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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!

Book Review :: Also Here by Brooke Randel

Also Here by Brooke Randel book cover image

Review by Eleanor J. Bader

When Brooke Randel was in her early 20s, her grandmother, Golda Indig, known as Bubbie, called her and suggested that she write about her life: “What happened in the war…You know, a young girl in the camps.” The request was jarring since Randel’s family had generally sidestepped discussions of the Holocaust, instead fixating on the present, with food, family, and holiday celebrations taking center stage. But Randel was intrigued and began interviewing Bubbie.

Surprisingly, the process was more difficult than she expected, for not only was Bubbie’s story filled with vague and random anecdotes, but it unfolded in fits-and-starts that were complicated by her illiteracy, easy distractibility, and memory gaps. Nonetheless, Also Here: Love, Literacy, and the Legacy of the Holocaust chronicles Bubbie’s traumatic deportation to Auschwitz as a 13-year-old and describes her transfer to Bergen-Belsen before being liberated by American soldiers; her eventual emigration to the US adds a riveting dimension to Bubbie’s tale.

In addition, the book veers into Randel’s own story – with details about her nine-year search for data to support Bubbie’s account – that are well-woven into the memoir. This makes Also Here unusual, as much about writing and research as it is about a love-filled but fraught inter-generational relationship. An emotionally resonant and compelling debut.

Also Here: Love, Literacy, and the Legacy of the Holocaust by Brooke Randel, Tortoise Books, December 2024 (pre-order available).

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.

Sponsored :: New Book :: Wrongland

cover of Wrongland by Gazmend Kapllani, translated by Peter Bien

Wrongland, Fiction by Gazmend Kapllani

Translated from the Greek by Peter Bien

Laertes Press/Egret Fiction, September 2024

Wrongland balances on an edge of migration and return. It crosses from an Albania recently rid of Hoxha to a Greece riven by tensions that ultimately drive the protagonist on to America. But homecoming is the pivot — one stuck in an unavoidable vying between alternate worlds.  

The reader, a simple stranger, is introduced to Ters, a city configured by remnants from the past, a locale scored by evil — at times, gripped by good.

Gazmend Kapllani is the author of two collections of poetry in Albanian and four published novels (written in Greek and Albanian). His literary work centers on borders, totalitarianism, migration, identity, and how Balkan history has shaped private and public narratives and memories.

Magazine Stand :: The Malahat Review – 227

The Malahat Review 227 cover image

Cover art by Torkwase Dyson invites readers into the newest issue of The Malahat Review (227), which opens with the 2024 Novella Prize Winner Ryan Cannon’s “A Hunting Story” (readers can find an interview with Ryan Cannon on the magazine’s website). Also featured in this issue is poetry by Isha Camara, Morgan Cross, Daniela Elza with Brian Brett, Nathan Erwin, Wess Mongo Jolley, Diane Louie, Raymond Luczak, Eli Mushumanski, Lauren Peat, Aaron Rabinowitz, Kyeren Regehr, Vivek Sharma, and Saadi Youssef (translated by Khaled Mattawa); fiction by Courtney Baird-Lew and Kaitlin Ruether; creative nonfiction by Kevin MacDonell; and reviews of new publications of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.

Discover loads more great lit mags with our Guide to Literary Magazines, Big List of Literary Magazines, and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed in our monthly roundup or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us.

Book Review :: Who’s Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler

Who’s Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler book cover image

Review by Kevin Brown

Judith Butler is known primarily as a gender theoretician and philosopher, most famous for her 1990 book Gender Trouble. Her latest book, Who’s Afraid of Gender, presents as more accessible than her previous writings, published by a trade publisher, as opposed to an academic press. Saying that this work is more accessible than her more theoretical work, though, is akin to a weekend tennis player stating that they’re only playing the 100th best tennis player in the world, not somebody in the top 10. That’s not a criticism of the book, just a heads-up for readers.

Butler crafts a nuanced argument against those who claim to oppose “gender,” which encompasses much more than the LGBTQIA+ community to include what some politicians call “woke culture”; thus, Butler explores race, colonialism, and abortion rights, among other ideas. Butler methodically goes after religious groups, especially the Catholic church, who claim that “gender” is an assault on the natural order, but they also break down the arguments of the politicians and the state, as well as the TERFs (“trans-exclusionary radical feminists,” though they prefer the term “gender-critical”).

Ultimately, they point out that all of these groups are threatened by everything they put under the umbrella of “gender,” as they ultimately want to curtail or take away altogether the rights and freedoms of groups with whom they disagree. Butler shows that these groups believe that somebody else’s freedoms will limit theirs. Butler reveals their fear, not just the flaws in their arguments.

Butler ends, though, on a positive note, as they argue for alliances between the groups that get sorted under the “gender” umbrella, pointing out that all these groups value freedom and that freedom for one group will lead to more freedom for others. They try to imagine a different world than the current world, an optimistic conclusion to redefine how readers see others.

Who’s Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 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. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite

New Lit on the Block :: Bear Paw Arts Journal

Bear Paws Art Journal logo image

Bear Paw Arts Journal is a new open access online journal of flash fiction, micro memoir, poetry, and featured artists publishing one issue each year in the fall. “It’s free to submit, free to read. This is a labor of love, and we’re proud of that,” say the editors.

Bear Paw Arts Journal takes its name from the Bears Paw Mountains in north central Montana. The editors explain, “The range is known locally as ‘The Bear Paws.’ These mountains were originally named by the native Cree and Blackfeet people as ‘The Mountains of the Bear.’ Bear Paw Arts Journal seeks to publish works that, like the Bears Paw Mountains, surprise and delight with each new turn.”

Continue reading “New Lit on the Block :: Bear Paw Arts Journal”

Magazine Stand :: Consequence – Volume 16.1

cover of Consequence Vol. 16 No. 1

Inside Consequence Volume 16.1, readers will find a concentration of beautiful and compelling work that wrestles with the consequences of war and geopolitical violence. From “The Philosophy of Escape’’ where the speaker struggles with the guilt of fleeing his war-torn home to “Nora’s Wedding,” which follows a Jewish woman as she unexpectedly finds family and love in Germany, to “Gertie’s Labyrinth” with its children who use make-believe to parse reality, each piece of prose, poetry, and visual art in this issue engages with the entangled consequences of conflict in an artful and memorable way.

Discover loads more great lit mags with our Guide to Literary Magazines, Big List of Literary Magazines, and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed in our monthly roundup or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us.

Book Review :: A Sign of Her Own by Sarah Marsh

A Sign of Her Own by Sarah Marsh book cover image

Review by Kevin Brown

A Sign of Her Own, Sarah Marsh’s debut novel, follows Ellen Lark, a girl who lost her hearing when she was four due to Scarlet Fever. Her mother and paternal grandmother—her father worked away from the family, then died—send her to school, then to work with Alexander Graham Bell, to learn lip-reading and Visible Speech, a phonetic means of pronunciation. Essentially, they want her to be able to pass as a person who is able to hear others.

Ellen fully embraces this approach, though there are hints of dissatisfaction early in the novel, even before she works with Bell. That unhappiness becomes fully developed when she meets Frank, as he grew up in a largely Deaf family—his mother is the exception—and community. She sees the joy of communication they have with one another, not through trying to imitate those who are able to hear, but by fully embracing their culture, especially signing.

Bell’s work on the telephone is in the background throughout the novel, especially the possibility that he stole the idea from Elisha Gray, reinforcing the overall idea of (mis)communication and (missed) connections. Ellen’s lip-reading often leads to misinterpretation, and numerous characters accidentally or willfully misunderstand each other.

Marsh clearly portrays the Deaf community’s internal conflict over signing versus lip-reading/English (heightened by external actors, such as Bell). Ellen has to learn who she is and who she wants to be, which will ultimately help her find the community she needs.

A Sign of Her Own by Sarah Marsh. Park Row Books, February 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. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite

Magazine Stand :: The Iowa Review – Double Issue 2024

painting of the outside of a diner named Deadwood in winter

In this double issue of The Iowa Review – Winter 2023/Spring 2024 – readers will be entranced by the Night Witches, aging backward, cardiologists, Freddie Mercury, family secrets, FreakFest, coyotes, VHS tapes, and more with poetry by Janice N. Harrington, John A. Nieves, Robert Wood Lynn, John Hodgen, Claire Denson , Eliza Gilbert, Rae Gouirand, Kate Gaskin, Richard Haney-Jardine León, Matthew Minicucci, Michelle Acker , Amanda Smeltz, Stella Wong; nonfiction by Sai Pradhan, Jennifer S. Cheng, Ryan Van Meter, Shannon Huffman Polson, Rochelle Goldstein Bay; fiction by Lucas Southworth, Tom Howard, Gracie Newman, Geri Modell, Chelsea Tokuno-Lynk, Jennifer Genest, Brynne Jones, Alex Burchfield; and cover art by Carlos Maldonado.

Discover loads more great lit mags with our Guide to Literary Magazines, Big List of Literary Magazines, and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed in our monthly roundup or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us.

Editor’s Choice :: Home, Rewritten Anthology

Home Rewritten anthology cover image

Home, Rewritten: Celebrating Asian American & Pacific Islander Voices
Fleeting Daze Magazine, May 2024

“Created in 1992, AAPI Heritage Month celebrates the immense culture and history fostered in the AAPI community. With the growing population of the AAPI community, AAPI media has been embedded into American society and heavily influenced its culture. However, AAPI artists constantly face stigmatization and microaggression in their work, especially when Asian artists deviate from the traditional ‘Asian ideal.’ This unwelcoming environment diminishes the diverse voices representing the AAPI community, leaving the American population vulnerable to homogeneity and narrow-mindedness. As editors-in-chief stemming from an AAPI background, we felt motivated to use the platform we’ve created to uplift AAPI youth voices undermined in society. We realized that allowing Asian artists to express their heritage genuinely and candidly brings true representation that society is working towards.”

“This project has been a long time in the making,” say Editors-in-Chief Rosie Hong and Caroline Zhang, “and we are so proud to be able to highlight AAPI voices and share with the world how we have redefined our homes and families through our experiences growing up.”

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as our Books Received monthly roundup. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

Book Review :: We Loved It All by Lydia Millet

We Loved It All: A Memory of Life by Lydia Millet book cover image

Review by Kevin Brown

Besides being an award-winning writer, Millet has worked at the Center for Biological Diversity for roughly twenty-five years. In We Loved it All: A Memoir of Life, she combines those two areas of expertise to create a poetic, meditative book that explores climate change, storytelling, hope, and despair.

However, Millet is not making an argument here, so much as she is simply sharing her love of nature and animals, celebrating the beauty and wonder of the world, in the hopes that others will see and appreciate the awesome diversity she recognizes. In fact, she doesn’t even seem to offer any practical solutions—though there are a few in the final essay. She believes that, if people love the world the way she and so many others do, they would make the necessary changes in their lives, in their policies, and in their corporate decisions to change the world.

Given Millet’s work as a writer, her approach to language is both beautiful itself and ironic. She writes each essay—there are three, roughly eighty pages or so long—in short sections, ranging from one sentence to a few pages, using fragments to provide a fractured, imagistic tone. She talks about the importance of bearing witness and telling stories to help shape the ways in which we see the world.

She also admits the limitations of language to both explain the scope of the problem and provide solutions, even acknowledging that the world will outlive our words. In the meantime, though, her language calls us, as best as it can, to truly see the world around us and love it all, hoping beyond despair that love will be the beginning of enough.

We Loved It All by Lydia Millet. W.W. Norton, 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. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite

Where to Submit Roundup: July 26, 2024

Where to Submit banner for 2024

37 Submission Opportunities including calls for submissions, writing contests, and book prizes.

Say it isn’t so! Here comes our final submissions roundup for July 2024. Next week kicks off August already. This is a great time to take that vacation you’ve been wanting to and kick back and relax before autumn decides to settle in. Want to spend some of that time writing and submitting? We’ve got your back! Plus, don’t forget that several opportunities end July 31. Don’t miss out.

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.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: July 26, 2024”

Magazine Stand :: Red Tree Review – Issue 4

Red Tree Review logo image

Issue four of the online poetry journal Red Tree Review is now live. As always, readers will find poems that surprise, harrow, and awe, this time featuring work by Cortney Bledsoe, Halee Kirkwood, Mirande Bissell, Scott Davidson, James Croal Jackson, Alex Sarrigeorgiou, Eva Skrande, Alison Heron Hruby, Clara Burghelea, C. B. Stuckey, Matthew Burns, and Jacob Schepers.

Discover loads more great lit mags with our Guide to Literary Magazines, Big List of Literary Magazines, and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed in our monthly roundup or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us.

Book Review :: Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad

Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad book cover image

Review by Kevin Brown

Enter Ghost, the title of Hammad’s second novel, refers to the stage directions from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the ghost of which serves as a metaphor throughout the work. Sonia is a British citizen with Palestinian heritage, working in London as an actor. While her career has never elevated to the top ranks, she has consistently had work. She feels a bit stuck, though, partly due to her career, but also partly due to an affair with a married theatre director, so she leaves England, supposedly to visit her sister Haneen, who lives in Haifa.

While there, she meets Marisa, a friend of her sister and a theatre director, who convinces Sonia to play Gertrude in a production of Hamlet. Sonia, as well as the other characters, are haunted by a number of ghosts from their past. There are the personal ghosts—such as Sonia’s affair—the breakdown of Sonia and Haneen’s family, and Sonia’s career.

However, the most significant ghost is the Palestinian past that has led to the current conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Throughout the novel, Haneen and Sonia refer back to their father’s involvement in anti-Israel activities, and it’s a visit to the West Bank that has led Haneen to live in Israel, as opposed to London, where her father and sister live.

The Israeli government and army are constantly watching the play to see if it contains anti-Israeli ideas, leading to the real possibility that they could shut down the performance. Sonia ultimately learns more about herself, her family, and Palestine, but she also finds true community through the production, as Hammad reminds readers of the power of art, even in the midst of war and suffering.

Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad. Grove Atlantic, April 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. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite

New Lit on the Block :: LIBRE

Libre logo

Whenever I hear someone kvetch, “Just how many literary magazines does the world really need?” a publication like LIBRE comes along to respond that there is room for this much-needed resource for the literary community.

LIBRE is a new online journal of prose, poetry, and art with three main goals: to uplift the marginalized voices of the mentally ill and those whose lives are affected by mental health; to celebrate the excruciatingly nuanced boundaries and expressionistic approaches that magical realist literature and artwork bring to our otherwise mundane realities; and to explore the oftentimes overlooked intersection that quietly, but stubbornly blooms between fabulist and health-oriented writing.

Continue reading “New Lit on the Block :: LIBRE”

Magazine Stand :: Colorado Review – Summer 2024

Colorado Review Summer 2024

The Summer 2024 Colorado Review takes a unique perspective on the season. “While summer is not the season we generally associate with loss, it does offer pause: time to reflect on what has been taken from us, what we might let go of, what we hope to hold on to, what we may yet reap.” This issue includes short fiction by Erika Krouse, Amanda Rea, Afsheen Farhadi, and Amy Silverberg. Also featured are essays by Elizabeth Kadetsky, Lilly Nguyen, and Jean McDonough.

“So much loss, yes, in this issue,” says editor-in-chief Stephanie G’Schwind of the prose. “Yet there is much to be gained in the exploration of what we no longer have. Of her pain, Nguyen writes: ‘I had become so accustomed to it over the years that its absence was remarkable…. With this came new knowledge.’ And an absence, suggests McDonough, can hold great value: ‘I remember this—the nothingness—and it will not be taken from me.’”

Poetry editor Camille T. Dungy has selected poems by Xochiquetzal Candelaria, Alyse Knorr, Max Seifert, Nasser Alsinan, Caroline O’Connor Thomas, and many others. “These poems vibrate,” writes Dungy. “They are sensitive. They are afraid but still insistent. Alert but also calming. They move from harrowing to hopeful, and they show what it means to live in-between.”

Book Review :: That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America by Amanda Jones

That Librarian by Amanda Jones book cover image

Review by Eleanor J. Bader

When Amanda Jones, a middle school librarian and head of the Louisiana Association of School Librarians, spoke before the Livingston Parish Library Board in August 2022, she did so as a concerned community member. Her message was clear and direct: Diverse collections must include books that accurately address U.S. history and offer readers multiple ways to understand race, class, gender, sexuality, and sexual identity. The latter category, she said, is especially important for children, adolescents, and teens as they navigate coming of age.

Although Jones was not the only person to express this viewpoint, four days after she testified she found herself on the receiving end of a well-organized hate-and-harassment campaign coordinated by Citizens for a New Louisiana, a newly-formed conservative group that dubbed her a pornographer and menace to children.

That Librarian, part memoir, part impassioned political argument against censorship and book bans, is a deeply felt exposition of the physical and emotional toll these smears exacted and a strategic workbook about ways for communities to fight back. Moreover, it charts Jones’s personal transformation from a 2016 Trump supporter to become a forceful advocate for civil rights, civil liberties, and the right to read. It’s a powerful, angry, and inspiring book.

That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America by Amanda Jones. Bloomsbury Publishing, August 2024 (pre-order available).

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.

Magazine Stand :: Blue Collar Review – Spring 2024

Blue Collar Review Spring 2024

The Blue Collar Review: Journal of Progressive Working Class Literature Spring 2024 issue opens with these words from the editor’s note, “This Spring is marked by escalating tensions'” to which much of the work included bear witness. The editors conclude, “change must come from the bottom, from the working, exploited and oppressed – from us. Promoting and presenting examples of the consciousness of class connection necessary for that change remains our primary goal. We continue to struggle against the odds of increasing expenses and censorship pressures to get your words out. Your continuing support and unique writing keep this effort alive and we are grateful.” Sample works are available on the publication’s website.

Discover loads more great lit mags with our Guide to Literary Magazines, Big List of Literary Magazines, and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed in our monthly roundup or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us.

Book Review :: Choice by Neel Mukherjee

Choice by Neel Mukherjee book cover image

Review by Kevin Brown

Neel Mukherjee’s most recent novel, Choice, tells a triptych of tales, all tangentially related to one another and all, not surprisingly, centered around the idea of choice. The first story follows Ayush, an editor at a publishing house where the focus has shifted from books and authors to profits. He is also not merely concerned with climate change, but obsessed with it, to the point that it disrupts his relationships with his husband, Luke, and their two children. He consistently repeats, as narrator, that one must change their life, which leads him to an important decision.

The second part follows Emily, a professor at a school that might be the same one Luke works at (or this story could be a story from a collection that Ayush publishes), though that’s left unclear. Emily takes a ride share home one evening, and the driver might have hit something and/or someone, though Emily didn’t see clearly, given that she was both drunk and digging around the floor of the vehicle for her dropped phone. Rather than going to the police, though, she gets to know the driver, Salim, and learns his story and his family’s story, as they immigrated from Eritrea, leading Emily to make a radical life choice.

The final section tells the story of Sabita, a woman living on the border of West Bengal and Bangladesh, and is most likely a response one of Luke’s fellow economics professors gives to Ayush when he asks about her work on poverty. Sabita and her family receive a cow as part of an experiment to see if a change in assets can change one’s level of poverty. Unlike the other respondents in the experiment, the situation does not go well.

Ultimately, Mukherjee’s novel asks the question of how one should live in the twenty-first century, especially around how one can do good in such a complex world. Mukherjee leaves the reader with that question, as he knows there are no easy answers.

Choice by Neel Mukherjee. W.W. Norton, April 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. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite

Editor’s Choice :: White Poverty

White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy by Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove book cover image

White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy by Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
Liveright / W. W. Norton, June 2024

One of the most pernicious and persistent myths in the United States is the association of Black skin with poverty. Though there are forty million more poor white people than Black people, most Americans, both Republicans and Democrats, continue to think of poverty—along with issues like welfare, unemployment, and food stamps—as solely a Black problem. Why is this so? What are the historical causes? And what are the political consequences that result?

These are among the questions that the Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II, a leading advocate for the rights of the poor and the “closest person we have to Dr. King” (Cornel West), addresses in White Poverty, a groundbreaking work that exposes a legacy of historical myths that continue to define both white and Black people, creating in the process what might seem like an insuperable divide. Analyzing what has changed since the 1930s, when the face of American poverty was white, Barber, along with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, addresses white poverty as a hugely neglected subject that just might provide the key to mitigating racism and bringing together tens of millions of working class and impoverished Americans.

To discover more great books from small, independent, and university presses, visit the NewPages Guide to Publishers as well as our Books Received monthly roundup. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

Book Review :: Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan

Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan book cover image

Review by Kevin Brown

Brotherless Night, V.V. Ganeshananthan’s Women’s-Prize-winning novel, clearly portrays the horrors of the Sri Lankan civil war of the 1980s and following. Sashi is a teenager when the book opens, and the book follows her over the next decade or so as the civil war affects every aspect of her life. She has four brothers, all of whom have some relationship to the war; the title of the novel, in fact, refers to the first night she spent without at least one of her brothers present, and it represents the beginning of the war.

Sashi works in a field hospital for the Tamil rebels, mainly due to the request of K., a childhood friend she would have married, if not for the war. Ganeshananthan portrays the horrific actions of the Sri Lankan and Indian government armies, but she also clearly conveys what the Tamil rebels do, not only to those government soldiers, but also to the civilian population and other rebel groups.

No entity is innocent here, and Sashi reflects that complexity. Though she disagrees with the Tamil Tigers’ actions, she works in the field hospital to try to make sure nobody dies for lack of medical care. She also works to expose the immoral actions they have taken. Ganeshananthan draws heavily on research, even basing one of Sashi’s professors on a real professor and activist, but it is the humanizing portrayal of the wide range of characters that gives this novel its power. Her care for her characters reflects the suffering so many endured throughout the years of the war, showing the reader just how much so many have lost, while their care for each other reveals how much humanity remains.

Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan. Random House, January 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. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite

Submit to Sport Literate’s “1970s Contest” before July Ends

Screenshot of Sport Literate's "1970s Contest" flyer
click image to open flyer

Deadline: July 31, 2024
We won’t be prescriptive beyond the decade in question, except to say that poets and writers should reflect on a subject through a sporting lens. Our guest judges, both SL veterans and contest winners, are also former state Poet Laureates. SL editors read through submissions and send anonymous finalists to Jack Bedell and Sydney Lea, who will pick their favorites. View our flyer for more information and a link to our website.

Want early access to our eLitPak flyers? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter! You can also support NewPages with a paid subscription and get early access to the majority submission opportunities, upcoming events, and more before they are posted to our site.

Interested in advertising in the eLitPak? Learn more here.

The Bluebird Word Online Literary Journal Seeks New Flash Writing!

Screenshot of The Bluebird Word call for new flash writing flyer
click image to view flyer

Deadline: Year-round
The Bluebird Word, an online literary journal for poetry, flash nonfiction and fiction, seeks new writing for our upcoming 2024 publishing calendar. We publish new issues each month and are looking for emerging and established writers. We are a non-paying market. Please send your crisp flash and poignant poetry for consideration in a future issue. View our flyer and visit our website for more information.

Want early access to our eLitPak flyers? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter! You can also support NewPages with a paid subscription and get early access to the majority submission opportunities, upcoming events, and more before they are posted to our site.

Interested in advertising in the eLitPak? Learn more here.

Inverted Syntax Poetry Book Contests

Screenshot of Inverted Syntax's flyer for their 2024 poetry book contests
click image to open flyer

Deadline: August 15
Inverted Syntax will be publishing and debuting between 3-5 full-length poetry books in the fall of 2026. Starting in 2024, we seek to identify up to five exceptional manuscripts for publication. We look for work that risks everything. We favor the hybrid but welcome all writing. If it’s well-crafted, uses language in daring ways, we want it. View guidelines and submission details on our flyer and at our website.

Want early access to our eLitPak flyers? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter! You can also support NewPages with a paid subscription and get early access to the majority submission opportunities, upcoming events, and more before they are posted to our site.

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It’s Time to try On Spec Magazine!

screenshot of On Spec's complimentary subscription giveaway flyer
click image to open flyer

On Spec (onspec.ca) is an award-winning Canadian journal of short genre fiction and poetry. Since 1989, On Spec has featured original works of science fiction and fantasy from writers around the world, with a mandate to showcase the best in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. Now’s the time to try an issue, and you may win a subscription! View flyer to learn more.

Want early access to our eLitPak flyers? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter! You can also support NewPages with a paid subscription and get early access to the majority submission opportunities, upcoming events, and more before they are posted to our site.

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Shaping Destiny, Elections Call

Albrecht Durer The Virgin Mary in Prayer

Deadline: August 1, 2024
The election is looming, and all those thoughts and emotions are getting sharper and at time produce fear and depression. Now is the time to have art be your voice and presence. Visit our website for full information and to submit your work.

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Submit to The Greensboro Review’s Literary Awards – $1000 prizes!

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Deadline: August 1, 2024
The Greensboro Review invites submissions for our annual Robert Watson Literary Prizes in Poetry and Fiction. Winners in each genre receive a $1,000 award and publication in the spring issue of the journal. Send us your previously unpublished poems and short stories, now through August 1! To learn more, read past prizewinners, and submit your work, visit our website and view our flyer.

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Unsolicited Press Is Releasing Literary Fiction that Challenges and Inspires You

screenshot of Unsolicited Press' flyer showcasing new 2024 titles
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Unsolicited Press is set to release enchanting literary fiction this year including THE HEDGEROW by Anne Leigh Parrish, LINES by Sung J. Woo, and DEVIL ON MY TRAIL by Danial DiFranco. See our flyer and learn more at our website.

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Issue 89 of Kaleidoscope Available Now! Accepting Submissions Year-Round

screenshot of Kaleidoscope's call for submissions flyer for the July 2024 eLitpak
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The summer issue of Kaleidoscope takes a closer look at the ebbs and flows of life, and we hope you will find some treasures in the work we’ve selected. 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! Visit our website and see our flyer for more information.

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Magazine Stand :: Kaleidoscope – Summer/Fall 2024

Kaleidoscope magazine Summer/Fall 2024 cover image

Kaleidoscope magazine publishes work that creatively explores the experience of disability through literature and the fine arts. The Summer/Fall 2024 issue (#89) explores the ebbs and flows of life. Just like shells along a beach, readers will find some treasures in the selected works.

The featured essay, “Portrait with a Seagull,” is the sweet story of a family’s visit to the Jersey Shore and one child’s preoccupation with seagulls. Mom and author, Natalie Haney Tilghman, sees her son interacting with a gull and is a bit envious of the effortless, immediate connection they have. Despite her aversion to the creatures that swoop through the sky snatching snacks and squealing, they end up saving the day in an unexpected way, and she is grateful.

Digital artist Diana de Avila is featured in this issue along with various other established and emerging writers: Emma Baker, Jax Bidmead, Marjorie E. Brody, Emma Burnett, Douglas G. Campbell, Deb DeBates, Alexander Etheridge, Joanne Feenstra, Janet Engle Frase, Ben Gooley, Lori Hahnel, Mattie-Bretton Hughes, Shelly Jones, Suzanne Kamata, Grace Kully, Karen McKenzie, Betsy Miller, PMF, Trystan Popish, Ivy Raff, Tara K. Ross, Sheersty Stanton, M.S., Cynthia Stock and Angela Townsend.

Where to Submit Roundup: July 19, 2024

Where to Submit banner for 2024

35 Submission Opportunities including calls for submissions, writing contests, and book prizes.

Sorry for missing out on our weekly submissions roundup last week. A family emergency took place at the end of the week that through everything into a chaotic tailspin. But we are back this week to help you with your submission goals! It’s hard to believe August will be upon us in two short weeks and then Labor Day will be here before you know it.

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.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: July 19, 2024”

Magazine Stand :: Still Point Arts Quarterly – Summer 2024

Still Point Arts Quarterly Summer 2024 cover image

Still Points Arts Quarterly Summer 2024 is themed “The House of My Dreams” and features contemporary works of art, fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Produced by Shanti Arts, this luxuriously printed journal is intended for artists, nature lovers, seekers, and enthusiast of all types. This issue features works by Judith Sornberger, Patty Somlo, Charlene Logan, Susan Eaton Mendenhall, B. D. Ramsey, James Lowell Hall, Cathy Fiorello, Michael Riedell, Lily Ione MacKenzie, Ann Cwiklinski, Christopher Woods, Ellen Pliskin, Rosalyn Kliot, Chris Hero, Theresa M. Pisani, and many more!

Discover loads more great lit mags with our Guide to Literary Magazines, Big List of Literary Magazines, and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed in our monthly roundup or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us.

New Lit on the Block :: Fleeting Daze Magazine

Fleeting Daze logo

Most of us are likely at an age when we can recall how quickly carefree younger days seem to have slipped through our fingers as we entered irrevocably into adulthood. Fortunately, for today’s youth, there is Fleeting Daze Magazine, a youth-run literary online quarterly publishing all forms of literary arts and writing from contributors ages 13-24. New issues are available every 2-3 months in open access online forms.

Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief Caroline Zhang explains the intentionality behind the name: “When creating the name, we wanted our magazine to highlight the coming-of-age process and the works we published to be unique to a new generation of creators and thinkers. We recognized that as a youth-run magazine, our knowledge and understanding growing up today was an advantage and a perspective that often is not found elsewhere in today’s media. ‘Fleeting Daze’ had a double meaning – first, symbolizing the glowing haze/dreamlike nature of childhood, having fun, believing in the possibilities of the world. On the other hand, ‘Fleeting Daze’ can also be read as ‘Fleeting Days,’ symbolizing how the best moments of our youthful childhoods can go by in the blink of an eye, and how every second must be grasped onto and enjoyed for as long as possible.”

Continue reading “New Lit on the Block :: Fleeting Daze Magazine”

Book Review :: Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel

Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel book cover image

Review by Kevin Brown

There’s not much plot to Headshot, Rita Bullwinkel’s debut novel—eight girls engage in a boxing tournament in a run-down gym in Reno, Nevada—but that’s not the point. The novel is largely structured around each fight with chapters getting progressively shorter and each focusing more on the lives and psychology of the two girls involved in the fight than on what actually happens in the fight itself.

There is a line from The Matrix: Reloaded, where Seraph, the character whose job it is to guard the oracle, fights Neo. When he explains to Neo that he had to know that Neo wasn’t an enemy, Neo responds, “You could’ve just asked.” Seraph replies, “No. You do not truly know someone until you fight them.” These eight girls seem to understand each other better than anybody in their lives, and they come to an understanding of themselves, because they fight.

None of them go on to box in the remainder of their lives, some of them even forgetting about this time in their lives, but their understanding of themselves remains. Boxing serves as a metaphor for the lineage of women understanding one another in this world, as they move in concert with one another, responding to one another, partners in a dance that will carry them through their lives.

Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel. Viking, 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. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite

Magazine Stand :: THEMA- Summer 2024

THEMA Summer 2024 cover image

Each issue of THEMA centers on a premise with the Summer 2024 prompt being “The magic of light and shadow.” The theme can be integral to plot, not necessarily central but also not merely incidental. A great challenge for writers, a wonderful resource for teachers, and an enjoyable experience for readers!

This issue’s stories, short-shorts, poems, and photographs were contributed by Victoria Ilemobayo, SPIN, Virginia McGee Butler, Anne Dalziel Patton, Erika Hoffman, R. David Bowlus, Stuart J. Silverman, Sean E. Britten, Nikky Mohandas, Robert Scott Mason, Daniel Crow, Gary Sterling, Madonna Dries Christensen, Ted Burrowes, Tom Gengler, Susan Duke, Beverly Boyd, Hûw Steer, Matthew J. Spireng, Ruth Holzer, R.G. Halstead, Linda Berry, Yvonne Ventresca, Orsolya Karàcsony, Margo Peterson, and Stephen Page.

Book Review :: Wonder About The by Matthew Cooperman

Wonder About The by Matthew Cooperman book cover image

Review by Jami Macarty

In Wonder About The, Matthew Cooperman “presents / / a spilling presence” of Colorado’s Cache la Poudre River:

Like an open vein, like a sluiced giant, it rolls on through cottonwood
     and willow body, through thistle and rabbit brush, grama and
          blue stem, through drought and illusion, it rolls on
               beyond us, the river flayed in moonlight (“Thesis”)

Cooperman’s eco- and documentary poetic “pulses in… / a rhythm” of “fluid” enactment, environmental activism, and river ecology, “palimpsesting” on water flow reports, geological surveys, “Colorado homesteading history,” environmental impact studies, and a Colorado oil and gas industry “Well Prediction Map.” Throughout the collection’s three sections, the poems roll like a river lyrically, fragmentarily, and narratively freely mixing reportage, collage, and erasure with homage and elegy. Regardless of their poetic mode or compositional method ultimately the poems aim to “Save the Poudre!”

The poems educate readers about the threats to the waterway’s fragile ecology: “a toil of oil,” the “rhetoric of monuments,” “people on the river,” “lifestyles,” and “progress.” And, the poems raft on inquiry: “what is a river / and what is a season / and what is the reason of oil.” As Cooperman’s poems prompted me to consider “what the river’s for,” I thought about the Diamond-Water Paradox which poses the question: If we need water to survive and we do not need diamonds, why are diamonds expensive and water cheap?

From advocacy and from love, Matthew Cooperman carves a “structure of all / perception” through a channel where the two tributaries of wonder are “alive and shimmering.”

Wonder About The by Matthew Cooperman. Middle Creek Publishing, June 2023.

Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize, forthcoming fall 2024, 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, forthcoming summer 2024 from the Vallum Chapbook Series, and Mind of Spring (Vallum, 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 – June 2024

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!

Ecotone Fall Winter 2023 cover image

The newest issue of Ecotone: Reimagining Place literary magazine is themed “The Labor Issue,” and features Retablos de  Imágenes y Memorias, 2022 by Perla Segovia on the cover as well as including a portfolio of his work inside the publication.

Inch #56 cover image

Ian Alam Sukarso’s artwork adorns the cover of Inch, a quarterly “focused on the miracles of compression” – a micro-chapbook featuring the work of a single author. Issue #56 spotlights Jarret Moseley’s Gratitude List.

Tar River Poetry Spring 2024 cover image

Leanne E. Smith’s photo on the Spring 2024 cover of East Carolina University’s Tar River Poetry makes me wish I could be taking a meander down that road on a cool summer’s day.

Discover loads more great lit mags with our Guide to Literary Magazines, Big List of Literary Magazines, and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed in our monthly roundup or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us.

Book Review :: Victim by Andrew Boryga

Victim by Andrew Boryga book cover image

Review by Kevin Brown

Victim, Andrew Boryga’s debut novel, tells the story of Javi, a Puerto Rican living in the Bronx. He does well in school and, through a meeting with a college counselor who’s volunteering at his school, ends up at an elite college, unlike his best friend, Gio, whose life takes a different path. Through that meeting with the counselor, Javi’s life seems to follow a traditional path toward the American success story, but Javi’s means of achieving what he seeks is complicated.

As the title conveys, Javi presents himself as a victim, whether of oppression or violence or racism, embellishing the stories he writes, first for his college newspaper, then for a national magazine. On the one hand, Boryga is satirizing the cult of victimhood, the approach that argues that one should use their stories to evoke pity as a means of accomplishing some goal. However, the ideas that Javi learns in college about systemic racism and other forms of oppression are true, as readers can see in Javi and Gio’s lives.

Javi’s problem isn’t that he doesn’t struggle with real suffering; it’s that he seeks the approval of others, especially via social media, so much that he’s willing to do whatever it takes to obtain that approval. He doesn’t care about the problems he details in his writing; he only cares about himself. His audience is also partly responsible, as the more his stories follow the expected arc of racial and class progress and success, as long as they fit the narrative his audience already believes, the more successful he becomes. Boryga reminds his audience that stories are more complicated than they seem and where the problem lies isn’t as obvious as one might think.

Victim by Andrew Boryga. Doubleday, 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. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite

Book Review :: The King of Terrors by Jim Johnstone

The King of Terrors by Jim Johnstone book cover image

Review by Jami Macarty

Before The King of Terrors was the title of Jim Johnstone’s 2023 poetry book, it was the title of a 1910 Sunday sermon preached by Henry Scott Holland, a 1977 horror novel written by Robert Bloch, and a 2022 horror film directed by Ryan Callaway. Like those before him, Johnstone’s poetry book regards death and its associates, madness and fear.

The poet’s approach is a meditative lyric, “a dream, into a song.” “Fear” is an anaphora, “leading by example” and “running free” throughout the poems. The particular fears have to do with what is “unseen”: “the virus” and “the tumour,” COVID-19 and meningioma. In “parallel / time,” global and personal health crises haunt Johnstone’s poems. In response, the poet seems to be prompted to accept Chronos, assisted by Derrida (“becoming / the always-already absent present”), and to confess to the “ghosts of former lovers.”

In the poem “The Darkroom,” among my favorites for its candor and heart, the poet finds “noun and verb” between apology and prayer to admit:

But I’ve said terrible things about those
whose only mistake was that they weren’t me,
didn’t show up in the mirror where I stared
and stared trying to make sure I was more
and better, where my face would blur
then realign as if hope could change the way
my actions were perceived.

The intimate and “direct nature of [the poet’s] address” in this poem and throughout the book takes the reader into his confidence and illuminates the “interstitial space,” “hovering between two ways”—between “instinct” and “change,” “fragment” and “renunciation,” “a liar” and “a lyre.” In The King of Terrors, Jim Johnstone offers readers poems for the uncertain time we “inhabit” “between / age and agency.”

The King of Terrors by Jim Johnstone. Coach House Books, September 2023.

Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize, forthcoming fall 2024, 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, forthcoming summer 2024 from the Vallum Chapbook Series, and Mind of Spring (Vallum, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. To learn more about Jami’s writing, editing, and teaching practices visit her author website.

Magazine Stand :: Blink Ink – #56

Blink Ink issue 56 cover image

“Addicted to Love” is the theme of Blink Ink #56, “The gold standard for microfiction” featuring stories of approximately 50 words. Not platonic, familial, or devotional, this is the rascal love where your heart sweats and you lose your mind. The world well lost for lust. Dreaming days followed by sleepless nights. A special someone, or just playing with the idea, the feeling.

Discover loads more great lit mags with our Guide to Literary Magazines, Big List of Literary Magazines, and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed in our monthly roundup or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us.

Book Review :: Permission to Relax by Sheila E. Murphy

Permission to Relax by Sheila E. Murphy book cover image

Review by Jami Marcarty

In Permission to Relax, Sheila E. Murphy vibrates as “Speaker. Language. Mirror.” Murphy’s poems are equally at home at “bake sales” as they are at a “Chaplin festival.” These two locales suggest the compositionally quirky, philosophically comic, and politically potent characteristics of Murphy’s cultural critique that “upends the platitudes.” The poet points out life’s absurdities, relationship tensions, and communication difficulties: “North of probability and vortices, a warm mind / rescues love from common sense.” “Fracture” “repeat[s] … sadness” in the background and foregrounds temporal anxiety: “In a minute, / it will be / tomorrow.”

Murphy’s “span of attention” ranges formally from prose to verse and the poet is equally adept at invented as received forms. The collection includes a “Hay(na)ku Sequence,” “Eight Ghazals,” and “Winter Pantoum.” Some poems act like “a letter with a question mark [slid] under [a] door.” Other poems are a “secret way of holding thought.” Whether “replete with souvenirs” or “homemade” baked goods, the poems of Permission to Relax make an “everworld … tingling.”

Reader, Reader, Sheila E. Murphy is a poet “whose pockets are filled / with permission slips” and “sprezzatura”!

Permission to Relax by Sheila E. Murphy. BlazeVOX [books], August 2023

Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize, forthcoming fall 2024, 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, forthcoming summer 2024 from the Vallum Chapbook Series, and Mind of Spring (Vallum, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. To learn more about Jami’s writing, editing, and teaching practices visit her author website.

Magazine Stand :: Southern Humanities Review – 57.2

Southern Humanities Review 57.2 cover image

Southern Humanities Review issue 57.2 features radioactive animals in “Wild Wild Wolves” and “Radiation Bestiary”; a photo-less photo essay of the George Floyd protests in “June 1, 2020: A Photo Essay”; shiny sharp new lives in “Alternative Lives with Teeth”; and a sense of peace, finally, in “Love Song in Someone Else’s Loblolly Stand” and “I Put Life on Hold.”

This issue also features poetry by Carson Colenbaugh, Patricia Davis, Elizabeth C. Garcia, Elisa A. Garza, Hua Qing, Liang Yujing, Heather Jessen, Thomas Kneeland, James Davis May, Matthew Nienow, Susan Rich, Angela Sorby, Lindsay Stewart, Laura Van Prooyen, and Ellen June Wright. Nonfiction contributors include Debra Dean and Maggie Nye. Fiction by Taylor De La Peña, Emily Greenberg, Svetlana Satchkova, and Gabriel Welsch. The cover, Holiday on the Hudson, 1912, is from George Luks (American, 1866-1933); The Cleveland Museum of Art; Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection. Some content can be read online, and individual copies, as well as subscriptions, are available on the Southern Humanities Review website.

Magazine Stand :: Cool Beans – Summer 2024

Cool Beans Summer 2024 cover image

The Summer 2024 issue of Cool Beans Lit is themed “Deep Dive.” It showcases the work of both new and established authors and artists delving far into their past perspectives and comparing them to new views on what the future may hold in this realm or the next. The pieces in this issue are impactful and will long resonate with readers by triggering a wide range of emotions from deep pain and despair to humor in childhood reflections to honest takes on love and anguish.

Featured authors include Ace Boggess, Sara Eddy, James Roderick Burns, Kenneth Cupp and Jason Clemmons. Stunning photography and visual art by featured artists, like Katie Hughbanks, David A. Goodrum, Robb Kunz, Edward Lee, Amalia Costaldi and Victoria Mullen, is sure to awe and inspire readers. This issue rounds out the first full annual volume for Cool Beans Lit with more unique issues and themes to come.

Magazine Stand :: The Lake – July 2024

The Lake online magazine of poetry and reviews logo image

The July 2024 issue of The Lake is now online featuring fresh new poetry by N. S. Boone, Chris Bullard, Mike Dillon, Philip Dunkerley, Bridgette James, Ted Jean, Bridget Khursheed, Annie Kissack, Faith Paulsen, Amanda L. Rioux. The Lake also features reviews of new poetry collections, with July spotlighting Karen An-hwei Lee’s The Beautiful Immunity, Stephen Cramer’s City Full of Fireworks & Blues, and Mark Vernon Thomas’s Dancing with Shadows and Stones. Unique to The Lake is “One Poem Review,” in which an author of a recently published book of poems shares a sample work with readers. Deirdre Hines is the featured poet for July.

Discover loads more great lit mags with our Guide to Literary Magazines, Big List of Literary Magazines, and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed in our monthly roundup or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us.

Book Review :: Only Insistence by James Lindsay

Only Insistence by James Lindsay book cover image

Review by Jami Macarty

In James Lindsay’s Only Insistence a new father to a son is in the throes of “involuntary / reflection” on his relationship with his parents: “What is authority / but anxiety.” The authority within Lindsay’s poems is a “witness” both “apprehensive” and “evasive.” He can tell readers his “mother died, but “can’t speak / as to why.” And, he confesses he doesn’t “know how to talk / about [his] biological father.” That’s personal, “the way life is personal” “and made up / of a terrifying sharpness.”

Sometimes it is easier “to describe the lake: … / the things that float on it / and the things that drown in it that make it what it is.” What is it? It is “the tiny histories that seed memory.”

Memory is both repetition and insistence, “wringing image to solid personal fact.” Here, “as he expresses himself // brutally but beautifully / in how honestly / he carries on,” Lindsay ensures “the Reader and writer / Have [the] kind of relationship” in which “language worked / / Because it was promised.”

Only Insistence by James Lindsay. Goose Lane Editions, September 2023.

Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize, forthcoming fall 2024, 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, forthcoming summer 2024 from the Vallum Chapbook Series, and Mind of Spring (Vallum, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. To learn more about Jami’s writing, editing, and teaching practices visit her author website.

Magazine Stand :: The Shore – Issue 22

The Shore issue 22 cover image

The Shore Issue 22 sparks with sizzling poetry shimmering just in time for summer. Find new hot poetry by: John Gallaher, Ben Cooper, Susan Muth, Julia Kooi Talen, Kate Welsh, Brett Griffiths, Sarah Burke, Peter Herring, Ahana Chakraborty, Colleen Salisbury, CC Russell, Mary Morris, Sarah Fawn Montgomery, Olivia Jacobson, Zeke Shomler, Alyssa Jewell, Liz Robbins, Emilee Kinney, Meghan Sterling, Lauren Mallett, Mark Majcher, Kelly Erin Gray, Naomi Madlock, Rachael Lyon, Elya Braden, Julia Lisella, Christopher Faunce, Amy Thatcher, Jeremy Rock, Meredith MacLeod Davidson, Ana Prundaru, Nathan Erwin, Jacob Schepers, Kathryn Merwin, Calista Malone, Carson Colenbaugh, Bryan D Price, Amanda Russell, Jo Snow, Rachel White, Rebekah M Rykiel and JB Kalf. This issue also features unforgettable art by Madeline Hernstrom-Hill.

Book Review :: My Favorite Thing is Monsters Book Two by Emil Ferris

My Favorite Thing is Monsters Book Two by Emil Ferris book cover image

Review by Kevin Brown

Readers don’t have to have read the first book of Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing is Monsters to understand what happens in book two, as she has enough exposition to bring the reader up to speed. However, reading the first installment (or re-reading it, if it’s been a while) will certainly enable the reader to avoid having to wonder about Karen’s relationship with her brother and her deceased neighbor, Anka, who appears through audiotapes she recorded.

Ferris presents the book as Karen’s sketches on notebook paper, and Karen portrays herself as a werewolf, mainly because she feels like a monster due to her romantic interest in other girls. She draws the world like a horror comic from the 1950s, as she sees the world as a treacherous place. Her brother Deeze seems to be an enforcer for a local mob boss, of sorts, and he may have even worse secrets in his past. Anka tried to rescue girls from the Holocaust, a real horror that Karen sketches based on the tapes.

Karen’s lack of knowledge forces the reader to draw conclusions from the limited information she has, embedding the reader in this world of terror. The artwork is amazing and immensely detailed and colored, which explains why it has taken seven years to get the second volume. While Karen lives in a monstrous world, it’s one that readers will want to live in, hoping that Karen can realize the humanity she exudes.

My Favorite Thing is Monsters Book Two by Emil Ferris. Fantagraphics, May 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. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite

Book Review of Memory Piece by Lisa Ko

Memory Piece by Lisa Ko book cover image

Review by Kevin Brown

Lisa Ko’s second novel follows three Asian-American women—Giselle, Ellen, and Jackie—who meet as teenagers, then remain close for the rest of their lives, though they see each other infrequently. Giselle becomes a performance artist, Ellen transforms a house she and others squatted into a type of communal living space, and Jackie revolutionizes the tech industry, careers and passions that seem far removed from one another.

However, they are all creators of some sort, even artists, though the world seems bent on preventing them from becoming so. They encounter sexism and misogyny, racism, and capitalist expectations, working together and separately to overcome (or simply thwart) those barriers and demands, to find success in their own ways. Ko moves the novel from the 1980s of their teenage years all the way to a future beyond their deaths to explore the ways in which they impact their world and how they become the women they need to be to survive and thrive in that world.

Underneath their different pursuits, they are all trying to answer the same questions that all artists are trying to answer, the questions Giselle knows an interviewer is really asking her: “HOW DO YOU LIVE (HOW DARE YOU LIVE) WHAT DO YOU DO (WHAT SHOULD WE DO) HOW DO WE LIVE HOW DO WE DIE WHAT DO WE NEED TO HEAR.”

Ko’s novel provides three different answers to those questions, but, more importantly, it asks the readers to find the answers in their lives.

Memory Piece by Lisa Ko. Riverhead 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. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite

Where to Submit Roundup: July 5, 2024

Where to Submit banner for 2024

34 Submission Opportunities including calls for submissions, writing contests, and book prizes.

We hope you had a wonderful Fourth. Hopefully you have a few extra days to rest and relax before diving back into work. Read a good book, get some writing done, and maybe some submitting. NewPages has your back with our weekly roundup of submission opportunities.

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.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: July 5, 2024”

New Lit on the Block :: The Greyhound Journal

The Greyhound Journal logo image

In word association, if I say “bus,” I’m sure “Greyhound” would be among the top responses, and it would be spot-on for introducing this new, history-oriented journal of text and audiovisual poetry and prose. Publishing biannually online with a regularly updated “Featured” column, The Greyhound Journal was originally created to open more spaces for literary dialogue revolving around history and to increase the accessibility of history through narrative. “Our founding mission,” the editors assert, “is to promote the exploration of history through creative work and literature.”

Continue reading “New Lit on the Block :: The Greyhound Journal”