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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!

Magazine Stand :: The Lake – September 2023

The Lake online magazine of poetry and reviews logo image

The September issue of The Lake online journal of poetry and poetics is now online and features work by Charlie Brice, Abby Caplin, Eric Chiles, Joe Flood, Katie Kemple, Lanny Ledeboer, Betsy Martin, Kushal Poddar, Lisa Rossetti, Rochelle Shapiro, J. S. Watts, Sarah White. There are also reviews of contemporary poetry collections: Nick Allen’s local universes; Oz Hardwick’s A Census of Preconceptions; and Mary Makofske’s No Angel. Readers can also get a sneak peek of recent published collections in The Lake‘s “One Poem Reviews,” which offers sample poems from Richard Robbins, Kelly Sargent, and Ram Krishna Singh.

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

Book Review :: Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein

Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein book cover image

Guest Post by Kevin Brown

In Kevin Jared Hosein’s Hungry Ghosts, Hans Saroop is a hard-working husband and father in 1940s Trinidad. Unfortunately, that work doesn’t get him much money and results in even less social status. He and his family, as well as their friends, live in the Barrack, a pieced-together building with a roof that leaks so often they don’t bother to patch it and walls so thin everybody knows what is happening—for good and ill—in everybody’s lives. Above them, both literally and metaphorically, live Dalton and Marlee Changoor, a couple who have everything those in the Barrack wish they had. Hans and two of his friends work for the Changoors, a proximity that will lead to one crisis after another, revealing the temptation of power and the realities of poverty and lack of social standing. As the title conveys, there are characters who only live in the most literal sense, while those who are dead continue to affect the living, with no respite from their haunting. Hanging over the entire novel is the threat of violence that seems embedded in the nation’s history, especially the colonization and domination of the country that continues to weave its way through the residents’ lives, just waiting for the moment to return in full force.

Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein. Ecco, February 2023.

Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite or kevinbrownwrites.weebly.com/.

New Book :: Frida Kahlo in Fort Lauderdale

Frida Kahlo in Fort Lauderdale: Poems by Stephen Gibson book cover image

Frida Kahlo in Fort Lauderdale: Poems by Stephen Gibson
Able Muse Press, February 2024

Stephen Gibson’s Frida Kahlo in Fort Lauderdale reimagines the iconic Mexican artist’s life and relationships by exploring Kahlo’s passions and pains through vivid persona poems. Realized entirely in a modified triolet form, the collection is essentially an ekphrastic epic inspired by the paintings, photos, and personal effects on display in a 2015 Fort Lauderdale exhibition. Gibson probes the artist’s inner world, giving voice to Kahlo’s desires, anguish, and defiant spirit. He conjures her crippling injuries from a bus accident, her tumultuous marriage to Diego Rivera, and her affairs with Leon Trotsky and others, all filtered through her fervent art. This innovative collection brings Frida Kahlo’s singular vision to life in visceral contemporary verse.

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

New Book :: What to Count

What to Count: Poems by Alise Alousi book cover image

What to Count: Poems by Alise Alousi
Wayne State University Press, August 2023

With heart and insight, the poems in Alise Alousi’s What to Count speak to what it means to come of age as an Iraqi American during the first Gulf War and its continuing aftermath, but also to the joy and complexity of motherhood, daughterhood, and what it means to live a creative life. More than a description of the world, Alousi’s poetry actively lives in and of the world. These poems explore the nuances of memory through the changes wrought by time, conflict, and distance. In “The Ocularist” and “Art,” and others, Alousi’s extraordinary verbal deftness precisely locates the still-tender pains and triumphs of collective being while trying to be an individual in the world. What to Count is a remarkable collection of contemporary poetry—both a lyrical splendor and a contemplative account of lineage, silenced history, and identity.

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

New Book :: Ropes

Ropes: 10th Anniversary Edition by Derrick Harriell book cover image

Ropes: 10th Anniversary Edition by Derrick Harriell
Aquarius Press/Willow Books, August 2023

Ropes by Derrick Harriel was originally published in 2013 as a collection based on the lives of four famous boxers: Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, Joe Frazier, and Mike Tyson. This 10th-anniversary edition contains new poems and a new Introduction by Kiese Laymon. Made up of persona poems about the greatest boxers in American history, Ropes is considered a leading commentary on African American life and culture in the past 100 years. Harriell is an associate professor of African American Studies and English at the University of Mississippi and the new director of the university’s African American Studies program. He is a past winner of the Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters Prize in Poetry.

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

Sponsored :: New Book :: No One Is on the Line

No One Is on the Line: The Poetry of Mohsen Mohamed book cover image

No One Is on the Line: The Poetry of Mohsen Mohamed

Translated from the Arabic by Sherine Elbanhawy

Laertes, September 2023

These poems arose from the depths of incarceration, from the voice and intellect of Mohsen Mohamed (sentenced to five years of imprisonment after a campus protest in 2014) and went on to win Egypt’s two most significant literary prizes. They speak of dislocation and the wrenching of the heart, of a found (and forged) community, of the bare lineaments of humanity disclosed in the throes of suffering. They are works of provocative witness and searching tenderness.

“Mohsen Mohamed is an honest poet with a new dictionary, a keen eye for details and surprising twists, and a great talent.” —Amin Haddad, poet, winner of the International Cavafy Prize for poetry

Where to Submit Roundup: September 1, 2023

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

Where to Submit Roundup 2023

Welcome to the first Where to Submit Roundup for September 2023. August has passed us by, and we are creeping closer to fall, cooler weather, and the best time of year to sit inside to work on our writing and submitting goals. There are several September 1 deadlines below, so don’t miss out on those!

Don’t forget paid newsletter subscribers can get early access to the majority of submission opportunities and upcoming events before they go live on our site, so do consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription today.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: September 1, 2023”

New Book :: Boundless Deep

Boundless Deep, and Other Stories by Gen Del Raye book cover image

Boundless Deep, and Other Stories by Gen Del Raye
University of Nebraska Press, September 2023

Boundless Deep, and Other Stories by Gen Del Raye, winner of the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, is a portrait of a family that holds together despite everything. At the funeral of her old boss, a grandmother confronts the legacy of the draft letters she delivered as a girl during World War II. Facing the loss of his job, a father becomes the caricature strangers have always believed him to be. A graduate student living far from home is worn down by the reality of what it takes to save even a small piece of the world. Along the way, we meet communist revolutionary Shigenobu Fusako hiding out in a Tokyo hotel, submariner and war criminal Nishina Sekio in his tortured dreams, and Edwin, a half-dolphin friend, wreaking havoc in a public pool. Written in the compressed style of Amy Hempel and Lucia Berlin, these stories examine characters whose struggles submerge them, weighing them down from every angle, until they can finally float free.

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

New Book :: Rock Stars

Rock Stars by Matt Mason book cover image

Rock Stars by Matt Mason
Button Poetry, September 2023

Witty, nostalgic, rhythmic, and forlorn, Matt Mason’s poetry calls on the classic rock music that shaped him. Mason laments on his childhood in the 80s and addresses the graduating preschool class of 2023, as he takes us on the coming-of-age road trip of a lifetime. An ode and ovation to what our ears taught us before we knew what to say, Rock Stars riffs on all things music, poetry, sports, and more. Matt Mason is the Nebraska State Poet and, through the US State Department, has run poetry programs in Botswana, Romania, Nepal, and Belarus. He is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Nebraska Arts Council.

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

Magazine Stand :: Alaska Quarterly Review – Summer/Fall 2023

Alaska Quarterly Review Summer Fall 2023 cover image

Photographer Marion Owen’s bee on the Summer/Fall 2023 cover of Alaska Quarterly Review won’t let you pass up this issue of stories by Jake Maynard, Julie Esther Fisher, Emma Pattee, Miriam Karmel, David Galef, Rebecca Bernard, Myles Zavelo, Claire Seymour; essays by Jenna Devan Waters, Alyce Miller, Gabriela Halas, Michael Bogan, Joan Murray; poems by Matthew Zapruder, Jamaica Baldwin, Virginia Konchan, Jennifer Barber, Robert Wood Lynn, Brooke Sahni, Mihaela Moscaliuc, Mary Peelen, Eva Saulitis, Dannye Romine Powell, Jason Tandon, Kareem Tayyar, Sarah B Sullivan, Mathew Weitman, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Elizabeth Bradfield, Patricia Clark, Rachel Hadas, Andrew Hemmert, Farah Peterson, Annie Wenstrup, Megan Snyder-Camp, Laura Kolbe, Jessica Greenbaum, Amy Dryansky.

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: Sex Augury

Sex Augury by C. Bain book cover image

Sex Augury: Poems by C. Bain
Red Hen Press, September 2023

Sex Augury is a collection that practices divination with the symbolism of our radically changed and changeable world. Exercising trans poetics, C. Bain denormalizes the violence embedded in the most intimate strata of American life. Confrontationally queer, urgently wounded, deeply political, and metaphysically transported, these poems create their own system of meaning in an environment that is increasingly hostile to meaning of any kind. This collection spans digital culture, gender reversals, and archetypal-mythic vocabularies, alongside close observation of the surround of “ordinary” urban existence. These poems bristle with intelligence, acuity of feeling, and refusal to gloss the complexity of our moment into a false narrative of progress.

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

Magazine Stand :: The Missouri Review – Summer 2023

The Missouri Review Summer 2023 cover image

Status is the theme of the Summer 2023 issue of The Missouri Review, as Editor Speer Morgan writes in the foreword, “status…with the storytelling that illuminates it, encompasses more than just economic or social position. For most living creatures, status can impact both intraspecific and interspecific chances of survival.” Exploring this theme is new speculative fiction by Emily Mitchell, Naeem Murr, and Jonathan Wei, new stories from John Fulton and Becky Mandelbaum, new poetry by Aaron Coleman, Cynthia Marie Hoffman, and Stephanie Niu, and essays from Grace Plowden and Kathleen Spivack. There is also an arts feature on Vanitas: the Art of Death and Decay, work on Clara Bow, and a review essay on recent books about Gay Life in the 20th and 21st centuries. Cover art: Mirror Head by Estanislao Gonczanski (2018).

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: Asides: Occasional Essays

Asides: Occasional Essays by George Singleton book cover image

Asides: Occasional Essays by George Singleton
EastOver Press, November 2023

George Singleton’s Asides: Occasional Essays offers readers a fascinating and curious collection in which Singleton explains how he came to be a writer (he blames barbecue), why he still writes his first draft by hand (someone stole his typewriter), and what motivated him to run marathons (his father gave him beer). In eccentric world-according-to-George fashion, Laugh-In’s Henry Gibson is to blame for Singleton’s literary education, and Aristotle would’ve been a failed philosopher had he grown up in South Carolina. Singleton gets his dogs to promise they won’t use his new gardens as a Porta-Potty, learns about his not-so-famous relations, and generally charms anyone sensible enough to read this delightful book. Word of advice? Buckle up and relish this ride.

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

Magazine Stand :: The MacGuffin – Spring/Summer 2023

The MacGuffin Spring/Summer 2023 cover image

The MacGuffin Spring/Summer 2023 issue marks the final volume of long-time typesetter and designer Ione Skaggs. The publication sends her off in grand style with a new story with a post-modern bend from MacGuffin favorite Gracjan Kraszewski to open things up and closes with a touching story that ruminates on both art and artists from Jeffrey Ihlenfeldt. In poetry, Karen Marker admits she’s “Been Following You on Instagram” and Laura Grace Weldon muses on the theater of our own lives in “Rich People We Know Offer Theater Tickets;” all this plus a four-poem spread of food-related poetry to inspire any reader’s next charcuterie foray. Cover art: “Dinner Guests” by Carol Aust, whose works are also featured in a full-color portfolio inside the issue.

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: The Cruelties of Brooklyn

The Cruelties of Brooklyn by Paul Schaeffer book cover image

The Cruelties of Brooklyn by Paul Schaeffer
Mudfish Individual Poet Series #17
Box Turtle Press, June 2023

In The Cruelties of Brooklyn by Paul Schaeffer, each poem builds upon the next to create an unsparing vision of all the characters in the poet’s childhood and adulthood that is nevertheless suffused with a love of humanity. With almost as few words as possible, Schaeffer conveys a world of meaning and abundance of detail, telling his outrageous stories that are colorful, earthy, perceptive, empathic, and brilliant. His intense realism lifts into the visionary: “The coffin lid flew open / Her body so light / She lifted into the air / A white sheet escaping a clothesline.” He mourns Aunt Helen, “the last of the gang,” but not before he immortalizes each and every one of them.

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

Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week – August 28, 2023

Lit Mag Covers: Picks of the Week recognizes cover art and designs for literary magazines, whether in print or online. These are chosen solely at the discretion of the Editor. Enjoy!

Epiphany Summer 2023 cover image

Sprinkler by Deanna Dikeman on the Summer 2023 cover of Epiphany is the quintessential image of the season and brought back many wonderful childhood memories.

Sugar House Review Summer 2023 cover image

I got into a stare-down with the Sugar House Review Summer 2023 cover image octopus and lost when I decided I’d rather look inside at all the great new poetry.

Michigan Quarterly Review Summer 2023 cover image

As a Michigander, this Michigan Quarterly Review Summer 2023 cover definitely speaks to me on many levels as well as fascinates my artistic appreciation with the mix of oil, acrylic, gouache, ink, marker, and graphite on paper by Andrea Carlson. The work, Future Cache, is currently part of an exhibit by the same name showing at the University of Michigan Museum of Art. The 40-foot tall memorial wall commemorates the Cheboiganing (Burt Lake) Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians violently burned from their land in Northern Michigan on October 15, 1900. Visit the UMMA for more information.

Find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

Magazine Stand :: World Literature Today – Sept/Oct 2023

World Literature Today September October 2023 cover image

The September/October 2023 issue of World Literature Today presents a cover feature devoted to Indigenous Literatures of the Americas, showcasing contributions by sixteen Native writers from the “long, long continent” of the Western Hemisphere. Additional highlights include short fiction by Uruguayan writer Armonía Somers, five questions with debut novelist Javier Fuentes, and Veronica Esposito’s “Untranslatable” column on Sehnsucht. Along with a book review section brimming with the latest must-reads, creative nonfiction from Canada, plus postcards from Georgia and Ecuador, the September issue offers a tantalizing lineup of the best new reading from around the world.

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

Magazine Stand :: The Society of Classical Poets – August 2023

The Society of Classical Poets logo image

The Society of Classical Poets Journal publishes a print annual of poetry, translations, and essays selected from those published on the SCP website between February and January as well as artwork for inclusion in the print copy. Throughout the year, readers can find these works on a rolling basis, making each visit to the website a new reading discovery. Recent contributors include Leland James, Julian Fite, Lucia Haase, Monika Cooper, James Sale, Carey Jobe, Paul A. Freeman, Phil S. Rogers, Daniel Howard, C.B. Anderson, Rob Crisell, D.R. Rainbolt, Gregory Roxx, Brian Yapko, and Nathaniel Todd McKee. Readers may also want to take part in the discussion following Julian Woodruff’s essay, “Can Long Poems Still Work?” and Joseph S. Salemi’s essay, “The Cultured Heonist.”

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: Sukun

Sukun: New and Selected Poems by Kazim Ali book cover image

Sukun: New and Selected Poems by Kazim Ali
Wesleyan University Press, September 2023

Kazim Ali is a poet, novelist, and essayist whose work explores themes of identity, migration, and the intersections of cultural and spiritual traditions. His poetry is known for its lyrical and expressive language, as well as its exploration of themes such as love, loss, and the search for meaning in a rapidly changing world. “Sukun” means serenity or calm, and a sukun is also a form of punctuation in Arabic orthography that denotes a pause over a consonant. This Sukun draws a generous selection from Kazim’s six previous full-length collections and includes 35 new poems. It allows us to trace Ali’s passions and concerns, and take the measure of his art: the close attention to the spiritual and the visceral, and the deep language play that is both musical and plain spoken.

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

New Book :: Down Here We Come Up

Down Here We Come Up by Sara Johnson Allen book cover image

Down Here We Come Up by Sara Johnson Allen
Black Lawrence Press, August 2023

Winner of the 2022 Big Moose Prize, Down Here We Come Up by Sara Johnson Allen is about three women who have lost connection with their children, through alienation, adoption, and across a militarized border. Their lives intersect in a “safe house” for migrant workers outside of Wilmington, North Carolina in 2006. From her deathbed, con artist Jackie Jessup lures home her estranged 26-year-old daughter Kate Jessup. There, Kate meets former teacher Maribel Reyes, who is separated from her family in Ciudad Juárez. While none of these women trust each other, they do have a chance to get back what they have each lost.

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

Magazine Stand :: Terrain.org – August 2023

Terrain.org new logo

Focused on place, climate, and justice, Terrain.org offers readers editorials, poetry, essays, fiction, hybrid forms, videos, review, interviews, the ARTerrain gallery, the “Upsprawl” case study, and the series Letter to America – all online on a rolling basis. Their email newsletter keeps readers up-to-date on fresh content, like “Oh, possum,” an essay by Laura Jackson Roberts (with audio); “Moon: An Excerpt of A Little Bit of Land,” nonfiction by Jessica Gigot; “What Water Holds,” nonfiction by Tele Aadsen; “Earth and Motherhood, Part II: A Collection of Wildness” by Melissa Mattewson; “Rapid Lightning,” a story by Megan Campbell; “Single Family Residence,” a story by Sara Joyce Robinson; “Land in Formation: Drawings” by Nicola López; poems by Rachel Richardson, Grant Kittrell, William Wenthe, Joe Wilkens, Grant Kittrell, Teresa Mei Chue, and Joseph Powell; and “Care is a Creative Act: Interview with Awren Danahue” by Martha Park. All content is free to read online.

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: Selected Poems of Calvin C. Hernton

Selected Poems of Calvin C. Hernton edited by David Grundy and Lauri Scheyer book cover image

Selected Poems of Calvin C. Hernton edited by David Grundy and Lauri Scheyer
Wesleyan University Press, August 2023

This volume promises to be the definitive guide to Calvin C. Hernton’s unparalleled poetic career, re-introducing readers to a major voice in American poetry. Hernton was a cofounder of the Umbra Poets Workshop; a participant in the Black Arts Movement, R. D. Laing’s Kingsley Hall, and the Antiuniversity of London; and a teacher at Oberlin College who counted amongst his friends bell hooks, Toni Morrison, and Odetta. As a pioneer in the field of Black Studies, Hernton developed a theoretical and practical pedagogy with lasting impact on generations of students. He may be best known as an anti-sexist sociologist, following in the footsteps of W.E.B. Du Bois, but Hernton viewed himself, above all, as a poet. This volume includes a generous selection of Hernton’s previously published poems, from classics like the often anthologized “The Distant Drum” to the visionary epic The Coming of Chronos to the House of Nightsong, reprinted in full for the first time since 1964, alongside uncollected and unpublished material from the Calvin C. Hernton papers at Ohio University, a new critical introduction by Ishmael Reed, and detailed notes, chronology, and bibliography.

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

Where to Submit Roundup: August 24, 2023

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

Where to Submit Roundup 2023

Welcome to the final Where to Submit Roundup for August 2023. That’s right. By next Friday, September will officially be here. This is a perfect time to check out our Big List of Writing Contests for upcoming fall deadlines, too.

Don’t forget paid newsletter subscribers can get early access to the majority of submission opportunities and upcoming events before they go live on our site, so do consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription today.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: August 24, 2023”

New Book :: Morpheus Dips His Oar

Morpheus Dips His Oar by Tamara Madison book cover image

Morpheus Dips His Oar: Poems by Tamara Madison
Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, February 2023

In this third full-length collection of poems, Madison welcomes the reader to step into her craft for a tour that tracks the movement of a life. Among narrative, lyric, and points in between, the poems in this collection are informed by the poet’s keen eye for detail, command of language, and ear for the music of words. Poems of loss, growth, grief, pleasure, joy and snark, are presented with arresting imagery, humor, and an abiding faith in the salvation that nature offers.

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

Magazine Stand :: Fictive Dream – August 2023

Fictive Dream online literary magazine logo image

Fictive Dream is an online magazine for short stories (500-2500 words) that give an insight into the human condition. The publication features stories “with a distinctive voice, clarity of thought, and precision of language. They may be on any subject. They may be challenging, unsettling, uplifting, cryptic but, above all, they must be well-crafted and compelling.” The publication accepts submissions on a rolling basis and publishes one story every Friday and Sunday. Recent contributors include Graham Mort, Sharon Boyle, Robert Scotellaro, Kerry Hadley-Pryce, Louis Gallo, Kim Magowan, Claire Polders, Carolina Peleretegu trans. Norma Kaminsky, Catherine McNamara, Megan Catana, Gary Fincke, and Will Musgrove.

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Lit on the Block :: Shō Poetry Journal

Shō Poetry Journal Number 3 cover image

Shō Poetry Journal is a new print publication released twice a year, and while it can’t be said it has a happy origin story, Editor Johnny Cordova has turned adversity into a beautifully crafted opportunity for both readers and writers. “Shō is a project that I abandoned in 2003 shortly after the second issue was published. I was going through a divorce, moved from Arizona to California, and wanted a clean break from everything.” Both Cordova and Editor Dominique Ahkong had moved from Southeast Asia to Arizona and started sending their own poetry to journals. “We were struck by how many journals had moved online. We saw a need in the market for a high-quality independent print journal that publishes a wide range of voices, accepts simultaneous submissions, has a reasonable response time, and that feels good in the hands.” And thus, Shō was created.

Continue reading “New Lit on the Block :: Shō Poetry Journal”

New Book :: You Were Watching from the Sand

You Were Watching from the Sand: Short Stories by Juliana Lamy book cover image

You Were Watching from the Sand: Short Stories by Juliana Lamy
Red Hen Press, September 2023

Playful, kinetic, and devastating in turn, You Were Watching from the Sand is a collection in which Haitian men, women, and children who find their lives cleaved by the interminably strange bite back at the bizarre with their own oddities. In “belly,” a young woman abandoned by her only living relative makes a person from the mud beside her backyard creek. In “We Feel it in Punta Cana,” a domestic child servant in the Dominican Republic tours through his own lush imagination to make his material conditions more bearable. In “The Oldest Sensation is Anger,” a teenager invites a same-aged family friend into her apartment and uncovers a spate of disturbing secrets about her. Written in a mixture of high lyricism, absurdist comedy, and Haitian cultural witticisms, this is a collection whose dynamism matches that of its characters at every beat and turn.

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

Magazine Stand :: Cutleaf – August 2023

Cutleaf August 2023 cover image

Cutleaf publishes a new issue online every other week and will update readers via email so they can keep reading fresh new prose and poetry that “responds to our common experience and reflects our differences.” Recent contributions: Gary Fincke explores where emotion lives in the essay “In the Heart,” Kristin Lindsey is visited by the spirits of the past and present in “Ghosted,” Annette Pearson travels towards the past in search of what is remembered and forgotten in “Road Trip South,” Jacob Boyd challenges, deepens, and complicates the principles espoused in John Perry Barlow’s list of 25 Principles of Adult Behavior, beginning with the poem “Remember that Your Life Belongs to Others as Well. Do Not Endanger It Frivolously,” Christen Noel Kaufman learns to hold death in her hands in three poems beginning with “Never Close a Knife Someone Else Has Opened,” and Okwudili Nebeolisa sinks into the kind of loneliness that can only be felt on dark nights beginning with his poem “It’s Never a Ghost.”

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New & Noted Lit & Alt Mags – August 2023

NewPages receives many wonderful literary magazine and alternative magazine titles each month to share with our readers. You can read more about some of these titles by clicking on the “New Mag Issues” under NewPages Blog or Mags. Find out more about many of these titles with our Guide to Literary Magazines and our Big List of Literary Magazines and Big List of Alternative Magazines. If you are a publication looking to be listed here or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay the most up-to-date on all things literary!

2River View, Summer 2023
Alaska Quarterly Review, Summer/Fall 2023
Apple in the Dark, Summer 2023
Arboreal, Number 3
Arc Poetry, Summer 2023
The Awakenings Review, Spring 2023
Blue Collar Review, Spring 2023
Boulevard, 112 & 113
Cholla Needles, August 2023
Cream City Review, 47.1
Cutleaf, August 2023
The Dream Review, Issue 3
The Empty Inkwell, July 2023, Issue 1
Fictive Dream, August 2023
Free Inquiry, August/September 2023
Ganga Review, 2023
The Gettysburg Review, 34.3

Continue reading “New & Noted Lit & Alt Mags – August 2023”

New Book :: Toy Gun

Toy Gun by Matt Coonan book cover image

Toy Gun: Poems by Matt Coonan
Button Poetry, August 2023

Through each poem in the debut collection Toy Gun, Matt Coonan fires his offbeat childhood and adolescence at the page. He enters each exit wound with sharp diction and form, extracting shards of trauma, mental health, and evolutionary violence. What readers will find in this collection is ambitious anaphora—an attempt to explain the irrationality of an obsessive mind by imitation. The result of it all? Raw candor dripped on the backdrop of New York suburbia; an intimacy that lingers from backyard barbeques to funeral homes.

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Magazine Stand :: South Dakota Review – 57.3

South Dakota Review Issue 57.4 cover image

South Dakota Review, Volume 57, Number 3, had just been released and includes poetry by Alison Zheng, John Walser, Joanna Acevedo, E J Cousins, Glenn Shaheen, Richard Robbins, Jen Yáñez-Alaniz, Judith Harris, Dylan Willoughby, Tricia Bogle, Gary Charles Wilkens, Joshua Michael Stewart, Simon Anton Niño Diego, Dani Putney, and Lisa Roullard; a novella excerpt by Yelizaveta P. Renfro; short stories by Joe Davies and Rylann Watts; creative nonfiction by Chelsy Diaz Amaya and Stephanie Dickinson; and a scholarly essay by Audrey Fong. Subscriptions and copies can be ordered here.

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

Lit Mag Covers :: Picks of the Week – August 21, 2023

Lit Mag Covers: Picks of the Week recognizes cover art and designs for literary magazines, whether in print or online. These are chosen solely at the discretion of the Editor. Enjoy!

Pembroke Magazine 2023 cover image

Artist Fran De Anda’s work is front and back on the 2023 annual issue of Pembroke Magazine. The Magician of Roots (2022) seen here is oil and gold leaf on canvas and is utterly mesmerizing.

Brick 111 cover image

Continuing with the ‘gold’ theme, the image on the front cover of Brick 111 is a detail of Zhang Xiaogang’s Light No. 5, 2022, oil on canvas.

Pulp Literature Summer 2023 cover image

PULP Literature covers are always a unique blend of classy, classic, and surreal. Their summer 2023 issue features the painting Dreaming Underwater by Claire Lawrence.

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: No Last Words

No Last Words by Tara Kelly book cover image

No Last Words by Tara Kelly
EastOver Press, August 2023

Tara Kelly’s moving memoir, No Last Words, opens: “The day before Robert died was an otherwise perfect June day in Connecticut: warm but not hot, with a bit of a breeze, flawless blue sky, puffy white clouds—the sort of weather a sailor loves, and Robert was a sailor.”

Robert Willis was Tara’s husband, father of their children, restauranteur, sailor, bon vivant, and alcoholic. From an enchanted start in Manhattan to a townhouse in Brooklyn, from an island in Maine and back to rural Connecticut, in fast cars and sleek boats, Tara and Robert seemed to live a charmed life. But beneath the glittering exterior was the struggle of money, alcohol, and ultimately self-control and hard-won sobriety. When this couple seems to have reached an impasse, separation brings renewed love, and then tragedy brings new challenges. Kelly’s memoir is a clear-eyed excavation of the lives lived together and apart by two charismatic modern Americans, a story told in love and compassion for herself and others.

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

New Book :: STONED

Stoned by Jill Hoffman book cover image

STONED: A Novel by Jill Hoffman
Box Turtle Press, April 2023

In Jill Hoffman’s long-awaited second novel, STONED, forty-year-old mother of two Maud Diamond is getting a divorce. Having experienced the colossal disappointment of being jilted by a famous artist, she falls in love with a poor unknown artist who assuages the disappointment but leads to other ills. Maud’s son leaves home to live with his father; the daughter does phone sex from their new home, proclaiming, “I’m the only one in this house earning any money.” As Maud starts a literary journal called Wild Leek with her new boyfriend and moves downtown, their relationship spirals downward from her pot-smoking and his alcoholism. STONED is for anyone who has been in love or lost love, been married, divorced, or lonely. It is about the satisfactions and deprivations of sex and drugs.

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

New Book :: Here in the Night

Here in the Night: Stories by Rebecca Turkewitz book cover image

Here in the Night: Stories by Rebecca Turkewitz
Black Lawrence Press, July 2023

The thirteen stories in Rebecca Turkewitz’s debut collection, Here in the Night, are engrossing, strange, eerie, and emotionally nuanced. With psychological insight and finely crafted prose, Here in the Night investigates the joys and constraints of womanhood, of queerness, and of intimacy. Preoccupied with all manner of hauntings, these stories traverse a boarding school in the Vermont woods, the jagged coast of Maine, an attic in suburban Massachusetts, an elevator stuck between floors, and the side of an unlit highway in rural South Carolina. At the center of almost every story is the landscape of night, with all its tantalizing and terrifying potential.

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

Magazine Stand :: The Dawn Review – Issue 3

The Dawn Review logo image

Issue 3 of The Dawn Review celebrates work that is surprising and otherworldly. In every piece, the self is intimately connected to its environment– as the world turns and folds inward, the self is reconstructed, and new usages of language are essential for capturing the transformations that occur in the crossroads. The works in Issue 3 refuse a concrete ending, just as life itself forces us to be constantly reborn. In “Sanctuary with the Burning Self,” Muhammed Olowonjoying renews language, writing, “I oasis of my existence. I camouflage / into fluorescence.” Meanwhile, LeAnn Perry wakes the dead in “Yes, No, Goodbye,” and Edward Gunawan allows personhood to bloom between the lines of his contrapuntal poem. Even as summer ends in Fiona Jin’s “Cassiopeia,” time is relentless, keeping the speaker “so here, so here, so here.” Issue 3 highlights the best work from the Dawn Review’s third reading period, as well as the winner and the finalists of the Dawn Prize for Poetry, judged by Sarah Ghazal Ali. Ultimately, the writers and artists in this third issue buckle against the restraints of language and form – in doing so, they unearth beauty and strangeness in how we build, rebuild, and destroy ourselves.

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

Magazine Stand :: The Meadow – 2023

The Meadow 2023 cover image

The 2023 issue of the nationally-acclaimed literary magazine The Meadow captures readers with the cover photo, Lichen Fang, by Mike Clasen. Once inside, featured writers will continue to captivate, with poetry by Stacy Boe Miller, Joanne Mallari, Jeffrey Alfier, Mark Sanders, Lora Robinson, Christine Kwon, Paul Ilechko, Kathryn Levy, Jana Harris, Lori Howe, Richard Robbins, and many others. The issue also includes four essays by Lori White, Kian Razi, David Stewart, and Zachary Greenhill. The Meadow is produced by Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nevada, and is currently open for submissions.

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: All the Ways We Lied

All the Ways We Lied: A Novel by Aida Zilelian book cover image

All the Ways We Lied: A Novel by Aida Zilelian
Keylight Books, January 2024

Set in Queens, New York, meet the Manoukians—a dysfunctional Armenian family and the fraying rope that binds them. While a father deteriorates from terminal illness, three sisters contend with one another, their self-destructive pasts, and their indomitable mother as they face the loss of the one person holding their unstable family together. Kohar, the oldest sister, is happily married, yet grapples with fertility issues and, in turn, her own self-worth. Lucine, the middle child, is trapped in a loveless marriage and haunted by memories of her estranged father. Azad, the beloved youngest child, is burdened by an inescapable cycle of failed relationships. Zilelian uses humor and compassion to explore the fraught and contradictory landscape of sisterhood, introducing four unforgettable women who have nothing in common and are bound by blood and history.

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

August 2023 eLitPak :: Consequence’s Fall Reading Period Open

Screenshot of Consequence's Fall 2023 Reading Period Flyer for the NewPages eLitPak Newsletter

Deadline: October 15, 2023
The reading period for Consequence Volume 16.1 is open from July 15 through October 15. As always, we’re after the strongest work that deals with the consequences of war or geopolitical violence. We publish in Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translations, and Visual Art, though we are especially interested in increasing our Translations submissions.

BIPOC and people from other under-represented communities are strongly encouraged to apply.

View submission guidelines here.

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August 2023 eLitPak :: 2023 Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest

Screenshot of Winning Writers flyer for the 2023 Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest
click image to open PDF

Submit published or unpublished poems to the 21st annual Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest sponsored by Winning Writers and co-sponsored by Duotrope. We will award $3,000 for the best poem in any style and $3,000 for the best poem that rhymes or has a traditional style. The top 12 poems will be published online. Final judge: Michal ‘MJ’ Jones. Deadline: September 30. Fee: $22 for 1-3 poems. View flyer for more information.

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Where to Submit Roundup: August 18, 2023

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

Where to Submit Roundup 2023

Welcome to the NewPages Weekly Roundup of Submission Opportunities! August is officially half over with this week. The weather is crazy, the only thing that wants to grow properly is grass and weeds, bugs are destroying everything in the veggie garden, and invasive pests are trying to kill my roses. Hopefully your summer is going better.

I hope you are able to get some nice R&R time in before the crazy period of back-to-school and fall descends upon us. If you’re still working on your submission goals, we are here to help. Don’t forget paid newsletter subscribers can get early access to the majority of submission opportunities and upcoming events before they go live on our site, so do consider subscribing or upgrading your subscription today.

Continue reading “Where to Submit Roundup: August 18, 2023”

Promote Your Books to Bookstores and Libraries

Author signing a book

NewPages.com offers mailing lists to help with the promotion of new books as well as set up readings or other launch events. NewPages.com offers up-to-date and affordable mailing lists for indie bookstores (U.S. & Canada), Barnes & Noble bookstores, public and academic libraries, and daily newspaper and alternative newsweeklies with a 100% postal delivery guarantee. Learn more about our mailing lists here.

New Book :: Remote Cities

Remote Cities by George Franklin book cover image

Remote Cities: Poems by George Franklin
Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, September 2022

From a cathedral in Cuernavaca with its frescos of samurai and soon-to-be-martyred priests to neighborhoods in Miami at the end of lockdown, to New York City in the 1970s, or to mythic Greece, the poems in Remote Cities are conscious of history as a process happening right now. They look back at us with an urgency that demands response, not that we embrace this or that political or religious dogma but that we live our lives with a sense of their fragility and value.

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

Books Received August 2023

NewPages receives many wonderful book titles each month to share with our readers. You can read more about some of these by clicking on “New Books” under the NewPages Blog or Books tab on the menu. If you are a publisher or author looking to be listed here or featured on our blog and social media, please contact us!

Poetry

Apples & Crows, Alan Basting, Kelsay Books
The Cruelties of Brooklyn, Paul Schaeffer, Box Turtle Press
Directed by Lilly Obscure, Dana Curtis, Blaze Vox
Excuse Me As I Kiss The Sky, Rudy Francisco, Button Poetry
Feast of the Ass, Jahna Khajavi, Ugly Duckling Presse
Floriography Child, Lisa C. Krueger, Red Hen Press
Frida Kahlo in Fort Lauderdale, Stephen Gibson, Able Muse Press
Honest Sonnets, Nicole Farmer, Kelsay Books
Joan of Arkansas, Emma Wippermann, Ugly Duckling Presse
Let Our Bodies Change the Subject, Jared Harel, University of Nebraska Press
MA, Ida Börjel, Ugly Duckling Presse
Morpheus Dips His Oar, Tamara Madison, Sheila-Na-Gig Editions
Nice Nose, Buck Downs

Continue reading “Books Received August 2023”

Magazine Stand :: Ganga Review- 2023

Ganga Review 2023 cover image

Named for the sacred river, the annual print Ganga Review is a journal of international writings for liberation inspired by a pilgrimage through India. The Ganga Review 2023 features Michele Alborg, Hila Amit, Edward Bruce Bynum, Ch’oŭi, Craig Czury, Daniel De Leon, Antonio Di Bianco, Craig Evenson, Jay Frankston, Ian Haight, Philip Jason, Ever Jones, Ziaul Moid Khan, Hareendran Kallinkeel, Richard Leise, Alexander Mercant, Emily Murphy, E. Martin Pedersen, Patrick Pfister, Sandro Francisco Piedrahita, Thomas Piekarski, Peter L. Scamardo, Stuart Silverman, Michael T. Smith, Joseph Thomas, Ana Vidosavljevic, Kwong Kwok Wai, Sarah Walko, and Saman Zoleikhaei.

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: The Weight of Ghosts

The Weight of Ghosts: A Memoir by Laila Halaby book cover image

The Weight of Ghosts: A Memoir by Laila Halaby
Red Hen Press, September 2023

The Weight of Ghosts is a circling of grief following the death of the author’s older son when he was twenty-one, a horror that was compounded by her younger son’s drug use, the country’s slow eruption as it dealt with its own brokenness, and reckoning the author had to do regarding her own story. The Weight of Ghosts is a lyrical reclaiming and an insistence by the author that she own the rights to her story, which is American flavored with an unreleasing elsewhere. The Weight of Ghosts is an immigrant story and a love story. While it is raw and honest and tragic, it is also a hopeful, funny, and original telling that demonstrates the strength of the human spirit, while offering a vocabulary for these most unmanageable human experiences.

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

New Lit on the Block :: Immigration Diaries

Immigration Diaries logo image

Immigration Diaries is a new online journal of short stories, personal essays, poetry, and visual art founded by Yawen Yuan. Yuan lived in Shanghai until she was nine years old when she then moved to New York City. She recounts that for many years after immigrating to the United States, she felt lost and alone in her experiences. Yuan says that after listening to authors like Min Jin Lee, who immigrated from Korea at a young age, both felt more comfortable in their own experiences. Yuan would like to help others the way listening to Lee helped her by creating a place to share immigration stories and experiences.

Continue reading “New Lit on the Block :: Immigration Diaries”

New Book :: The Art of Mercy

The Art of Mercy Robert L. Penick book cover image

The Art of Mercy: New & Selected Poems by Robert L. Penick
Shō Poetry Journal / Hohm Press, August 2023

Robert L. Penick’s short, masterful poems have been making appearances in small press magazines since the early 1990s. The Art of Mercy, his first full-length collection, contains excerpts from four chapbooks as well as fifty-seven new and previously uncollected poems, representing the best of a long, quiet career in the poetry trenches. This book marks the first in the Beggar Poet Series produced by Shō Poetry Journal in partnership with their parent publisher, Hohm Press. “It is named for seekers across world traditions who set out on the spiritual path with nothing but a begging bowl in hand and a driving thirst for the unnameable. Some of those beggars become poets. Just as some poets, in their sacred vocation, become beggars, standing empty before the muse and writing what is given.”

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

Magazine Stand :: Baltimore Review – Summer 2023

Baltimore Review Summer 2023

The Spring 2023 issue of The Baltimore Review their summer contest winners selected by Judge Kelly Weber: Rochelle L. Johnson for flash creative nonfiction; Robin Littell for flash fiction; and Jarrett Moseley for prose poem. The regular content includes poems, short stories, and creative nonfiction by Kayo Chang Black, Brendan Constantine, Roxanne Lynn Doty, Jim Genia, Sara Elkamel, Michael J. Grabell, Bronte Heron, Rochelle L. Johnson, Virginia Kane, Robin Littell, Jarrett Moseley, Robert Osborne, Charlie Peck, Remy Reed Pincumbe, Tom Roth, and Mimi Veshi. Many contributors also provide notes about their work, as well as audio recordings. All issues of The Baltimore Review back to Winter 2012 can be read online at no cost, and content from the online issues is also published in annual print compilations. Founded in 1996, The Baltimore Review showcases writers from Baltimore, across the U.S., and beyond.

To find more great reading, visit the NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Literary Magazines, the NewPages Big List of Alternative Magazines, and the NewPages Guide to Publications for Young Writers. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay up to date!

New Book :: And Dogs to Chase Them

And Dogs to Chase Them by Ray Trotter book cover image

And Dogs to Chase Them by Ray Trotter
EastOver Press, August 2023

In Ray Trotter’s collection of stories, And Dogs to Chase Them, ordinary humans are pushed to do things in out-of-the-ordinary ways. Trotter has conjured a world of Southern hyper-reality: a good Christian woman who pushes a man down the staircase, “as final as flushing the commode”; a concrete deliveryman who ought to have double-checked the address before he got out of his truck; and a man who enacts his revenge on the self-declared Queen of the Post Office. Through a keen eye for detail, Trotter brings to life a world that is at once familiar and deeply odd and creates characters that stay with a reader long after the book is closed.

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