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In Greek mythology, Persephone is the daughter of Zeus and the harvest goddess Demeter. As a young girl, while alone picking flowers in a field, Persephone is abducted by Hades, ruler of the underworld and brother of Zeus. As this version of the story goes, Hades makes Persephone queen of the underworld where she spends half the year; the other half, she returns to be with her mother above ground. Among her many symbols, Persephone is considered the protector of young girls.

Persephone’s Daughters is a quarterly print and digital publication of poetry, prose, and art that embraces and creates a space for this next generation of powerful protectors of women. Founder and Editor in Chief Meggie Royer says, “Our mission for creating this magazine is to empower female survivors of abuse who often do not get to see themselves, or other women who have endured similar experiences, represented in literary magazines. Having already been stripped of their voices through assault and abuse, we cannot and will not allow these women’s voices to be stripped away a second time within the literary community.”

As such, Royer says readers coming to the publication can expect to find “poetry, prose, and art about survival, about the aftermath of all kinds of abuse and degradation, including (especially) the healing. Each issue of Persephone’s Daughters is centered around survivors of abuse and the various ways they cope through their art.”

The first issue packs in over 80 contributors’ works, including art by Haele Wolfe, Kathie Rogers, and Emily Iannarilli, prose by Mitzi Luna, Olivia Sanders, Milly Hill, and Shirin Choudhary, and poetry by Hannah Hamilton, Schuyler Peck, and Jane Werntz. Interviews with Amanda Oaks, Yasmin Belkhyr, and Clementine von Radics are also featured.

Persephone’s Daughters has an incredible staff, including dozens of readers and art evaluators, tech and social media assistants, managing editors and submissions managers. Among them are Senior Editor of Prose Jessica Therese, Senior Editor of Poetry Ashe Vernon, and Senior Manager of Art Lora Mathis.

Writers and artists can expect that their works will be given much attention. According to Royer, all written submissions are read through and voted on by the publication’s large body of readers. Artworks are evaluated and voted on by the art evaluators. Writing submissions that pass the reading stage are next given suggested edits and revisions by the poetry and prose editors, who work closely with their authors “to ensure that the final product is something that makes everyone happy.”

Moving forward, Royer hopes that Persephone’s Daughters will expand its reach, “continuing to collect remarkable works of art from people all around the world with stories of their survival.”

Sprout Magazine is an online literary journal publishing social commentary, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, art, and media works by contributors 13-22 years old. While the temptation with such a name as “Sprout” is to clichéd metaphors about tender young growth, such commentary would not be reflective of this publication’s focus on real world social issues that demonstrate an awareness of the world from a variety of youth perspectives – bold, raw, and unafraid.

But indeed, the editors themselves choose the word “sprout” as a direct reference to the people they are trying to inspire: young creative minds who have taken root, but have not yet blossomed. As it says in their mission statement: “We are simply a plot of land for seeds to grow.” Also, the editors add “we like the color green.” Clearly, some humor is welcome as well.

The editors also belong to this community of young creative minds, each with their own already impressive backgrounds of achievement, perspective, and expertise. Founder and Editor-in-Chief Victoria Hou [pictured] is also the Editor-in-Chief of her high school’s print magazine and last year won Silver Key for Scholastic’s Art & Writing Competition, West Region. Co-managing Editor Sophie Govert is a recent graduate of the Iowa Young Writer’s Studio. Her work has been published in her high school’s literary magazine, she is secretary of her school’s Gender and Sexuality Alliance and a vocal part of the LGBTQ+ community. Co-managing Editor Joonho Jo is an alumnus of the Iowa Young Writer’s Studio. Outside of Sprout, he is a staff writer for the oldest preparatory school newspaper in the United States, The Exonian, and writing editor for Pendulum. He won a first place in the Letters About Literature contest in NH, sponsored by The Library of Congress.

It was their combined vision which inspired this literary start-up “to have a space where young minds can share their thoughts and opinions about society through creative expression. As Sprout’s mission is to broadcast social commentary, it was fitting to use an online literary platform – a site anyone can access – to showcase the raw art from our contributors.” As such, readers can expect to find “all kinds of meaningful and creative works, each addressing a social or political topic.”

Some recent published works include “On Christianity” (Avery B); “How to Avoid Getting Bullied in Middle School” (Joonho Jo); “The Political Science of Politics and Science” (Nina Tate); “Why You Shouldn’t Make Friends with Monsters” (Fenn De Bont); “Piedmont Needs Feminism”; poetry by Victoria Hou, Allie McGinnis, Mar C., Sophie Govert, Dylan Escobar, Michelle Wang, Kelsey K., Clara Eugene; and art by Catherine Zhao.

Sprout accepts “pretty much any form of creative media” year round, currently publishing a new piece once every two weeks. “Once a submission is received,” Sprout explained to NewPages, “all editors on the editorial board assess the work, seeing if it contains a message that is socially or politically driven. When deemed appropriate and relevant to our mission, the piece is reviewed under a critical lens for grammatical errors, inconsistencies in content, and strength of message.” Authors are then sent a url to their published work, which remains on the site.

Sprout editors hope to increase both their editorial staff and their submissions as they move forward. And, the editors note, they are also looking to compile pieces into an electronic issue for their readership.

Founded in 1977, the American Book Review is a nonprofit, internationally distributed publication that appears six times a year. ABR specializes in reviews of frequently neglected published works of fiction, poetry, and literary and cultural criticism from small, regional, university, ethnic, avant-garde, and women’s presses. ABR as a literary journal aims to project the sense of engagement that writers themselves feel about what is being published. It is edited and produced by writers for writers and the general public.

Recent issues have focused on American World Literature, Human Rights, Prison Writing, Comics, Critical Lives, The Color of Children’s Literature, Multilingual Literature, The Sixties at Fifty, Machine Writing, Letters, Sex Writing, Literary Activism, Metamodernism, Lost & Found, Post-Apocalyptic Literature, and Arab-American Literature.

American Book Review is produced by University of Houston-Victoria under the editorship of Dr. Jeffrey R. Di Leo, Editor and Publisher of ABR, and UHV Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences.

[Text from the ABR website.]

Literary Bohemian online literary magazine offers readers “travel-inspired writing,” which is a broad invitation to writers. Below is a sampling of three poems from the most recent issue, well worth the travel of clicking your mouse to go read the rest of each along with other poetry and prose.

Thessaloniki, Four a.m.
by Anastasia Vassos

Here they dance with arms raised above their heads
while their legs sink deep in the dusty earth, describing

the arc of some forgotten journey. The middle
of the body suspended like a question.

. . .

Night Becomes Day Over the West
by Megan Foley

These ridiculous, Christ-eyed hares,
projected once or twice through headlights,
wet the highways outside Helena, Montana.

. . .

Fear in Kenya
by Kristina Pfleegor
(after Dorianne Laux)

We were afraid that the ferry across the Mombasa Channel—rusty, overfilled—
would sink on our daily commute to school. We were afraid of growing up,
losing letters in the mail, broken tree branches, thorns in our feet, chiggers,
bees, sea urchins, jellyfish, sharks, riptides, spiders, spitting cobras,
tsetse flies, baboon bites, lice, electric fences, hippos, elephants sitting on our cars,
cockroaches flying into our eyes, geckos jumping off the walls.

The American Library Association is hosting the 90-minute online workshop What You Need to Know About Starting a Digitization Project on Wednesday, January 20, 2016 at 2:30pm Eastern/1:30pm Central/12:30pm Mountain/11:30am Pacific. Susanne Caro, former State Documents Librarian for New Mexico State Library, is the workshop instructor and will cover: Basic information and research needs; Collection selection; Where to find financial and human resources; Awareness of digital preservation needs; and The basics of copyright as it relates to digitization. This workshop could be of interest for literary magazines with print archives they’d like to consider digitizing to preserve and make avaiable to a new generation of readers.