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NewPages Blog

At the NewPages Blog readers and writers can catch up with their favorite literary and alternative magazines, independent and university presses, creative writing programs, and writing and literary events. Find new books, new issue announcements, contest winners, and so much more!

Southern California Review – 2013

All the bad, bad boys. You sort of wanted them to fraternize with each other—take the sociopath Greg from Erika Wurth’s short story “Freight Train” and introduce him to the Matthew/Luke character (trust me, they are merged in the story too) from Graeme Mullen’s memoir of creating a community art project, then place them under the suicidal tutelage of Ilya Leybovich’s eponymous ‘suicide artist’ flailing for good fortune in the Upper East Side. I wanted the characters to meet each other, and that is how you know that even the surreal ones are thoroughly alive. Continue reading “Southern California Review – 2013”

World Literature Today – March-April 2013

World Literature Today always packs an exciting table of contents, one that makes me want to spring up off my couch and catch the first international flight. I see the shining achievement of WLT in the editors’ ability to balance what is innovative and cutting edge with what is well established and relevant. Its unique content distinguishes it from most mainstream literary magazines, giving it vitality and spunk. This special double issue treats photography as a modern narrative form. Featuring twenty-one photographers, the spread beautifully illuminates many intersections between literature and photography. Continue reading “World Literature Today – March-April 2013”

Ghost Ocean Magazine – January 2013

Ghost Ocean Magazine publishes some of the best poetry and short prose; as far as long prose goes, they say, “Just don’t waste our time.” Published on their website in an easy to navigate and read format, the writing feels cohesive, like it really does belong together under one roof. Continue reading “Ghost Ocean Magazine – January 2013”

Writing Wanted: SWITCHEROO 2013

Writers, it’s time for Broadsided‘s annual Switcheroo, now in its tenth year!

Broadsided has posted two images online. Writers respond to the visual pieces in poetry or prose in a way that creates a relationship between art and literature and that fits with the Broadsided format. There are plenty of past years’ selections to see as well. The editors will read all submissions, and the winning entries (one for each piece of art) will be published on May 1, 2013 as a Broadsided collaboration.

Deadline: April 15, 2013.

Kaleidoscope Goes Digital

In the editor’s note in Kaleidoscope‘s Issue 66, Gail Willmott announces that the magazine has been given two choices: go online only, or cease publication. There has been a whole-hearted decision to make it go digital. “To be honest,” she writes, “I have mixed feelings about this transition. For me part of the joy of completing each issue of the magazine has been holding the tangible, finished product in my hands.” However, we she found out the ultimatum, she chose to continue the magazine. “In truth there will be many positive developments as Kaleidoscope goes online. First, many more people will have access . . . Second, readers will be able to view all of the artwork in color rather than in black and white as is now the case . . . Third, it is my hope that without the cost of printing, there may soon come a time when we will not be strictly limited to 64 pages, which means making more of the excellent work of our contributors available to a much wider audience.” She wishes that readers will continue to read the magazine as it transitions to a digital form.

This current issue, themed “Significant Relationships,” features Janeen McGuire’s “One Blue Eye,” Peter L. Pingerelli’s “Dart Frogs and Love,” Cynthia Lim’s “The Gum-Chewing Notary,” and more.

Consequence Prize in Poetry

Consequence features the winner of their prize for poetry in Volume 5. Selected by the judge Fred Marchant, Michelle Bonczek won for her poem “Aria.” Here is a small section of the poem:

I am reading this to you from a stage,
from a bathtub full of mineral salt, from a canoe

lost in the Pacific like a paperclip
holding a death certificate. I am reading this from a drop

of water, a sand speck sunk
to the bottom, a little island dome.

We are on Jupiter’s smallest moon, in a poppy,
in a bean field. We are sunflowers and a herd of cows.

This is a field of vision. It grew long before me, before
you. Before I walked for the last time

to the rail of my grandfather’s bed, away
for the first time from the rail of my daughter’s crib.

You can view the rest of the poem online here, or in Volume 5. The finalists include Jared Coffin for “Hollandia,” Dawn McGuire for “After Finding a Firefighter’s Ax at the Thrift Store,” Wesley Rothman for “White Flag,” and Danielle Sellars for “Thoughts From an Army Girlfriend.” The rest of the issue includes the work of David Abrams, Andrew Barlow, Stephen Dau, Bruce Felming, Peter Balakian, Martha Collins, Lee Sharkey, Paul Wasserman, and more.

Birmingham Poetry Review’s 25th Birthday

Birmingham Poetry Review celebrates 25 years with its Spring 2013 issue. It is a hefty issue with poets Adcock, Adkison, Ager, Anderson, Asekoff, Balbo, Brachman, Brewer, Collins, Davidson, Dawson, C. Doyle, J. Doyle, Dubrow, Emerson, Fabrizio, Fagan, Foster, Gottlieb-Miller, Hardin, Hartsock, Hirsch, Jenike, Jerrell, Jordan, Kirby, Levitin, Logan, May, McCullough, McLoghlin, McRae, McVicker, Meek, Meitner, Mintz, and many, many more.

The featured poet, Claudia Emerson, shares her poems “Clearcut,” “Lightning,” “Third,” “Common House Sparrows at JFK’s International Terminal,” “Virginia Christian,” and “Apo
logue.” Following her poetry is an interview with Emerson, conducted by Susannah Mintz.

Anderbo Poetry Prize 2012

Anderbo.comhttp://anderbo.com/ announces the winner of their 2012 Poetry Prize, judged by Sidney Wade. The contest assistant was Charity Burns.

Winner
Margaux Griffith for “Apple Galette”

Honorable Mentions
Grace Marie Grafton for “Rising”
Leland James for “What God in This Forest Dwells”
Julie Stuckey for “The Student”

All of these pieces can be read online, here.

New Lit on the Block :: Zymbol

Zymbol is a new print magazine that publishes twice a year, in March and September, and welcomes all sorts of genres and forms. Editor Anne James says, “We’re happy to consider any genre or medium that the submitter feels belongs to, or shares a connection with, Symbolism or Surrealism. As an editor, I’d rather read three times as many submissions to find that amazing, description-defying piece than to miss out on seeing it because we’ve set our guidelines too strict.” However, because they are a print magazine, James says, “we can’t accommodate submissions of someone’s videotaped fire-eating homage to Salvador Dalí.”

In the issues you can expect to find a variety of writing. “We pride ourselves on the diversity of voices we publish,” says James, “and I don’t just mean in terms of demographics. We have everything from the whimsical to the downright sinister. Any reader who daydreams and questions reality can find a sense of camaraderie in the pages of Zymbol.”

The magazine gets its title from the way symbols are “the key in Symbolist and Surrealist works.” James says, “We wanted our name to pay homage to historical influences, while signaling a drive for the future, hence the ‘Z.’” James worked learning the industry at St. Petersburg Review with Elizabeth Hodges, “an amazing mentor and friend who showed [her] it’s still possible for an independent literary magazine to thrive.” James says that she feels there is a “vacancy in the world of art and literature for a publication that is both surreal and grounded in experience. Too much contemporary literature veers off into absurdity and flights of fancy, but what excites me is the absurd out of the commonplace, the magic and mystery in our minds and our realities.”

Along with James there is a student editor, Adria Holmes of Endicott College, along with Alex O’Fhailghigh, who has been helpful in defining the editorial focus, and Marta Ferrer, who helps with art submissions and helping recruit international contributors.

The first issue features art by Nuncio Casanova, Anastasia Hager, and Mette Norrie; an essay by Marta Ferrer Gómez; poetry by Carol Alexander, Flower Conroy, William Doreski, Lou Gallo, Anastasia Hager, Anne James, Natalie Kinsey, Anthony Madrid, Erin Lyndal Martin, Ben Nardolilli, Kevin O’Sullivan, Mary Ellen Phillips, Matt Schumacher, J.J. Steinfeld, Tim Suermondt, Allison Willard, and Bill Wolak; and fiction by Jennifer Hollie Bowles, Cary Groner, Zachary Kaplan-Moss, Larry Lefkowitz, Ilya Lyashevsky, John McCaffrey, Harry Posner, and Evan Morgan Williams.

While they are only available in print right now, they hope to develop an e-reader version as soon as possible. Along with that goal, they hope to “get bookstores and other venues enthusiastic about doing some wacky readings and performances, because there’s nothing like sharing an experience with a room full of people.”

Right now, they are looking for submissions that will match up with “what is shaping up to be a very dark and stormy Autumn/Winter issue.” James says this will be a nice contrast to the Spring/Summer issue. She advises that although they read year-round, submissions now through May have the best shot at getting into the next issue. They take submissions online through their website. But “if you have something crazy that the submissions manager won’t eat,” you can send it directly to James at [email protected].

NewPages Reviewers

NewPages is still looking to add a couple more reviewers for both book reviews and magazine reviews. If you are interested, please check out this page for more information. Then send a message to Kirsten, kirstenmcilvenna[at]newpageswork[dot]com for magazine reviews or to Holly at hollyzemsta[at]newpageswork[dot]com for book reviews. Please pass along this information to anyone you think may be interested.

Arc Poetry Magazine Staff Changes

The editor’s note in Arc Poetry Magazine announces a few changes in the editorial staff. Prose Editor Chris Jennings steps into his new role: “The title of prose editor may be new, but Arc has always had a ‘prose editor’ function usually handled by the Editor.” Additionally, former Coordinating Editor Katia Grubisic is thanked for her work and given a send-off. Jennings writes, “Those of you who know her know that she is tireless and professional, and we were proud to have her at the helm for the brief time we enjoyed the privilege. As with Anita Lahey and John Barton before her, we will take some solace in knowing that Katia the poet and writer will continue to participate in the Canadian poetry conversation.”

Stepping into her shoes is Robyn Jeffrey. Jennings says that “Robyn brings considerable experience in project coordination and organizational capacity to our operations, and we look forward to having her insight and talents on Arc‘s editorial team.”

Alaska Quarterly Review: Two Novellas

The Spring & Summer 2013 issue of Alaska Quarterly Review features a special section for the place of two novellas. Included in this section are Cary Holladay’s “The Army Disease” and Christie Hodgen’s “Mistakes I Made.”

The issue also includes fiction by Ben Brooks, Matt Carmichael, Patricia Schultheis, Peter Gordon, Ihab Hassan, Catherine Bussinger, Emily Mitchell; nonfiction by Anne Kaier, Edward Hower, Mary Koral, and Leslie Ullman; and poetry by Matthew Westbrook, Joan I. Siegel, Kim Farrar, Carol Edelstein, Deborah Brown, and many more.

Meat for Tea Anniversary

For seven years now, Meat for Tea has been putting forth issues. To celebrate, they have released a special “Lardo” issue, featuring the work of Micahel Alves, Elizabeth Macduffie, D. H. Yondernod, Meg Pokrass, Ben Bellizzi, Robert Joshua Mobley, John Sibley Williams, Gina Williams, Kirby Wright, Clare Haxby, David P. Miller, Loren Kantor, Richard E. Corrigan, John Lurie, Gina Marie Bernard, and many more. They also celebrate with creating a new style for the magazine: “Deciding it was time Meat for Tea grew a back bone, I have turned to a perfect bound format,” writes Meaty Gonzales, Editor-in-Chief.

National Poet Hunt

The most recent issue of The MacGuffin features the winner of the 17th National Poet Hunt: Sharron Singleton for “Like a scrap of Michigan sky.” Judge Dorianne Laux says that she was hooked after the first line, saying “already a place, already an image, a tone.” She says that, “This is a poem to hold in our hands, to sing out loud.”

The honorable mentions go to Sophia Rivkin for “Lido Island” and Kevin Griffin for “Melt,” also featured in this issue alongside Rik Barberi, Carrie Callaghan, Jorge Casuso, Barbara Crooker, Justin Daughtery, Marti Dodge, Taylor Dowd, Kathleen Founds, Deborah Kent, Kent Maynard, Billy Middleton, Rex Richards, and many more.

Happy National Poetry Month 2013!

From the Academy of American Poets:

It’s hard to believe that when the Academy of American Poets launched National Poetry Month in 1996, only a few hundred people participated. Today, it is the largest literary celebration in the world with special events taking place in thousands of schools, libraries, bookstores, and communities nationwide. Here are some ways to participate in National Poetry Month this year:

Sign up for Poem-A-Day, which delivers a new poem to your inbox every morning.

Spread the Word: Download the official 2013 National Poetry Month logo for promoting your poetry events this month. And, promote your events on our national Events Calendar.

Participate in Poem-in-Your-Pocket Day April 18.

Learn about what’s happening with poetry in your state by taking a looking at our poetry maps.

Or, consider one of these 30 Ways to Celebrate National Poetry Month in your community.

NaPoWriMo is Here!

NaPoWriMo, or National Poetry Writing Month, is an annual project in which participating poets attempt to write a poem a day for the month of April.

NaPoWriMo was founded in 2003, when poet Maureen Thorson decided to take up the challenge (modeled after NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month), and challenged other poets to join her. Since then, the number of participants has gotten larger every year, and many writers’ organizations, local, national and even international, organize NaPoWriMo activities.

Anyone can “join”NaPoWriMo by simply writing a poem a day for the month – no need to sign up or agree to anyone other than yourself. Participants with websites are invited to submit their site for listing, and if you want to organize your own NaPoWriMo events in your area, Thorson says: “There is no licensing process or fee for NaPoWriMo. If you want to organize a group to participate, that’s great! If you set up a website for your group, you can submit it to be listed on this site.”

THEMA’s 25th Anniversary

THEMA‘s Spring 2013 issue marks the magazine’s 25th anniversary. To celebrate, the theme is “White Wine Chilling,” and Editor Virginia Howard encourages you to “drink a toast to THEMA Literary Journal!”

What started as a game among friends in 1988 at a Chinese restaurant has now evolved into the popular themed magazine. “We would each write a story based on the fortunes printed in the fortune cookies received that day. We invited other literary friends to join us,” writes Howard. “This mental exercise turned out to be such a pleasure that it fueled our curiousity. How would other authors handle the same theme? And what about other unusual themes? . . . And how would various imaginations react to them? We had to know!”

Featured in this issue are D’Ann Gunn, Norbert Petsch, Dennis Trujillo, Corrine D’Italia, Debbie Okun Hill, Gary R. Hoffman, Lorraine Merrin, Marvin Thrasher, Sandra Storey, Elinor Davis, Susan Shaw Sailer, Norman Weddle, Ronald Edwin Lane, Judy Swann, J. F. Pierce, Stefanie Freele, James B. Nicola, and Suszanne Stuhaug,

Incarnadine

Mary Szybist’s second poetry collection, Incarnadine, traces the ordinary and the divine in well-lit poems engaged in lyrical narrative. Although initially read as quiet, introspective meditations, these poems claim larger historical ground through interactions with and dissolutions of male-centric texts, including those of Nabokov, George W. Bush, and Byrd, and well-known female figures. With strong representations of Biblical female figures that further complicate the lineage and significance of women, specifically the Virgin Mary, Incarnadine leads the reader through a nuanced interpretation of gender roles and expectations. Continue reading “Incarnadine”

The Hello Delay

Julie Choffel offers a warning at the start of The Hello Delay, winner of Fordham University Press’s 2012 Poets Out Loud prize: “my poetry has no camera.” Photographs tell stories; their tableaus create the “‘everyone crying’ scene” or the “‘everyone looks elsewhere’ scene” (“The Sorrows”). Still, in a photograph’s version of reality: “mud is paper mud / the sky has creases in it” (“The Rain Falls as a Cylinder”) or “the sand is never real sand, but some uncatapultable feeling of / sand” (“The Sorrows”). Besides a natural disconnect between the image and the physical object, photographs have their own contexts, back stories, and intrigues that make meaning depending on the beholder. When the speaker of “The Sorrows,” for instance, gazes at a photo of herself, she “can only see [her] own eyes / seeking their place” and not the whole of the composition. Choffel’s collection resists “easy combinations” and singular definitions. In fact, her photography metaphor informs how the collection thinks about language: exploratory, changeable, and exhilarating. Continue reading “The Hello Delay”

Swallowing the Sea

“This is a book about ambition,” Lee Upton writes in the first section (aptly titled “Ambition”) of Swallowing the Sea. It would seem that Upton’s own ambition with this book is to discuss writing as a writer, and yet the book does so much more. For anyone in love with writing, Swallowing the Sea is an homage to the delicate, painful, and (for some) necessary impulse to write. Upton explores the process of writing, the hurdles and frustrations along the way, and the fervor of being an avid reader, while employing personal anecdotes, literary criticisms, and poetical metaphors to make sense of writing’s place in our culture. Continue reading “Swallowing the Sea”

It Becomes You

Dobby Gibson’s newest collection, It Becomes You, is his third book of poetry. His poems remind me of Billy Collins or Mark Strand: conversational and witty with themes of nostalgia and doubt. At their best, they reflect the sharp humor of Auden, who makes tight lines appear effortlessly conversational. From W. H. Auden’s “The Unknown Citizen”: “Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd: / Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.” Gibson’s best poems aspire to this same kind of detached philosophical clarity. He generally succeeds, but without the formal aesthetic pleasure. Continue reading “It Becomes You”

American Dream Machine

Matthew Specktor’s new novel, American Dream Machine, is set in LA and spans the second half of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st. My mind has pop-ups when I hear about a book that takes place in LA—I think Chandler, Fante and Mosley, not to mention all those black-and-white noir films. Never having visited, I prefer to keep my perhaps faux-romantic ideas of this location rather than be disturbed by the actual reality of Los Angeles. So, I wondered, what will Specktor’s book add to my at-a-distance relationship to this fabled city? Continue reading “American Dream Machine”

Out Across the Nowhere

In her debut collection, Out Across the Nowhere, Amy Willoughby-Burle tells vast and vibrant stories (fourteen of them) in a scant (ninety-three) number of pages. Think bright and miniature, resembling the fireflies in her title story: “. . . like all the stars have left the sky to come roost in the tree limbs.” Think of their impact and largeness, and they make us feel that “We could swallow them and make little galaxies in our empty stomachs.” Continue reading “Out Across the Nowhere”

At the End of Life

The twenty-two essays in this collection were chosen from four hundred submissions in response to Lee Gutkind’s (editor of Creative Nonfiction literary magazine) call for essays on the subject of death. The book is a collaboration of Creative Nonfiction and the Jewish Healthcare Foundation. While it isn’t a book one would choose for entertainment or casual reading, it is an important one that offers an expansive view, from various perspectives, on how we deal with death and dying. Continue reading “At the End of Life”

A Displaced Person

A Displaced Person: The Later Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin is the much anticipated finish of the Chonkin trilogy, told through a curious and unexpected Absurdist literary frame for our Russian protagonist. The story of A Displaced Person is fantastical dark satire of a Stalin-era Soviet soldier who manages to blunder his way from one adventure to another. This story, however, is also a wonderfully powerful philosophic commentary on the struggle for meaning in the confusing, conflicted experiences of a Russian Everyman. This detached existentialism that surrounds Private Chonkin throughout the narrative allows the author the opportunity for caustic commentary on Russian and Soviet moralism. Continue reading “A Displaced Person”

In a World of Small Truths

Southern discomfort informs Ray Morrison’s short story collection In a World of Small Truths, yet the unease that permeates each story comes distinctly from the New South, nowhere near the traditional gothic trappings of Faulkner or O’Conner. Still, Morrison’s voice is that of an insider, often reflecting on a youth long gone, not unlike a more collective longing for those lost antebellum days. Continue reading “In a World of Small Truths”

If a Stranger Approaches You

In Laura Kasischke’s first collection of short stories, she grabs you from the beginning, making you catch hold of your breath in anticipation. And I mean from the very beginning. The first line of the first story (“Mona”) reads: “They’d all warned her not to snoop.” Already, we are just as curious as the mother in her teenage daughter’s bedroom. What will she find? And in addition, what will we, as readers, find between the pages? This collection speaks of the unknown. What is your daughter hiding from you? What are the lives like for the people in the houses you pass by each day? What will happen when you grow up and are no longer a child? What lies ahead of you after death? And yet, what we find isn’t necessarily answers to those questions. I found arresting images, ones that allow both the darkness and the light to live within the same text. Continue reading “If a Stranger Approaches You”

The Dinner

Dutch novelist Herman Koch’s The Dinner, a bestseller in Europe, is funny, intense and discussable for its morality. Two brothers and their wives meet at a topnotch Amsterdam restaurant to talk about their fifteen-year-old sons. One brother, Serge, is a politician, a shoo-in for prime minister, and the other, the narrator Paul, was a high school history teacher. At first the novel is funny due to Paul’s acerbic comments on the restaurant’s pretensions and his brother’s obvious love of being in the spotlight. But then when we learn of the crime perpetrated by Paul’s son Michel and Serge’s son Rick, and we learn more of Paul’s background, the book grips us with its surprises. Continue reading “The Dinner”

Percival Everett by Virgil Russell

Percival Everett’s narrative model is vacillating like our thoughts, changeable as our awareness that inhabits the present as we are ever forced to find meaning by telling ourselves what is in front of us. Upfront in Percival Everett by Virgil Russell, Everett constructs the perch from which the book is written: “language was a great failure or deceiver . . . that it could not be trusted” because the Ontological Argument for God’s existence was logically, but not factually, sound. “A=A,” a logical proposition, is not the same as “A is A,” pointing at existence. Once we are in the territory of “is,” the otherness of life as its own force enters, and with the acknowledged unreliability of language comes a different kind of narrative than the narrative forms we have acclimated to in the modern era. All the techniques of postmodern narrative, a merged narrator of at least seven voices, intertextuality using literature elements from more than two thousand years, the narrative looking at the narrative as it is being written, nonlinear time, mix of high and low subjects, and varied writing styles are used to give us a story pointing beyond language . . . and Everett does accomplish this. The postmodern techniques, as deranging as they are, take a backseat to the “heart of the matter.” Yet the techniques let us experience our struggle for the incomprehensible knot it is. Continue reading “Percival Everett by Virgil Russell”

A Disturbance in the Air

Michele Poulos’ debut poetry chapbook and winner of the 2012 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition, A Disturbance in the Air, embodies a meditative, emotive lyric in finely crafted poems that deal with the complexities of interpersonal relationships. In examining lives through a historical veil, various speakers narrate and reflect on historical events surrounding Greece and other places, prompting the dead to speak and even return. Continue reading “A Disturbance in the Air”

American Antiwar Poetry Examined

“Resisting Imperial Jouissance: The Transideological Line in Recent American Antiwar Poetry” by Dean Brink has been published in Volume 43, Number 1 /2013 of Canadian Review of American Studies: “This essay critically examines various strategies taken in the most compelling contemporary American antiwar poetry written against the occupation of Iraq. It finds both limitations, as many poets have succumbed to a postmodern distance from events, and brilliance, in poets who have discerned ways of eliciting hope in the aims of such poetry. Linda Hutcheon’s term transideological irony is used to show how many poets are complicit, in their irony, with rubrics of the dominant discourse such as ‘a nation at war.’ In light of Žižek’s Lacanian-Marxist formulation of jouissance, the imperial jouissance manifest in much poetry presented as thematically ‘antiwar’ is examined in terms of both successes and shortcomings.” The essay is available for purchase online as a PDF download.

The Antigonish Review Contest Winners

The Winter 2013 issue of The Antigonish Review features the winners of the Great Blue Heron Poetry Contest and the Sheldon Currie Fiction Contest.

Great Blue Heron Poetry Contest
First Prize: Charles P. R. Tisdale
Second Prize: Kim Trainor
Third Prize: Laura Legge

Sheldon Currie Fiction Contest
First Prize: Veronica Ross
Second Prize: Fred Annesley
Third Prize: Joan M. Baril

The issue also includes work from Jocko Benoit, Dwayne Brenna, Jan Conn, Mark Corkery, Mike Donaldson, Aloys Fleischmann, Michelle Glennie, Sean Howard & Mark Silverberg, Kevin Irie, Edward Lemond, Lisa McLean, Jean McNeil, Mark Puhlman, and Reynold Stone.

Naugatuck River Review 2013 Contest

Naugatuck River Review‘s Winter 2013 issue features the winners of their fourth annual Narrative Poetry Contest, judged by Pamela Uschuk.

First Prize
Diane Lockward “Original Sin”

Second Prize
Doug Ramspeck “Idle Signs”

Third Prize
Bianca Diaz “The Light in the Dark”

Finalists
Lauren K. Alleyne “Dear Christopher”
John Victor Anderson “El Lagarto”
Lana Hechtman Ayers “In My Dreams I Draw Circles But None Of Their Edges Touch”
Wendy Burbank “Frederick”
Judith Waller Carroll “Pas de Deux”
Beth Copeland “Blue Honey”
Maureen Tollman Flannery “Selling the Ranch”
Veronica Golos “China Town Fish Market, New York, Circa Unknown”
Paul Hostovsky “Del Nelmezzo”
Brenna LeMieux “On Mending”
Mary Leonard “Tel Aviv Sonnet”
Taylor Mali “What the Whispering Means”
Thomas R. Moore “Pinus Strobus”
Roger Pfingston “Divorce”
Gail Thomas “Flame”
Lauren Wolk “Wolf Hollow, Pennsylvania”
Lisa Wujnovich “Cynthia”

To view a complete list of the semi-finalists, please click here.

Poetry Trading Cards @ AWP

In addition to their twice annual, large-format (8.5×11) literary journal, Fact-Simile is now in their fourth year of publishing Poetry Trading Cards. Each card features a full-color front with a photograph of the poet and the poem printed on the back using traditional trading card stock. Each card comes in an archival quality plastic sleeve and can be purchased for 99 cents each or $10 for the year (+s/h). You can still subscribe now and get the “back issues” as well as receive monthly delivery for the remainder of the year.

I was thrilled when I learned that a number of the Trading Card Poets would be signing cards at the Fact-Simile table at AWP Boston. I’ve been a subscriber from the start, so picked out the cards, printed the signing schedule, and for three days, I haunted the Fact-Simile staff regularly throughout each day! I was their most obsessed fan, I’m sure of it, and was tolerated with kindness and humor each time I ran back and forth (several times to catch Hoa Nguyen, who in addition to signing cards was giving tarot readings in the aisle way).

My diligence paid off as I was able to meet and have cards signed by Charles Bernstein, Marcella Durand, K. Silem Mohammad, Hoa Nguyen, Jena Osman, Vanessa Place, Elizabeth Robinson, and Lewis Warsh. Huge thanks to Fact-Simile for creating and keeping this series going. It’s a treat to get one of these in the mail each month. And thanks for the signing, for obsessed fans like me it was a great opportunity!

Georgia Poets

Southern Poetry Review‘s new issue features Georgia Poets. In their original call for submissions, they were clear that they weren’t necessarily looking for work that addressed Georgia or the South, but instead should come from poets that were from Georgia or had a significant connection to it. “We wanted to see who was, so to speak, out there,” writes Co-Editor James Smith. “A few of the poems do, indeed, make passing reference to Georgia, and some of them, to a large extent, are “about” the South, but the reader must decide if the other poems carry any redolence of place. We decided not to arrange the issue, as we usually do, selecting a poem with which to lead off, one with which to end, and intimating connections along the way . . . but in an issue devoted to a particular group of poets, we wanted to be careful not to give the impression of ranking, so we chose the alphabetical approach and found nonetheless many interesting juxtapositions and groupings.”

So, in alphabetically order, the issue includes Rebecca Baggett, Coleman Barks, Beverly Burch, Kathryn Stripling Byer, George David Clark, Alfred Corn, Heather Cousins, Blanche Farley, Rupert Fike, Starkey Flythe Jr., Gregory Fraser, Alice Friman, Roberta George, Sarah Gordon, William Greenway, Linda Lee Harper, Gordon Johnston, Robert S. King, Nick McRae, Judson Mitcham, Eric Nelson, William L. Ramsey, Rosemary Royston, Anya Silver, Nancy Simpson, Charlie Smith, Matthew Buckley Smith, Ron Smith, R. T. Smith, A. E. Stallings, Memye Curtis Tucker, Austin Wilson, Edward Wilson, and William Wright.

Map Literary Print Issue

Map Literary, an online magazine, has just put out their second print issue, an anthology collection from the past year. Although it doesn’t include everything that was published online, it features the best of the best.

It features the work of Keith Newton, Nicholas Brown, Tina Brown Celona, Michelle Valois, Julia Cohen, Sam White, Joshua Ware, Dan Kaplan, Beth Couture, Paige Taggart, Craig Foltz, Patrick Swaney, Jim Daniels, Simon Perchik, Kirk Curnutt, Joe Lennon, and Joanna Clapps Herman.

American Literary Review Last Print Issue

If you love American Literary Review, you best get your hands on their current issue. It will be their last print issue. However, this doesn’t mean they are extinct! Starting with the Fall 2013 issue, the magazine will be featured exclusively online. “The necessity of change has taken us a little by surprise, although publications before us have taken to the ehter, due to economic circumstances and the attendant promise of a wider readership,” writes Editor Ann McCutchan. “And while we mourn the physical journal, we’re excited about the advantages of the new format.”

With the new format, the magazine can be offered for free—and who doesn’t love free—and will be able to fit in even more poems, stories, and essays, with a “substantially beefed-up book review section.”

McCutchan extends her gratitude to her editors and everyone that has worked with the magazine as well as to the readership. “Jim Lee imagined that if he built it, ‘they’ would come. Now after more than two decades, it’s fair to say that you’ve built it, with your writing and readership. Once more, thank you, and we’ll see you online.”

William Van Dyke Short Story Prize

Sponsored by The Van Dyke Family Charitable Foundation and judged by Mark Richard, the William Van Dyke Short Story Prize is featured in the newest issue from Ruminate. “It was a pleasure to read this year’s submissions,” writes Richard. “In one story, grief is made real in images of rain and through music. In another, a woman hopes to find healing from her childhood, trying to accept love from those who often fail her and from a God who never does. A person of faith begins to have doubts during the prolonged death of a loved one, the meaning of the suffering proving elusive. A man struggles to keep the contents of his mind from spilling out at the end of his life. Another person of faith desires to surrender unto death, but the will to survive is stronger.”

First Place
David Brendan Hopes: “Saturdays He Drove the Ford Pickup”

Second Place
Terrence Cheng: “In San Francisco”

Honorable Mention
Megan Malone: “Safekeeping”

Finalists
Daniel Casey: “RE: Sentencing”
Peter Court: “The Simple Art of Flight”
A.R. Gardner: “A Mother’s Legacy”
Lindsey Griffin: “Tenebrae”
Linda McCullough Moore: “What a Lifetime Is”
Alexandre Puttick: “The Fall”

Richards writes, “David Hopes’ ‘Saturdays He Drove the Ford Pickup’ spoke to me as a parable would, and I’m always inclined toward a parable. And on subsequent readings, it seemed a bit more layered than I originally thought. The things I first thought sentimental about the piece actually gave it ultimate poignancy.”

Seattle Poetry Panels

Seattle Poetry Panels invites you to “The State of Seattle Poetry” at 7 p.m. on March 24. “Founded by Greg Bem and Amber Nelson, Seattle Poetry Panels is a naturally occurring online phenomenon. For each panel, a Seattle poet is designated captain, gathers forces, and leads the charge on tough, in-depth investigations on any given subject related to poetry, Seattle, or Seattle poetry. These panels will take place in google hangout so anyone can watch from the comfort of their sofas and snuggies.”

The discussion will also be saved on YouTube to view it in the future. To attend the Google Hangout, please view the Facebook event invitation. Or you can directly email Greg at gregbem[at]gmail[dot]com or Amber at ambydexterous[at]gmail[dot]com.

NYC Literary Festival

For all of you in  NYC in April, there will be a Downtown Literary Festival hosted by McNally Jackson and Housing Works Bookstore Cafe. “The festival will take place at both bookstores simultaneously on Sunday, April 14, 2013, followed by a happy hour mingle at Housing Work Bookstore and an after-party at Pravda, featuring Russian literature–themed cocktails. The goal of DLF is to showcase the literature and writers of New York City. We will aim to reflect the diversity and creativity that characterizes downtown NYC with a day of the non-traditional events for which McNally Jackson and Housing Works Bookstore have become known.”

Kites by Robert Gibb

American Life in Poetry: Column 416
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

This kite-flying poem caught me right up and sent me flying as soon as Robert Gibb described those dimestore kites furled tighter than umbrellas, a perfect image. Gibb lives in Pennsylvania.

Kites

Come March we’d find them
In the five-and-dimes,
Furled tighter than umbrellas
About their slats, the air

In an undertow above us
Like weather on the maps.
We’d play out lines
Of kite string, tugging against

The bucking sideways flights.
Readied for assembly,
I’d arc the tensed keel of balsa
Into place against the crosspiece,

Feeling the paper snap
Taughtly as a sheet, then lift
The almost weightless body
Up to where it hauled me

Trolling into the winds—
Knotted bows like vertebrae
Flashing among fields
Of light. Why ruin it

By recalling the aftermaths?
Kites gone down in tatters,
Kites fraying like flotsam
From the tops of the trees.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2012 by Robert Gibb from his most recent book of poems, Sheet Music, Autumn House Press, 2012. Poem reprinted by permission of Robert Gibb and Autumn House Press. Introduction copyright © 2013 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Chinese Literature

Two current news pieces on literature in China – present and future:

The World has yet to See the Best of Chinese Literature by Samantha Kuok Leese in The Spectator (UK): “…it’s early days for modern Chinese literature…the issue must be understood in the context of the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. Mao Zedong’s atrocious campaigns all but shut down education, and left a frightening number of Chinese people illiterate. Writers in China are now suffering the aftereffects…”

The Future of the Novel in China published by the Guardian UK is an edited version of Li Er’s speech at the Edinburgh World Writers’ Conference 2012-2013, Beijing, translated by Alice Xin Liu. “China’s mass media-connected society is more complicated than novelists in the west could ever have imagined, requiring new forms of storytelling to define our subjective experience.” Full versions of this and all the speeches are available on the Edinburgh World Writers’ Conference website.

2012 Fiction Contest :: Passages North

Passages North’s newest issue (which I must say has a great cover) features the winners of their 2012 fiction contests.

Waasmode Fiction Prize, judged by Caitlin Horrocks
Winner
“We Are Here Because of a Horse” by Karin C. Davidson

Just Desserts Short-Short Fiction Prize, judged by Roxane Gay
Winner
“After the Flood the Captain of the Hamadryas Discovers a Madonna” by Traci Brimhall

Honorable Mentions
“Girl” by Nahal Jamir
“Dirty Girl” by Rochelle Hurt

The rest of the issue features features Kristin Abraham, John Azrak, Jenny Boully, Hans Burger, Christine Caulfield, Michelle Dove, Stefani Farris, Michael Filas, Toni Graham, Karen Hays, Rochelle Hurt, Brandon David Jennings, Hiram Larew, Sally Wen Mao, Roy Mash, Brenda Miller, Jill Osier, Elena Passarello, Emma Ramey, Susan Terris, Matthew Vollmer, Allen Woodman, and many more.

World Literature Today Photography Issue

The most recent, special double issue of World Literature Today features some amazing photography. “Why is World Literature Today, a literary magazine, publishing a photography issue?” writes Editor Daniel Simon. “For one thing, 2013 marks the centenary of popular 35mm still photography: the American Tourist Multiple camera was introduced in 1913, and Oskar Barnack began developing the prototype of the ur-Leica that same year. Moreover, 1913 stands out as a watershed modernist moment.” During that same year, Camera Work published a special issue featuring art photography and the movement known as pictorialism. Simon explains, “By juxtaposing photography with other works of modern art and literature, Stieglitz was hoping to promote ‘the camera’s role as the most apt metaphor for the modernist enterprise’ and to defend the use and aims of photography ‘as one of the defining tasks of modernism itself.'”

He goes on to say that “one hundred years later—and in a similar spirit—WLT presents a special double issue devoted to the language of photography and, by extension, literature . . . By the conventional measure, the seventy-plus pictures included in this issue must be worth more than seventy thousand words. And while photographers often prefer to let the images they create stand on their won, without comment, in this instance we’re fortunate to have their words alongside their photos.”

The featured photographers include Yousef Khanfar, David Goldblatt & Nadine Gordimer, Lois Greenfield, Jacko Vassilev, Lisa Kristine, Robert Glenn Ketchum, Lalla A. Essaydi, Kenro Izu, Joyce Tenneson, Misha Gordin, Ken Duncan, Ami Vitale, David Doubilet, Candida Höfer & Umberto Eco, Tim Mantoani, Angela Bacon-Kidwell, Phil Borges, Graciela Iturbide, Jay Dusard, Camille Seaman, and Shahidul Alam.

The issue also contains essays by Kamila Shamsie, Adnan Mahmutović, and Mark Budman, as well as poetry by André Naffis-Sahely.