonIntellectual Freedom Blog hosted by the Office for Intellectual Freedom, a unit of the American Library Association, provides “a venue for coverage of time-sensitive news in intellectual freedom and librarianship.” The topics, however, are of interest to a much wider audience, including writers, readers, and academics – teachers, students, and administrators. Recent post titles include: “Is There a Connection Between Mental Health and Intellectual Freedom?” by Allyson Mower; “‘The Post,’ the Pentagon Papers, and the Era of Fake News” by Robert Sarwark; “Xicanas/Latinas and Intellectual Freedom in College: When Reading is Political” by Eva Rios-Alvarado; “Reading as a Mirror: Banning the New Jim Crow in New Jersey Prisons” by Jane’a Johnson [pictured]; and weekly roundups of Intellectual Freedom News.

The Massachusetts Review: More than a Lit Mag

table for one yun ko eun massachusetts reviewReaders may already be familiar with The Massachusetts Review, the quarterly print journal founded in 1959, but did you know they also have digital projects available?

Working Titles are e-publications of prose which are too long to be printed in the quarterly. Published bimonthly, there are three ways to purchase and download Working Titles. Recent publications include Table for One by Yun Ko Eun translated by Lizzie Buehler, The Keepers of the Ghost Bird by Jenn Dean, The Leader by Nouri Zarrugh, and more.

Readers can also find Digital Chapbooks, showcasing art and poetry from past special sections and art inserts throughout the years of the journal. These features are free to read and easy to access, a good way to spend some time.

While you’re checking out the current “Truth” issue of The Massachusetts Review, be sure to see what digital offerings are up for grabs.

The Amazing Mr. Morality

The Amazing Mr. Morality is a collection that dives head first into the shallow end of a pool full of ethical dilemmas. Jacob M. Appel creates wild worlds just inches beyond reality, but still close enough to the real deal that you can absolutely imagine them coming true. The writing is sharp, the characters are witty, and the stories are original.

Continue reading “The Amazing Mr. Morality”

Marvels of the Invisible

“Another endangered syntax descends.” —from “Echolocations”

If ex-poet-laureate Billy Collins is correct in saying that poetry is “everyday moments caught in time,” then Jenny Molberg’s debut collection The Marvels of the Invisible, winner of 2014 Berkshire Prize, is exemplar. As if flipping through a family album, Molberg covers a personal history from birth to death, hospital and bible, family and landscape, hope and redemption.

Continue reading “Marvels of the Invisible”

American Life in Poetry :: Connie Wanek

American Life in Poetry: Column 670
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

I’m writing this column on a very cold day, and it’s nice to be inside with a board game to play, but better yet, for me at least, to be inside with a poem about a board game. This Monopoly game by Connie Wanek is from her book Rival Gardens: New and Selected Poems  from the University of Nebraska Press.

Monopoly

Connie WanekWe used to play, long before we bought real houses.
A roll of the dice could send a girl to jail.
The money was pink, blue, gold, as well as green,
and we could own a whole railroad
or speculate in hotels where others dreaded staying:
the cost was extortionary.

At last one person would own everything,
every teaspoon in the dining car, every spike
driven into the planks by immigrants,
every crooked mayor.
But then, with only the clothes on our backs,
we ran outside, laughing.

We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry  magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2016 by Connie Wanek, “Monopoly,” from Rival Gardens: New and Selected Poems  (Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2016). Poem reprinted by permission of Connie Wanek and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2017 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.

Bennington Review is Staying Alive

bennington review coverI was relieved to see it wasn’t just me who heard the Bee Gees in my head when I saw the cover of Bennington Review Issue Four themed “Staying Alive.” Editor Michael Dumanis opens the “Note from the Editor” with these two lines from the 1977’s classic, “Life goin’ nowhere, somebody help me / Somebody help me, yeah, I’m stayin’ alive.”

Dumanis explains, “As we were reading the poems, stories, and essays submitted to Bennington Review  in 2017 for this, our fourth issue, we noticed a word that come up with remarkable regularity – the verb ‘survive’ in all its various permutations. In Issue Four, it occurs – frequently as a directive, occasionally as the noun ‘survivor’ – twenty-eight times. The word ‘living’ can be found twenty-one times, an the word ‘alive’ shows up an additional twelve.”

A “tonal shift” from their previous issue, themed “Threat,” Dumanis notes that “something has shifted in the cultural landscape. An acceptance of threat has bred a series of reactions – resistance, perseverance, even a measure of optimism . . . there’s now a restored sense of agency.”

Readers can find works by Patrick Williams, Erin L. McCoy, Marco Wilkinson, Ian Stansel, A. Molotkov and many more, with several contributors’ works available to read online.

Stayin’ alive? I’m all for it.

Brevity Craft Essays

FeliciaRoseChavezIn addition to its regular content of ‘extremely brief’ (under 750 words) nonfiction, Brevity‘s regular feature of Craft Essays in its first issue of 2018 features Chelsey Dyrsdale’s “Transforming an Essay Collection into a Memoir,” Annelise Jolley’s “Capturing the Numinous: Mary Karr’s Sacred Carnality,” and Felicia Rose Chavez’s [pictured] “The Mental Load: Honoring Your Story Over Your To-Do List.” All of Brevity‘s content is available online for free. No reason not to stop on by.

Interview :: The Godfather – of Nonfiction – Speaks

lee gutkindIn “The Godfather Speaks,” 3QR: The Three Quarter Review interviewed Lee Gutkind on the two-decade anniversary of the controversial Vanity Fair article, in which critic James Wolcott “accused creative nonfiction writers, of memoir in particular, of ‘navel gazing’ . . . lambast[ing] the form itself as: a ‘sickly transfusion, whereby the weakling personal voice of sensitive fiction is inserted into the beery carcass of nonfiction.‘” Wolcott labeled Gutkind as “The Godfather behind creative nonfiction.”

Gutkind reflects on what could have been devastating to some in their careers: “The Godfather label—the positive aspects of it—stuck. From that point on, emboldened, I was much more in an offensive rather than a defensive mode when it came to creative nonfiction.” And for this, we are all grateful to The Godfather.

Bearing Arms Broadside Collection

BearingArms WoodwardPerrine BroadsidedPress“Bearing Arms: Responding to Guns in American Culture” is the new special “Responses” collection from Broadsided Press. The editors put out a call for visual art and then words in response to those images. All six collaborations – by Maureen Seaton and Jonathan Clyde Frey; Jonathan Baxter and Dixie Salazar; Daniel Aristi and Sandra Cohen; Melissa Fite Johnson and David Kamm; Jennifer Perrine and Kristen Woodward; and Gregory Stapp and Osceola Refetoff – are available for free, full-color download to print, post, and share in your communities. Please do so!

Blink-Ink – 2017

I have a soft spot in my heart for diners. I’ve spent countless nights at 24-hour restaurants, sipping bad coffee and shoveling down greasy food. At diners, you can sit and write as you study the cast of characters around you, you can escape responsibilities for a while, you can blend in and cease to exist in your sticky booth. The writers in Issue 30 of the pocket-sized Blink-Ink explore the different aspects of diners, all in 50-words or less.

Continue reading “Blink-Ink – 2017”

The American Poetry Journal – December 2017

With 2017 over and two weeks into the new year, it kind of feels like getting through last year was surviving something. Reading the December 2017 issue of The American Poetry Journal, I found myself drawn to poems that consider different types of survival.

Continue reading “The American Poetry Journal – December 2017”

From the Depths – 2017

Sometimes one feels the need to explore the darkness bubbling below the surface. From the Depths from Haunted Waters Press provides such an experience with poetry and prose that raises goosebumps. This issue features the winners and runners-up of the Haunted Waters Press Fiction & Poetry Open, and the Haunted Waters Press Short Shorts Competition for an added treat.

Continue reading “From the Depths – 2017”

Poetry – December 2017

Harriet Monroe founded Poetry magazine in 1912 with the aim to “print the best English verse which is being written today, regardless of where, by whom, or under what theory of art it is written.” Now, over a hundred years since its inception, Poetry has stayed true to Monroe’s vision, following the art in whatever form it takes, lending pages to the words that need them most. Far from blindly crashing into the future, though, Poetry remembers its history. Volume 211 begins with a tribute to Richard Wilbur, who passed this past year.

Continue reading “Poetry – December 2017”

Vallum – 2017

This literary magazine is excellent for anyone who enjoys thought provoking poems. In this issue of Vallum, the focus is on “Lies and Duplicity,” and features a number of great poets, a collection of visual art, a conversation with poet Rae Armantrout, and book reviews by various authors.

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Foliate Oak – December 2017

If there were a word to define the December issue of Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, it’d have to be “eclectic.” There truly is no other word I could think of that would adequately describe the nature of the pieces here. The writing ranges widely in style and tone from family-drama fantasy “Vengeance is Born” by Ashley Crisler to “Blister,” Eric Obame’s stark and sobering poem about drug addiction. To be as explicit as possible: eclectic is always a welcome thing in my book.

Continue reading “Foliate Oak – December 2017”

2017 Kenyon Review Short Fiction Prize Winners

The January/February 2018 issue of Kenyon Review features winners of their 2017 Short Fiction Prize:

david greendonnerFirst Prize
“Lionel, For Worse” by David Greendonner [pictured]

Runners Up
“When Do We Worry” by Kimberly King Parsons
“Canto” by Lorain Urban

Each of these works can also be read full-text online here along with commentary on the selections by Judge Lee K. Abbot.

Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week

southern humanities reviewSouthern Humanities Review continues celebrating its fifty years in print with issue 51.2, lush cover art by Victoria Marie Bee, & the buzzards came & undressed her  (pigment print, 2016).

crazyhorsePublished by the Department of English and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the College of Charleston, the cover image of Crazyhorse Fall 2017 is “Blue Hole,” a digital photograph by Shane Brown.

writing disorderAnnelisa Leinbach’s vibrant art is featured on the home screen as well as in a portfolio for the Winter 2017 issue of The Writing Disorder online literary magazine.

 

American Life in Poetry :: Kim Addonizio

American Life in Poetry: Column 668
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

I’ve had a couple of aquariums (or is the plural aquaria?), but I didn’t take very good care of either one. The glass clouded over with algae, and the fish had to live on whatever they could scrounge because I’d forget to feed them. Some liked eating each other. But here’s a poem (a sonnet!) about an aquarium you can actually see into. The poet, Kim Addonizio, lives in California, and her most recent book is Mortal Trash  (W. W. Norton, 2016).

Aquarium

kim addonizio picThe fish are drifting calmly in their tank
between the green reeds, lit by a white glow
that passes for the sun. Blindly, the blank
glass that holds them in displays their slow
progress from end to end, familiar rocks
set into the gravel, murmuring rows
of filters, a universe the flying fox
and glass cats, Congo tetras, bristle-nose
pleocostemus all take for granted. Yet
the platys, gold and red, persist in leaping
occasionally, as if they can’t quite let
alone a possibility—of wings,
maybe, once they reach the air? They die
on the rug. We find them there, eyes open in surprise.

We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©1994 by Kim Addonizio, “Aquarium,” from The Philosopher’s Club , (BOA Editions, Ltd., 1994). Poem reprinted by permission of Kim Addonizio and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2017 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.

Schuylkill Valley Journal Features Prisoners Poetry

schuylkill valley journal 2018The fall 2017 print issue of Schuylkill Valley Journal includes a special section of poetry written by men imprisoned at Graterford Prison in Philadelphia. Fran B. provides an introduction to the section entitled, “A Poetry Workshop at Graterford Prison,” which begins, “In January, 2017, I started a poetry workshop at Graterford Prison. I had wanted to do this for a long time, several years, and my semi-retirement enabled me to think that I finally had the time to devote to the project.” Fran explains how he worked with the Prison Literacy Project of Pennsylvania and a group called Lifers, Inc. in Graterford Prison to get the workshop started, building a rapport with the inmates, and developing guidelines for their sessions. Fran shares some of the prompts he developed and the responses these elicited from participants.

Contributing Writer Eric Greinke provides an editorial comment on the works selected: “Although all of the poems that were submitted have merit, this particular group of five poets display special talent and affinity for poetry. Poetic talent can appear anywhere, under any circumstances, because it is the result of the inner human drive to evolve and connect. These five poets transcend situational concerns and rise to a universal level that communicates to our shared humanity. Their poems have in common an emotional intensity but each poet sings with his own unique voice.”

Included are ten poems by five poets: Reginald L., Terrell C., Ben C., Aaron F., and Eduardo R.

Glimmer Train 2017 Sept/Oct Short Story Award for New Writers Winners

Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their September/October Short Story Award for New Writers. This competition is held three times a year and is open to all writers whose fiction has not appeared in a print publication with a circulation greater than 5000. The January/February Short Story Award competition has just opened: Short Story Award for New Writers. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.

Maxime Kawawa BeaudanPW revph cr Scott McCrae1st place goes to Maxime Kawawa-Beaudan [Photo credit: Scott McCrae] of Berkeley, California, who wins $2500 for “Waiting for Fireworks.” His story will be published in Issue 102 of Glimmer Train Stories. This will be his first major print publication.

2nd place goes to Kristen Hamelin Tracey of New York, New York, who wins $500 for “A New World.” Her story will also be published in an upcoming issue, increasing her prize to $700. This will be her first major print publication, as well.

3rd place goes to Oliver Kammeyer of Boston, Massachusetts, who wins $300 for “They’ll Fix That in Turkey.”

A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found here.

Deadline soon approaching! Family Matters: January 12
Glimmer Train hosts this competition once a year, and first place has been increased to $2500 plus publication in the journal, and 10 copies of that issue. It’s open to all writers for stories about family of any configuration. Most submissions to this category run 1000-5000 words, but can go up to 12,000. Click here for complete guidelines.

The Whetting Stone

What do you do when the person who promised to stay with you for better and worse, sickness and health leaves? What if they leave by taking their own life? What do you do with the subsequent feelings of betrayal, sadness, and guilt? If you’re Taylor Mali, you write poetry about it. The Whetting Stone, winner of the 2017 Rattle Chapbook Prize, encapsulates Mali’s grief in the aftermath of his wife’s suicide in 2004.

Continue reading “The Whetting Stone”

Good Stock Strange Blood

“where time, they say, ends. Whereas for extending, whereas what you might call a leaking or a wandering. Incalculable lang, incalcable list—what’s spun down the hole. No pulling or leaping up. Blackness, only the din of our existence. Wishing-rod defunct. Hear my voice without echo, always defunct. A stone in hand. A crown in laughter.”
— from “One falls past the lip of some black unknown”

Continue reading “Good Stock Strange Blood”

Most American

“One thing we ought not forget in this America is how our impulse to forget is so strong.” Rilla Askew, Most American

From where I sit right in Shawnee, Oklahoma, I am 41 miles from Rilla Askew, a professor at the University of Oklahoma and author of Most American: Notes From a Wounded Place, a collection of essays on race, violence, history, and Oklahoma. Six months ago, I would not have expected this proximity and would have read this novel from a distance out of curiosity, but disconnected from the Oklahoma Askew memorializes in these pages and connects to the larger American drama.

Continue reading “Most American”

Thousand Star Hotel

The other day a seemingly nice older man whom I don’t know exclaimed, “I really don’t care for this hot weather—are you from Japan?” Hell yeah, I should have said. In fact, you know that movie Godzilla? That’s based on my life. It makes me want to vomit radioactively and commit zombie homicide, except in my version there is more than one Asian who survives. Our real conversation was not nearly as fun, but at least it didn’t end in violence. Our daughter overheard this and admonished me: “Don’t talk to strangers, Daddy.” – from “Greek Triptych”

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Volver

Antonio C. Márquez’s Volver is a “memoir” in the truest sense of the word, as its subtitle “A Persistence of Memory” suggests. Beginning in the Pre-World War II borderlands near El Paso, Texas, and moving to Los Angeles, the Midwest, and then all over the world, Volver recounts Márquez’s life and travels, from a poor boy to an established expert in his field who is called on by the government to be a cultural representative in other countries.

Continue reading “Volver”

The Book of Donuts

I’ve discovered that the donut is a popular topic for books, but I haven’t noticed an entire book of poems on the subject. The Book of Donuts, edited by Jason Lee Brown and Shanie Latham, helps fill in the gap. The editors have brought together several dozen diverse poets with equally diverse attitudes toward the confection.

Continue reading “The Book of Donuts”

The Walmart Book of the Dead

Lucy Biederman’s newest project The Walmart Book of the Dead has been called “fearsome,” “extraordinary,” and “inventive.” In a work that Biederman calls experimental, she puts together a collection of spells that are meant to remind the reader of the Egyptian Book of the Dead—but in this collection, the tomb is a Walmart.

Continue reading “The Walmart Book of the Dead”

World Literature Today Inspires Writing as Resistance

world literature todayIn these turbulent times, we can’t help but wonder just exactly how words do matter, in the sense of “for good” instead of what we see so much of bandied about in terms of knee-jerk thoughtlessness. World Literature Today provides the perspective “Words Matter: Writing as Inspired Resistance” in their January-February 2018 issue. In addition to its regular content is “Treasuring the Tradition of Inspired Resistance”: A Conversation with Maureen Freely by Michelle Johnson, poetry by Iossif Ventura and Anna Maria Carpi, an essay by Liliana Ancalao, three audio poems (online) in Mapuzungun, Spanish, and English, by Liliana Ancalao, a web exclusive interview “Breaking Open Gates: A Conversation with Emmy Pérez,” by Norma Cantú and Chelsea Rodríguez.

Readers can access five articles per month without a subscription; WLT is a paying market for writers and encourages subscriptions.

Ecotone :: The Craft Issue

ecotone craft issueEcotone‘s mission is to publish place-based work exploring “the ecotones between landscapes, literary genres, scientific and artistic disciplines, modes of thought.” The Fall/Winter 2017 issue is themed on “Craft” and opens with Editor Anna Lena Phillips Bell’s “From the Editor: The Craft of Editing,” which includes the insightful list of eight “Guiding Principles for Ecotone Editors.”

Content includes fiction by Jill McCorckle, Alexis Schaitkin, and Farah Alie, nonfiction by Ellie A. Rogers, Andrea Mummert Puccini, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Ben Miller, and poetry by Cortney Lamar Charleston, Nina Sudhakar, George David Clark, Jessica Guzman Alderman, Dawn Manning, Lauren Camp, Cate Lycurgus, Lynne Thompson, David Macey, Athena Kildegaard, and Molly Tenenbaum. Each contributor also offers one sentence on craft, “what hopes and concerns about craft, writerly and/or otherwise, the writers and artists who are part of the issue might have.”

The gorgeous cover and bookmark insert for this issue deserves recognition: designed and printed by Rory Sparks at Working Library in Portland, Oregon, with text hand-set in Lining Gothic, Franklin Gothic, And Garamond Italic, and printed on Mohawk Superfine Eggshell 100lb on a Vandercook Universal I AB P.

Still Point Art Online Gallery

Founded in 2011 by Christine Brooks Cote, Shanti Arts celebrates and promotes Art, Nature, and Spirit. Along with publishing a wide array of books, Shanti Arts also produces Still Point Art Gallery and  Still Point Arts Quarterly. The print publication features full-color art throughout, and the website includes the full exhibition of artwork. Nature’s Textures is the current exhibit, running through January 31, 2018.

still point exhibitArtists’ works honored in this exhibit:

Best in Show
Tricia Hoye

Award for Uniqueness of Concept and Originality
Jane Gottlieb

Award for Exceptional Composition and Design
Stefynie Rosenfeld

Award for Distinctive Interpretation of Theme
MJ Edwards

The Chattahoochee Review Examines “Neighbors”

anna schachnerIn a double issue (Fall 2017/Winter 2018), The Chattahoochee Review focuses on “Neighbors.”

Editor Anna Schachner writes, ” Some of our special-focus topics are more wistful than others. This one – Neighbors – certainly is. When our editorial staff chose the topic, I don’t think any of us were specifically thinking of borrowed cups of sugar or Christmas carolers at our front door, but, given current national and global events, it’s hard not to yearn for that simplicity and purity. Still, most of the work in this issue fluctuates between a kind of yearning for proximity, for connections, and a kind of wry suspicion of it.”

See a full list of contributors here.

Prime Number Magazine Monthly Contests

hannah ambrosePrime Number is a quarterly online publication of “distinctive poetry and short fiction that takes readers to new places, introducing them to interesting characters, situations, and observations.” A publication of Press 53, the editors enjoy engaging writers in two monthly contests: the Prime Number Magazine Flash Fiction Contest, which is a low-cost ($7 – a prime number) reading fee with a prime number first prize of $251, and the 53-Word Story Contest, which is free (is 0 a prime number?) and comes with a prompt.

Both winners are published in future issues of the publication.

Winners currently featured are Flash Fiction “Interrogation” by Michael Chin and 53-Word Story “Dance on my Grave” by Hannah Ambrose [pictured].

Terrain.org 8th Annual Contest Winners

Winners of the Terrain.org 8th Annual Contest in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry each receive $500 in addition to publication. Finalists are awarded $100 and publication.

jennie goodePoetry Winner
Judge Robert Wrigley
“Tying a Tie” and “Airborne”, two poems by Edward Harkness
Finalists: Poems by Ellery Akers, Deborah Fass, and John Pass.

Nonfiction Winner
Judge Nicole Walker
“Ghost Trees” by Jennie Goode [pictured]
Finalists: “What Remained” by Kristina Moriconi and “Northern Wardens” by Alisa Slaughter

Fiction Winner
Judge Padma Viswanathan
“N-Place Exiting” by Thomas Ausa
Finalist: “The Stilled Ring” by Luther Allen

Read more about the winning works here. The contest re-opens in January 2018.

Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week

into the void“The Cowards” by French photographer Iva Iova on the cover of Into the Void #6 is from her series, The Remains , of which she writes, “The last decade held a concentration of questionable political and social events. [. . . ] A population raised and educated to be Deaf, Cowards and Heartless.”

salamanderKikki Ghezzi‘s oil on linen entitled “Snow Flake” is featured on the cover of Salamander #45 with a full-color portfolio of more of her works inside the issue. She writes, “My paintings are increments of time and increments of marks and strokes in a meditative moment. They are the time of a walk, the time of process. The kind of ‘glow”’ time in my paintings is infinite in both directions, outward in accumulated, immeasurable brush strokes and inward towards a glow point.”

oneOil on canvas “21 August 2017” by Lynn Boggess invites readers into the December issue One  online poetry magazine, which features a “Second Look” section in which writers discuss poems they admire. This issue’s Second Look is Patrick Kavanagh discussing The Great Hunger.