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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!

Books :: 11th Tartts First Fiction Award Winner

enigma of iris murphy maureen millea smithIn July, look for Maureen Millea Smith’s The Enigma of Iris Murphy from The Livingston Press. Winner of the eleventh Tartts First Fiction Award, Smith’s short story collection looks at “A prison’s visitation room; a veterinarian who understands the thoughts of animals; an Omaha police sergeant; a banking executive who consoles her dying friend; a librarian who sleeps with giraffes—all linked by the life of Iris Murphy.”

While awaiting its July release, readers can check out The Livingston Press’s website where they can find an excerpt from The Enigma of Iris Murphy and preorder a copy.
[quote from publisher’s website]

Gulf Coast Prize Winners :: 2016

The summer/fall 2016 issue of Gulf Coast, in addition to a lot of great writing for their themed “Archive Issue,” includes winners from two of their contests:

The 2015 Gulf Coast Prize in Translation
Judged by Ammiel Alcalay
Winner ($1000 + Print publication)
Samantha Schnee for her translation from Carmen Boullosa’s The Romantics’ Conspiracy.
Honorable Mention ($250 + Online publication)
Rebeca Velasquez for her translation from Irma de Águila’s El hombre que hablaba del cielo, or The Man Who Spoke About the Heavens.
Brad Fox for his translation from Sait Faik Abasiyanik’s novella Havada Bulut, or A Cloud in the Sky.
Commendation
Jonathan Larson for his translation of Friederike Mayröcker’s études.
J. Bret Maney for his translation of Guillermo Cotto-Thorner’s Manhattan Tropics.

2015 Barthelme Prize for Short Fiction
Judged by Steve Almond
Winner ($1000 + Pring publication)
“Taylor Swift” by Hugh Behm-Steinberg
Honorable Mention ($250 + Print publication)
“The Deer” by Nickole Brown
“Threeway” by Wes Wrobel

Hudson Review 2016 Fiction Contest Winners

The Hudson Review has announced the winners of their 2016 Short Fiction Contest:

First Prize ($500)
“The Comfort Weaver” by Alia Ahmed
“The Colonel’s Boy” by Timothy Dumas

Second Prize ($250)
“Leah, Lamb” by Dana Fitz Gale
“Shadow Daughter” by Leslie Pietrzyk

Honorable Mention
“Einhorn’s Kosher Palace” by David Klein
“Those Who Burn” by Lara Prescott
“The Wedding at Valocchio” by James Vescovi

Alia Ahmed’s “The Comfort Weaver” is published in the spring 2016 issue of The Hudson Review and is also available full-text on the publication’s website here.

Chattahoochee Review 2016 Lamar York Prize Winners

The Lamar York Prize honors the founder and former editor of The Chattahoochee Review by awarding $1,000.00 each and publication to a winning story and essay. The 2016 winners appear in the spring 2016 issue.

Fiction Winner
Judged by Tayari Jones
“Y’all’s Problem” by Beth Ann Fennelly

Nonfiction Winner
Judged by Dinty Moore
“Trip” by Audrey Spensley

The Lamar York Prize is an annual contest that accepts submissions between October 1 and January 31.

[Cover art: The Baron in the Trees, 2011 by Su Blackwell; detail and artist’s statement included in the issue.]

Kenyon Review EcoPoetry

kenyon review v38 n3 may june 2016“Literature and the Anthropocene” is the title of The Kenyon Review Editor’s Notes in the May/June 2016 issue. The term ‘anthropocene, Editor David H. Lynn explains, is “a term coined by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in 2000 to denote the current epoch, ‘in which many geologically significant conditions and processes are profoundly altered by human activities’ . . . As one response to these vast and accelerating changes we offer in this issue a special section of EcoPoetry, work that self-consciously addresses the relationship between the human and the natural world, gathered by our poetry editor David Baker. This is the second iteration—last year’s received wide acclaim—and my intention is that it will be an ongoing feature in our pages.”

To further encourage the genre, the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop offers a nature writing session each summer. Collaborating with scientists at Kenyon College’s Brown Family Environmental Center, this workshop provides wrirters with guided scientific investigation, in labs and wetlands and woodland paths, along with time and strategies for writing. This nature writing workshop is one of several offered by the Kenyon Review.

[Cover art by Brett Ryder.]

Books :: 2015 Permafrost Prize Series Award

scavengers becky hagenstonBecky Hagenston brought home the 2015 Permafrost Prize Series Award with her story collection Scavengers, chosen from nearly 150 entries. As the winner, Hagenston saw her collection (her third) published by the University of Alaska Press this year in both paperback and digital editions.

From the publisher’s website:

These are the people and situations—where the familiar and bizarre intermix—that animate Becky Hagenston’s stories in Scavengers. From Mississippi to Arizona to Russia, characters find themselves faced with a choice: make sense of the past, or run from it. But Hagenston reminds us that even running can never be pure—so which parts of your past do you decide to hold on to?

An unforgettable read, Scavengers is now available.

Alaska Quarterly Review on Poems and Painting

peggy schumakerThe spring/summer 2016 issue of Alaska Quarterly Review includes the special feature “Sparks: A Conversation in Poems and Paintings” with Poet Peggy Shumaker [pictured] and Artist Kes Woodward.

From the Introduction: “This collaboration began when two friends decided to share an artistic conversation. Kes Woodward asked Peggy Shumaker to write a poem, and he created a painting in response to it. Peggy wrote in response, Kes painted in response, again and again. As each piece added its vividness to the conversation, both writer and artist found they were responding not just to the last piece, bu to the entire body of work. The work has taken many unpredictable and startling turns, adding to the intensity of this third art – an art that’s not language alone, not purely painting, but the bonding of the two.”

Briar Cliff Review Contest Winners

briar cliff reviewVolume 26 of The Briar Cliff Review includes the winning entries from their 2015 annual writing contest.

Poetry Winner
“Midwinter, My Mother” by Laura Apol

Fiction Winner
“Thirty and Out” by S.J. MacLean

Nonfiction Winner
“On Kindness” by Laura S. Distelheim

In addition to publication in the gorgeous full-size format print copy – which includes full color art  throughout – winners receive $1000 each. This annual contest runs from August 1 – November 1 of each year.

Have Book Will Travel

have book will travelYou know you’ve got a great idea when you create something that makes others say, “IT’S ABOUT TIME SOMEONE DID THAT!”

Founded by Author and Editor Neil Aitken, Have Book, Will Travel is a searchable database of authors willing to travel, reading series currently seeking guest writers, and venues available for booking events. “Our goal” writes Aitken, “is to develop Have Book Will Travel into a valuable online resource that will make the task of planning a reading or a book tour easier and less confusing for all involved. We also encourage instructors and schools where budgets might be too tight to fly an author in for a reading, to consider bringing an author in via Skype for a classroom discussion or a video conference reading. By creating a central repository of information, we seek to simplify the search and to make more authors available to more venues.”

Authors can add themselves to the database, as can hosts of reading series and managers of bookstores, galleries, libraries, theatres, restaurants, or other types of performance venues for authors. On the flip side, users can search or browse the full lists of authors, series, and venues or search each by state and province in Canada. Some of these links don’t have much or anything just yet, which means there’s room for you to get in there and “add”! Sign up authors, series and venues!

Booth – 2016

Booth never fails to present a beautiful product, and Issue 9 is no exception. In fact, it’s such a beautifully produced issue, I wrote notes about it in a separate journal, unable to bring myself to scribble in the margins and ruin a good thing. A green color scheme starts on the cover with art by Jillian Nickell—a house on a hill that’s actually a sleeping creature’s back—and carries through the entire issue. Even the inside cover flaps are donned with colorful art. Luckily, the editors put in just as much care in their writing selections, so readers guilty of judging books by covers will not be disappointed when they read the work this issue of Booth holds.

Continue reading “Booth – 2016”

Sonic Boom – April 2016

Sonic Boom is a journal “for writing that explodes.” Even the cover art of the April 2016 issue explodes with rich colored graffiti, a photograph by Kyle Hemmings. Issues start out in the Poetry Shack, then move on to Paper Lanterns—a section for haiku, tanka, senryu, and other Japanese forms—before continuing on to prose, art, and an interview, with 64 total contributors found in this issue alone.

Continue reading “Sonic Boom – April 2016”

Typoetic.us – 2015

Typoetic.us is a play on words, on the url and its own name (Typoeticus: ending like so many Greek names with the -ticus), and just a downright playful poetry journal. But don’t take playful to mean light and frivolous; rather, playful in the way that us literarians appreciate. The featured writers skillfully play with language, sound, emotion, and experience, and as readers, we are invited along as playmates. With the variety of styles the editorial sense includes, no one is left out.

Continue reading “Typoetic.us – 2015”

CALYX – Fall 2015

Since 1976, CALYX has published art and literature by women. Senior editor Brenna Crotty describes this issue as a “search for meaning and identity.” More specifically, this issue resembles Cindy Cotner’s cover art, “Becoming.” The contributors examine how we become who we are, even as we grapple with the fact that often there is no recipe and no completion. Becoming is a continuous process.

Continue reading “CALYX – Fall 2015”

Prairie Schooner – Winter 2015

NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB, Premier League, Bundesliga, La Liga—if you are reading or dare say, published in Prairie Schooner’s Winter 2015, then you’re playing in the big leagues; say good-bye to the minors, enjoy your box-seats, and greet Natalie Diaz as the guest commissioner.

Continue reading “Prairie Schooner – Winter 2015”

Become an Official Teens’ Top Ten Book Group

Coming in August 2016, library staff may apply on behalf of their teen book groups for a chance to become one of fifteen Teens’ Top Ten official book groups with Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) of the American Library Association (ALA). The fifteen book groups will carry out a 2 year term, which will take place from January of 2017 through December 31, 2018. The official book groups are responsible for reading, submitting reviews, and nominating titles for the Teens’ Top Ten list.

Interested groups may sign up for updates about the application period here. Learn more about the book group project and eligibility requirements here.

The Teens’ Top Ten is a “teen choice” list, where teens nominate and choose their favorite books of the previous year. Nominators are members of teen book groups in fifteen school and public libraries around the country. Nominations are posted the Thursday of National Library Week.

School Library Research Journal Seeks Co-editor

The American Association of School Librarians (AASL), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), is seeking a Co-editor with experience in scholarly research and publishing for its online journal, School Library Research. Click here for a full position description. Qualifications include PhD, EdD, or equivalent terminal degree and tenure or tenure-track faculty status at a college or university. Applications are due June 6, 2016.

Nominate Top Teen Titles

The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) of the American Library Association (ALA) has announced that teens aged 12-18 can now nominate their favorite titles to be considered as a 2017 Teens’ Top Ten nominee via the public nomination form.

In previous years, nominations were limited to the official Teens’ Top Ten book groups while the voting process for the official “top ten” titles was open to the public. In efforts to ensure that the “top ten” better reflect the opinions of teens everywhere, nominations for the preliminary round of nominees is open to the public. Book title nominations submitted in the current year will be used for consideration of the following year’s list of nominees. Teens can submit a book title now through December 31, 2016 to be included in the pool of the 2017 nominee candidates. For books to be eligible for consideration, they must be published between January 1– December 31, 2016.

Submit a suggested title via the public nomination form here.

Black Warrior Review 11th Annual Contest Winners

black warrior reviewThe Spring/Summer 2016 issue of Black Warrior Review features the winners of the publication’s 11th Annual Contest in Prose, Poetry, and Nonfiction. Each winner received $1,000 and publication; each runner-up received $100.

Fiction judge Alissa Nutting selected “The Twins” by Jill Rosenberg as the winner and “Fellowship” by Kimberly Parsons as the runner up.

Poetry judge Heather Christle selected “b careful” by Mark Baumer as the winner and “Wolfmoon” by Mary-Alice Daniel as the runner-up.

Nonfiction judge Mary Roach selected “Huron River Drive” by Will McGrath as the winner and “Three Great Lyric Passages” by Hugh Martin as the runner up.

Judges’ comments on the winning works and a full list of all the finalists can be found here.

Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week

crazyhorse 89Still Life with Apple by David Harrison is a rich oil on canvas acquired for the Spring 2016 issue of Crazyhorse, which also includes the winners of their Crazy-shorts! Short-Short Fiction Contest.
sarah katharina kayssI liked this slightly dizzying photo on the cover of Big Muddy: A Journal of the Mississippi River Valley. Credit goes to German photographer Sarah Katharina Kayß, whose work provides unique perspectives on architecture.
colorado reviewI want to believe it is the Blue Bird of Happiness that adorns the Spring 2016 cover of Colorado Review [no photo credit given].

The Bellingham Review 2015 Contest Winners

bellingham reviewThe Spring 2016 issue of The Bellingham Review features their 2015 literary contest winners.

Contest judge Bruce Beasley selected Ming Lauren Holden’s poem, “For My Aspirated,” as the recipient of the 49th Parallel Award for Poetry. Beasley said the poem “stunned me every time I reread it for its collision of mystery and absolute clarity . . . its insistent repetitions and piled-on rhetorical questions pounding against the unplumbable mysteries of loss.”

Eric Roe’s short story, “Notes From Lazarus,” earned the Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction. Contest judge Kristiana Kahakauwila called the story, “a lovely meditation on love, devotion, and hope . . . finely crafted and controlled but never overwrought.”

S. Paola Antonetta, contest judge for the Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction, described the pleasures of reading Leigh Claire Schmiddli’s work: “‘This Sonata, into the third movement’ is an essay that puns deeply to get at the deep truths of all those ways in which language, like life, evades our meanings for it. Divided, like a musical piece, into movements, ‘This Sonata’ evokes movement itself in all its forms . . . Piercingly lyric, haunting in its details.”

Books :: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

sir gawain green knight john ridlandForthcoming from Able Muse Press in August 2016 is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a new Modern English translation by John Ridland. Advance praise calls this edition one of the most readable and complete translations of the classic tale. Illustrations by Stephen Luke are found inside the pages, and provide the front and back cover art, the cover design similar to that of an old fairytale storybook.

A great addition to classic collections, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is now available for preorder from Able Muse Press.

No: a journal of the arts – 2005

No is more than a literary magazine; it is a journal of the arts. That lofty subtitle is not just a marketing ploy. No really does bring the literary magazine to the level of art form. It is so well put together it succeeds as a discreet collection of poems and as a unified whole. Beautifully bound, this creative cornucopia is overflowing with the smartest, edgiest, and most provocative poetry. This issue heavily features Marjorie Welsh’s poetry and painting, including the book-length “From Dedicated To,” which acts as a kind of book-within-a-journal in this case. Continue reading “No: a journal of the arts – 2005”

Pool – 2005

“For genius, at least where poetry is concerned, consists precisely in being faithful to freedom,” Dean Young quotes from surrealist poet Yves Bonnefoy in the latest issue of POOL. Although this quote comes from Amy Newlove Schroeder’s interview with Young in the back pages of POOL, it might as well be the magazine’s credo. From the Natasha Sajé’s prose poem “B” to Jeff Chang’s “Things to Forget”—“Under the skin is another layer. / We call this baby skin. // Under a baby’s skin, / snowflakes.”

Continue reading “Pool – 2005”

The Greensboro Review – Spring 2003

Spring is The Greensboro Review’s contest issue and the prize winning story, “The Cornfield” by Ann Stewart Hendry, and prize winning poem, “Poem from Which Wolves Were Banished,” by Jeanne Marie Beaumont, are indeed exemplary. Hendry’s story of the ruin of a farm as a result of foot-and-mouth disease on a neighbor’s property is beautifully written, old-fashioned in some senses (a pleasingly traditional story), much like the family farm itself.

Continue reading “The Greensboro Review – Spring 2003”

Colorado Review – Summer 2003

This last issue to be edited by David Milofsky (“…it’s important to know when to write the conclusion…”) is a study in contrasts. For the most part, the fiction is plainspoken, colloquial, and of the moment. The poetry, on the other hand, tends toward the abstract, fragmented, and difficult, with marvelous syntactical configurations in poems both long and short.

Continue reading “Colorado Review – Summer 2003”

Descant – Winter 2003

This Canadian review is separated into sections titled “Up the Down Staircase,” “Stone Games,” “Mask in Flight,” “In Fall/Forest Garden, Book, and Prison,” Stories From the Water Glass,” and “Strange Honeymoons.” The section titles are as lyric (and sometimes as obscure) as the poetry, fiction, essays and art contained within. The weirdly haunting short fiction “Bloodline” by Janette Platana is a standout piece, as is the poem “Babies in the Eyes” written by Wang Shunjian and translated by Ouyang Yu. Continue reading “Descant – Winter 2003”

The Antioch Review – Winter 2004

Judith Hall, the influential poetry editor of this esteemed literary journal, should be congratulated for producing one of the best issues of “The Antioch Review” that I’ve read in a long time. This special all-poetry issue, subtitled “What to Read, What to Praise,” contains, contrary to what you might believe from the cover, more than just poetry.

Continue reading “The Antioch Review – Winter 2004”

New Letters – 2003

Editor Robert Stewart’s interview with Renée Stout — reproductions of her mixed media assemblages, paintings, and sculptures appear on the cover and on sixteen pages within — is reason enough to look at this issue, but, not the only reason. Poems by Sherman Alexie, Simon Perchik, Diana O’Hehir, short fiction by Lance Olsen, and essays by Janet Burroway, and Jodi Varon make spending time with the most recent New Letters especially worthwhile.

Continue reading “New Letters – 2003”

The Gettysburg Review – Autumn 2003

The Gettysburg Review is a consistently beautiful literary magazine. Distinctive art work grace its cover and internal gallery, and it has a sensual “feel good” quality. The Review continually selects works of fiction, essay, and poetry which make you sigh. This issue does not disappoint, although the art work—desolate industrial Manhattan landscapes by Andrew Lenaghan—can best be appreciated after reading the insightful commentary by Molly Hutton.

Continue reading “The Gettysburg Review – Autumn 2003”

River Styx – 2003

In the “Route 66” issue, River Styx succeeds in its “homage to that lingering spirit of the road” with poems (by Gaylord Brewer, Walt McDonald, Nancy Krygowski, Rafael Campo, among others), short fiction, essays, illustrations and photography. These lively pieces concentrate on the vast subject matter encountered during automobile travel around the United States. 

Continue reading “River Styx – 2003”

Five Points – 2003

The quiet, simple beauty of Paula Eubanks’ black and white photographs featured in this issue tells you all you need to know about the fiction you’ll find here. These are high-quality stories, told in clear, confident, but unadorned prose. This issue opens with “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” by Alice Hoffman, with strongly depicted characters and a keen sense of place: “I could place a single blade of eelgrass between my fingers and whistle so loudly the oysters buried in the mud would spit at us.” In “An Only Child,” Julia Lamb Stemple gives us a heartbreaking look at a boy’s ambivalence towards growing up: “He wanted to hold himself close to [his babysitter] again but thought that she didn’t want him to, and something seemed to come loose inside him. He looked over at the triangle of shadow between the ficus and the entertainment center where he had been hiding and saw that she must have known he was there all the time.”

Continue reading “Five Points – 2003”

Shenandoah – Fall 2003

Civil war buffs will particularly enjoy this Fall 2003 issue of Shenandoah as it features a portfolio of twenty-three poems about the Civil War. It also showcases nonfiction, short fiction, poetry, and book reviews; many of the pieces have in common a sense of restraint, almost an old-fashioned polite reserve.

Work here is on the formal rather than the experimental side. I enjoyed Paul Zimmer’s amusing nonfiction piece “The Commissioner of Paper Football” and Mark Doty’s lyrical poem “Fire to Fire,” which begins:  “All smolder and oxblood, / these flowerheads, / flames of August: / …the paired goldfinches / come swerving quick / on the branching towers, // so the blooms / sway with the heft / of hungers…”

Overall a satisfying read, especially those who like Southern regional flavor; there were quite a few contributors from the state of Virginia and its environs. One note for fans: the editor writes that this journal will now be appearing three times a year instead of four.

[Shenandoah, Washington and Lee University, Troubadour Theater, 2nd Floor, Box W, Lexington, VA, 24450-0303. shenandoahliterary.org]

Shenandoah Volume 53 Number 3, Fall 2003 reviewed by Jeannine Hall Gailey

The Bitter Oleander – Summer 2003

This issue of The Bitter Oleander is heavy on translations and features an interview with writer and editor Nicomedes Suárez-Araúz as well as a selection of his poetry, which, overall, provides an international flavor to the collection. The translations in this issue are accompanied by the pieces printed in their original languages, from German to Spanish to Swedish, which I think adds nuances to the reading that otherwise might not be caught.

Continue reading “The Bitter Oleander – Summer 2003”

88 – October 2003

This new-ish journal (only on its third issue) has already generated lots of positive talk among poetry insiders and continues to showcase a wide variety of writers: experimental, traditional, narrative, lyric – name a style, and you’ll probably find it in here. A feeling of whimsy and humor pervades this issue; in the editor’s notes, Ian Randall Wilson confides that they used a “Dada” method to organize the submissions. But the felicitous juxtapositions created work in the reader’s favor.

Continue reading “88 – October 2003”

The Malahat Review 2016 Open Season Awards

malahat 194Winning entries for the 2106 Malahat Review Open Season Awards can be read in the newest issue (#194). Interviews with each of the winning authors can be found on The Malahat Review website.

Open Season Award for Poetry Winner
John Pass, “Margined Burying Beetle”

Open Season Award for Fiction Winner
Katherine Magyarody, “Goldhawk”

Open Season Award for Creative Nonfiction Winner
Jennifer Williamson, “Light Year”

The Malahat Review, Canada’s premier literary magazine, invites entries from Canadian, American, and overseas authors for their annual Open Season Awards, with a prize of $1500 in each of three marquee categories: poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction.

Glimmer Train January/February 2016 Short Story Award for New Writers

alex jarosGlimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their 2016 January/February 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 next Short Story Award competition is open now: Short Story Award for New Writers. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.

1st place goes to Alex Jaros of Kansas City, MO [pictured], who wins $2500 for “The Southwest Chief.” His story will be published in Issue 99 of Glimmer Train Stories.

2nd place goes to Gabriel Houck of Lincoln, NE, for “A Working Theory of Stellar Collapse.” His story will also be published in an upcoming issue of Glimmer Train, increasing his prize from $500 to $700.

3rd place goes to Sonia Feigelson of Brooklyn, NY. She wins $300 for “Easy, Exotic.”

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

Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week

three elements reviewBenjamin Duke’s Home Again, Home Again fills the front and back covers of the Spring 2016 (#10) issue of 3 Elements Literary Review, an online publication that challenges writers and readers alike with issues themed with three elements. Spring’s elements are Measure, Cleave, and Sliver.
apple valley review spring 2016Taking the old and making it new again is this spring issue of the online Apple Valley Review, which features cover artwork: “Cabin in the Woods, North Conway, New Hampshire,” 1848, oil on canvas by Thomas Cole.
michigan quarterly reviewSix Million is the photograph by Conor MacNeill on the cover of Winter 2016 Michigan Quarterly Review. It was taken in Berlin at the Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas – the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, and is companion to the opening essay by Philip Beidler, “This Way to the Führerbunker: Gertrud-Kolmar-Straße, Berlin, Mitte.”

Catherine Breese Davis

The final paragraph in The Unsung Masters Series book Catherine Breese Davis: On the Life and Work of an American Master reprints her 1996 journal entry. After years of trying to publish a book: “[ . . . ] sometimes when I get exasperated with all this, I think the poems will all end in a black hole. I certainly don’t want to have a posthumous book, but it may come to that.”

Continue reading “Catherine Breese Davis”

Contrary Motion

Contrapuntal motion is the general movement of two melodic lines with respect to one another. There are few variations within contrapuntal, being parallel, similar, oblique and finally, Contrary. Andy Mozina, ever the social dissident, has produced a work that moves in many different directions. It manages a solidarity that many strive to achieve. Mozina has a voice that speaks easily of the dark and laughs until it aches. It yearns towards Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift, but it is swift in the manner of an iPhone. The ease at which the language flows in Andy’s work is one of the highest selling points. The social constructions that he works are just a simple perk and by product of reading a great dark comedy.

Continue reading “Contrary Motion”

Come In Alone

I hate to focus so much on form, but in this review of Anselm Berrigan’s Come In Alone, form will take center stage. Or more accurately: form will frame the way we encounter Berrigan’s electric and vocally driven sensibilities. Because the very first thing you will notice when you open this book is the simple but profoundly innovative design, which runs all of the text as a border around an otherwise empty page. (You can look at sample pages here at the publisher’s website.)

Continue reading “Come In Alone”

Books :: The Inklings Coloring Book

inklings coloring bookIf you haven’t joined the adult coloring book bandwagon yet, now is a great time to hop on. Black Squirrel Books, an imprint of The Kent State University Press, released a new coloring book last month. The Inklings Coloring Book—with illustrations by fantasy illustrator James A. Owen—features 15 line drawings inspired by the works of Oxford’s famous Inklings.

Inside, J. R. R. Tolkien has tea, Christopher Tolkien stands outside the Tolkien Home, Charles Williams is at Oxford, and these illustrations are all mixed in with dragons, dwarves, elves, and more, with the Bandersnatch hidden in many of the images.

Fans of fantasy literature can take a break from their latest adventure and relax with some fantastical coloring with The Inklings Coloring Book, available now.

Bellevue Literary Review 2016 Prize Winners

bellevue literary review spring 2016The Spring issue of Bellevue Literary Journal features the winners of their 2016 BLR prizes:

Goldenberg Prize for Fiction judged by Paul Harding
Winner: “The Foreign Cinema” by Lauren Alwan
Honorable Mentions: “Are You Having Suicidal Thoughts?” by John Noonan, and “First Child, Second Place” by Marylin Warner

Felice Buckvar Prize for Nonfiction judged by Mark Vonnegu
Winner: “Askew” by Esther K. Willison
Honorable Mention: “A Member of the Family” by Morgan Smith

Marica and Jan Vilcek Prize for Poetry judged by Ada Limón
Winner: “The Problem With Anatomical Thinking—” by Meridian Johnson
Honorable Mention: “The Interview” by Kathryn Starbuck

Daniel Liebowitz Prize for Student Writing
Winner: “The Lump” by Susanna Nguy

Uruguay Poet Idea Vilariño

vilarinoPoet Lore Spring/Summer 2016 features Jesse Lee Kercheval’s translation of Uruguay poet Idea Vilariño. In her introduction, Kercheval writes of Vilariño’s book-length work, Poem de amor, “her own Leave of Grass. . . stands as a testament to both the necessity and the impossibility of love in this world, especially for a passionate, independent woman determined to speak with her own voice.” Kercheval adds, “I believe it is important for English-speaking poets and poetry readers in general to have access to work, and am delighted to this selection of poems – in both Spanish and English – in Poet Lore. I hope all of Poemas de amor will soon be available in translation.” Several of the works are available in English on the Poet Lore website. A Guest begins:

You’re not mine
you’re not here
in my life
at my side
you don’t eat at my table
or laugh or sing
or live for me.

Southeast Review 2015 Contest Winners

southeast reviewThe Southeast Review spring issue (34.1) is chock-full of finalists and winning contest entries from their 2015 season.

World’s Best Short-Short Story Contest
Judged by Robert Olen Butler

Winner:
C. A. Kaufman, “Akron, Ohio: 1933”

Finalists:
Amina Gautier, “Thankful Chinese”
Lewis Holt, “Manliness”
Ashton Russell, “We Don’t Talk About Ifs”
Ashley Shelby, “Liberation: Kuwait”
Michaella A. Thornton, “Man Lace”

SER Gearhart Poetry Contest
Judged by David Kirby

Winner:
Carolyn Moore, “The Teen Romances Her Razor”

Finalists:
Sarah Gordon, “Creases, Folds”
Tom Kelly, “Funeral Glam”
Rebecca Lauren, “Elegy for a Band Mother”
Ralph Sneeden, “Contrapunctus (#2)”
Arne Weingart, “Piecework”

SER Narrative Nonfiction Contest
Judged by Bob Shacochis

Winner:
Will McGrath, “Death of the Virgin”

Finalists:
Heather Corrigan, “Widmarked”
A. Sandosharaj, “Dead Bird Stories for Nonbelievers”

Publishing Triangle Honors Best LGBT Writing of 2015

eloise klein healyThe 28th annual Publishing Triangle Awards were presented on April 21, 2016.

Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement
Eloise Klein Healy [pictured]

The Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction
Winner: A Poet of the Invisible World by Michael Golding (Picador)

Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature
Winner: The Middle Notebookes by Nathanaël (Nightboat Books)

Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction
Winner: One Hundred Days of Rain by Carellin Brooks (BookThug)

The Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction
Winner: “No One Helped”: Kitty Genovese, New York City, and the Myth of Urban Apathy by Marcia M. Gallo (Cornell University Press)

The Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction
Winners [tie]:
Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage by Barney Frank (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
It’s Not Over: Getting Beyond Tolerance, Defeating Homophobia, and Winning True Equality by Michelangelo Signorile (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

The Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry
Winner: Chord by Rick Barot (Sarabande Books)

The Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry
Winner: No Confession, No Mass by Jennifer Perrine (University of Nebraska Press)

For a full list of finalists and winners, visit the Publishing Triangle Awards website.

Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week

macguffin winter 2016G. Davis Cathcart is the artist behind this sugar-crazed untitled work of a young man/boy enjoying his morning dose of Sugar Pops on the Winter 2016 cover of The MacGuffin.
green mountains reviewAnother comic cover on Green Mountains Review (v29 n1) is an illustration by Tim Mayer from OldGuy: Superhero. Selections of both poetry and images from the illustrated chapbook by William Trowbridge are featured within the issue.

Chinua Achebe Symposium

massachusetts review spring 2016Chinua Achebe fans: You’re going to want the newest issue of The Massachusetts Review (v.LVII, n.1; Spring 2016) “A Gathering in Honor of Chinua Achebe” on the front cover doesn’t quite convey the powerhouse of essays included within. The editor’s note gives more specific context: “In our Spring issue the Massachusetts Review is honored to feature the contributions to a recent symposium held at the University of Massachusetts Amherst on October 14 and 15, 2015. ‘Forty Years After: Chinua Achebe and Africa in the Global Imagination’ was hosted by the university’s Interdisciplinary Studies Institute . . .” and included physician-executive Dr. Chidi Achebe (third son of Chinua and Christie Achebe), Johnnetta Betsch Cole, Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, Denja Abdullahi, Jule Chametzky, Caryl Phillips, Okey Ndibe, Chika Unigwe, Chuma Nwokolo, Maaza Mengiste, and Achille Mbembe. Each of their contributions are included in this issue along with the originating essay, “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” by Chinua Achebe.