Home » NewPages Blog » Page 181

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!

Press 53 Publishes 100th Title

Press 53 has just published In a World of Small Truths, the debut short story collection from Ray Morrison. This is the 100th book published by Press 53, which celebrated its seventh anniversary in October.

Morrison’s book focuses on the Southern city in a state of flux, jumping from backwoods thieves and farmers to professionals and students. Stories from the collection have appeared in Fiction Southeast, Ecotone, Aethlon, Carve Magazine, and Night Train. Morrison won first prize in the short story category of the 2011 Press 53 Open Awards and has twice received honorable mention in the Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition.

Congratulations to both Press 53 and Ray Morrison.

Fugue Prose and Poetry Prizes

The Summer & Fall issue of Fugue announces the winner of the 11th Annual Ron McFarland Prize for Poetry. The judge, Rodney Jones, says that the winner, Ansel Elkins, “is a poet we are going to hear from.”

Ron McFarland Prize for Poetry

Winner: Ansel Elkins
“Real Housewives”

Finalist: David Cazden
“Midwest Suite”

Finalist: Dylan Mounts
“Bobby Solomon Found Himself the Owner of a Local Community Lawn Services Organization”

The winner of the 11th Annual Prose Prize is also included. The judge, Pam Houston, says that the winning piece is “the most ambitious of all the contest stories.” She says, “I was both surprised and convinced by the ending, which is a satisfying combination for any story. This is one ending that will stay with me.”

Fugue Prose Prize

Winner: Josie Sigler
“The Watcher in the Woods” [Fiction]

Runner-Up: Natanya Ann Pulley
“The Trickster Surfs the Floods” [Essay]

Fat Characters in Contemporary Literature

In her essay on Salon.com Contemporary Literature’s Obesity Epidemic, Hannah Rosefield of the LA Review of Books examines “fat characters” in modern literature beginning with this: “…there aren’t nearly as many fat characters in modern fiction as you’d expect, considering how many fat people there are in the world today.” Rosefield draws upon Virginia Woolf’s “On Being Ill” (1926) to set the analysis of Big Ray by Kimball, Heft by Liz Moore, The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg, and Erin Lange’s young adult novel Butter, each of which “have protagonists who are double or even triple their ‘healthy’ weight.”

Thunderbird

The “other” world is a refrain throughout Dorothea Lasky’s startling new collection Thunderbird, which seeks the origins of creativity in the dark corners of anger, frustration, and even boredom. “I don’t live in this world,” Lasky writes (in “Death and Sylvia Plath”). “I already live in the other one.” These second worlds are easy to “breeze” into (“When you breeze upon the other world / O you are already there / O you are already there”); alternately, they seem impossibly insular (“Sweet animal, they locked us in this life / But I think we still have time before we have to get out of it”). In a book of flights—“Thunderbird” references a Native American spirit, but Lasky also conjures birds, planes, wind, and the mind’s movements—travel means to relinquish control. To disembody: Continue reading “Thunderbird”

Po-boy Contraband

Patrice Melnick’s memoir is a dance with language. Po-boy Contraband is a series of mini essays that outlines Melnick’s diagnosis with HIV and her journey to reclaim her life through music, writing, and relationships. The literary dance she creates is quick and jarring in the opening section “Finding Out,” sweeping us through the wilderness of Africa, where Melnick served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the late ’80s and where she contracted the virus. Characters pop up and out of the essays like soap bubbles, never reoccurring in later scenes—a nod to the flimsiness of relationships but also, at times, unsatisfying to the reader. Her relationship to music has the strongest hold in this book, so I more easily remember the album she listens to in DC when she discovers she’s HIV-positive than the friends she has in Africa. Continue reading “Po-boy Contraband”

Clangings

In psychiatric terms, “clangings” is a thought disorder experienced by those with schizophrenia and manic states in which words are connected by sound rather than concepts, and speech and thoughts can quickly veer in a new direction in a disconnected way. In Clangings by Steven Cramer, each page has a poem of five quatrains that stands alone as a self-contained piece but also furthers the book’s connected story of a narrator reflecting on his life “in his way.” There are two pages that break this pattern and provide clarity of the narrator knowing his misaligned place in the scheme of things. Close to the end of the book: Continue reading “Clangings”

The Fifth Lash & Other Stories

In his preface, Anis Shivani claims that The Fifth Lash & Other Stories is a collection of fiction that is fundamentally the work of a young man. He quickly points the reader to the collection’s immaturities—the anger of the narrators, the stylistic experimentation from story to story, transient identities of characters, and even the youthful rawness of emotions crammed into the assemblage as a whole. Indeed, The Fifth Lash was Shivani’s first collection (later publications include Anatolia and Other Stories as well as his poetry in My Tranquil War and Other Poems), but the poignancy of these sketches deserves more than to simply stand in the shadow of his earlier published—yet later written—work. Continue reading “The Fifth Lash & Other Stories”

The Creek at the End of the Lawns

In capturing the people and place of a small town, Ira Joe Fisher’s fourth poetry collection forges a strong relationship to form, meter, and rhyme. A keen sense of reminiscing for past ghosts filters through poems that range from brief lyrics to grander narratives. The Creek at the End of the Lawns resurrects the need for the performative aspect of poetry in terms of storytelling and mythmaking, prompting the reader to speak these poems aloud rather than remain silent. Continue reading “The Creek at the End of the Lawns”

Conning Harvard

Adam Wheeler was by all accounts a very successful 21-year-old. He entered his senior year at Harvard University with everything going for him: top marks in his courses, a large circle of friends, and a steady girlfriend, not to mention scads of prestigious academic honors and awards. Indeed, it seemed that there was nothing this affable wonder boy couldn’t do. There was just one problem. All of his success—from the impressive academic grants he received to his very admission to Harvard University—was predicated on fraudulent transcripts, fake SAT scores, phony letters of recommendation, and enough plagiarized prose to fill a library. In short, everything people thought they knew about Adam Wheeler was a lie. Continue reading “Conning Harvard”

Circle Straight Back

Noel Sloboda released two chapbooks from different presses in 2012. His screen-printed, stanza-form chapbook, So Below (sunnyoutside, March 2012) contains four short poems and a deftly made two-color fold-out. Unlike So Below, the other chapbook of prose poems, Circle Straight Back, is sparse and unadorned. The effect is matter-of-fact, archival, and unsentimental. This seems an appropriate device for poetry of subtle misery and overt tragedy. It is certainly a theme running through the text. From the first poem, “Birth of Tragedy,” to the end of a species in “Of Species,” the threads of death, destruction, tragedy, and disappointment prevail. Continue reading “Circle Straight Back”

This Is Not the End of the Book

As our age at an ever increasing rate gives birth to what is rightfully referred to as The Rise of the Digital, are printed books going to disappear? This is the largely opaque question at the heart of the lengthy conversation between two accomplished artistic European intellects that forms This Is Not the End of the Book. Umberto Eco is surely the more easily recognizable interlocutor here—his books In the Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum enjoy a broad readership, especially since the former was made into a film starring a young Christian Slater alongside Sean Connery. Yet Jean-Claude Carrière is a no less distinguished literary figure. A French writer with numerous books to his name, though perhaps not an author widely recognized by English readers, he has also authored several screenplays for films which are likely quite familiar, such as The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Continue reading “This Is Not the End of the Book”

Illustrated Poem: The Nudists by Kevin Simmonds

San Francisco poet Kevin Simmonds sent along this link to his illustrated poem The Nudists about the recent San Francisco nudity ban. The ban goes into effect in February 1, and there are already efforts under way to have the law overturned. The The Poetry Blog published Simmonds’s poem and is making it available as a free download.

October Family Matters Contest Winners

Glimmer Train has just chosen the winning stories for their October Family Matters competition. This competition is held twice a year and is open to all writers for stories about family of all configurations. The next Family Matters competition w ill take place in April. Glimmer Train’s monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.

First place: Soma Mei Sheng Frazier [pictured], of San Leandro, CA, wins $1500 for “Everyone Is Waiting.” Her story will be published in the Spring 2014 issue of Glimmer Train Stories.

Second place: Eugene Cross, of Chicago, IL, wins $500 for “Miss Me Forever.” His story will also be published in an upcoming issue of Glimmer Train Stories, increasing his prize to $700.

Third place: Sofia Ergas Groopman of New York, NY, wins $300 for “A Body, Even.”

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

2012 Haiku Year-in-Review

Broadsided’s annual Haiku Year-in-Review is now available for download from their website. Readers voted for their favorite haiku to match artists interpretations of four world events from 2012: The Greek Government Bailouts; The Arab Spring; Droughts in the U.S. Midwest; Death of the Last Pinta Giant Tortoise.

“The 2012 Haiku Year-in-Review” broadside features poems by Matthew Caretti, Sarah Martinez-Helfman, Renee Lacroix, Cynthia Gallaher and art by Lochlann Jain, Cheryl Gross, Sarah Van Sanden.

Read, enjoy, download, share!

Online Resources for Higher Ed Job Seekers

This resource comes from the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester, so there is some content specific to that field, but it otherwise provides a lot of good, general sources for those looking to get a job in higher education

And this essay from Inside Higher Ed: Questions They Might Ask You by Katherine Ellison and Cheryl Ball.

Rejection of Rejection

Roxane Gay, co-editor of PANK, contributes an essay to the new issue of Kugelmass titled “The Art of the Rejection of Rejection.” She writes about some of the silly and amusing responses she gets from writers who have been rejected from PANK. One writer responds “Thanks for your thoughtful response. I agree the work is one of my weaker efforts, but I had the idea that I might find a place for it if only I set my sites low enough.” Gay writes, “I did not alter his spelling so the irony, as you might imagine, amused me greatly.”

But still some writers respond in a much more melancholy manner; “[the responses] are tough because it’s clear the writer is having some kind of emotional crisis and/or has their self-esteem inextricably bound to their literary success or lack thereof.” But ultimately, it is not up to the editors to make decisions based on how the rejection “might affect a writer’s life.”

Gay rounds out her essay with a statement that I think we can all identify with, whether it is about ourselves as writers or about writers we have workshopped or worked with: “It is fascinating . . . how writers are not able to separate their writing from themselves. They view constructive feedback as a personal attack, a personal insult, an editorial sin that can never be forgiven.”

There are more essays in this issue from Jenny Allen, Sam Allard, and Katherine Spurlock as well as poetry from Edward Curtis, Denise Duhamel and Amy Lemmon, Jessy Randall and Daniel M. Shapiro, David Kirby, Christopher Citro, Mark Cunningham, and Buff Whitman-Bradley and stories from Robert Atwan, Courtney Maum, Sophie Kipner, Dan Pope, Timothy C. Dyke, and Dan Moreau.

Wanted: Assistant Web Administrator and Editors

Red Feather Journal is a growing online, international, interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal that provides a forum for scholars and professionals to interrogate representations of children in film, television, Cyberspace, video games, art, photography, advertisement or any other visual medium in which the image of the child is featured. Red Feather Journal facilitates an international dialogue among scholars and professionals through vigorous discussion of the intersections between the child and the conception of childhood, children’s material culture, children and politics, the child body, and any other intersections of culture and the child image within local, national, and global contexts.

Red Feather Journal is seeking interested applicants who would like to be a part of our exciting and diverse group of scholars in the capacity of editor and/or assistant web administrator.

For the editor position we seek applicants who have published scholarly works or established research in the area(s) of film/media studies, or children and childhood studies, or related field.

For the Assistant Web Administrator position we seek applicants with established research in film/media or children’s studies (or related field) and who have web-page design and maintenance experience. Duties include [Assistant Web Administrator] assisting Web Administrator with journal publication and design (published twice a year), and [Editor] active participation in the double-blind peer review process.

Scholars from outside the United States and Graduate Students who are ABD are encouraged to apply.

Interested scholars please send letter of interest, contact information, CV, and one sample publication (or link to a sample) to Debbie Olson, debbieo-at-okstate.edu or dolson-at-uta.edu

Applications will be accepted until January 31st, 2013.

CFS New Online Dev Ed Journal

EDvance is a practitioner-based resource for developmental educators seeking innovative methods of instruction for their classrooms. The journal publishes research-based pedagogy that challenges students to think deeply about their learning in highly creative and imaginative ways. The purpose of the publication is to extend the scope of what it means to teach students of the developmental level.

Submissions: Lessons must be thoughtfully designed and suited for the developmental English classroom. The editors anticipate a careful consideration of scaffolding that would be appropriate for various levels of developmental English.

Native Filmmakers Fellowship

Sundance Institute’s Native American and Indigenous Program has created a Fellowship to provide direct support to emerging Native American, Native Hawaiian, and Alaskan Native film artists working in the U.S. The Fellowship is a two-stage development opportunity for filmmakers with short film scripts. The first stage of development is an intensive 5-day workshop, held May 20th – 24th, 2013. During the workshop, Fellows received intensive feedback on their projects from established screenwriters and directors.

Sign Petition for Imprisoned Poet

Michael Rothenberg and Terri Carrion from 100 Thousand Poets for Change are asking supporters to sign an extremely important petition in response to Qatari poet Mohamed Ibn Al Ajami‘s imprisonment for the crime of reciting a poem extolling the courage and values of the popular uprisings in Tunisia. He as been sentenced to life in prison. Read the full petition here.

Rothenberg and Carrion write: “As poets and artists we have a personal stake in seeing this poet released from prison. His persecution is the persecution of all poets and we feel this is something we can’t stand by and watch without taking immediate action. We are very excited by the broad community support we have received thus far and it would be a great honor to have you join us in support of this action by signing the petition and forwarding it to like-minded friends.”

Open Utopia

Does the world really need another edition of Utopia? From Open Utopia creator/curator Stephen Duncombe: “This digital edition of Utopia is open: open to read, open to copying, open to modification. On this site Utopia is presented in different formats in order to enhance this openness. If the visitor wishes to read Utopia online they can find a copy. If they want to download and copy a version, I’ve provided links to do so in different formats for different devices. In partnership with The Institute for the Future of the Book I provide an annotatable and ‘social’ text available for visitors to comment upon what More – or I – have written, and then share their comments with others. Those who like to listen will find a reading of Utopia on audio files, and those who want to watch and look can browse the user-generated galleries of Utopia-themed art and videos. For people interested in creating their own plan of an alternative society, I’ve created Wikitopia, a wiki with which to collaborate with others in drafting a new Utopia. More versions for more platforms are likely to be introduced in the future.”

Behind the Editor’s Desk

With the new issue of Iron Horse Literary Review comes two brand new columns. “In the Saddle” will give a sneak peak into the habits and writing rituals of an author that the magazine editors admire. Since it is the first installment of the column, the editors of Iron Horse decided to go first. To the left is a photo of the editors’ desk, labeled and commented on to the right. While some of the comments are insightful (“Once we accept a manuscript, everyone in the office . . . spends a little alone-time with the piece, copy-editing closely and massaging the writing into its best possible shape.”), other comments are playful: “We complain about our office being windowless. Some folks say, ‘Even if you had a window, you’d just be looking out at a brick wall.’ So we hung a photograph of a brick wall, by Marcus J. Weekley.”

In “Bits & Pieces,” Leslie Jill Patterson talks about how Duotrope has wrongly listed Iron Horse as one of “The Slothful” journals, taking around a year to respond to submissions. After crunching numbers on their own, they showed that their average response time is actually more like one to two months. “For complaining and pointing out that what Duotrope is doing might actually be libelous, was certainly unethical, Iron Horse was booted from their Web site,” she writes. “Fine. I like being a rebel. Let’s see if we can set this thing on fire.” She says that more news about this will be posted on their website and social media sites.

The rest of the issue includes new writing from Carrie Shipers, Charles Hughes, Juan Morales, Abby Geni, Asha Falcon, Mary Jo Melone, and more.

Responding to Tragedy in School

From the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE): “Literacy teachers, working with community members and educators across a school system, have a special responsibility in the wake of school tragedy. They help students build empathy and understanding through reading literature, informational texts, and multimedia accounts of events in and around their school. They help students gain perspective by learning to place events in cultural, social, and historical contexts. And they help students organize evidence so they can write persuasively about changes that will promote safety, security, and healing.

“In a time where violence and social disruption do not stop at the school house door, NCTE honors the vital work of literacy educators, and all who collaborate with them, to advance learning under the most difficult circumstances.

“We’ve assembled these resources on responding to tragedy in schools for you and your school community.”

– Sandy Hayes, NCTE President

The Gift that Gives to All

If you are reading the NewPages blog, chances are you already consider a book to be one of the best gifts out there (to give or receive). But why not consider another literary gift? A donation in someone’s name to an independent publisher gives on multiple levels:

  • You are supporting not just the publisher, but authors (and by extension, readers) as well.
  • In some cases, publishers offer books at a certain donation level, so you’ll still have something for your recipient to unwrap. (And if not, buy one of their books!)
  • Many independent presses, especially non-profit ones, are heavily involved in the improvement of their communities and dedicate funds to literacy and other programs, both local and worldwide. Your donation can have a far-reaching impact.

Unsure how to choose a publisher to support? Just pick a tactic. Go with the well-known: both Coffee House Press and Graywolf Press are non-profits; Graywolf notes on its site that a $25 donation can provide one of their titles to a high school student, and through 1/15/13, Coffee House is donating 10% of its sales to the worldwide literacy program Room to Read. Or go with a cause near to your recipient’s heart: Kore Press, for example, publishes women’s poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, including that of writers underrepresented in the cultural mainstream. They also seek to mentor and support women ages 14-20 with their Grrls Literary Activism Program. Find a press that supports GLBT literature…environmental activism…translations of obscure French poetry; whatever your recipient’s interest, there’s likely a small press that caters to it.

Countless publishers would appreciate your financial support, and any reader would enjoy having that support given in her/his name. And perhaps best of all, you don’t have to go anywhere near a mall.

If you know of other presses like those mentioned, please add a comment about who they are and what they do to this blog post. (Comments are moderated to avoid spam, so give us time to post them.)

Technoculture: The Retro Issue

Technoculture (ISSN 1938-0526) is an independent annual peer-reviewed journal. Publishing both critical and creative works that explore the ways in which technology impacts this (or any) society, with a broad definition of technology.

Technoculture seek creative works that use new media and/or are on the subject of technology, and essays from a broad a range of academic disciplines that focus on cultural studies of technology. Essays published examine the topic “technology and society,” or, perhaps,“technologies and societies.”

For Volume 3 (2013), The Retro Issue, the editors are particularly seeking essays and creative works that focus on lost, ancient, old or dead technologies, technologies that no one uses, or very few people still employ. Topics could include depictions of technologies that treat a wide range of subjects related to the social sciences and humanities. These subjects might include:

  • technologies once popular that are no longer used, such as 8-track tape
  • film and television as technologies (especially in the early days of television and film)
  • celebrities’ use of technology in a given historical moment, such as the early days of television or the heyday of radio
  • politics and technology, especially historical approaches
  • music production and dissemination, especially historical approaches (such as Listz’ transcriptions of entire Wagner operas and Beethoven symphonies)
  • visual artists and their use of (or flight from) given technologies, especially historical approaches
  • literary depictions of technologies (especially in works from other decades than our own)
  • computer/video gaming (older games, rather than newer games)
  • the dissemination of the arts via technology to broad or to specialized audiences in particular historical moments
  • the disappearance of a given technology or technologies and what that disappearance/disappearances means/mean for the archival issues that surround the humanities.
  • sports and sports figures of the past
  • memorabilia and collectibles from the past

In particular, the editors are interested in a conception of “technology” and the “humanist impulse” that pushes beyond contemporary American culture and its fascination with computers; they seek papers that deal with any technology or technologies in any number of historical periods from any relevant theoretical perspective with a particular focus on old, dead and lost technologies for this issue.

Technocluture is not interested in “how to” pedagogical papers that deal with the use of technology in the classroom.

Technoculture will publish scholarly/critical papers in the latest MLA citation style, but also creative works including poetry and creative non-fiction are of interest to us. They will publish art work and especially media designed for display/dissemination on a computer monitor including still images, video or audio.

Submissions for Volume 3 (2013) accepted until 31 August 2013.

NewPages Link Updates

Added to The NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines:
Five Quarterly [O] – poetry, fiction
Lunch Ticket [O] – poetry, fiction, nonfiction
New Haven Review Image – poetry, fiction, nonfiction
Midwestern Gothic Image – poetry, fiction, photography
Angle [O] – poetry
Chagrin River Review [O] – poetry, fiction
Glitterwolf Image – LGBT, poetry, fiction, art, photography
Phoenix in the Jacuzzi Image – poetry, fiction, art
Quickly [O] – poetry, fiction, nonfiction, drama, reviews
Sundog Lit [O] – poetry, fiction, nonfiction
The Whole Mitten [O] – fiction
Theodate [O] – poetry
iO Poetry [O]
Broad! [O] – poetry, fiction, nonfiction, visual art
Clockhouse Review Image – poetry, fiction, nonfiction, drama, comics, graphic narrative
Quarterly Literary Review Singapore [O] – poetry, fiction, criticism, interviews
Storm Cellar Image – fiction, nonfiction, poetry, photography, art
Swamp Biscuits and Tea [O] – fiction

[app] = publication available as an app for tablets/phones
[e] = electronic publication for e-readers
Image = online magazines
[p] = print magazine

Added to Literary Links:
Burrow Press Review – fiction, nonfiction, columns, serials, interviews, book reviews
The Dying Goose – fiction
District – poetry, fiction, art
Animal – poetry, fiction, nonfiction
Revolver – an arts and cultural magazine based in Minneapolis
WhiskeyPaper – Drink words
The Barnstormer – to celebrate the intersection of sports and humanity with good writing
Dead Flowers – A Poetry Rag
The Bakery – poetry
Verity LA – (Australia) – creative arts journal, publishing short fiction and poetry, cultural comment, photomedia, reviews, and interviews.

Added to The NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines:
thisthatSAID [O] – a critical examination of contemporary issues
Gadfly [O] – culture that matters

Added to Writing Conferences, Workshops, Retreats, Centers, Residencies, Book & Literary Festivals:
Whistler Readers & Writers Festival [Canada]
BookFest Windsor
Blood & Tea Mystery Conference

Added to Creative Writing Programs:
Augsburg College (MN) MFA program
Benedictine College [Springfield, IL] BA in Writing & Publishing
Monterey Peninsula College [CA] creative writing classes

Added to Independent Publishers & University Presses
Triangle Square – YA imprint of Seven Stories Press
Great Weather for MEDIA – poetry, fiction, monologues, nonfiction, anthologies
Torrey House Press – fiction, nonfiction, environment, American West
Soberscove Press – art-related books
ANTIBOOKCLUB

Crazyhorse Fiction and Poetry Contest Winners

The Fall 2012 issue of Crazyhorse announces the winner of the Crazyhorse Prize in Fiction: “Candidate” by Amina Gautier, selected by Joyce Carol Oates. The winner of the Lynda Hull Memorial Prize, judged by Carl Phillips, is Lo Kwa Mei-en’s poem, “Man O’ War.” Both winners received $2,000 and inclusion in this issue.

Other contributors to the issue include Karen Brown, Nona Kennedy Carlson, Aaron Gwyn, Caitlin Horrocks, Molly McNett, Karen Munro, Lia Purpura, Peter Stine, Monica Berlin, Traci Brimhall, Daniel Carter, Jean-Paul de Dadelsen, Kara Dorris, John Estes, Elisa Gabbert, Sarah Giragosian, Karin Gottshall, Sarah Gridley, Katy Gunn, Marilyn Hacker, Allison Hutchcraft, Karen An-hwei Lee, G

Tupelo Press 30 Poems in 30 Days

The 30/30 Project is an extraordinary challenge and fundraiser for Tupelo Press, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) literary press. One poet per month will run the equivalent of a “poetry marathon,” writing 30 poems in 30 days, while readers can “sponsor” and encourage her or him every step of the way by making a donation to Tupelo Press in honor of the poet. The first volunteer, Rebecca Kaiser Gibson, is already off and running. Readers can follow the poets by having each new post delivered via e-mail. Tupelo plans to continue the 30/30 Project for a full year. If you’d like to volunteer for a month, contact publisher-at-tupelopress.org with your offer, a brief bio, and three sample poems.

Art of Takanori Aiba in Stone Voices

Takanori Aiba’s art is featured in the Winter 2012 issue of Stone Voices. He “creates incredibly detailed tiny worlds using craft paper, plastic, plaster, acrylic resin, paint, and other materials. His work is inspired by his early experiences with maze illustration as well as with the Japanese art forms of bonsai (miniature trees) and suiseki (stone appreciation).”

The art is truly amazing and detailed; I only wish I could see the pieces in real life. I’m particularly enraptured with the pieces that incorporate the bonsai tree. “My work comes out of my extraordinary, fantastic, and sometimes even chimerical imagination,” he writes. “People believe that my creations are real buildings and spaces because I depict not only the outline, but also all the elaborate details in each piece. I create the side, back, and even the inside of the buildings.”

I was also taken with Vincent Louis Carella’s column and photography, “The Little People.” He takes photos of miniature plastic people in the environments around him. “Taking these photos has raised for me a thousand questions,” he writes. “How is it exactly that bodies speak? The language of the human form has no vowels, it defies the tongue and teeth. . . These little figurines speak loudly.” Later he says, “What I’ve discovered is that I overlook so much.”

The rest of the issue includes art portfolios by Kristin Reed and Rae Broyles and features Naomi Beth Wakan, M. M. De Voe, Marsha Bailey Andersen, and David Denny.

LiveCast: Junot Díaz and Julie Otsuka

The 92 Street Y Reading Series will feature Junot Díaz and Julie Otsuka on Monday December 17 at 8:00pm EST. The free livecast allows viewers to post questions to a Twitter feed. Junot Díaz’s new collection of stories is This Is How You Lose Her. His writing is “radiant with the hard lives of those who leave and also those who stay behind—it is a rousing hymn about the struggle to defy bone-cracking history with ordinary, and extraordinary, love,” wrote Walter Mosley. “His characters explode off the page into the canon of our literature and our hearts.” Julie Otsuka won this year’s PEN/Faulkner Award for The Buddha in the Attic. She “creates a voice that is hypnotic and irresistible, and renders her story with the power of the most ancient, timeless myths, the legends that crowd our dreams, and the truths we cannot bear,” wrote the judges.

The Golden Key – 2012

The Golden Key is a brand new speculative online journal, then name coming from the Grimm’s fairy tale with the same title. The Grimm’s story ends with a boy who lifts the lid of an iron chest without revealing what’s inside. Co-Editor Susan Anspach says, “The Grimms chose to end their collection of fairy tales with this story as a reminder that there exists an endless reserve of stories still yet untold. In the same spirit, our journal seeks to publish work that is open to strange and marvelous possibilities.” Continue reading “The Golden Key – 2012”

Otis Nebula – Fall 2012

screenshot of Otis Nebula Number 6

What first drew me into this magazine was the art, by Alison Scarpulla. The table of contents is set up as a collage of images, each one pertaining to a piece of prose or poetry. At least for the art, make sure to take a look at this issue, though I suspect you’ll find plenty in the writing to keep you on the site.

Continue reading “Otis Nebula – Fall 2012”

Mead – Fall 2012

Mead aims to make the magazine “small and explosive, writing we would want to read while waiting at the bar for our lover. Writing that is fermented, burnt, makes some kind of penance, offering, or sacrifice. Has breakage, but tooth. Writing with ropes, legs, residue. Writing that leaves ashes.” There are five sections—beer, wines, cocktails, pure spirits, and sparkling—in which the editor categorizes the pieces to be published. In this review, I choose to select my favorite for each of the drinks. Continue reading “Mead – Fall 2012”

Cerise Press – Fall/Winter 2012-13

Cerise Press, a well laid-out and professional looking online journal, publishes a variety of fiction, poetry, translations, essays, and art and photography in the latest issue. I started with the fiction, getting lost in the narratives and then dove into the endless (okay, not literally) amounts of poetry. Continue reading “Cerise Press – Fall/Winter 2012-13”

Right Hand Pointing – 2012

Before delving into discussion of the writing in Right Hand Pointing, it is worth noting that the magazine’s layout/design makes reading it easy. Such a simple design allows for full focus on the words rather than what they look like on the page. I read the issue entirely from my phone; at the end of each poem, I simply scrolled to the bottom and clicked the hand pointing to the right to continue on in the issue. Continue reading “Right Hand Pointing – 2012”

Arkansas Review – August 2012

The Arkansas Review features a blend of fiction, poetry, photography, and scholarly articles about the seven-state Mississippi River Delta. At fifty pages, the brief journal is an interesting study of this part of America, but at times feels claustrophobic in its geographic constraints. What sets this magazine apart from others is the chorus of Delta voices and its convincing local color. Continue reading “Arkansas Review – August 2012”

Boulevard – Fall 2012

Once again, Richard Burgin and his team present a well-rounded collection of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that will appeal to the reader’s intellect and emotion alike. The impact begins with the journal’s very first piece: a new short story from Joyce Carol Oates. In “Anniversary,” Vivianne has retired from higher education and has decided to volunteer to teach writing in the State Prison Education Program. Vivianne has been paired with Cal Healy, a much younger and far less experienced teacher. Oates builds tension effectively and organically, taking a lot of time to explain all of the many rules one must follow to work in a prison. (Avoid blue clothing so you can’t be confused with an inmate, avoid delving too deeply into their personal lives . . . and keep an eye on that pencil sharpener.) The ending of the story alone is worth the read. Oates manipulates the reader’s understanding of the narrative, lending greater power and a more disturbing undertone to a simple ride home. Continue reading “Boulevard – Fall 2012”

Brick – Summer 2012

At its start, Brick was a collection of reviews, and at its heart still is. The editors say, “Brick’s mandate remains unchanged: to create a beautiful product filled with the most invigorating and challenging literary essays, interviews, memoirs, travelogues, belles lettres, and unusual musings we can get our hands on.” Continue reading “Brick – Summer 2012”

CALYX – Summer 2012

CALYX, a literary journal dedicated to celebrating women’s voices, never fails to delight. The expanded summer issue of 2012, with its collection of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, art, and book reviews, is by turns lyrical and raw, whimsical and powerful. We read about mothers, sisters, wives, and best friends in witty and imaginative language, glimpses into other lives that live on in the imagination long after the last page has been turned. Continue reading “CALYX – Summer 2012”

The Carolina Quarterly – Fall 2012

Families in various stages of self-destruction or survival are a connecting thread for most of the prose in this issue of Carolina Quarterly. Fiction and memoir today are rife with stories about the unsettled, uncommitted young, so it’s refreshing to read strong writing about people who have tried to firm up some ground beneath their feet—even if the effort sometimes fails catastrophically. Continue reading “The Carolina Quarterly – Fall 2012”

Ekphrasis – Spring/Summer 2012

As its name would indicate, the poems in this slender volume of Ekphrasis take another piece of art as their starting point, sometimes providing description or commentary but also pushing it further, igniting something transformative. Though there is no editorial statement to indicate any specific theme or thrust for the issue, the further one reads, the more unnecessary it becomes. The title is enough. Continue reading “Ekphrasis – Spring/Summer 2012”

Eleven Eleven – 2012

Eleven Eleven is an exciting journal from the California College of the Arts. Founded in 2004, their goal is to provide an outlet for risk and experimentation from talented writers and artists. From the gorgeous cover art to the works of fiction and poetry from local and international talent, there is a lot to like about the current issue. Continue reading “Eleven Eleven – 2012”